Two days later.
Outside a remote mountain valley.
Lin Yi steered the cloud-shaped Dharma artifact that resembled a Somersault Cloud into the sky above the valley, circling briefly.
Only after confirming that everything below was normal did he cast an incantation, bringing the artifact slowly down to the ground.
Oh, and as an aside:
Years ago, out of nostalgia for his home world, Lin Yi had indeed named this flying artifact the Somersault Cloud...
Once on the ground, Lin Yi glanced down at the Demon-Seeking Compass in his hand and gave a slight nod. "A valley about half a shichen due north of the sect... The direction checks out. This must be the place Zhao Ping mentioned."
He put the Demon-Seeking Compass away and surveyed his surroundings.
Not long ago, after slipping quietly out of Jiuwu City, Lin Yi had not returned straight to the sect.
Considering that he had plenty of spirit stones on hand to replenish his spiritual power, plus the ultimate trump card of the Profound Frost Golden Palace Talisman to back him up, he had deliberately taken his time, looping widely through several desolate areas. Sure enough, he discovered that demon beast activity in the wilderness was noticeably higher than usual.
Coupled with the bits and pieces of intelligence he had gathered along the way, he was basically certain that old Daoist Hengshui had neither fabricated nor exaggerated the facts.
Yet in that case...
The two Golden-Eyed Crimson-Scale Beasts that had appeared outside the Guihua Sect a few days ago seemed all the stranger.
So, nearing the sect, Lin Yi had detoured to trace the path Zhao Ping had taken when tracking the Golden-Eyed Crimson-Scale Beasts.
Zhao Ping had marked a total of three locations on the Demon-Seeking Compass, and Lin Yi had already conducted on-site searches of the first two.
Unfortunately...
Aside from impressions pressed into the earth by demon beast bodies, he had found nothing unusual.
As for this final valley...
Well, at first glance, there seemed to be nothing special here either.
The valley covered around a thousand square meters. Though vegetation grew here, it was far from lush; two withered old trees leaned crookedly among scattered boulders, looking for all the world like the balding crown of a programmer before he transmigrated, with the trees acting as the arms of a pair of eyeglasses...
Still, considering this was the last and farthest location, Lin Yi put his complaints aside and focused seriously on the task.
He first drew out a low-grade spirit stone and held it in his palm, while extending his divine sense to slowly spread outward.
Divine sense was somewhat like radar back on Earth, able to detach from the body to a certain extent to scan for objects.
Generally speaking, the higher a cultivator's realm, the greater the range of their divine sense—though naturally, the more spiritual power it consumed.
For a mid Foundation Establishment cultivator like Lin Yi, extending divine sense at full power covered an area of about fifty meters, enough to reach both sides of the valley.
Several minutes later, having reached the end of the valley, Lin Yi stopped and wiped a bead of nonexistent sweat from his brow. "Damn it all, how did I get skunked here too..."
*The expected result of coming up completely empty.jpg.*
He let out a sigh and prepared to bring out the Somersault Cloud to leave the valley.
Yet just as his fingers were about to brush the Storage Pouch at his waist, Lin Yi suddenly froze, catching sight of something.
"Huh?"
His fingers shifted slightly, feeling their way to a small box beside the Storage Pouch that resembled a Bluetooth earphone case.
Right now, five red light dots were flashing rapidly and in unison across the box's surface.
This little box was a simplified integration module provided by the Think Tank, primarily used to monitor whether the five body cameras Lin Yi wore were functioning properly and to store data.
The five cameras corresponded to the five light dots. When everything was working normally, they showed green; only when experiencing a signal transmission failure would they turn red.
"Strange..."
Lin Yi unclipped the little box from his waist and gave it two solid clouts, just like an old-timer slapping a malfunctioning television set. "Wasn't it working fine back in Jiuwu City? Since when did the equipment from back home become so fragile? Or did the Concealment Array fry it?"
Shaking his head, he summoned the Somersault Cloud and took off from the valley.
Yet moments after lifting off the ground,
*Beep, beep, beep—*
The integration box clasped in Lin Yi's hand vibrated slightly, and all five light dots—as if possessed by the A-share stock market—instantly flipped from red to green.
Lin Yi slammed the brakes midair. "????"
What was this?
How had it suddenly fixed itself?
Self-correction by the device?
Or could it be...?
After a moment's thought, he rested the integration box in his palm and guided his Dharma artifact into a slow, gradual descent.
One meter...
Two meters...
Five meters...
When he descended to about thirty meters above the ground,
*Flash—*
All five little green lights snapped simultaneously back to the fault-indicating red.
Lin Yi froze, then snapped his head down to stare in astonishment at the valley floor.
To be honest, when he had first noticed the error lights, his immediate reaction was that some bug had cropped up in the integration box itself; he hadn't considered signal interference.
After all, the five cameras on his body were completely independent. A glitch in one or two was plausible, but the odds of all five suffering a transmission failure at the exact same time were practically nonexistent—it wasn't as if the Tianling Realm had electromagnetic blackouts.
But looking at it now...
The abnormality with the integration box seemed to be related to something inside this valley.
With that thought, Lin Yi immediately steered the Somersault Cloud downward, returning to the valley floor.
"..."
Once on the ground, Lin Yi swept his gaze over his surroundings. Without hesitation, he pressed his index and middle fingers together, his spiritual power rapidly congealing.
*Whoosh—*
A beam of sword light swept forth.
It was none other than the second-rank cultivation technique he practiced: the Clear Wind Sword Art.
In truth, Lin Yi had chosen the Clear Wind Sword Art specifically for this sword light.
After all, what Huaxia native could resist the sight of sword light soaring forth at the flick of a finger?
Of course, cool as it looked, unleashing this sword light meant the date he would dissolve into the Dao had just moved up by another shichen or two.
He could only hope his lifespan hadn't been wasted...
Under Lin Yi's watchful eye, the sword light, like a gentle breeze turning into a celestial river with rolling sword intent suppressing all directions, carrying an unmatched aura that spanned the heavens... chopped the surrounding weeds into utter disarray.
After that, Lin Yi stopped using his divine sense, relying purely on his physical eyes to circle and inspect the area.
Finally, as he passed a patch of weeds, he came to an abrupt halt.
This patch was small and sparse; when scanned with divine sense earlier, it had seemed entirely ordinary.
Yet now that the foliage had been plowed flat by sword light, a careful visual inspection revealed something:
The remaining roots of these weeds seemed faintly speckled with numerous red dots.
Seeing this, Lin Yi thought for a moment, stowed several of the weeds into his Storage Pouch, and then blasted out another beam of sword light.
Lifespan: -0.1 days.
*Boom—*
A small crater about half a meter deep was swiftly blasted into the yellow soil.
His expression impassive, Lin Yi continued condensing spiritual energy.
-0.1, -0.1, -0.1, -0.1, -0.1...
His lifespan indicated that this was a truly high-stakes match.
Soon enough, having fired off his eighteenth beam of sword light, Lin Yi's brows suddenly raised, and he called a halt to his life-burning spree.
Flicking his sleeves, he bent down and clawed through the loose soil.
A short half-minute later, Lin Yi straightened back up.
In the palm of his right hand, he was now conspicuously holding...
A fiery-red egg, over a dozen centimeters tall!
Chapter 45