Wei Yuan simply plunged his longsword into the side of the bed, grabbed the youth's head with one hand, and used Dao power to seal his sea of consciousness. This person hid himself exceedingly well, with only a faint glint of light showing within his sea of consciousness. Yet Wei Yuan possessed the Diting divine ability, and thus saw that hidden gleam of light within.
This fellow was no ordinary Dao Foundation cultivator. He had concealed his Dao Foundation almost seamlessly. If not for the Immortal Monarch's feng shui formation plate seizing upon the karmic link, Wei Yuan could have walked right past him face-to-face and, without probing deliberately, never noticed anything amiss, taking him for an ordinary Body Casting cultivator.
Now that Wei Yuan had seen his Dao Foundation, no matter how convincingly this person acted petrified with horror, it was useless. It had to be said, however, that his acting was truly lifelike—so much so that Wei Yuan had briefly doubted his own judgment. If the likes of Vice General Liao or Ren Youwei were here, they would have had to take him as their master when it came to acting.
Yet overacting had its drawbacks; it was a bit melodramatic. For instance, Wei Yuan felt he had clearly arrived with the demeanor of someone seeking plunder, so why was this person behaving as if something far worse than being killed were about to happen?
Still, a hidden Dao Foundation could not be faked, nor could the Immortal Monarch's feng shui formation plate be mistaken. Wei Yuan sneered inwardly: Since you want to act, I'll let you act to your heart's content!
A Dao Foundation cultivator with a sealed sea of consciousness in Wei Yuan's hands was like a lump of clay, to be kneaded and molded however he pleased. Even an immortal foundation from the Hall of the Bright King would have been at his mercy; any struggle would merely be amusement.
Wei Yuan pressed down offhandedly, his peerless strength bearing down, pinning the young cultivator face-down onto the bed.
To his surprise, the captive's struggles suddenly grew several times fiercer. A burst of great strength surged from who knew where; thrashing and squirming desperately like a landed fish, the cultivator actually shoved Wei Yuan's large hand away and forced a turn onto the back.
Wei Yuan was taken aback, though which side faced up mattered little—it was merely a question of order. A thorough search was imperative. Without uncovering every hidden trick and potent artifact on this person, Wei Yuan could not rest easy.
Pinning the cultivator down again, Wei Yuan slid a hand into the cultivator's robes and searched carefully. But as his hand descended, it pressed against a sizable mound of flesh.
Wei Yuan froze. A woman?
The young cultivator flushed crimson, biting her lower lip and averting her gaze. Though she had suffered humiliation, her captor had now realized her true identity; since his tastes supposedly leaned toward men, he ought to let her go.
Yet surprised as Wei Yuan was, his hands did not pause in the slightest.
Once one achieved a Dao Foundation, the Dao arts available were legion. If even the storybooks at Lie-Flat Inn could spin endless wild tales about them, cultivators themselves were bound to be even more inventive.
For instance, numerous illusions could make people mistake the false for real—something that didn't exist at all could not only be seen, but felt and perceived, when in reality one was merely groping at thin air. In certain extraordinarily profound illusions, if a person believed they had been killed, they would genuinely die even if whatever "killed" them never existed.
If illusions were like this, even more Dao arts and magical artifacts could achieve similar effects. Taking a step back, even if what Wei Yuan touched was truly a piece of flesh, that was no reason to stop. This was someone locked onto by the Immortal Monarch's formation plate through karmic ties; there was no way she was innocent. If Wei Yuan didn't search her completely, his very life might be at risk.
Searching a cultivator was fundamentally different from searching an ordinary mortal. A cultivator's physical body served versatile purposes: some borrowed falsehood to cultivate truth, some simply donned an outer shell over their real body, some refined a part of themselves into an artifact, and some went so far as to conceal formidable artifacts inside their flesh. For example, while the belt gifted by the Immortal Monarch was fastened around Wei Yuan's waist, the silk thread had actually been extracted and sealed in his left hand. If anyone focused solely on stripping Wei Yuan's belt, they would taste the Immortal Monarch's divine sense.
