Chapter 118 - Act 17. Abyssal Labyrinth (3)

The first market town.

Yise headed straight to a ritual-implement merchant. As soon as he entered, he handed over a spirit stone and asked a question.

“Has anyone come looking for a seal-breaking ritual implement recently?”

“You’re not looking for a seal-breaking implement, but for someone who was looking for one?”

“Yes. I’m searching for a wanted criminal.”

Yise answered honestly, lest the merchant grow suspicious and report him to the Heavenly Ice Palace.

“Well, not that I know of.”

Yise thanked him, then checked every ritual-implement shop in the area. Next, he visited the bookshops and public libraries.

“Has anyone started coming here noticeably more often lately?”

“Most of our customers are regulars. What is this about?”

He learned nothing, but he did not give up. He checked the identities of the Foundation Establishment Cultivators in the market town against the rumors circulating about them. Once he had seen their faces with a Farseeing Talisman, identifying them was easy enough. Most were local notables, or the elders or leaders of sects.

When his inquiries yielded nothing, he activated the Spirit-Detecting Mirror in the center of town and settled in to wait for at least three days. He had already confirmed that even those who normally concealed their spiritual energy appeared in the mirror the moment they began circulating their energy to cultivate.

Once he was certain no one was dropping their concealment and appearing in the mirror, he moved on to the next market town.

* * *

At the third market town, Yise found a Foundation Establishment Cultivator concealing his spiritual energy.

It happened in the town’s largest bookshop. Sensing another divine sense meeting his own, Yise turned his gaze. The other man was hiding his spiritual energy with a spirit-concealing ritual implement.

‘Could it be? Have I found him?’

He slowly examined the man’s face without making his interest too obvious. It differed from the face on the wanted notice, but a disguise would be the most basic precaution.

Yise looked away first. As he did, he felt the divine sense scanning him gradually lose interest.

‘He seems relaxed.’

The Foundation Establishment Cultivator glanced at Yise, then left the bookshop as though he were of no particular concern. His manner seemed rather leisurely for a wanted man on the run. Either he was not the fugitive, or he was a remarkably calculating actor.

Yise hurriedly handed the bookshop owner a spirit stone.

“Excuse me, fellow Daoist. Do you know the Cultivator who just left?”

“Oh, him? He’s the leader of the Doghead Gang.”

Yise immediately gathered information on the nearby Doghead Gang, only to be disappointed. Its leader was a local notable who had been active in the area for quite some time.

‘So even people with firmly established identities sometimes wear spirit-concealing implements.’

This bounty-hunting business was harder than he had expected. Looking a little weary, he moved on to the next market town.

* * *

The fifteenth day of the search.

The sun was setting as he traveled from the fifth market town, which he had finished searching, to the sixth. He had found no clues to Jang Yeonggeol’s whereabouts. Ironically, all he had caught instead was an unrelated wanted demonic practitioner in hiding, who had ended up in the Demon-Sealing Album.

Surely there was nothing to fault in either his strategy or his methods. Yise activated the Spirit-Detecting Mirror and calmly made his rounds through the market town. Yet negative thoughts kept creeping in. He could not go on searching every town forever, like someone searching a beach for a needle. He had already invested considerable resources.

‘At this rate, I might not even break even...’

Three large market towns and four medium-sized ones remained. If he searched those seven without success, he would have to consider his initial strategy a failure. After that, all he could do was pour in more time with nothing to go on. At that point, giving up would be the right choice.

* * *

A month into the search.

Yise was wandering through the tenth market town, barely keeping his mind from succumbing to an inner demon, when the spiritual energy of a Foundation Establishment Cultivator appeared in the Spirit-Detecting Mirror. The dot had certainly not been there a moment earlier.

His gaze snapped in that direction. Four rugged peaks rose from the mountainous terrain. It looked like an ideal place to hide.

Yise vanished from sight, concealing his spiritual energy. Then he reduced the reach of his divine sense to a minimum and advanced steadily toward his target, relying solely on the Spirit-Detecting Mirror.

After extending his vision with a Farseeing Talisman, he discovered a barrier formation. It concealed a cave, making it difficult to detect with the naked eye or even ordinary spirit sight. Whoever was inside had gone so far as to set up a barrier to hide here, despite this not being a grotto-heaven.

