On the other side, Azure City's Young Master, Elder Xu, and their party traced the footsteps of Gu Nan and the others, coming all the way to the estuary.
"Damn it! These bastards should be killed with thousands of knives!"
The Young Master's entire face twisted with anger. Without Elder Xu needing to say anything, he also understood what happened.
Some light blue liquid was floating on the continuously flowing sea.
"How dare they pour the Ice Soul blood into the sea!" If Gu Nan was present right now, Azure City's Young Master definitely wouldn't hesitate to personally tear him into eight pieces to vent his hatred.
'Do these bastards know how precious the Ice Soul's Blood is? How could they actually pour it into the sea?'
Elder Xu didn't even have the time to feel distressed. He quickly ran to the estuary with a sullen expression, suddenly waving his sleeves. A flash of light instantly enveloped those blue lights.
There were countless cultivation paths in this world, and this Elder Xu was clearly someone who specialized in powers of the mind, such as telekinesis.
He forcibly wrapped the remaining blood with his mental powers to ensure that they wouldn't be lost, and only then did he dare to start slowly extracting it.
"The actual blood has been completely washed away, leaving only pure Ice Soul power." Elder Xu sighed lightly. "Fortunately, Luo Bing's bloodline was dense enough, otherwise it would've long been washed away by the sea."
Azure City's Young Master couldn't help but ask urgently, "Is there any way to extract the bloodline?"
"Of course there is." Elder Xu replied proudly, "Those people tried to steal a chicken but ended up losing even the rice they used to lure it [ 1 ]. They probably didn't expect us to arrive so soon and didn't expect the Ice Soul's Blood to not be washed away by the water."
"Right now, I've already preserved it with a secret technique. As long as I hurry to extract it and prevent it from being overly contaminated by the seawater, the Ice Soul's Blood will still be intact."
When he heard this, Azure City's Young Master felt relieved and nodded. "We only need about 80% of the bloodline, that will be enough... Elder Xu, please start as soon as possible!"
Every second they delayed would contaminate the bloodline a little more. Elder Xu also dared not delay, so he hurriedly sat down and started using his mental power to refine the seawater.
As time went by, Azure City's Young Master was no longer in a hurry. In any case, they had already obtained the bloodline, so he just ordered his men to secure the area.
A few hours later, Elder Xu slowly opened his eyes, exhaustion clear on his face.
However, his mind was very excited. "Young Master, this Ice Soul's Blood has been completely purified... Eh? Why is there so little?"
"Shameless thieves! They didn't pour all of it in!"
...
Gu Nan and the others walked in the mountains. Everyone held a large pile of frozen meat chunks in their hands.
The Ice Soul's Blood was truly remarkable. After leaving the host body and feeding just a tiny sip to the boar, the poor little boar instantly froze into an ice statue.
Gu Nan chopped the frozen boar into pieces and handed everyone a little bit so that they could throw some pieces while they walked.
"What's the purpose of this?" Qin Xuanji asked curiously. She was also someone who often traveled in the wild, but she still couldn't understand Gu Nan's actions.
Gu Nan casually threw a chunk of meat and explained, "To interfere with their tracking."
"Normally, locating something by sensing the bloodline power can't possibly be as accurate as technological methods. At most it'll just be a vague feeling..."
Before he even finished speaking, Lin Ruo interrupted, "So something that's far away and something with weak bloodline energy will both feel similar to the other party's senses, and they won't be able to tell them apart?"
"Most likely so." Gu Nan nodded.
Lin Ruo and Ye Chong exchanged glances. After carefully thinking about it, this seemed very reasonable. The tracking methods they usually used also seemed to have such shortcomings.
It's just that they had never thought about it like this, let alone making use of these blind spots in their thought processes.
The reality also seemed to be as Gu Nan expected.
When they were almost at the edge of the dense forest, they heard a bunch of loud noises behind them. It was obvious that the other party had launched a large-scale search.
Azure City's Young Master stood in the same place as he breathed heavily.
He commanded his subordinates to search around while holding a chunk of frozen boar in his hand.
"These petty tricks again..." Azure City's Young Master snorted coldly while feeling vicious.
He thought that they already worked swiftly and also had Elder Xu to help with the tracking, so they should've caught up quickly, but the other party used these tricks to delay them again and again.
Elder Xu also had a gloomy expression. A few strands of his hair even turned white with anger.