Besides, this person's appearance could only be considered delicate among men, and among female cultivators, she was merely ordinary. Growing up, Wei Yuan had looked upon celestial beauties like Bao Yun and Ji Liuli. If it had been them... Wei Yuan immediately banished such thoughts from his mind; dwelling on that kind of thing was asking to be struck by lightning.
Then again, even Wei Yuan himself was far better looking than she was. Thus, the person before him was no different from a block of wood or a stone in his eyes. He didn't care in the slightest what she was thinking; finishing the job quickly was what truly mattered. As the storybooks said: with looks so ordinary, one was unworthy of karmic entanglements.
Thus Wei Yuan searched meticulously, indeed finding quite a few artifacts, talismans, spiritual materials, and medicinal pills, stacking a small pile beside them in no time. Furthermore, she really had hidden several items inside her flesh, none of which escaped Wei Yuan's grasping claws. As Wei Yuan searched her all over, her struggles grew increasingly frantic, her face turning from red to purple.
Why would Wei Yuan care how a fish on the chopping board flopped? He pressed deeper.
Danger!!
An alarm flashed through Wei Yuan's heart, its intensity comparable to when he had faced the Northern Liao Snow Eagle! In that fraction of an instant, countless thoughts raced through Wei Yuan's mind...
Then he realized that even the Northern Liao Snow Eagle hadn't been able to kill him, so there was no rush to use the Immortal Monarch's divine sense.
The surrounding scenery suddenly shifted, transforming into a deep, gloomy hall in a state of ruin everywhere. The pedestals on both sides were empty, bearing no trace of what had once been enshrined there. In the center stood an idol, but its head and half its body were gone, leaving only the lower torso. The mutilated idol was covered in dried bloodstains. Not a flicker of lamplight illuminated the hall; only a few beams of moonlight slanted through a half-open door and a breach in the roof.
Both the captive and Wei Yuan appeared in the center of the hall, with Wei Yuan holding her down mid-search. In this moment, time seemed to freeze. Wei Yuan's consciousness remained sharp, yet he could not move an inch.
Upon the person, the phantom of an exquisitely beautiful woman clad in red opened her eyes, her pupils cold and devoid of emotion. Rising, she cupped Wei Yuan's chin and exhaled a breath of chilling air into his nose and mouth!
The breath was bone-chillingly cold and permeated with incense-vow power, utterly unlike the breath of the living. After entering Wei Yuan's nose and mouth, this yin qi rushed straight into his sea of consciousness, transforming into a wisp of yin wind capable of annihilating all things and corroding dharma idols!
Yet after circling across the vast, boundless earth, the yin wind couldn't find anything to blow upon...
It clearly possessed a degree of sentience. At first, it instinctively moved to blow against the ground, but quickly pulled back. Fortunately, it spotted Mount Jade, so it rushed eagerly toward it and blew violently against the mountain!
Mount Jade stood completely unmoved.
The yin wind capable of severely crippling a dharma idol vanished just like that, failing to shave off even a speck of dust. By rights, the easiest thing to blow away should have been the withered branch, but for some reason, the yin wind refused to blow toward it. Even so, under that gust, one of Wei Yuan's two newly acquired wisps of fortune vanished into thin air.
A sudden spark of sentience flashed in the red-robed woman's eyes, as if someone were looking deeply at Wei Yuan through her eyes before she dissipated.
The ruined hall vanished, and the surroundings reverted to the original room. The person was still pinned by Wei Yuan, frozen in a futile posture of struggle. However, a chill touched Wei Yuan's face, and fake whiskers and eyebrows fluttered down in flakes; all his disguise Dao arts had been dispersed by that single breath of yin wind from the red-robed woman.
That breath of yin wind was indeed extraordinarily formidable. Bypassing Wei Yuan's physical body to strike directly into his sea of consciousness, even a Perfected Person's dharma idol would have suffered heavy wounds if struck, carrying a hint of the Immortal Monarch's divine sense in the way it ignored defenses. Yet this method of directly attacking a Dao Foundation or dharma idol was utterly countered when facing Wei Yuan: a tiny breeze meeting the vast earth had nowhere to begin, and blowing with all its might amounted to nothing more than sweeping the ground.
