Chapter 497 466: Tracking, a Strange Land of the Grand Thousand Worlds

Song Ciwan cast the Shadow Tracking Technique and followed the Immortal Seeking Martial Artist, making three turns through a series of secluded streets and alleys.

"Immortal Seeking Martial Artist" was the label Song Ciwan had given this Martial Artist in her mind.

He was a Martial Artist who had later started Cultivating Immortality. However, those who followed the Golden Core Dao didn't call themselves Cultivators; they typically referred to themselves as Immortal Seekers.

"Cultivators" were Immortal Dao Cultivators of the Nine Provinces Mortal World, like Song Ciwan herself.

"Immortal Seekers," on the other hand, walked the Foundation Establishment Golden Core Dao. But the path of the Immortal Dao was arduous, whether for Cultivators or Immortal Seekers—

In this world, ninety percent of Cultivators could train their entire lives and never move past the Qi Transformation Stage, let alone reach the Qi Refining Stage. As for the Divinity Transformation Stage, that was practically unheard of.

Each Divinity Transformation Expert was exceedingly rare compared to the vast population. While Song Ciwan would later reach a point where she could slaughter Divinity Transformation Experts as easily as dogs, that didn't mean they were worthless, nor that they were so common as to be found everywhere.

It was simply that once a person reached a certain level, the circles they moved in would naturally elevate. As the saying goes, her associates were no longer common folk.

Divinity Transformation was too difficult; it was a dream many Cultivators would never achieve in their lifetimes.

The same was true for Immortal Seekers.

The Golden Core Stage was also a dream that many Immortal Seekers would never achieve in their lifetimes!

Most Immortal Seekers in the world, even with a Foundation Establishment Pill, were unable to cultivate to the Golden Core Stage.

The most they could do was successfully achieve Foundation Establishment!

However, Immortal Seekers held one very distinct advantage over Cultivators.

Namely, once an Immortal Seeker succeeded at Foundation Establishment, they were at the Foundation Establishment Stage—

This wasn't a redundant statement. After all, the Foundation Establishment Stage was equivalent to the Qi Refining Stage for Cultivators. And Qi Cultivation was the second realm of cultivating immortality!

In other words, the second step on the Cultivator's path was merely the starting point for an Immortal Seeker.

That went without saying for Martial Artists. A Foundation Establishment Stage Immortal Seeker was equivalent to an Innate Second Transformation Martial Artist, and how many Martial Artists in this world could ever reach the Innate Second Transformation?

For an ordinary, low-level Martial Artist—especially one who had no hope of ever reaching the Innate realm—swallowing a single Foundation Establishment Pill was an opportunity to defy the heavens and change their fate!

Forget low-level Cultivators; wasn't even a remarkably talented disciple from a prominent sect like Ye Sheng unable to resist the temptation of a Foundation Establishment Pill?

The excitement Song Ciwan had felt when Qionghua Pavilion issued the "Golden Core Death Order" gradually began to settle as she trailed the Immortal Seeking Martial Artist.

She thought of many things as she followed him. It wasn't that she was being pessimistic; rather, while there was a glimmer of hope on the horizon, she still had to face the reality that her enemy was unfathomably deep and treacherously cunning.

A moment later, the Immortal Seeking Martial Artist leaped into a river.

It was a small river that snaked through the inner city. Because Liangzhou was a land of plateaus and deserts with scarce water sources, this little river in the city was remarkably clear and shallow.

The river was normally only about two feet deep; if an adult stood in it, the water would at most reach their calves. At this depth, forgetting about diving, even just swimming was impossible.

Yet when the Immortal Seeking Martial Artist ahead of her leaped into the river, he took a deep plunge. With a flurry of movement from his arms and legs, he vanished in an instant!

Despite Song Ciwan's mastery over the Dao of space, she couldn't detect any anomaly.

For a moment, she couldn't even sense where the Immortal Seeking Martial Artist had gone.

'Is there something strange about the riverbed? Or is it the Immortal Seeking Martial Artist himself?'

Song Ciwan stood by the riverbank, pondering for a moment. Just as she was about to activate her Spiritual Eyes to probe the river's secrets, she saw someone furtively approaching from upstream.

It was a young girl, about thirteen or fourteen years old, with a mischievous, pixie-like appearance and a very youthful face.

She wore a small hat made from a lotus leaf. Her nose was so delicately upturned it didn't seem to belong to the mortal world, looking more like a figure from a painter's fantastical dream. The very tip of her nose had a hint of rosy blush, and in the sunlight, it appeared almost transparent.

But this lovely, lotus-hatted girl with the upturned nose was also creeping along with her back hunched and her shoulders stooped. Slung diagonally across her back was an enormous bundle!

The bundle was so large it almost completely obscured the girl's entire upper body.

If Song Ciwan hadn't first seen the girl's face, but her back, she might have mistaken her for a walking bundle at first glance.

The lotus-leaf girl walked straight toward Song Ciwan, yet passed right by her as if she wasn't there—

Song Ciwan had used the Shadow Tracking Technique. This magic placed her in a semi-invisible, almost ethereal state. As long as she didn't choose to reveal herself, the lotus-leaf girl naturally couldn't see her.

The Shadow Tracking Technique was considered a high-grade form of magic, one Song Ciwan had recently acquired by trading the human desires of Lian Jia, a disciple from the Curios Pavilion.

Ever since her battle with Ye Sheng at Thunder Strike Ridge, the human desires accumulated in Song Ciwan's Heaven and Earth Scale had piled up into what was nearly a small tower.