Originally, the bloodline clearly pointed them in this direction, but when he actually came here, he found that the bloodline was suddenly pointing in dozens of directions!
From the moment he saw the piece of frozen boar, he knew what the other party had done, but there was no good way to deal with it.
He could sense dozens of signals of varying strengths, yet the correct answer was hidden in a pile of illusions. How could he distinguish them?
"Cunning villain!"
...
Even more surprising events were yet to come.
Ye Chong and the others followed Gu Nan, walking around the mountain forest for three days. They actually didn't encounter a single enemy attack.
Gu Nan had too many petty tricks, such as obscuring their line of sight, creating roadblocks, leading disaster to them... Everything that could be used in the dense forest was all used by him.
When they ran out of options, he caught over a dozen wild animals and gave each a sip of the Ice Soul blood.
Gu Nan and the others could just walk away, but poor Elder Xu had to work hard to extract the bloodline from animal blood.
After three days, Gu Nan and the others were able to save their energy. Instead, the group of pursuers were exhausted and didn't sleep well for the entire three days and three nights.
After the Ice Soul's Blood left the host's body, the spiritual energy within it would continuously dissipate and become completely ineffective in three days, so no one dared to rest.
"Young Master, they have been blocked by us. We've surrounded them in the valley up ahead. They can't run anymore!"
A man in black clothes stood in front of Azure City's Young Master and reported in a heavy voice.
His eyes were bloodshot, and his image looked horrendous. Azure City's Young Master, who normally paid the most attention to bearing and banners, would have kicked him a long time ago, but now he wasn't in the mood.
On one hand, it was because he himself wasn't much better, and on the other hand, it was naturally because...
"Finally! Caught them!"
The distinguished Young Master of Azure City actually had an urge to cry with joy right now. He grabbed Elder Xu's arm beside him and said, "Elder Xu, please hold on a little longer. We'll have our victory soon!"
Elder Xu nodded hard, but he didn't even have the strength to speak anymore.
By now, he didn't even look like a human. His eyes tainted red, his face covered with bloody gashes, his hair grew white, and he was being pushed in a simple wheelchair.
Azure City's Young Master saw his appearance and couldn't help feeling a heartache.
This elder who watched him grow up had done the most exhausting work in the past three days!
He needed to always sense the other party's position and also had to extract the Ice Soul's Blood from random places, so he didn't have any time to rest!
After three days and nights like this, not even an iron man can stand that!
"Charge! Charge with me!" A line of people rushed to the entrance of the valley, and Azure City's Young Master eagerly roared.
He had completely stopped caring about anything like scouting the terrain or investigating the enemy's strength. Right now, he just wanted to have a good fight.
Even if he died in battle, it was still much better than what he had to endure these past three days!
Of course, in the bottom of his heart, the Young Master was still very sure of his own decisions.
According to their information, the other party merely consisted of four orphans raised by Luo Bing, without any special abilities. All they could do was play some clever tricks. How could they be a match for him?
Unfortunately for him, he didn't expect to face four well-rested Innate Realm experts.
Devotee's Game System Inspired Note
» This section of the chapter is a Fan based created system to mock-up or simulate the 'Status Information' of our MC - Gu Nan. This implies that you are free to skip reading this and continue your journey onto the next chapter.
» All catalog data below is a summary of various information achieved by Gu Nan that corresponds till the end of the related chapter and is compiled into a singular 'Status Screen.' Additionally, the invented system below would continue to evolve as we progress and learn more about the novel itself.
MC's Status Information
Name: Gu Nan
Current Location: Radiant Tower's branch office on Ruby Fish Star's sixth asteroid belt
Current Soul Location: In a hidden forest on the Azure City plane
Status: ⟪ Evil God ⟫
Advancement Direction: Agility Type
Current Evil God Rank: Tier 2
Equivalent Martial Art: External Kung Fu Master - Innate Realm Third Stage
Current Evil God Temple Quest:
→ Main Mission Objective/s:
-— Protect an item and prevent the enemy from snatching it for three days. - External Source
◈ Status: On Going
Current Evil Points: 336
Overall Evil Points: 816, Overall Evil Value: 26
Exclusive Skills Acquired:
— Deceitful Steps. ｢Movement Speed increased by 30%. Attack Speed increased by 50%｣
Item/s owned:
→ Four Element Crossbow. ｢A Tier 2 crossbow weapon that can generate four types of elemental arrows—earth, water, wind, and fire—based on the user's needs and does not need to load arrows.｣