Chapter 376 - 364: 3 Moles

Chapter 376: Chapter 364: 3 Moles

The branch shop of the Mingyuan Commerce Association occupied a three-shopfront space on the main street of the eastern district. Shelves lined the walls, stocked with everything from Low Tier Spirit Medicine to common Magical Artifact components used by Foundation Establishment Stage cultivators.

Li Yuan walked slowly past the shelves, his gaze sweeping over the various goods. He wasn’t lacking most things; the Talismans and pills produced by the market town already covered his daily needs.

He stopped when he reached the innermost row of shelves.

A few jade slips sat on the top shelf, with a small wooden plaque next to them displaying the item’s name and price.

Soul Condensing Pill Recipe. Fifteen Mid-grade Spirit Stones.

Li Yuan picked up a jade slip and swept his Divine Sense through it for a quick look.

The recipe’s records were complete, detailing three primary ingredients, two secondary ingredients, the refining process, and heat control. The core effect of the Soul Condensing Pill was to strengthen the cohesiveness and impact resistance of one’s Divine Sense, making it extremely practical for Cultivators who frequently used their Divine Sense in combat or needed to operate it at high intensity for long periods.

The daily consumption of his five Divine Sense Lines was already significant, and the Soul Condensing Pill was the perfect remedy.

"I’ll take this pill recipe."

The clerk behind the counter quickly packaged it and took his payment.

After returning to his stone house, Li Yuan read through the pill recipe’s jade slip three times, committing every key step to memory.

Two of the primary ingredients were already growing in his Spirit Field, and he had just bought a batch of the third from a Loose Cultivator’s stall a few days ago. The secondary ingredients were even simpler; he found them just by rummaging through his storage bag.

He weighed and sorted the medicinal ingredients one by one, measuring out a single furnace’s worth according to the proportions specified in the recipe. Then, he set up his Pill Furnace.

The furnace fire ignited, and he added the ingredients in sequence.

The Soul Condensing Pill was a tier less difficult to refine than the Condensing Evil Pill. Its medicinal properties were gentle, with no violent rejection reactions during the fusion process. The key lay in precise heat control—if the temperature was too high, the medicinal properties would over-evaporate; if it was too low, they wouldn’t congeal properly.

The multitasking capabilities of his five Divine Sense Lines made the entire refining process exceptionally smooth. The medicinal liquid gradually shifted from pale green to a translucent amber, and the Spiritual Power within the furnace flowed evenly, without any fluctuations.

About an hour later, a crisp hum echoed from within the furnace.

Li Yuan lifted the furnace lid, and four round, pale golden pills flew out onto a jade plate. Their bodies were translucent, their surfaces faintly glowing, and the condensation patterns of Divine Sense and Spiritual Power within were clearly visible.

’Above-average quality. Four pills from the first furnace... not a bad result.’

Li Yuan picked up a Soul Condensing Pill.

The panel popped up.

[Detected Equippable Item: Soul Condensing Pill (Complete)]

[Equipment Trait Preview: Divine Sense Condensation (Green)]

[Effect: Increases Divine Sense condensation speed by 20%; Divine Sense attacks and defenses inflict a brief stun effect.]

[Permanence Condition Preview: One Divine Soul Skill reaches Tier Two Great Success, and meditate continuously for fifteen days (0/15).]

’A green trait.’

’A 20% increase in Divine Sense condensation speed, plus a brief stun on Divine Sense attacks and defenses.’

This stun effect would be invaluable in actual combat. If every Divine Sense attack could make an opponent momentarily dazed, it would be enough to create a fatal opening in a fight.

The permanence condition had two parts. The first, reaching Tier Two Great Success in a Divine Soul Skill, was already exceeded since his Concentrating Soul-Invoking Skill was at the perfection stage. But the second part required fifteen consecutive days of meditation, which would take time to complete.

Li Yuan placed the Soul Condensing Pill into an empty slot.

"Equip."

[Equipped: Soul Condensing Pill (Complete)]

[Divine Sense Condensation (Green) is active.]

[Divine Sense Condensation (Green) Permanence Condition: One Divine Soul Skill reaches Tier Two Great Success (Met), and meditate continuously for fifteen days (0/15).]

The moment the trait took effect, a faint ripple spread through the depths of his Sea of Divine Sense. The tips of his five Divine Sense Lines simultaneously grew sharper, and their formation speed became noticeably faster.

Li Yuan closed his eyes to feel the change for a moment, then stored the remaining three Soul Condensing Pills in a jade bottle.

