Chapter 785: Broken Trail

Qiyun Sect was famously difficult to provoke in the cultivation world.

The Taishu clan's bloodline was famous as well. Children born into the clan had an extraordinarily high chance of possessing aptitude for cultivation, so Qiyun Sect was essentially made up of one great family. There were few members with other surnames.

The clan was ruthless not only toward outsiders but toward its own people.

Children born with cultivation aptitude were taken into Qiyun Sect. Those without it were thrown directly into Jin's army as soldiers, starting from the lowest ranks with no special treatment whatsoever. If they had ability, they could climb on their own.

As for women without cultivation aptitude, they were either married to civil officials at court or to military officers.

Naturally, throughout Jin, marrying a daughter of the Taishu clan was considered an honor.

The result was that the entire State of Jin was practically the Taishu clan's family realm. Other cultivation powers were squeezed so thoroughly that they had no way to compete.

Looked at another way, that was also precisely why Jin was so united from top to bottom.

The clan's fierce style now showed itself clearly.

Even after night fell and searching became inconvenient, Qiyun Sect still led Jin's cultivators through the darkness, rushing toward the direction Ji Yude had indicated and combing the surrounding region.

...

"Ah! Qiyun Sect really screwed us this time."

Standing atop a mountain peak, Niu Youdao looked around and sighed repeatedly.

He had led the others back to search for Ling Sect.

They had found nothing.

Earlier, although they had used Ling Sect's people to locate Jin's forces, Niu Youdao had made Ling Sect's hidden contact stop leaving trail markers before approaching Jin, all for safety.

By the time he realized Jin's people were too troublesome to follow and turned back, Ling Sect's group was already gone.

They searched everywhere.

They even returned to the place where they had originally separated from Ling Sect and followed the direction in which those people had departed.

Still nothing.

For some reason, Ling Sect had probably changed its route.

Wu Zhaoxing and the others looked around as well and realized the situation had become troublesome.

Things were no longer as they had been at the beginning.

When everyone first emerged from the ancient forest, the various factions had not yet spread very far apart, so encountering one another had been relatively easy.

Now they had already spent more than three months deep inside the Tiandu Secret Realm.

The degree to which the various powers had dispersed could easily be imagined.

The increasing intervals between each faction they had located before already showed the problem.

While they could still borrow the manpower of a major force, using one group to connect to the next had worked well enough.

Now that one link in the chain had broken, matters had genuinely become difficult.

With only the four of them, they had no ability to cast a broad net.

Another faction might be only a few li away and they could still pass right by without ever seeing each other.

If they could not even find nearby Ling Sect anymore, then after so much time had passed, finding the other factions would be harder still.

Their chain of contacts had been working perfectly until they ran into Qiyun Sect and lost the trail.

From Niu Youdao's point of view, hadn't Qiyun Sect screwed him?

"Why don't we go back and find Qiyun Sect?" Yun Huan suggested.

Gathering ideas was not a bad thing.

No one could guarantee Niu Youdao had considered every angle.

He immediately asked, "Explain."

Yun Huan said, "You said they'd search for whoever attacked their disciples. If they're still searching that area, we may run into them if we go back."

"Then you can find some way to contact your man again, and we can keep following behind Qiyun Sect."

"With them clearing the way, we'd be safer too."

"If we wander around blindly like this and some faction with a grudge against you spots us first, we might walk straight into an encirclement without even realizing it."

Niu Youdao had already considered that idea.

It would not work.

Xiaoyue Pavilion had not sent nearly as many people into the Tiandu Secret Realm as Wu Zhaoxing and the others imagined.

If large numbers of Xiaoyue Pavilion agents could appear on every state's recommended roster, just how enormous would Xiaoyue Pavilion have to be?

Some states originally had none at all.

Only after Xiaoyue Pavilion deliberately adjusted its arrangements had it managed to spread two or three people into each state's forces to serve as Niu Youdao's eyes and ears.

On Jin's side there were only two independent cultivators.

Trying to contact Ji Yude the same way again was impossible.

The incident had happened around Ji Yude himself.

Qiyun Sect would already have difficulty not becoming suspicious of him.

Contacting the other Xiaoyue Pavilion man using the same method would not work either.

Every time something happened, the independent cultivator survived while everyone else died.

That was too unnatural.

And then leave trail markers on the road too?

Was he afraid no one would notice something was wrong?

Niu Youdao had spent too much time and energy laying this whole arrangement.

He had no intention of ruining everything because of one careless mistake.

So he rejected the idea immediately.

"No."

Yun Huan asked, "Why not?"

Niu Youdao said, "You go try it."

Yun Huan did not know whether to laugh or cry. "I admit I don't have that kind of ability, but you do. You managed it every time before. Why suddenly not this time?"

"It's hard to explain in a few words. If a suitable chance comes, I'll explain later."

Niu Youdao brushed him off and looked left and right.

"We'll think of something else... If only we had a map. At least it would help us judge where we are."

Unfortunately, they did not.

The main reason was that mapping this damned place was not particularly useful.

Ordinary people could not remain here for long, so there was little reason to invest enormous manpower in surveying it.

Even if people did, completing a full map would be extraordinarily difficult.

The regions cultivators could actually explore during each opening were limited.

Legend said complete maps did exist.

This place had been opened by Shang Song.

The major secret realms known today, including the Butterfly Dream Illusory Realm, were all remnants left behind after Shang Song opened them.

According to legend, Shang Song had made complete maps of every secret realm.

They had simply disappeared long ago.

