Chapter 1713: Capturing the Runes
While capturing the runes, Li Yan kept a close eye on those around him. When he saw the girl in the yellow dress being pulled out after her fourth rune, his heart stirred. He had noticed something.
As the belt tightened, the sister inside was hoisted into the air and yanked out of the field in an instant. However, Li Yan saw that the belt, which should have been pulled taut into a straight line, had a distinct ‘bend’ or ‘kink’ at the edge of the barrier. It looked as if the belt had been folded at an angle.
The visual suggested that the person pulling outside wasn’t using much strength, yet Li Yan could feel the massive force that had yanked the girl out. At that moment, he finally solved the riddle that had troubled him.
The reason they couldn’t capture the runes from the outside, no matter how hard they tried, was because the space inside and outside the barrier was not on the same visual plane. What appeared to be a straight line was actually a distorted distance. It was like looking at an object through water; the light refracted, causing one to reach for a position where the object wasn’t actually located.
The reason the girl had to leave was because the spiritual power in her meridians was nearly exhausted. If she stayed, she would be unable to breathe, and her internal circulation would stall. Like a mortal diving into the depths, she had run out of air and needed to surface.
Li Yan now grasped the true difficulty of this assessment. The golden runes themselves weren’t a challenge; even a Golden Core cultivator could easily capture them if they could use their full power. The hurdle was this barrier formed by Pill Resonance. From the outside, you couldn’t accurately target the runes due to spatial distortion. This forced you to enter the barrier, where you were stripped of your connection to the world and forced to rely on your physical frame and the meager Qi in your meridians.
The girl had only managed four runes before needing to ‘breathing.’ At that rate, acquiring fifty in half an hour seemed feasible, but the math was deceptive. She had to rest and let her Qi refill her meridians before re-entering. Each cycle would take twenty to thirty breaths.
Crucially, the golden runes were scattered. Once the ones near the edge were gone, they would have to venture deeper, where their Qi would be stretched even further. Li Yan predicted that as time ran out, desperate examinees would stop gathering and start stealing from those emerging to ‘breathing,’ right into the hands of the group waiting outside.
Li Yan realized that his physical strength, which far exceeded that of a normal Spirit Transformation cultivator, gave him a massive advantage. He could move much faster and reach the runes without consuming much Qi. However, doing so would reveal his status as a body cultivator—one of his hidden trump cards. He had only just arrived at Huangqi Valley; exposing his full strength now would leave him one less life-saving measure for the future.
The burly man’s group also noted the sisters’ strategy. Having figured out the trick, they too began to gather runes as quickly as possible, forgoing conflict for now. For a brief moment, a rare peace settled over the Spirit Transformation group as they shuttled in and out of the barrier. They relied on their physical bodies to move, only using their precious Qi to secure the runes.
Even the twins eventually entered together, no longer leaving one sister outside.
Outside the formation, the white-robed examiner watched the busy figures through a technique. Seeing them working in harmony, a smile of anticipation played on his lips.
“The storm is coming,” he murmured. He knew this peace wouldn’t last.
Fifteen minutes passed. Everyone had gathered about thirty golden runes. The runes near the edge and in the middle had vanished. To get more, they had to go deeper into the heart of the resonance field.
When Li Yan secured his thirty-seventh rune, he was deep within the barrier, and his Qi was nearly dry. He used his remaining strength to maintain his internal ‘breathing’ and relied on his physical power to return to the edge.
As he emerged from the barrier after a hundred and thirty breaths, the suppression on his dantian vanished. Spiritual power surged through his limbs like a roaring river. But as he began to circulate his Qi, a figure abruptly appeared by his side.
Li Yan acted as if he hadn’t noticed, but a cold sneer formed in his mind.
‘So, it begins. Perfect, I didn’t want to go back into the depths anyway.’
On the other side, the girl in yellow also emerged from the barrier. The moment she stepped out, two figures lunged at her.
The person who had appeared by Li Yan’s side was the provocative woman in the revealing clothes, her snow-white skin gleaming. The two lunging at the twin sister were the burly man and the gold-robed cultivator—a coordinated ambush.
These three had been ‘breathing’ outside, timing their recovery. When they saw Li Yan and the twin sister returning, they had feigned exhaustion and emerged as well, keeping enough Qi in reserve to strike immediately. The fourth companion, the black-clad man, remained deep inside the barrier to keep the other twin occupied.
Outside the barrier, the distance between them was only a few dozen li. For a Spirit Transformation cultivator, that distance was non-existent.
The woman in the late-stage of Spirit Transformation attacked the twin. She was nearly exhausted, and the ambush was lethal. Simultaneously, the provocative woman struck at Li Yan.
Li Yan showed a flash of panic. The moment the woman reached him, she threw a red veil intended to shroud him. Her other hand flicked, sending a jade bracelet spinning toward his face.
Li Yan seemed to freeze for a fraction of a second before reacting. He didn’t engage her head-on. As the veil descended, he twisted his body and slipped past, stumbling slightly as he fled.
“You want to steal? Ridiculous! You’re just wasting your time!” Li Yan shouted, his voice full of mockery, but his expression told a different story—one of forced bravado.
Though Li Yan didn’t use his Phoenix Soaring movement technique, his physical speed was enough to evade a mid-stage Spirit Transformation cultivator. Yet, he made his escape look clumsy. He darted away along the edge of the barrier, seemingly afraid to step back inside where his Qi would be suppressed.
Seeing the young man in green fleeing in a panic, nearly tripping over himself, the woman sneered. He had dodged the veil, but her jade bracelet had grazed his shoulder.
Crack!
The protective light on Li Yan’s shoulder shattered. The force of the strike sent him spinning further away. The woman’s initial ambush had failed to capture him, but she had drawn blood—or so she thought.
‘His reactions aren’t slow,’ she thought, her eyes flashing with killing intent. ‘You think you can run? I’ll show you how truly laughable you are in the face of real power!’ She shot after him.
As Li Yan fled, his Divine Sense noted that the twin sister on the other side had also reacted with surprising speed. She seemed to have anticipated the move. Under the pincer attack of the two men, she twisted her lithe body and slipped through the narrow gap between them like a slick loach.
‘That movement technique exceeds the normal speed of a mid-stage cultivator. Is she also a body cultivator specializing in agility?’ Li Yan wondered.
Inside the barrier, the other twin saw her sister being attacked and began to rush out. The black-clad man followed her, only a step behind. He too had emerged from the depths and had used up most of his strength, resulting in a slight lag in his pursuit.
This was the perfect time to close the net. They anticipated their targets would try to dive back into the barrier to escape. If they did, it would be their death sentence. The pursuers only had to follow one or two of them in and force them into a fight. Once their Qi was spent, they would be forced out to ‘breathing,’ right into the hands of the group waiting outside.
Li Yan continued to flee. The woman’s expression grew grim as the boy proved incredibly slippery. The space within the grand formation wasn’t large, but Li Yan constantly changed directions. She had come close to striking him several times, only to miss by a hair.
‘Let’s see how long you can hold out,’ she thought. This kind of high-speed evasion in a confined space consumed massive amounts of Qi. She could already see sweat pouring off Li Yan’s forehead.
On the other side, the other twin finally emerged from the barrier. Seeing her sister on the brink of defeat, she ignored her own unstable state and charged forward to help.