Chapter 1205: True Void Sense

Everyone throughout villa no longer appeared as vague human-shaped presences. They were people in the fullest positional sense of the word. Phei perceived exactly where they stood, sat and which direction their bodies faced, the positions of their limbs, their movement through corridors, the physical space everyone occupied and even faint disturbances produced by Mana circulating through awakened cultivators.

A security guard beyond reached toward a cup, and Phei perceived the movement before the man’s fingers closed around it. A staff bent inside a storage room, yet Phei did not see her from one angle so much as understand exactly where her entire body existed at once. Someone else of the staff approached the stairs from somewhere behind Phei’s physical position, and he never needed to turn because behind had already stopped meaning very much.

His awareness crossed 600 meters and continued toward seven, swallowing space after space of existence until it felt less as though Phei were extending a sense outward from his body and more as though he were looking inward from the Void surrounding everything else.

Every place, position shape and and everything in the reality he perceived became another possible angle of perception, every silent absence between structures another place from which reality could be observed, and somehow his mind understood the impossible arrangement as naturally as if he had been born seeing this way.

Then all that information nearly crushed him.

Hundreds of people and thousands of movements arrived together with Mana, rooms, machinery, shadows, spatial hollows, hidden channels, minute disturbances, vehicles outside, birds crossing the air and even wind moving through architectural gaps.

Phei groaned and grabbed the side of his head:

"Too fucking much."

The information kept coming until Phei stopped trying to process all of it.

The instant he made that decision, True Void Sense responded.

Distant some people beyond the villa slipped from his active attention first, followed by plumbing, electrical systems and the countless irrelevant structural details filling the hotel. Phei narrowed his focus toward movement and immediately found moving presences becoming prominent while everything stationary faded into the background.

He shifted toward Mana instead, causing the hidden cultivators to brighten within his perception while ordinary humans (his women and other) receded, then he focused on spatial disturbances and watched people themselves dim as hollows, concealed spaces and abnormal distortions became painfully obvious.

Phei exhaled slowly. "So I can filter it."

That was much better.

True Void Sense allowed him to perceive an absurd amount of information, but it did not force him to drown beneath everything simultaneously. He could narrow his awareness toward a person, room, floor, movement, energy, spatial abnormality, concealed space or whatever else mattered at the time, turning what had initially felt like sensory torture into something terrifyingly useful.

Phei pushed his range outward one final time.

It crossed 800 meters, approached 900 and continued until clarity finally began to soften near the edge.

Somewhere just short of a full kilometer, the expansion stopped.

He remained seated with his physical eyes closed, yet the world had never appeared clearer.

Phei followed a bird crossing the sky hundreds of meters from villa without moving his head, knew the position, direction and speed of a car travelling along a road below, and immediately perceived someone entering a staff four floors beneath him.

When he opened his eyes, almost nothing changed except that ordinary sight was now layered over something vastly more complete. He looked toward the wall and continued perceiving everything beyond it, closed his eyes again and found the information entirely unchanged.

"That’s ridiculous."

His physical sight had become optional inside True Void Sense’s range.

Then Phei noticed something stranger.

Some places accepted his perception effortlessly, while others produced faint distortions where concealments or formations interfered with the surrounding Void. One particular region above and beyond the lounge felt different from both. The Void itself seemed strangely incomplete there, as though his perception flowed naturally through everything around it only to encounter a small part where something had deliberately denied it entry.

Phei tilted his head upward and focused.

The concealment resisted him, but unlike Minimal Void Sense, the evolved ability did not simply surrender and report empty space. True Void Sense noticed the denial itself; the surrounding Void continued everywhere except that one suspicious spot, and the shape of what refused his awareness became its own evidence that something existed there.

Phei pressed harder.

The obscurity gradually thinned until another presence finally emerged inside his perception.

’Consort~’

She floated quietly within concealment some distance above him, her smaller figure wrapped in her familiar kimono, its fabric falling neatly around her while one hand rested near the sword carried at her side. Her concealment was extraordinary, good enough that Phei had failed to sense anything before the evolution, yet True Void Sense had still found her.

