Chapter 571 - 517: Encirclement and Interception

Chapter 571: Chapter 517: Encirclement and Interception

Northwest of Bazhou City, at Hidden Dragon Mountain, a peak abruptly exploded. As earth and rock shot through the air, a sharp Sword Intent surged to the heavens. A web of crisscrossing sword light instantly enveloped the shattered peak.

Caught off guard, several Chen Family Golden Core Cultivators scrambled to evade the sudden flash of sword light.

But amidst the web of sword light, a single, unremarkable gleam shot into the forest to the side, vanishing in an instant.

Deep in the forest, Chu Mu concealed his presence and began to flit along the mountain’s contours.

As for the Chen Family Golden Core Cultivators behind him, he was powerless to deal with them.

If he dared to stop and engage them, it would only be a matter of moments before the Heaven and Earth Net closed in on him from all sides.

In the less than a day since he’d left Bazhou City, he had been exceedingly cautious, using his Cyan Bird Puppets for reconnaissance and relying on Wangcai’s Bloodline Divine Techniques to aid his escape.

Yet even with such prudence, it was impossible to guard against all the overt and covert measures within this vast surveillance network. Once the Chen Family detected a sign of him, the pursuits began, one after another.

His Cyan Bird Puppets formed a vast web of their own, scouting a radius of hundreds of miles with him at the center, while Wangcai’s active Bloodline Divine Techniques provided the crucial information he needed to evade capture.

The full extent of the Chen Family’s Heaven and Earth Net remained unknown to him.

But one thing was certain: a great number of Chen Family Cultivators were involved in the hunt.

Wangcai’s Bloodline Divine Techniques alone had identified more than ten Chen Family Golden Core Cultivators.

And these more than ten Golden Core Cultivators were all within a few hundred miles of his current position.

Moreover, they were all converging on the spot where he had just been forced to reveal his presence.

Most importantly, this was only the force he could detect.

The number of those he hadn’t yet perceived was still a mystery.

Chu Mu suppressed his aura as he sped along. Guided by his Cyan Bird Puppets and Wangcai’s Bloodline Divine Techniques, he wove through the Heaven and Earth Net with pinpoint precision, avoiding one surveillance node after another where he might have left a trace.

He even had close calls, passing by the converging Chen Family Golden Core Cultivators with only a few miles to spare.

Chu Mu’s expression was grim. The pressure on him was immense. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

Although the chase had lasted less than a day, it was easy to see the Chen Family’s absolute determination to capture him. He wouldn’t be surprised if a Chen Family Nascent Soul Ancestor had given a kill-on-sight order.

If this dragged on any longer, he, isolated and helpless, would be doomed. Regardless of the outcome of the Nascent Soul Battle in the city, the longer he was delayed, the more Chen Family forces would converge. They would slowly shrink his room to maneuver, and even with all his tricks, he would inevitably be ground down and killed within this Heaven and Earth Net.

’Southwest? Northwest? Or straight south? Should I try to hole up in the southwest again?’

He paused on a mountain peak, a Jade Scroll in his hand. The map of the Bazhou Basin was clearly displayed within it. Surveying his surroundings, he hesitated.

As soon as he’d realized he was being hunted, he had remotely piloted the Sky-Breaking Flying Boat out of the Bazhou Basin.

He did this partly to avoid revealing his trump card, the Sky-Breaking Flying Boat, and partly to protect the True Understanding Main Pavilion from the Chen Family’s wrath.

After all, he had thoroughly offended the Chen Family this time.

The True Understanding Main Pavilion was still on Chixia, and so were Xu Yuan and his entire family.

It was inevitable that they would be implicated because of him and face the Chen Family’s wrath.

Without an advance warning, their deaths would be certain.

’One can only hope.’

Chu Mu shook his head to himself. Trapped as he was, he hadn’t even managed to save himself yet, let alone worry about matters on faraway Chixia Island.

All he could do was send a message so that Chang Hongyi and Xu Yuan would have time to react.

As for what happened next, he was truly... powerless.

Chu Mu pursed his lips, his Divine Sense sweeping over the map of the Bazhou Basin. A vast area was already covered in dense markings, each one a surveillance node he had detected. He could even see that some of them were garrisoned by numerous Chen Family Cultivators.

In many places, the concentration of Blood Qi was so thick it rivaled the boundless carnage within Bazhou City.

It was just as he had predicted: for now, at least, the Chen Family was keeping a tight lid on the news of the catastrophe in Bazhou City.

Or rather, as of now, it seemed no other survivor had managed to escape their Heaven and Earth Net...

Bazhou City had hundreds of thousands of Cultivators, and the Bazhou Basin was dotted with countless Marketplaces and cities, home to innumerable more.

Even if the Chen Family’s great net only covered a portion of the Bazhou Basin, the number of Cultivators caught within it must have been immense.

The Chen Family’s meticulously prepared scheme, one that utilized so much manpower and resources, had crumbled because of him...

’If I were one of them,’ he thought, ’grinding my bones to dust and performing Soul Extraction and Spirit Refining on me would probably not be enough to quell their hatred!’

But clearly, this entire chain of cause and effect was the result of a bizarre series of coincidences.

The way things had unfolded was beyond his ability to predict or control.

He, too, had been caught up in circumstances beyond his control.

After a moment’s thought, Chu Mu stowed the Jade Scroll in his Storage Space with a flip of his hand. He patted Wangcai, took a single step, and vanished into the forest once more.

And just as Chu Mu had expected, now that its original purpose was complete, the Chen Family’s Heaven and Earth Net had only one remaining function: hunting him.

Back in Bazhou City, the Nascent Soul Battle raged on, with no clear victor in sight.

Amidst the city’s deathly silence, the forces originally meant to maintain control and suppress chaos had all been deployed outside the walls. They had merged with the Heaven and Earth Net to hunt down Chu Mu, the primary culprit.

The cat-and-mouse game continued. As the Heaven and Earth Net tightened, several days passed in a blur.

Though only a few days had passed, to Chu Mu it felt like years. On his map of the Bazhou Basin, more than half the region was now lit up with dense markings that outlined the Chen Family’s Heaven and Earth Net.

The scope of the Chen Family’s Heaven and Earth Net far exceeded his expectations. Their methods were simple and crude, but now that there were few other survivors and all their manpower and resources were focused on him, even a brute-force approach could form an inescapable dragnet.

Every time he fled, no matter how perfectly he concealed his tracks, it wasn’t long before the Chen Family discovered his trail through simple, brute-force grid searches. What followed was an endless cycle of pursuits and blockades.

Forced to change direction again and again by the Chen Family’s relentless encirclements, he fled east, west, north, and south in a series of twists and turns.

His most successful attempt had brought him to the very edge of the Bazhou Basin, into its northwestern mountain range. But in the end, faced with overwhelming opposition, he was forced to change direction once again to find another path to survival...

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