’Starting today, I’ll meditate daily. In fifteen days, it will become permanent.’

He sat cross-legged on his meditation cushion and entered a meditative state.

That night, just after Midnight.

The perception network of Dark Evil Insight captured fluctuations of Demonic Qi on the outskirts of the market town.

Li Yuan opened his eyes.

This fluctuation was different from the mole’s transmissions he had intercepted before. The frequency was more urgent, the amount of information was larger, and the interval between the Demonic Qi pulses was almost halved.

’Someone is desperately sending a signal.’

Li Yuan focused all his senses on that thread of Demonic Qi, simultaneously receiving the signal and decrypting it in real-time by comparing it against his coded vocabulary.

The content of the intelligence emerged piece by piece.

Contact point lost. All peripheral strongholds on high alert. Rebuild contact network. Accelerate material collection.

’The Dark Abyss Association has discovered that the mine-cave contact point was taken out.’

All three resident Demon Cultivators were missing, contact was severed, and the intelligence chain was broken. They reacted quickly, noticing the anomaly in less than half a month and beginning to urgently rebuild their communication network.

At the same time, they were demanding the mole accelerate the material collection, which meant the Dark Abyss Association’s need for those materials was more urgent than Li Yuan had estimated.

Li Yuan recorded the decrypted content in a jade slip but didn’t act rashly.

He needed to figure something out first.

The mole’s signal he had monitored before had always originated from the direction of the Loose Cultivator area. But this time, the transmission’s location seemed slightly off.

The deviation wasn’t large; it was near the precision limit at the edge of his perception network, making it impossible to tell if it was an error or if the location had actually changed.

Li Yuan decided to monitor it for a few more nights.

On the second night, at the same time, the Demonic Qi fluctuation appeared again.

This time, Li Yuan had adjusted the deployment density of his perception network in advance, doubling the thickness of the perception threads in the northeastern direction.

The signal’s origin was much clearer.

It wasn’t in the Loose Cultivator area.

The location was further north, pointing toward the Primordial Yang Sect’s outpost garrison.

Li Yuan didn’t jump to any conclusions and continued to wait.

The third night.

The signal source appeared again, its position identical to the second night: the eastern side of the Primordial Yang Sect’s outpost garrison.

After three consecutive nights of tracking, Dark Evil Insight had narrowed the signal’s origin down to a tiny area. Fewer than ten people were in that area, all of them garrison personnel from the Primordial Yang Sect.

Li Yuan pretended to be clearing out Demon Beasts and went to the vicinity of the outpost.

He checked the Spiritual Power fluctuation characteristics of everyone in that area, one by one.

Seven of them had completely normal Spiritual Power circulation, with no residual Demonic Qi.

The eighth person was a Mid-stage Foundation Establishment deacon. On the surface, his Spiritual Power fluctuations were no different from a normal person’s, but under the ultra-high sensitivity of Dark Evil Insight, Li Yuan detected an extremely subtle anomaly.

A nearly imperceptible backflow of Demonic Qi lingered deep within the man’s meridians.

An ordinary Cultivator would never be able to discover a trace like this; even a Late-stage Foundation Establishment Cultivator might not sense it. But for a blue permanent trait like Dark Evil Insight, which specialized in detecting Demonic Qi fluctuations, this residue was like a candle flame in the dark.

’A Mid-stage Foundation Establishment deacon. Someone from the Primordial Yang Sect.’

Li Yuan sat on his meditation cushion, his expression calm.

The mole he had sensed in the ruins of the Profound Nether Sub-Palace was one. The cloaked cultivator who met face-to-face with a Demon Cultivator in the wild to exchange materials was the second. This Mid-stage Foundation Establishment deacon he had just identified was the third.

There were likely at least three Foundation Establishment deacons colluding with the Dark Abyss Association.

The extent of the Dark Abyss Association’s infiltration into the Primordial Yang Sect in this region was far more severe than he had estimated.

Li Yuan organized the information on the three moles into a separate jade slip and sealed it in the deepest part of his storage bag.

He wouldn’t make a move against them for now.

The moles’ intelligence transmissions were currently Li Yuan’s most stable channel for learning about the Dark Abyss Association’s movements. Acting rashly and alerting the enemy would only cut off his own source of information.

The days passed one by one, filled with cultivation and surveillance.