’Not a dress today, huh? Too bad she looked really sexy last time and beautiful.’ But who was he kidding, he liked watching the shape of her, mostly that ass of hers.

Phei’s lips slowly curled.

Above him, Consort’s expression changed.

She had felt something touch the edge of her concealment, although it was neither ordinary vision nor Mana probing for her presence. The sensation was considerably stranger, almost as though the empty space surrounding her had suddenly noticed she existed.

Phei nearly called out to her immediately, another discovery dragged his attention away before he could.

Dozens upon dozens of traces littered the lounge:

Every Void Step he had performed earlier had left something behind. Minimal Void Sense had only registered them as vague wrongnesses he could barely interpret, but True Void Sense revealed thin scars impressed into the Void, with one disturbance marking where he had surrendered his position and another showing where ordinary reality had received him again.

Even their age was apparent, older traces already smoothing toward nothing while fresher ones still carried faint impressions of his Void essence.

Phei followed one carefully and realized he could determine the direction in which the movement had gone. He could distinguish his own essence within the disturbance, recognize which traces were newer and even see that another pattern differed slightly because he had entered the Void while falling, as though the residual mark itself had remembered something about the state in which he moved.

His amusement faded.

"So this is what someone with good enough spatial perception could follow."

Such a person would not necessarily need to witness where he emerged. If their perception was sufficiently powerful, they might read the disturbance itself, track his route and perhaps even reconstruct how he had moved.

That was irritating.

Phei focused upon his nearest trace and immediately felt something odd about leaving it there. The disturbance belonged to him, had been created through his Void and still carried his essence, so why exactly was he leaving it sitting around for some enemy to inspect afterward?

He pressed True Void Sense against it and, with more instinct than actual understanding, simply willed the surrounding Void to settle.

The trace collapsed.

’WHAT!’

Phei froze and searched the location again, only to find nothing remaining there. No disturbance, no residual essence, no faint scar and no indication that Phei had ever vanished from that point.

His expression changed completely. "Oh~"

He tried another, and the Void closed over it just as easily. A third disappeared moments later, each residual footprint erased so thoroughly that even his new perception could no longer recover it.

Phei sat silently for several seconds before calling up the evolved description.

[True Void Sense: Host’s perception has evolved beyond merely detecting disturbances in the Void. By extending your awareness through the surrounding Void, you may perceive reality simultaneously from every direction within nearly one kilometer or more, granting complete spatial awareness without reliance upon ordinary sight. Host may discern precise position, distance, movement, physical structure, spatial hollows, concealed spaces, hidden presences, erased traces and disturbances associated with space or the Void.]

[Ordinary matter and physical obstruction cannot easily conceal what exists within your perception, as Host may cast your awareness into the surrounding Void and perceive the physical world from within it. True Void Sense may be narrowed toward selected targets, regions, movements, energies or abnormalities to prevent unnecessary sensory burden.]

[Powerful Domains, spatial isolation, divine concealment, superior Void abilities and skills and sufficiently advanced sealing methods may obstruct, distort or deny portions of Host’s perception.]

That was all.

Phei stared at the description before returning his attention to the perfectly clean space where one of his earlier traces had existed. The System had explained everything from complete perception to concealment resistance and filtering, yet there was absolutely no mention of erasing the disturbances created by his own Void movement.

His grin widened. "So you didn’t know about that either."

[...]

There was another useful lesson hidden inside the upgrade:

Even if something possessed enough power to deny True Void Sense direct access, concealment would not necessarily become perfect invisibility anymore. If his awareness flowed naturally through an entire area except for one suspicious blank region, the absence itself became a warning; just like Consort.

Phei might not always know what was hiding there, but he would at least know something had gone to great lengths to refuse being seen.

That alone could save his life.

Phei turned his attention toward the second ability and the 450,000 EXP remaining in his Status.

True Void Sense had already transformed his relationship with the Void so thoroughly that stopping now would have required far more financial responsibility than he currently possessed.

"Upgrade Void Steps."

[Confirmation Required: Host wishes to spend 350,000 EXP to evolve Void Steps into True Void Steps.]

"I accept."

[Ding!]

[350,000 EXP deducted.]

[Remaining EXP: 100,000.]

[Congratulations, Host...]