Chapter 1443: Measuring and Judging

After launching a barrage of attacks that covered the sky and the earth, the stout man still heard nothing. However, through the feedback from his techniques, he sensed resistance from one direction. A jolt of joy went through his heart, though he let none of it show on his face. In an instant, he spun around and unleashed several fully-condensed soul arts toward that direction with all his might.

But what happened next left him utterly stunned. After all his soul arts were unleashed, there was no longer any feedback from that direction; they had all hit empty space…

He had launched the attack the very instant he sensed his opponent’s location. The opponent’s evasion was simply too fast.

Just then, at the Gate of Life acupoint on his lower back, a black light faintly flashed and silently submerged into the blue light.

“Hiss!”

The stout man felt as if a small wound had been abruptly torn in his seven po souls. The pain made him suck in a sharp breath of cold air, and beads of sweat immediately rolled down his forehead.

“Senior, Senior, please spare this junior! I do not know how I have offended you, I beg you to tell me. Whatever compensation you require, this junior will do his utmost to provide…”

This time, the stout man’s defense was breached again. He also sensed that the art used to attack him was, once more, the most basic of soul arts, and it was “Soul-Striking Finger,” a fundamental technique for attacking the seven po souls.

Faced with the successive attacks and their varying effects, the stout man suddenly thought of something, and an expression of terror appeared on his face.

The stout man couldn’t see where his enemy was, but he could basically determine that there was only one person. Before, he hadn’t understood why his opponent repeatedly used only the most basic soul arts to attack him. And yet, just when he managed to defend himself, that person would use brute Soul Power to overwhelm him. It felt as if his opponent was toying with him, playing a cruel game.

This immediately brought to mind certain legends—that some old monsters of cultivation had bizarre dispositions, their actions difficult to fathom. This was especially true for old monsters of their soul cultivation lineage. They cultivated the hun and po souls, and a single misstep or deviation in their practice could lead to a twisting of their souls, a schism. From then on, the person would become completely different from before, their personality growing erratic and unpredictable, often doing things that ordinary people found incomprehensible, yet they would take pleasure in it.

Could it be that on this trip out, he had run into one of these legendary figures?

Otherwise, if his opponent truly held a grudge against him, they had already ambushed and trapped him, so they surely wouldn’t have many reservations. At this point, they should be venting the hatred in their chest, mocking or threatening him. Only by doing so could he understand the reason, filling his heart with anger and fear, and then he would bitterly beg them, confess his remorse, and give them the satisfying feeling of revenge. Or they could just kill him swiftly and leave, to avoid any further complications.

But what he was experiencing was being tormented time and again with these basic soul arts. They would let him guess the enemy’s cultivation level, only to make him feel in the next moment that he had guessed everything wrong.

The purpose of such actions might be to see his face filled with confusion and anger, while they hid in the dark, gloating with excitement.

‘Damn it, this is a lunatic. I… how did I get so unlucky? His mind is completely unhinged, he’s not even human…’

While pleading, the stout man had already guessed his predicament. The thought of such a cultivator’s madness filled him with utter terror.

He was certain he was trapped in an illusion formation, which was why all his previous attacks had struck outside the formation. His opponent could change the illusion at any time, making him think he was attacking in the correct direction when, in fact, the position had already been altered by a single thought from his opponent.

“Senior, Senior, this junior should have no grievances with you. Please just spare this junior…”

Outside the formation, Li Yan listened to the stout man’s pleas, completely unmoved. He had just taken the man’s counterattack. The pained expression on his face had vanished after some careful reflection, and he was now frowning in deep thought.

Li Yan had painstakingly cultivated basic soul cultivation methods and soul arts for eight years, almost without a moment’s rest. But this kind of solitary, hard cultivation left Li Yan unable to judge what realm he had actually reached. At the same time, he had no definite measure of the power of the soul arts he practiced.

Thus, a few days prior, he had quietly left his Cave Residence and flown over thirty thousand li in one direction. This was the first time he had come out in eight years, and he was no longer stopped for questioning along the way. Through these years of cultivation, Li Yan had gained a deeper understanding of soul cultivators.

After a soul cultivator practices their cultivation method, not only will their magical power circulate through a heavenly cycle as they absorb the Spiritual Energy of heaven and earth, integrating with the world’s rules, but their hun and po souls will also break through acupoints along a specific path.

Once this fundamental breakthrough is complete, the souls within the body can constantly communicate with heaven and earth, resonating with the sun, moon, and stars, producing a kind of formless, rhythmic absorption akin to breathing.

To a non-soul cultivator, this phenomenon is completely imperceptible, even if the person is right in front of them. But a true soul cultivator can easily sense this change. Thus, they can tell if someone nearby has a soul that is communicating with heaven and earth. Then, by the strength of this change, they can sense the person’s approximate realm and cultivation, thereby determining if they are a soul cultivator.

Soul cultivators are also a type of dharma cultivator, just a rather special one, much like poison cultivators. It’s just that their path to immortality through cultivation methods is different. Therefore, soul cultivators still need to form a core and a nascent soul in their Dantian. Even if their attacks are primarily soul-based, they still require the support of magical power and Divine Sense.