His progress with Void-Rending Slash was faster than with the other magic. The spatially-enhanced perception from the Teleportation Stone was the best aid for practicing spatial magic. With every injection of Spiritual Power, the angle, depth, and expansion rate of the spatial rift were continuously optimized under the precise guidance of his perception.

From an initial spatial rift that was three feet long and lasted for four breaths, it grew to four feet and five breaths, and then to five feet and six breaths.

Every inch of growth signified a simultaneous improvement in both Spiritual Power compression density and the precision of his spatial control.

The panel popped up.

[Void-Rending Slash: Adept (0/400)]

Li Yuan conducted a test in the karst cave.

A five-foot-long gray rift extended from his fingertips, silently slicing through a wall of Fire Evil Stone ore in front of him. The cut surface of the ore wall was as smooth as a mirror, showing no resistance.

He then took out a Tier Two Middle Grade flying sword, which he had seized from a Demon Cultivator’s storage bag, and placed it in the rift’s path.

The rift swept past, and the flying sword broke into two pieces.

There were no sparks at the break, no sound of metal clashing, and even the Spiritual Power fluctuation was negligible. A spatial rupture itself was the cleanest, most efficient method of cutting, requiring no enhancement from elemental Spiritual Power.

Conventional spiritual power shields were practically useless against such an attack.

Li Yuan dispelled the rift and put away the broken sword.

His cultivation of the Teleportation Skill also continued to advance steadily. The displacement distance slowly expanded from fifty feet, and its Spiritual Power consumption gradually decreased, but he was still a long way from reaching the Adept level.

One afternoon, as Li Yuan was meditating in his stone house, a knock came from the courtyard gate.

He stopped his cultivation, rose, and opened the door.

Chen Yi was standing outside, holding a jade slip with a red mark on it.

"Come in and talk."

The two sat down inside. Chen Yi placed the jade slip on the table, his expression grave.

"The Sect’s latest deployment. Two exploration teams have been formed for the depths of the Ghost Mist Forest. They’ll be setting out in the coming days."

Li Yuan picked up the jade slip and probed it with his Divine Sense.

Each of the two exploration teams was led by a Late-stage Foundation Establishment Cultivator, with team members being elite disciples from the Early to Mid-stage Foundation Establishment. Each team had eight to ten people. The official mission described in the document was to clear out Demon Cultivator strongholds deep within the Ghost Mist Forest.

"Clear out strongholds?" Li Yuan glanced up at Chen Yi.

Chen Yi leaned back in his chair and was silent for two breaths.

"That’s the official reason." He paused. "But I’m afraid what the higher-ups want is more than just clearing them out."

Li Yuan didn’t press him.

Chen Yi continued on his own.

"Over the last six months, the attitude of the Sect’s upper echelons toward the Ghost Mist Forest has been changing. At first, it was passive defense—setting up outposts and patrol points on the periphery to prevent Demon Cultivator infiltration. Later, when they found the Demon Cultivators’ activities becoming more frequent, they shifted from defense to active control, sending more personnel and expanding the patrol range."

He tapped the tabletop twice with his finger.

"Now it’s changed again. They’re sending exploration teams deep into the forest’s interior. The official mission is to clear them out, but the team’s composition doesn’t look like they’re going to war. They’re carrying a large number of detection-type Magical Artifacts and Array auxiliary materials, and they’ve even assigned a deacon who specializes in sensing Earth Veins."

"They’re looking for something," Li Yuan said.

"I don’t know." Chen Yi shook his head. "My rank doesn’t give me access to that level of information. But one thing is for sure: the higher-ups’ interest in the depths of the Ghost Mist Forest is no longer just about defense and control."

He stood up and glanced back at Li Yuan as he reached the door.

"Once the exploration teams set out, just coordinate with their logistical supplies. Don’t get involved in anything else, and don’t go too deep into the forest."

Li Yuan nodded in agreement.

Chen Yi’s figure disappeared beyond the courtyard gate.

The stone house fell silent.

Li Yuan sat back down at the table and carefully reviewed the exploration teams’ planned routes in the jade slip.

The two teams would set out from the outpost and advance separately along the eastern and western sides of the Ghost Mist Forest, planning to push more than a hundred *li* into the woods.

A hundred *li*.

’That’s still about forty *li* away from the center point I calculated.’

’I didn’t find anything in there myself. I wonder if the Sect will have any luck.’

Li Yuan put the jade slip away.

The Primordial Yang Sect was searching, and the Dark Abyss Association was searching too. Both powers were reaching deep into the Ghost Mist Forest.