Chapter 225 — The Pursuit Begins

My Dao to Eternity

Chapter 225 — The Pursuit Begins

Li Fan did not answer immediately. He kept moving, choosing the fastest safe route his memory of the surrounding terrain could provide while turning over the voice's simple observation with the same careful attention he gave every matter.

"An Early-Stage Core Shattering cultivator," the voice continued, still unhurried, carrying the patience of someone entirely unconcerned about the outcome of what came next, "should not possess divine sense capable of registering something at the very edge of its reach, much less something concealed as carefully as I keep myself. Peak Core Shattering, perhaps, might obtain a clear perception at half that distance on a very good day. To sense me clearly at the full extent of your range is beyond what I expected from someone two full stages below my realm."

The observation carried more weight than any direct threat could have. Li Fan understood that this was not empty praise intended to slow him before an attack. It was a genuine assessment, the kind a careful investigator made before deciding whether a matter deserved the time required to understand it.

He did not stop moving. He did not attempt a response. An instinct older than this Realm and older than his own careful habit of avoiding unnecessary conflict told him that answering this particular curiosity would only deepen it.

"I do not intend to kill you immediately," the voice said, and its tone made the statement sound like simple fact rather than mercy. "Not yet. I would first like to understand what I am looking at. Run if that is your instinct. I have no urgent business elsewhere."

Li Fan ran.

He did not run blindly, nor did he flee in panic. He chose terrain he understood over terrain that merely offered greater speed, drawing upon the map of ruins, formations, and dangerous territories that eight months had allowed him to commit to memory.

Behind him, at a distance that neither closed nor widened, the presence followed.

Moving through the thinning forest with his divine sense stretched taut behind him, Li Fan had no idea how long this particular problem would continue. He understood only that resolving it would require every measure of patience and preparation this journey had taught him, while the man behind him, an Infant Formation cultivator who remained unhurried and genuinely curious, had no reason to abandon the pursuit merely because it became prolonged.

He adjusted his course toward a stretch of broken terrain he remembered from an earlier detour and continued forward.

The first days of the pursuit revealed the nature of his pursuer's patience.

Elder Guanshan did not close the distance quickly. He had no reason to. He simply followed with steady steps, matching every alteration in Li Fan's course with a correction of his own several breaths later. He remained close enough that Li Fan's divine sense never completely lost him. There was no urgency in the pursuit and no visible strain. Guanshan moved with the composure of a man taking a long journey toward a destination already known to him.

Li Fan measured the distance between them constantly through his divine sense, watching it remain almost unchanged through hours of travel. That consistency troubled him more than a sudden burst of speed would have. A pursuer who exhausted his strength would eventually slow. Guanshan showed no sign of exhaustion.

Li Fan did not mistake the calm for carelessness. He used every advantage the terrain offered instead, cutting through an ancient forest where low branches and dense undergrowth forced anyone moving through it to slow and avoid the hardened wood. He doubled back twice through a dry riverbed, deliberately leaving a scent and spiritual trace that diverged from his true path. Through his extended divine sense, he watched Guanshan reach the division, pause for a long moment, and choose the correct path.

On the third day, Li Fan raised a defensive formation in a narrow canyon passage, hoping to gain an hour of distance while Guanshan broke through or circumvented it. Guanshan did neither. He simply stepped across its boundary. The formation's structure could not withstand a cultivation base an entire realm above what it had been designed to restrain.

The collapse cost Li Fan little in materials, only several spirit stones and an hour of preparation assembled from memory rather than through careful design. Its failure taught him more than its construction had. Some methods simply could not restrain an opponent at such a cultivation level, regardless of how useful they had been against everything else the Realm had placed before him.

Li Fan recorded the failure without frustration and altered his approach. Formations intended to hinder a Core Shattering pursuer would have to be reconsidered entirely or abandoned against this particular opponent.

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He relied instead upon the terrain, drawing from eight months of accumulated memory: the fixed territory of the stone guardian two hundred miles behind him, the unstable ground near the ancient fissure, and the dangerous regions he had mapped across the western basin during his slower exploration. He guided Guanshan along the outer edge of a demon beast territory that Li Fan himself would never have crossed carelessly, relying upon the Elder's caution to slow him rather than attempting to confront him directly.

The method worked for part of an afternoon. Guanshan skirted the territory instead of crossing it, and the detour gave Li Fan several miles of clear distance before the pursuit resumed its steady pace.