In the outside world where Divine Sense can be used, their realm and strength can also be basically determined by judging the fluctuations of their magical power.

In the True Earth Domain, when normal soul cultivators go out, they generally do not deliberately shield their soul’s connection to heaven and earth, to avoid misunderstandings. Any true soul cultivator can sense it, like an invisible token of passage.

However, the previous Li Yan, although his Soul Power was quite formidable, had used it in a simple and crude manner. For the soul’s senses to rush out of the body and communicate with heaven and earth, the key was to break through certain acupoints and allow the Soul Power to form a complete cycle along the cultivation method’s path.

At that time, Li Yan had not opened this cycle at all. Without a path for his Soul Power to circulate, others naturally could not sense his response to heaven and earth. Only when Li Yan mobilized his Soul Power to attack would other soul cultivators sense it, knowing that his Soul Power existed and could leave his body.

Therefore, whenever he went out, he was constantly questioned!

But because there are also many soul cultivators who are unwilling to display their cultivation, they sometimes close these acupoints to achieve the purpose of concealing their level. Therefore, some of Li Yan’s behaviors were not considered eccentric among soul cultivators. It would only make others suspicious, which in turn led to more questioning.

After all, within the True Earth Domain, the cultivators here had long regarded this space as their private domain, strictly guarding against the invasion of those “Evil Spirit Cultivators.” If the “Evil Spirit Cultivators” were to take root here, they would once again lose their paradise and be forced to live in the shadows, hiding and fleeing.

After Li Yan went out, he began searching everywhere for lone cultivators. Finally, after confirming a soul cultivator was at the Golden Core Realm, he used the Stealthy Night Art and quietly tailed him.

Pitifully, this Golden Core cultivator never dreamed that a Nascent Soul cultivator would actually use sneak attacks to deal with a minor cultivator like himself. With such a huge disparity between them, Li Yan knocked the man unconscious and sealed him with a single move.

Then, not sparing the consumption of his Divine Sense, he immediately pulled the Golden Core soul cultivator into the Earthen Patch. Then, swaggering all the way, he brought the man back.

He wanted to test his cultivation results on this person, but he would not kill this Golden Core cultivator. After he was done, Li Yan would once again expend his Divine Sense to pull the man back into the Earthen Patch space, completely erase this segment of memory, fill it in with the man’s other experiences, and modify his memory.

Not killing him wasn’t because Li Yan was particularly merciful, but because he didn’t want to attract attention. It was better to have one less problem than one more. People like this might have Soul Lamps or Natal Soul Tablets left in their sect. Even if he was a rogue cultivator, he might have left some contingency plan, one could never be sure.

Now, having gradually grown accustomed to the loss of Divine Sense, Li Yan had discovered many advantages of this place. The methods he had for using Divine Sense gave him many more abilities than the cultivators here. He could soul-search, he could modify others’ memories—things that others in the outside world could also do with ease, but here, were as difficult as ascending to heaven.

Therefore, once Li Yan tampered with someone, it was ninety-nine percent certain that no one would suspect him, because ninety-nine percent of the people here shouldn’t be able to do it, so naturally, they wouldn’t suspect him.

The sound of pleading constantly echoed in his ears, but Li Yan turned a deaf ear, frowning deeply in thought.

Through simple attack and defense tests, he had already discovered that the soul arts he cultivated still had considerable problems and had not reached his expected goals. When attacking a mere Golden Core cultivator, apart from the initial successful sneak attack, he was immediately defended against afterward. Later, Li Yan could only rely on forcefully increasing his Soul Power to overwhelm the opponent with brute force…

After several years of cultivating the “Soul-Condensing Art,” Li Yan felt that his Soul Power, which had not grown for a long time, had once again seen new growth, and at a considerable pace. This made Li Yan overjoyed, but he knew that this situation would not last long and would cease after a period.

The reason was that this was Li Yan’s first time truly cultivating a soul cultivation method. Therefore, even the most basic, rudimentary techniques could allow him to improve rapidly.

Sure enough, after a year of practicing the “Soul-Condensing Art,” his cultivation speed began to slow down. By the third year, it had become even slower. This situation already indicated one thing: he needed a better soul cultivation method.

Through these years of cultivation, Li Yan had come to know more about the wondrous uses of the soul. Incidentally, even the power of the “Soul-Tugging Execution” art had greatly increased. In fact, Li Yan had anticipated this before he started cultivating; this art could also be considered a soul art of the Gui Water Immortal Sect. But he had not expected the final result. After just getting started with soul cultivation methods, the power of “Soul-Tugging Execution” had increased by at least thirty percent.

If Li Yan were to calculate this based on his normal cultivation of the True Scripture of Gui Water, he was now already at the Late-stage Nascent Soul. The next time he could enhance “Soul-Tugging Execution” would probably not be until the Spirit Transformation Realm.