Yise’s hypothesis was gradually hardening into conviction.

He waited in silence, like a predator lying in wait for its prey. Was this the right target? Were there any accomplices? Any hidden defensive formations or traps?

Battles between Cultivators were always full of variables. This time, he also had to fight without attracting attention. Even two or three thorough checks would not be excessive.

The man was indeed a cautious fugitive. He remained holed up in his hideout for days, only emerging on the fourth day. Using a Farseeing Talisman, Yise secretly followed him from beyond the range of his divine sense. The man made a circuit of the nearby market town, then returned.

Once every seven days and nights. That was how often he went out. Each time he emerged from his secluded abode, he wore a different face. He was probably using disposable Disguise Talismans to alter his appearance.

Yise did not miss the fleeting instant when the Disguise Talisman’s effect ended as the man stepped into the barrier around his hideout. He had further disguised himself with a wig and false beard, but the features Yise discerned through his divine sense unmistakably matched the portrait on the wanted notice.

At last, he had found Jang Yeonggeol.

Once he was finally certain it was safe to begin the hunt, Yise moved.

‘I have to end it in one blow.’

‘If I don’t give him even a moment to respond, the fight won’t draw attention.’

‘I need to take his head off at once. I can’t risk damaging his storage pouch.’

Yise infused the Twin-Banner Spirit-Domain Sealing Standard with spiritual energy and sent it flying with telekinesis. He planted it in the cliff above the cave, enclosing the enemy’s hideout within its barrier, then immediately burrowed underground with the Earth-Travel Art.

The reaction was swift. He felt the Foundation Establishment Cultivator, his supply of energy cut off, frantically probing outside his hideout with his divine sense. The moment it touched Yise’s, he hastily withdrew it like a snail whose eyes had been prodded. Although Yise could not read his thoughts, his panic was palpable.

That fleeting instant seemed to drag on.

At last, unable to withstand the silent pressure of the Twin-Banner Spirit-Domain Sealing Standard, Jang Yeonggeol burst out of his hideout.

“Who’s there!”

Murderous intent poured from him. He seemed to have decided to kill the intruder, silence him, and escape. As a Foundation Establishment Cultivator himself, he would know precisely how far the barrier extended.

Perhaps the urgency had kept him from thinking to probe underground with his divine sense. Or perhaps he had decided his safest course was to escape the spiritual-energy-sealing barrier first.

The instant he hurriedly stepped outside it, Yise erupted behind him, swinging his hand axe with primordial energy. The pitch-black blade of the Black Phosphor Axe traced a graceful arc, and the Foundation Establishment Cultivator’s head sailed into the air with almost anticlimactic ease.

It was a nearly perfect hunt.

THUD.

The head rolled across the ground.

Rather than mount it on an Earthen Spear, Yise checked once more that the Cultivator was truly dead.

‘I bear you no ill will, but you harmed others for a fortuitous encounter yourself. Consider this your just deserts.’

He felt no guilt. He avoided unnecessary killing where he could, but he was no easygoing pacifist.

Senior U Jeol had told him that taking from thieves would not cause their resentment to accumulate as his karma. Thus, he had said, one should treat ordinary people with care and kill Cultivators on sight for the good of the world.

Yise listened well to his seniors. Still, since he had killed someone with whom he had no personal enmity, he offered a brief Consolation Ceremony, as if in compensation.

With a tense expression, Yise searched Jang Yeonggeol’s clothing and inspected his storage pouch. Fourteen thousand spirit stones, along with a considerable number of ritual implements.

The man must have prepared meticulously for betraying his sect. There were all manner of implements for fleeing, hiding, and evading pursuit. Yise carefully gathered and stowed them away.

The last thing he acquired was a jade slip considerably larger than those typically used to store cultivation methods. Inscribed on its front was the name Five Elements Life-Promoting Art.

It was a name he had never heard before. For now, he tidied up the scene, buried the body, and returned to his rented residence. As eager as he was to break the seal immediately, lingering at the scene would be dangerous.

* * *

Once he returned to his residence, the first thing Yise did was take out the jade slip containing the sealed secret map.

Five Elements Life-Promoting Art.

First, Yise tried to infer the nature of the cultivation method from its name. The five elements meant the five attributes. Life-promoting meant fostering life.

