Chapter 361 - 350: Condensing Evil Pill

Chapter 361: Chapter 350: Condensing Evil Pill

Li Yuan took out the Dark Demon Token he had gotten from the box earlier and examined it closely in his hand.

The perception net of his Dark Evil Insight silently spread out, covering the entire marketplace and the surrounding area for several miles.

The night deepened.

Within the marketplace, the fluctuations of Spiritual Power gradually subsided as cultivators returned to their residences to cultivate or rest. The main street grew quiet, leaving only the sound of the patrol team’s footsteps and the occasional clash of Magical Artifacts.

About an hour later, his perception net detected an extremely faint tremor of Demonic Qi at its edge.

It was not inside the marketplace, but on the outskirts of the Ghost Mist Forest.

Li Yuan opened his eyes and precisely locked onto the location.

Northeast of the Ghost Mist Forest, about a dozen miles from the marketplace. An extremely faint wisp of Demonic Qi was pulsing at a regular frequency he recognized before quickly dissipating.

The mole had sent the signal.

Li Yuan didn’t move.

He remained seated on his rush cushion, focusing all of his perception within the marketplace.

Sure enough, a moment later, an extremely subtle fluctuation of Spiritual Power came from a courtyard in the southern district of the marketplace. Someone was desperately suppressing their aura as they quietly left their residence.

’That’s the residential district for Loose Cultivators.’

Li Yuan’s perception tracked the figure. Their Concealment technique was decent, and their Spiritual Power was suppressed so cleanly that an ordinary Foundation Establishment Cultivator would never have noticed anything amiss. It was only due to Dark Evil Insight’s extreme sensitivity to fluctuations in Demonic Qi that he was able to detect it.

The person didn’t use any of the marketplace gates, instead flipping over a secluded corner of the southern wall and moving quickly northeast, sticking to the tree line.

Li Yuan still didn’t rise. With the perceptive strength of his Dark Evil Insight, he could let them get several miles ahead and still not lose their trail.

His perception remained firmly locked onto the person’s trail, while he split off a portion of his attention to scan the more distant areas around the marketplace.

To the northeast, deep within the Ghost Mist Forest, three extremely faint clumps of Demonic Qi were slowly approaching.

’The rendezvous party is here.’

Li Yuan waited for about the time it takes for an incense stick to burn.

Within his perception net, the mole who had snuck out of the marketplace met with the three clumps of Demonic Qi in a mountain hollow shrouded in thick fog. Their exchange was brief; Li Yuan could sense items being passed between them, but only a small quantity.

’That was expected.’

The types of materials the Dark Abyss Association wanted to collect were already consumed in huge quantities in the Mist Forest Marketplace’s daily trade. After the marketplace expanded, the number of cultivators skyrocketed, and the demand for various Array components and ores far exceeded the supply. Even if the mole wanted to hoard goods for the Dark Abyss Association, there was very little they could actually buy.

The exchange ended quickly.

The mole headed back towards the marketplace the way they came, while the three Demon Cultivators retreated deeper into the Ghost Mist Forest with the few materials they had received.

Only then did Li Yuan stand up.

Triple-layered concealment activated simultaneously. He retracted his Spiritual Power to the deepest core of his body, his aura vanishing completely into nothingness.

He didn’t use the door. Instead, he slipped silently out the window at the back of the stone house, his figure flitting into the night like a falling leaf.

The three Demon Cultivators were retreating quickly, but under Li Yuan’s pursuit, their path was perfectly clear.

They were clearly very familiar with the route; the rhythm of every turn and every pause to scout had a set pattern. Li Yuan remained over a mile away at all times, using the thick fog and canopy of the Ghost Mist Forest to trail them like an invisible shadow.

After traveling for over twenty miles, the three Demon Cultivators stopped in a valley dense with scattered boulders.

Li Yuan, concealed deep within the canopy of a giant tree far away, suppressed his perception to a bare minimum, relying solely on the passive mode of his Dark Evil Insight to capture the movements ahead.

The lead Demon Cultivator took an item from his robes.

Dark Evil Insight clearly perceived that the object was emitting an extremely dense spatial fluctuation, mingled with Demonic Qi.

’A Token.’

The lead Demon Cultivator raised the Token and pushed it toward a massive, bluish-gray rock face in the center of the valley.

The surface of the rock face showed no change—no light, no sound.

But Li Yuan’s spatial sense clearly caught the anomaly at that instant. The spatial structure on the rock face’s surface rippled ever so slightly at the point where the Token made contact.

The three Demon Cultivators walked toward that spot one by one.

One after another, they vanished without a sound, as if swallowed by the rock face.

The entire process took no more than three breaths.

The valley returned to a dead silence.

Li Yuan, concealing his aura, waited motionless in the canopy for a full incense stick’s time.

After confirming there were no more fluctuations of Demonic Qi in the area, he dropped from the tree and silently approached the bluish-gray rock face.

He didn’t reach out to touch it. He simply stood three paces away, using his spatial sense—enhanced by the Teleportation Stone—to carefully scan the rock face’s surface.

The spatial folds had completely smoothed out. The rock face looked no different from any other, without even a trace of residual Spiritual Power.

But Li Yuan knew this was the exact spot where the three Demon Cultivators had vanished.

Just as he’d suspected, the Demon Cultivators had secretly entered a base hidden in a spatial node.

After memorizing the location, Li Yuan didn’t linger for a moment longer.

He turned and quickly retreated along the path he had come.

The next morning, as Li Yuan stepped out of his stone house, a Spirit Farmer jogged up to greet him.

"Pavilion Master Li, the Soul-devouring Grass in the Evil Qi isolation zone has sprouted."

The Spirit Farmer’s face was full of excitement as he wiped the sweat from his brow. "The first batch of seedlings sprouted last night. They’re growing extremely well, almost twice as fast as expected."

Li Yuan nodded and followed the Spirit Farmer toward the Spirit Fields.

At the very edge of the three-thousand-mu Spirit Fields, an area of about two mu was surrounded by four Array Discs. A grayish-black light flowed across the surface of the discs, continuously drawing up Evil Qi from deep underground. This created a cold, grim environment within the area, completely distinct from the surrounding Spirit Fields.