Aspiring to the Immortal Path

Chapter 161: Following the Trail

“A fox knows how to disrupt the Tracking spell?” Tang Jie felt shocked.

Was Wei Tianchong really chasing a fox?

“What do we do now?” Shi Meng frantically asked.

Tang Jie looked around. Suddenly he walked to a nearby tree and carefully examined it.

“What are you doing?” Shi Meng asked.

“We can’t use spell arts, so we’ll just use our eyes to see, our heads to think, and our ears to listen…” Tang Jie replied. “Don’t blindly believe in spell arts. We’re people, and we have many crude methods that might even be more effective than lofty spells.”

These weren’t his words. He was just repeating what Gu Changqing had said.

When Gu Changqing had been on the run, Gu Changqing had taught him this sort of Tracking spell that wasn’t a Tracking spell.

Gu Changqing’s method was simpler and more practical than a spell art, and while it may have been less effective, the traces weren’t as easily concealed in this era where cultivators were used to solving everything with spells. The more primitive the method, the less likely it was to be targeted.

As he carefully examined that tree, he stroked the bark and muttered, “This bark is freshly peeled and shows signs of being bound… and over here…”

Tang Jie walked over to another tree and examined it. “The same here.”

“And what about it?” Shi Meng didn’t get it.

Tang Jie went back to the hole and carefully measured the distance between the hole and the tree. He tossed out the golden ball from his left hand, which turned into a golden thread and wrapped around the tree twice.

This was the first time Shi Meng had seen Tang Jie’s golden thread, and he asked in shock, “What is this?”

“Golden Silkthread, a spell weapon, my secret trump card. I got it from Gu Changqing,” Tang Jie casually lied. “Don’t tell anyone else.”

He couldn’t keep things a secret forever. Only by letting others know would he have the opportunity to use them in the future, and Golden Silkthread was an explanation that made sense.

As he answered Shi Meng, Tang Jie dropped one end of the golden thread into the hole. After testing a few things, he nodded. “He was pulled up on a rope.”

“And what about it?”

“I can understand a fiend fox digging this kind of hole, and I can accept that it can use spiritual energy to muddy the trail, but using a rope to pull someone out of a hole… Don’t you find that rather strange?”

Shi Meng’s mouth opened. “You… you’re saying…”

“There’s a human!” Tang Jie solemnly said.

Even though he didn’t want to admit it, Tang Jie had still realized that this wasn’t something a fiend fox could pull off alone. A human had to be involved.

“So what do we do?”

“Regardless of who this person was, since they needed a rope to pull him out, they must have limited strength. We should be able to deal with them. The key is to find out where the young master is.” Tang Jie turned around and took several steps. He looked at the dirt and said, “They should have gone this way.” 

He ran ahead.

Shi Meng ran after him, and as the two followed the trail through the forest, they quickly arrived at a cliff face.

The trail ended here, and Tang Jie could find no more clues. He started to get worried, saying, “Shi Meng, let’s split up and search. They must be nearby, so the cave entrance might be well-concealed or hidden using a spell art.”

“Understood,” Shi Meng shouted as he ran off in another direction.

As Shi Meng ran off, Tang Jie’s eyes flashed with killing intent. He loudly declared, “I don’t care who you are. Immediately hand over my young master, or else I won’t be merciful!”

His voice echoed through the valley, but there was no reply.

A vicious streak emerged in Tang Jie’s mind as he formed hand sign after hand sign, sending out pulses of spiritual energy that threw his surroundings into turmoil. He shouted, “Formations have rules. The Life Gate must emerge first!”

In a rush of spiritual energy, in the Gen position (northeast), the spiritual light of the Life Gate appeared.

Tang Jie made another hand sign. “The wind enters through the Xun position (southeast), and the Stop Gate is born!”

The winds howled as the Stop Gate was formed.

Tang Jie reached into his Mustard Seed Bag and pulled out an item.

The Alarm Gate Banner!

Thrusting the Alarm Gate Banner into the ground, Tang Jie shouted, “The laws have no boundaries! Alarm Gate, emerge!”

As the Alarm Gate appeared, strange clouds began to gather.

He was laying down the Four Seas Storm Formation. It was an extremely powerful, large-range offensive formation. When facing an unknown enemy, it was the best choice. Although he didn’t have the materials, with the Alarm Gate Banner, it still possessed considerable power.

Tang Jie thrust out his hands, and the earth trembled. “Earth returns to the Zhen position (east); the Injury Gate rises!”

With four gates created, Tang Jie shouted, “The wind and earth have no borders, and all the world is beneath my eyes. If you don’t come out, I will summon the wind and clouds to sunder the earth and topple this mountain!”

With this shout, a cave suddenly and silently appeared on the side of the mountain. It was too dark to see what was inside.

Finally, he had provoked a reaction.

After some thought, Tang Jie made a grabbing motion in the air, snatching up the Alarm Gate Banner and putting it back in his bag. The clouds dissipated as everything calmed back down.

Shi Meng hurried back and shouted, “What happened?”

He had been searching for a cave when he had heard Tang Jie shout. He hadn’t paid it much attention at first, but as he began to feel surges of spiritual energy, he had finally hurried back in alarm.