Li Yan had no exact measure for the power of soul arts, which was why he had captured a Golden Core cultivator to test them. But as for “Soul-Tugging Execution,” he had used this art against enemies too many times and knew its power clearly; it could even affect Mid-stage Spirit Transformation cultivators. After these years of cultivation, if he were to encounter someone like the old woman surnamed He at the Mid-stage Spirit Transformation again, Li Yan felt that just using this art would cause her to suffer a great loss, and might even result in her soul being severely injured.

‘The soul arts I’ve practiced are still crudely applied, and the mobilization of both hun and po power is not yet fluid, wasting thirty to forty percent of my strength. The cultivation time has been too short. Moreover, relying solely on the introductory “Soul-Condensing Art” will make it very difficult to improve my cultivation further. The strength of my soul was already much greater than others to begin with, so in terms of practicing soul cultivation, my foundation is not entirely nonexistent. To improve my Soul Power, I can only find better cultivation methods to practice. The basic soul arts, however, can continue to be honed…’

Through practicing soul cultivation methods, Li Yan also learned how soul cultivators graded the level of the soul.

Before his soul level increased, although it was much stronger than that of ordinary cultivators, among soul cultivators, it was roughly at the Mid-stage Nascent Soul level. After these few years of practicing the “Soul-Condensing Art” and growing again, it had surprisingly reached the same level as his dharma-body dual cultivation—Late-stage Nascent Soul.

But if he were to fight using only soul arts, his combat power would be greatly weakened, at most reaching a level close to the Initial-stage Nascent Soul. And this was under the premise that Li Yan had never practiced a soul cultivation method before. From this, one could see just how formidable that underground passage of the Hellsoul Clan was. Back then, without any cultivation method, Li Yan had forcefully condensed his soul to such a degree of strength.

Li Yan could now be certain that that place was definitely a core, important location for the Hellsoul Clan, but there were no Nascent Soul-level soul spirits there. However, it was fortunate that there weren’t; otherwise, he and Zhao Min might not have been able to get out even now.

This phenomenon could actually be explained. One reason was that the cultivation site there might have been only for ordinary disciples of the clan, not for high-level cultivators. In other words, there might be an even more terrifying training ground underground in the Hellsoul Clan’s territory, or perhaps there was simply no place to train Nascent Soul cultivators.

Li Yan’s own explanation for this was that Nascent Soul cultivators were already the top existence in the lower realm; Spirit Transformation cultivators shouldn’t even exist. Therefore, they were unable to unleash the true power of Spirit Transformation. Under these circumstances, to capture a Nascent Soul cultivator in the lower realm and then refine their soul for cultivation—one can imagine how difficult that would be.

Even if it were possible, it would probably only be enough for a few people to cultivate. So, in the long passage Li Yan experienced, the Nascent Soul-level souls had likely been consumed long ago.

“…My Soul Power has actually already met the requirements of a Nascent Soul-level soul cultivator, but my soul arts are not up to par. Therefore, I need to rent for another ten years and diligently practice these basic soul arts to at least the minor accomplishment stage. That way, I’ll have a better chance in the sect’s assessment…”

After testing his strength today, Li Yan had a judgment of his own capabilities in his heart and began to think about his next plan. But the thought of having to continue renting the Cave Residence made him sigh internally.

Although he was quite wealthy when he arrived in the True Earth Domain, his Spirit Stones were constantly being spent. And to accelerate his cultivation, Li Yan would often use Spirit Stones to recover when his magical power was nearly depleted.

At this rate, he estimated that even if he did nothing else, he could cultivate to the Spirit Transformation Realm, but this kind of raw consumption would probably use up about half of his Spirit Stones by then.

Once he broke through to the Spirit Transformation Realm, the resources consumed afterward would only be more terrifying. It would be good if he could last until the Mid-stage Spirit Transformation. For cultivation, it was still better to rely on a great power.

At this moment, he raised his head again and looked at the stout man in the Mirror Flower Illusion Formation.

Inside the illusion formation, the stout man had also stopped pleading and was constantly looking around. He hadn’t been attacked for a while, and he felt that his words had had an effect. Although the other party remained silent, they were already considering it.

And at a certain moment, the stout man suddenly felt as if a pair of eyes were quietly watching him. He instantly had a bad feeling…

Like a fleeting glimpse of a white colt, time for cultivators always passed easily. While mortals were still lamenting the heartlessness of the years, how beauty fades, and the coming of white hair and withered bones, another ten years passed in a flash.

On this day, above the low hill where Li Yan was, after the restriction formation flashed, a figure soared into the sky and, in the next moment, sped away into the distance.

This person was none other than Li Yan, who had been in seclusion for another ten years. He chose a direction in the air and then left this place.

…

The stout man stood in a cave. It was empty all around. He looked somewhat blankly at the dark stone wall before him.

He remembered that while flying over a sea of clouds, he had suddenly lost his way. Then, as he flew with all his might in one direction, wanting to get out as quickly as possible, he had plunged headfirst into an even denser fog.

What followed was a dizzying spell, as if he were being teleported.

Afterward, he found himself in a desolate forest!