The name gave little indication of its contents, but it was accepted wisdom in the cultivation world that any method with “life” in its name was a heaven-blessed art of the highest order. Famous methods widely known throughout the Jeong Empire, such as the Long Life Art and the Heaven-and-Earth Life-Spirit Art, were examples.

Perhaps Jang Yeonggeol had known what this cultivation method was.

He carefully examined the sealed jade slip. He tried infusing it with spiritual energy, then Demonic Energy, then both together, but it did not respond. The result was the same even when he cautiously fed primordial energy into it, worried he might damage it.

There was no change whatsoever.

‘I knew it wouldn’t be easy, but still.’

Apart from its name, the jade slip bore no markings. It was designed to fold in half, but the two halves were joined so tightly that the seam was almost invisible.

‘Strange.’

He was no expert on seals, but he had heard that those left by ancient immortal masters shared one feature: they included clues. Eccentrics who enjoyed testing the worthiness of later generations would set a requirement and expect their successors to meet it. Surely they would not have designed the seal to be opened with outside help from a clan’s ritual-implement artisans or formation practitioners.

Yet no matter how he looked, he could find nothing resembling a clue.

Over the next few days, Yise tried everything he could. He submerged it in water, lightly scorched it, examined it in darkness and under light, and even used a disposable Appraisal Talisman. He went so far as to have his spirit beast Emer bite it. Emer opened his beak as wide as he could and bit down on the secret map, only to roll about on the floor, apparently in pain.

Yise also asked around about the appraisal methods used by ritual-implement artisans and tried those, but to no avail.

‘The secret must be hidden within this jade slip.’

It would not be anything conventional. The clue would be marked only on the physical object, so that whoever obtained it would have to figure it out for themselves.

How did one hide something? Cover it with something else, or make it smaller. He had already tried every means of stripping away a covering. Then perhaps... it had been written in letters so minuscule that even a Cultivator’s naked eyes could not see them?

Yise activated a Farseeing Talisman. His vision magnified dozens of times beyond its normal strength, he began examining the enlarged jade slip. In the end, he found no trace of anything on either its front or its back.

‘If magnifying it were enough, Jang Yeonggeol would surely have tried that.’

But if he had been the one who made this jade slip, he would have gone a step further. Yise held it upright and traced along the seam.

At last, he found them: five tiny indentations carved into the straight seam, so small they were barely visible even with the Farseeing Talisman. When he slipped his divine sense through the indentations, he saw tiny beads in five different colors inside.

The problem was what came next. Even feeding a fine trickle of spiritual energy into the seam alone produced no change. Yise’s mind raced.

Five Elements Life-Promoting Art.

The five elements.

Why the five elements?

The colors of the beads inside the indentations represented the five elements.

‘Could it be?’

A hypothesis flashed through Yise’s mind. A cultivation method with “five elements” in its name. Five indentations that could only be examined using both a Farseeing Talisman and divine sense.

Was the worthy successor sought by the owner of this method someone who had reached Foundation Establishment with a five-attribute spiritual root?

For someone with a five-attribute spiritual root, reaching Foundation Establishment was as difficult as plucking a star from the sky. Daemudo did see such cases from time to time thanks to its distinctive cultivation methods, but they were a mere drop in the ocean compared with the total number of Cultivators.

What, then, of the other continents? Apart from those in Daemudo, not a single Foundation Establishment Cultivator he had met possessed a five-attribute spiritual root.

Hadn’t even Ryu Seonghan, a dual-attribute spiritual root bearer, expected it to take him about a hundred years to reach Foundation Establishment? Granted, his circumstances had been poor, and he was lazy by nature.

In the cultivation world, unless they could afford to eat elixir pills as regularly as meals, even those with four-attribute spiritual roots might only just manage to reach Foundation Establishment after using up their entire lifespan of 150 years.

Someone who reached Foundation Establishment with a five-attribute spiritual root would therefore be... a rare talent indeed.

Yise simultaneously cast one spell for each of the five elements and directed them into the indentations. He had always focused on increasing his spells’ size and power, never on controlling them with such minute precision, so he struggled for quite some time.

At last, the moment he succeeded in feeding all five elemental spells into the tiny indentations at once, the folded jade slip began to open, emitting a dazzling light.

Inside was a map showing the location of the Abyssal Labyrinth.