Chapter 35: Finding the Trail

To be honest, Shang Xia was trying his luck.

He was more than ready to tear off all pretense with the Lightning Bird for the sake of getting it to help him. However, he seemed to have underestimated the Lightning Bird’s intelligence and desire to break through.

Releasing his Yin Yang Essence Qi, the Lightning Bird soon gained its freedom. Rising into the air, it didn’t fly away immediately. Instead, it circled the air above Shang Xia.

Realizing that it wouldn’t be able to obtain the other half easily, it shot into the skies, hoping to quickly discover traces of the convoy.

As Shang Xia left under Yuan Zilu’s orders, he had no idea what happened after.

From the looks of it, the members of the Tongyou Peak failed to reinforce them in time. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have left stuff like silver essence on the ground.

In order to trade with Shang Xia, Yan Ming wanted to give him her low-grade weapons and fifty pieces of silver essence!

Shang Xia might have rejected her easily and scoffed at her offer, but fifty pieces of silver essence wasn’t a small amount in the Tongyou Peak!

Many disciples at the Martial Extremity Realm wouldn’t be able to take out so much money anyway!

For ordinary cultivators in the Martial Realm, they would consider themselves lucky if they had three to five pieces of silver essence. They would use copper boards as their currency of choice instead.

Since they buried their money in the ground, there was definitely some sort of special meaning behind their actions.

On the off chance that the outer disciples weren’t killed, they wouldn’t have gotten far with their cultivation.

More than a dozen Embroidered Cloud Carriages were robbed and sixteen disciples who were about to enter the inner division disappeared. There were the disciples of the Protection Division too! No matter how slow they were at reacting, the Tongyou Peak should be in complete chaos at the moment.

If anyone managed to rescue them, they would have returned for their stuff. After all, disciples who hadn’t broken through to the Martial Realm would never be able to give up on treasures like that!

Sighing slightly, Shang Xia hoped that nothing serious happened in the Tongyou Peak.

Since the members of the Wind Swallow Race could openly plunder resources, Shang Xia could tell that trouble was definitely brewing at the Tongyou Peak.

It was too late to panic. Regardless, he wouldn’t be able to go head to head with the Wind Swallow Race alone. He could only wait patiently for the Lightning Bird to return.

.

The only other thing he could think about was the blood red tablet in his sea of consciousness. Even if he knew that he wouldn’t be able to gain anything useful from it, he knew that it contained a massive secret. Uncovering the secret the best he could, he could only find two uses for it.

One was to improve his secret art, the other was to obtain the most optimal recipe from whatever half baked recipe he was given.

Other than the two times it worked, it didn’t react in the slightest.

Those novels told amazing legends of how cultivators transmigrated and received a special guide or an invincible system… It helped them grow strong extremely quickly and turn into the main character of the story… Those characters either had insane plot armor or freakish help given from the heavens…

Look at me! What the fuck is this?!

All he got was a damn tablet that stood in the middle of nowhere. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t do anything with it!

According to Shang Xia, the blood red tablet was probably ranked extremely high in the list of ‘most useless treasures after transmigrating’.

Was there even a need to mention how one face was cracked?! If he managed to dig out a way to use the blood red tablet, it might crack even more!

Once all four faces of the tablet cracked, it was probably time for it to shatter…

That wasn’t a god-given talent or system… That was a goddamn time bomb!

Shang Xia racked his brains but came up with nothing.

The only time it reacted was during the eruption of the Origin Tide. It was one of the reasons Shang Xia decided to go deeper. Deep in his heart, he thought of an idea of repairing the blood red tablet with the help of the Origin Tide. From the looks of it, he overestimated himself.

When his mind nearly broke down in the Origin Tide, the tablet remained completely motionless! It might not have helped him, but looking at things from another point of view, the tablet was strong enough to withstand the eruption. It had to be hiding even more secrets.

Naturally, he would be unable to uncover anything with his low cultivation level.

“Let’s just hope that the tablet doesn’t destroy itself before I grow stronger…” Shang Xia sighed in his heart.

He was brought back to reality by sounds of chirping and quickly discovered that his surroundings were changing again.

Dark clouds gathered in the skies, but a warm breeze swept through the lands.

Raising his head, Shang Xia saw the Lightning Bird circling around him with Yan Ni’er following closely behind it.

𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮

Looking closely, he realized that Yan Ni’er’s speed had increased by quite a bit.

Even though it was slower than the Lightning Bird, it was much faster than when it attacked the convoy. If it could fly so quickly then, Shang Xia wouldn’t have been able to capture it!

The lightning bath it enjoyed recently definitely allowed it to improve significantly.

… Was he going to nurture another Lightning Bird?

Shang Xia thought of the possibility, but his thoughts soon returned to the Lightning Bird. For it to return so quickly, it might have found traces of the other disciples!

This lightning chicken doesn’t know what’s good for it…. I’m the one giving it the lightning, but there it is flying around playing with Yan Ni’er…

Putting his fingers in his mouth, a loud whistle tore through the air. Catching the birds’ attention, he waved to them.

Yan Ni’er ignored the Lightning Bird immediately and she soared towards him. She released several cries to hurry it up while flying.

Who would have thought that the Lightning Bird would turn around and fly in another direction seeing as it had Shang Xia’s attention?

Chasing behind the damn lightning chicken, Shang Xia quickly discovered that there were Mutated Rain Swallows every seven or so miles out. They were resting on anything they could find, and they would fly away when Shang Xia arrived.

They were obviously sitting there to act as guides for Shang Xia.

Flames of hope ignited in his heart the further he went. After passing nearly forty birds, two hours later, Shang Xia found that he traveled nearly two hundred and fifty miles.

He caught sight of the Lightning Bird again, flying high above a tiny hill in the distance.

Not in a rush to barge into whatever the hill contained, Shang Xia took a short break, restoring himself to his peak state. When he was well rested, he circled the hill once in order to avoid running into a trap.

Indeed… He discovered something wrong with the hill after walking around it.

Even though he didn’t alert the enemy, he discovered horse tracks outside a hidden valley and signs of people trying to remove it.

The signs of battle didn’t continue into the valley. Instead, it went in another direction.

Shang Xia guessed that the battle was a result of the members of the Tongyou Peak discovering traces of cultivators of the Azure Spiritual World after they robbed the convoy. The cultivators of the Azure Spiritual World probably retreated, and the experts of the Tongyou Peak started to hunt them down.

Light flickered in his eyes when he looked at the entrance of the hidden valley.

Since the experts of the Tongyou Peak discovered the place, they would definitely enter the valley to take a look.

After all, there were too many cultivators of the Tongyou Institution involved. The experts of the Tongyou Peak who arrived later had to save the cultivators of the Tongyou Institution no matter what! If they were dead, they had to retrieve the corpse!

Since the battle had ended, it made no sense for there to be anyone in the hidden valley! However, from how the Lightning Bird was flying about in mid air, the people he wanted to find had to be inside!

Holding caution towards the bird that annoyed him since the raid on the convoy, Shang Xia was extremely suspicious of it. His instincts told him otherwise.

Choosing to take another route to enter the hidden valley, he crawled up one of the wall faces to avoid detection. When he arrived at the top, he peeped downwards only to be greeted with a sorry sight.

Dozens of disciples were tied up, and they were squatting in a circle with their backs against each other.