By the seventh day, Li Fan understood that Guanshan no longer regarded the pursuit as a simple matter of following. The Elder's corrections had become more precise, and his anticipation of Li Fan's likely routes had sharpened beyond what simple pursuit could explain. He was learning, just as Li Fan learned everything, through patient accumulation of observation rather than brute strength.

"You are not panicking," Guanshan observed on the tenth day, his voice arriving through the same wordless projection as before, entirely without malice. "Most cultivators, faced with such a difference in cultivation, lose the ability to think clearly within the first hour. You have not stopped thinking since the moment you sensed me."

Li Fan did not answer. After ten days of silence, he had learned that responding only encouraged further conversation, and conversation consumed attention he needed for the terrain beneath his feet.

He used the Five Elements Escape twice more before the fifteenth day arrived, each use giving him a brief advantage through terrain where his cultivation allowed him to move more efficiently than an ordinary pursuit. He sank through loose earth beside a dry riverbed, then dissolved into scattered embers to cross an exposed stretch of ground that would have left him vulnerable in open terrain. Each use consumed qi that could not immediately be replenished, and Li Fan carefully recorded the expenditure together with every other resource the pursuit was consuming.

By the fifteenth day, camped within a shallow hollow with Guanshan's presence still steady at the edge of his divine sense, refusing to draw closer and refusing to fall away, Li Fan understood that the pursuit had ceased to be a question of whether he could escape quickly.

It had become a question of how long he could continue thinking clearly while being steadily worn down by someone who had no reason to hurry.

He allowed himself several hours of careful rest, circulating his qi as efficiently as the constant pressure of pursuit permitted. He rose before the false dawn and continued westward, deeper into terrain he had not yet fully mapped, carrying a problem that showed no sign of resolving itself through anything less than continued patience.

By the twentieth day, Li Fan had stopped treating the pursuit as a simple escape. He viewed it as a problem whose positions and possibilities had to be examined with the same discipline he applied to a difficult formation before its complete structure became clear.

He possessed one advantage Guanshan did not, and he used it without hesitation. Eight months of patient exploration had given him knowledge of this region that no outside cultivator, regardless of strength, could possess without personally walking the same ground. He knew where the earth became unstable near ancient fissures. He knew which demon beast territories contained predators strong enough to trouble even an Infant Formation cultivator, and which contained nothing worth detouring around. He knew the exact location of the stone guardian's fixed boundary, measured to a hundred paces.

The map existed only within his memory, formed from one dangerous encounter after another rather than copied from any chart or record. He had never written it down. His own memory could not be stolen as easily as paper, nor could another cultivator simply take a written record and learn what he had spent eight months discovering.

On the twenty-third day, he guided Guanshan past the edge of that boundary, close enough that the guardian's territory became clear to any divine sense sweeping across the region. Through his own extended perception, Li Fan watched the Elder slow his pursuit by a quarter-mile, unwilling to enter the unknown territory of a powerful construct without first understanding its strength.

The detour bought Li Fan nearly an entire day of clear distance. He did not celebrate it. He used the time to rest as much as the pursuit allowed, then continued moving.

Guanshan adapted within a week. By the twenty-eighth day, the Elder's corrections had become sharp enough for Li Fan to understand that this was no longer simple pursuit. Guanshan had begun anticipating his decisions instead of merely following his trail, closing paths before Li Fan had fully committed to terrain that might otherwise have given him an advantage.

From that point onward, the pursuit became a contest of understanding rather than speed.

On the thirty-first day, Li Fan led the pursuit through broken highland riddled with deep, unmeasured fissures, the same region he had carefully avoided months earlier while routing around the vast presence within the black stone spires. He knew the safe paths through the terrain from memory. Guanshan did not. For the first time during the pursuit, Li Fan felt the Elder's presence hesitate completely as he examined the ground with careful sweeps of divine sense before choosing a route.

The hesitation cost Guanshan nearly two hours. It almost cost Li Fan considerably more.

Crossing the narrowest fissure at speed, Li Fan's footing struck a loose stone shelf he had failed to account for. For a suspended breath, the ground gave way beneath him and his body tipped toward a depth his divine sense had failed to measure. His fingers caught the opposite ledge. The bones of his hands, strengthened by Returning Marrow, held against the stone as he hauled himself upward by main strength and pulled his body onto solid ground. His heart beat harder than it had at any point since the pursuit began.

He did not dwell upon how narrow the margin had been. He continued forward, adding the near fall to the same careful accounting he gave every other price this pursuit demanded.