Niu Youdao could only sigh at the thought.

A person's cultivation reaching the level where he could shatter the void and open a passage into another world...

That fact alone showed how terrifying Shang Song's cultivation must have been.

No wonder he had been able to suppress all cultivators beneath Heaven.

As things stood now, sects that had participated in the previous opening of the Tiandu Secret Realm and still survived in the present age generally preserved records of the terrain their predecessors had encountered.

Those records might not be useful for finding Spirit Seeds, but at least later generations of the sect would know something about certain places.

Niu Youdao knew a little as well.

Back when he was in the Shangqing Sect, he had seen descriptions in the Shangqing Record of Gleanings.

By now, however, he had forgotten most of them.

Even if he remembered, it would hardly help.

Mountains had no names.

Places had no names.

After running around blindly for so long, who knew how far they were from any location mentioned in those old records?

Still, Niu Youdao had carefully remembered the directions of sunrise and sunset.

Otherwise, it would be far too easy to lose even the route back.

After thinking for quite some time, he finally raised a hand and pointed ahead.

"We keep going straight."

"They're collecting Spirit Seeds, so they shouldn't be moving as quickly as we are."

"We'll push ahead until we've gone beyond them, then sweep back and forth across the area."

"Even with terrible luck, we ought to run into some group eventually."

Yun Ji said, "We know almost nothing about the situation around us now."

"We don't know where people are, or which areas require caution."

"Traveling openly like this makes it very easy for someone to spot us first."

"If we run into a faction hostile to you and they prepare even a small ambush, we'll be in trouble."

Niu Youdao spread his hands. "What else can we do?"

"I'd like to find somewhere comfortable too."

"I'd happily go back to the ancient forest."

"But I don't have that choice."

"I have to take first place."

"If I don't take first, I die."

"What do you expect me to do?"

Wu Zhaoxing said, "Now you know regret?"

"Where did all that swagger from Tiangu go?"

"Spirit Seeds were never especially important to you."

"You could have waited until the exit reopened and then found some way to slip out."

"Instead, just for a moment of satisfaction, you forced yourself into a dead end and dragged all of us along with you, running east and west."

Niu Youdao sighed. "Zhao's people had made it obvious they would never let me go."

"It was equally obvious that when everyone returned through the exit, that would become a life-and-death calamity for me."

"They might even have started hunting me the moment we entered the Secret Realm."

"If I had a chance to remove some of that trouble beforehand, how could I go soft?"

"Who could have known that bastard Sha Rulai wouldn't reason at all?"

"That grandson Sha Rulai had better wait. Sooner or later, I'll deal with him."

Wu Zhaoxing scoffed. "You'll deal with him?"

"One sentence from him flattened you."

"You still want to deal with him?"

"He could stand there without moving and lend you a hundred times your current courage. Would you dare touch him?"

"You'd better think about how he's going to deal with you later."

"There's no point arguing about this."

Niu Youdao cupped his hands toward the three of them.

"In the end, every mistake is mine."

"All of you have suffered because of me."

"I'll have to trouble you to keep suffering a little longer."

"If I get out—so long as I can leave this place alive—I will not treat any of you poorly."

It was both an apology and a request.

And indeed, there was no better option.

The four could only continue forward.

There was no human habitation anywhere.

The sky always seemed impossibly high.

The land stretched without visible end.

They crossed that primitive wilderness without any clear destination.

Once they lost their objective, the journey became exceptionally dull.

Even their minds gradually went numb.

A person's mood could not help being influenced by such surroundings.

Niu Youdao, however, knew how to entertain himself.

His thieving heart still had not died.

He kept trying to find a mount.

Yun Ji and the other two would stand well away so they would not be dragged into whatever disaster he caused next.

The three lined up like expressionless statues—one with hands behind his back, another with arms folded—watching numbly as Niu Youdao chased one bizarre giant creature after another like an idiot, complete with loud shouts meant to frighten them.

Whenever his attempt went wrong, everyone reacted as though it were exactly what they had expected.

Then they continued on.

During one rest stop, while the other three sat recovering their spiritual power, they saw Niu Youdao cut down a tree and drag it over.

He chopped it apart and stacked the wood.

Even Yun Huan had stopped being willing to handle miscellaneous chores for him.

Niu Youdao had no choice but to do the work himself.

Wu Zhaoxing rolled his eyes. "You really never stop."

"You can always find some pointless thing to do."

"Can you sit still for once?"

Instead of answering, Niu Youdao lit the heap of wood.

Then he flashed back and waved for them to move.

"Don't stay here. Hide farther away."

Yun Ji had lost patience with him too.

"What are you doing now?"

Niu Youdao pointed toward the column of smoke rising into the sky.

The three stared at the thick smoke and gradually seemed to understand.

Niu Youdao explained, "Running around blindly like this isn't a solution."

"If anyone is within visual range, they'll probably come investigate after seeing the smoke."

"We hide at a distance and watch."

"We'll sit by the stump and wait for the rabbit."

The three exchanged looks.

It genuinely was a decent idea.

So they followed his instructions and concealed themselves somewhere with a good view.

Unfortunately, their luck seemed poor.

The whole pile burned out.

The smoke dispersed.

No one appeared anywhere nearby.

They continued onward.

From then on, they kept using the same method.

Whenever they stopped to rest, they burned enough material to raise a column of smoke.

At night, they lit a large bonfire on a mountain summit, hoping someone in the distance would see the fire and be drawn over.

[End of Chapter 785]