“It’s nothing. It’s just that what should have appeared has finally appeared,” Tang Jie nonchalantly replied.

Only now did Shi Meng notice the cave entrance.

He looked at Tang Jie and cautiously asked, “Could it be a trick?”

Tang Jie was just about to reply when a figure suddenly rushed out of the cave at them.

“Watch out!” Panicked, both of them thrust out their palms at this approaching figure.

“Tang… agh!” They heard a familiar scream.

“Young Master!” The two of them hastily stopped attacking as they watched that figure collide with the side of the mountain and fall back to the ground.

Who else could it be besides Wei Tianchong?

He grimaced as he lay on the ground. “Shit, you’re trying to kill me!”

Tang Jie and Shi Meng exchanged a glance and sighed in unison. It seemed like he was fine.

Helping Wei Tianchong up, Tang Jie asked, “So, tell us what happened.”

Wei Tianchong awkwardly chuckled. “Nothing, really… I’ll tell you later. Let me take you to see someone first.”

He walked back into the cave.

Shi Meng angrily said, “We know even if you don’t say anything! You fell into the fiend beast’s trap, right? I’ve only heard of people laying traps to deal with fiend beasts, never about a fiend beast laying a trap to deal with a human. You’re really something else!”

Wei Tianchong became frantic. Jumping up and down, he said, “It was different! Different! I just got careless!”

“Forget it. It seems to me that you’ll be careless for the rest of your life,” Shi Meng gruffly said. After spending so much time together, Shi Meng had gradually begun to gain confidence.

“Alright, alright,” Tang Jie said, acting as the mediator. “Save whatever you have to say for once we get inside.”

The three of them went into the cave, and as they got deeper, they suddenly saw a ball of light. This was the light radiated by a pearl that had been embedded in the wall.

In the innermost depths of the cave, the three of them saw an elder sitting on a stone platform.

The elder was skeletal, his head sagging as he sat, but he actually didn’t have a body below the waist. A little fox nervously stood guard next to him, looking at the three.

“This is…?” Tang Jie asked Wei Tianchong.

Wei Tianchong replied, “He’s Divine God Luo.”

Divine God Luo?

Tang Jie and Shi Meng were scared out of their wits by this name, instinctively taking up defensive postures.

Divine God Luo had been an infamous tyrant of the Rosecloud Domain. He had been a Grand Elder of the Five Divines Faith, possessing outstanding strength and a ferocity that reached the heavens. But after the Basking Moon Sect joined with the other sects to heavily injure him, he vanished without a trace.

After that battle, the Five Divines Faith suffered a massive fall in prestige, waning for generation after generation until it had ultimately become a third-rate sect.

Tang Jie and Shi Meng hadn’t expected to meet Divine God Luo here. This was a Celestial Sovereign from several thousand years ago!

Wei Tianchong hastily said, “Don’t panic. He’s already dead.”

“Dead?” Tang Jie and Shi Meng exchanged a glance, and then they looked at the old man. He was just sitting there, not even breathing. He really was dead.

But when he died, there had been no change in the weather or pulse of spiritual energy. Presumably, this man had been so severely injured that he didn’t have even one percent of his former cultivation when he died.

Seeing that he didn’t have legs and recalling how Wei Tianchong had been pulled up using a rope, Tang Jie gradually began to form an image of what had happened.

“So he just died?” Tang Jie asked.

“Mm, right when you came,” Wei Tianchong replied.

“Really? So conveniently?” Shi Meng asked.

“It’s not that much of a coincidence. Actually, when he was injured long ago, he hid here and used some secret of his religion to heal himself. But the secret art ended up failing, causing him to sleep for a thousand years. If not for his aspiration, he would have died, but he continued to stubbornly cling to his last breath. The fox disaster was really because he had recently trained a little fox, and once he had trained it enough, he used it to lure people…” Wei Tianchong sighed.

Sitting next to a stone table, Wei Tianchong explained what had happened to him. “…Just like that, when I woke up, I found myself in this cave, and next to me was Divine God Luo.”

“So you’re saying that after you were taken to the cave, he didn’t do anything to you, and so you fell asleep again?” Tang Jie asked in shock.

This bastard could sleep even in this situation?

Wei Tianchong’s face turned red. “That’s not important! What’s important is that I encountered a Titan from several thousand years ago. After sleeping for several thousand years, he finally woke up, and then I ran into him. Do you get it? This is a lucky encounter! A lucky encounter!”

“You’re saying that he was waiting here for thousands of years, unwilling to die, just to wait for someone, to give someone a lucky encounter? And once he had had this lucky encounter, he could die in peace?” Tang Jie asked, pointing at the corpse of Divine God Luo seated on the stone platform.

He didn’t dare to believe his ears. Was this really true?

Did this sort of stuff of legends really exist?

His face twitched.

Wei Tianchong chuckled. “Whether you believe me or not, it really happened.”

“What did he give you? Magic treasures? Spirit medicines?” Shi Meng asked.

Wei Tianchong sighed. “He was utterly defeated by the Basking Moon Sect, his treasures either used up or destroyed. Do you really think there would be any magic treasures or spirit medicines left for me? And look at him. He’s in such a bad state, so how could he have any medicine left? Even if he had any left over, they would have all gone bad after two thousand years!”