Besides trading these human desires for cultivation time, Song Ciwan had naturally also used them to acquire many new Cultivation Techniques.

She already had more Cultivation Techniques than she could possibly use, but such were the rules of the Heaven and Earth Scale. When the human desires of a new person were traded for the first time, the Scale would always produce a Cultivation Technique, magic, or martial arts skill before it could be used to trade for cultivation time.

Faced with such a wealth of human desires, aside from making a few specific trades to complete the partial Cultivation Techniques she already possessed, Song Ciwan let the rest be a gamble—she opened them all like blind boxes.

Of course, she only opened blind boxes from the Divinity Transformation Stage or Innate Third Transformation and above.

It was worth noting that recently, as her own cultivation level increased, the human desires of mortals could no longer be traded for Cultivation Techniques, regardless of whether it was a first-time trade.

This was a good thing; she had no need for a pile of useless, Low Level Cultivation Techniques anyway.

The same was true for the human desires provided by Cultivators at the Qi Transformation Stage or Innate First Transformation Cultivators.

These human desires could only be traded for cultivation time: one jin from a Qi Transformation Stage cultivator was worth one month, while one jin from a mortal was worth a single day…

It was better than nothing, she supposed. Song Ciwan had recently stopped trading such Low Level human desires, as doing so was purely a waste of her daily trade limit.

As for the human desires of Qi Cultivation Stage Cultivators or Innate Second Transformation Martial Artists, one jin was often worth a year of cultivation time.

This type of human desire was quite valuable and suitable for routine cultivation.

The best part was that for the human desires of Qi Cultivation Stage Cultivators, Song Ciwan could now specify that even a first-time trade should yield cultivation time directly, instead of a Cultivation Technique.

Only desires from the Divinity Transformation Stage, Innate Third Transformation, and the like still had to produce a Cultivation Technique on the first trade before they could be used for cultivation time.

Thus, the quality of the "blind boxes" Song Ciwan had opened recently was quite good.

In addition to the Shadow Tracking Technique, she had also acquired the Ganlin Healing Skill, an advanced version of the Ganlin Spell.

She also gained a new Speeding Technique: Shrinking Inches!

And a new form of Flying Magic: Riding the Clouds and Mist.

Compared to Song Ciwan's old Space Shifting Technique, Riding the Clouds and Mist seemed rather ordinary, both in terms of Level and speed.

However, Riding the Clouds and Mist was visually impressive when cast and bore a slight resemblance to Lu Bell's "Unique Martial Technique," Cloud Sea Stepping Waves.

As for the Shadow Tracking Technique, it seemed similar at first glance to the Celestial Spirit Daoist Skill she had previously obtained, Upright Shadowless, but in reality, they were completely different.

Upright Shadowless was powerful on a whole other level; it was a rule-bending Daoist Technique whose properties were so absurd they were practically cheating.

But Upright Shadowless had one weakness: one had to remain perfectly still while using it!

The Shadow Tracking Technique perfectly compensated for this weakness. While using it, a person could enter a state of Invisibility and still be able to move.

If another living being were to pass through her location while she was invisible, she could simply use Upright Shadowless. They would pass straight through the space she occupied without physically touching her in the slightest.

The combination of the two was ingenious beyond belief.

Additionally, Song Ciwan had obtained an Attack magic called the Star Cross Skill.

This Daoist Skill could borrow the power of the stars. If one used the Big Dipper to kill, the target would have no hope of survival.

Back when Illusory Nether City had been open, Song Ciwan had once faced the Big Dipper Star Array of a certain sect's disciples. The Array had left a very deep impression on her.

Now, she had inadvertently learned the Star Cross Skill. It felt, strangely enough, like a long-held wish had been fulfilled.

Carrying her huge bundle, the lotus-leaf girl scurried furtively past Song Ciwan with a hunched back.

After passing Song Ciwan, the lotus-leaf girl leaped into the air and then plunged into the river!

She landed in the exact same spot where the Immortal Seeking Martial Artist had entered the water.

This time, Song Ciwan was prepared. Forming a hand seal, she cast the Great Derivation Birth Skill to perform a calculation while simultaneously focusing her vision, watching with perfect clarity.

It turned out there was a specific trick to the lotus-leaf girl's leap.

As she hit the water, she was seen exhaling three times.

These three breaths seemed like normal exhalations when entering water, but they actually followed a distinct rhythm. The tempo was one fast and two slow, while the pitches corresponded exactly to the Gong, Yu, and Shang notes of the pentatonic scale—

Without using the Great Derivation Birth Skill to analyze it, it would have been nearly impossible for Song Ciwan to decipher such a strange method.

After exhaling three times, the lotus-leaf girl's entire body instantly shrank to the size of a water droplet. She then fell into a single pebble on the riverbed and vanished.

'No wonder I didn't sense any obvious spatial fluctuations earlier,' Song Ciwan thought. 'There's no spatial gate here. This is a Sumeru Mustard Seed, a world within a grain of sand—a microcosmic world existing naturally within a macrocosmic one. How could there be any obvious spatial-temporal ripples?'

Upon discovering this marvel, Song Ciwan felt a surge of wonder, feeling as though her horizons had once again been broadened. She no longer hesitated.

Her body dissolving like smoke and dust, she descended into the water.

There was no need to imitate the lotus-leaf girl's three breaths. Now that she had grasped the secret of this miniature world, Song Ciwan simply took a light step. With a subtle shift, she naturally stepped into the world within the riverbed pebble.

Her vision went dark, then brightened once more. When Song Ciwan looked around again, she found she had arrived in an immense world!