Even so, the yin wind had still dispersed one of Wei Yuan's wisps of fortune, which was genuinely quite formidable.
Wei Yuan suddenly remembered something: why were there only two wisps of fortune left just now? Where had the other one gone?
Startled, Wei Yuan quickened his hands, intending to finish searching this person cleanly so he could return to deal with that fellow next door. Though that fellow next door was merely a mortal, a wisp of otherworldly fortune had vanished on his account—he definitely harbored a massive secret!
By now, the pinned woman was staring blankly at Wei Yuan's face, her struggling losing nine-tenths of its strength. Flushing red, she silently endured until Wei Yuan finished.
In the end, Wei Yuan found four or five more powerful artifacts on her. It was truly impossible to tell that such flimsy clothes could conceal so much.
With a wave of his hand, Wei Yuan swept everything into the space within the thread, seized the woman, flew out through the window, and headed back toward Lie-Flat Inn. In the blink of an eye, Wei Yuan returned to the room in the adjacent courtyard, where the frail, dissipated youth was stuck in a spread-eagle shape, firmly glued to the wall by a Dao art.
Wei Yuan set down the woman in his grip, pointed at the bed, and said, "Go sit there. Don't try any tricks."
"Mhm." She nodded and obediently walked over to sit by the edge of the bed.
Wei Yuan pulled over a chair and plunked himself down, glancing back and forth between the two. The more he looked, the angrier he grew. Through his unremitting efforts and sudden epiphanies into secret arts, he had painstakingly obtained three wisps of fortune, yet in less time than it took to eat a meal, two had been inexplicably burned away on these two fellows?
The more Wei Yuan thought about it, the more resentful he felt, especially toward the fellow stuck to the wall.
Let alone a Dao Foundation, this fellow hadn't even begun cultivating Blood Merging. His temperament was cowardly, greedy for life, and absurd, clutching a storybook and reading endlessly without restraint. At the time, Wei Yuan had figured he couldn't stir up any trouble, so he had merely glued him to the wall with a Dao art, and then, feeling a bit uneasy, had added a wisp of fortune to seal and suppress him before heading off to catch the second person with a karmic connection.
And yet, in the mere time it took to conduct a body search, this fellow had consumed an entire wisp of fortune? Even the young master of the Liao Clan hadn't cost so much fortune!
Besides, it was just a body search—how much time could that take?
This fellow was clearly hiding something, pretending to be a pig to eat the tiger. But now that he was in Wei Yuan's clutches and suppressed by fortune, unless he was an Immortal Monarch, there was no chance of turning the tables. Since he wanted to play the pig, Wei Yuan decided to treat him like one.
When dealing with someone addicted to storybooks who stayed up all night without sleeping, Wei Yuan had plenty of methods. Right then, he drew his longsword and thrust it between the man's legs, the blade slicing through layers of cloth and stopping a hair's breadth from flesh.
"Speak! Who are you? If half a word is false, I'll slice that tiny thing of yours into fine pieces!" Wei Yuan barked fiercely. This bellow not only scared the man on the wall half to death, but also startled the woman on the bed.
Yet seeing this scene, the woman on the bed felt it was rather different from what she had imagined; evidently, nothing had transpired between the two men. Could it be that this hateful sword-wielding fellow wasn't actually that wicked?
The young man on the wall shook like a sieve again, yet emboldened by who knew what, he stiffened his neck and fumed, "What do you mean, tiny?!"
But with that slight shift, the flesh between his legs brushed against the sword tip. Feeling an instant chill, he nearly scared his soul out of his body. The courage from a moment ago vanished without a trace, and he wailed, "Spare my life, Great King! I still have a bottle of immortal medicine on me! One pill each morning, noon, and night cures all ailments!"
Chapter 105