txolops Chapter 694 The Pursuers Are Here! Tracking Treasure!
Chapter 694 The Pursuers Are Here! Tracking Treasure!
The bearded demonic cultivator gasped, "Five million plus two million, that's seven million mid-grade spirit stones? That price is almost the entire fortune of a late-stage Nascent Soul cultivator. What on earth did Chen Fan do to enrage the King of Zhao so much?"
The bald old man sneered, "The Fourth Prince is the King's most favored son; who in the entire Tiannan Star doesn't know that? Although Zhao Yan has become the Crown Prince Regent, the King still favors Zhao Yu. Now, Zhao Yu has been publicly beheaded in the capital, his soul even extracted. Isn't this a slap in the face to the Zhao Kingdom? If the murderer goes unpunished, where will the Zhao Kingdom's reputation stand?"
The bearded demonic cultivator chuckled and took another swig of wine: "To be honest, we demonic cultivators have never gotten along with the righteous sects of Zhao. If it really was that fourth prince of Zhao who did this outrageous thing, I have to respect that eunuch as a real man."
The tall, thin demonic cultivator quickly nudged him with his elbow: "Keep your voice down! If you're not afraid of dying, don't drag us down with you."
The bald old man didn't seem to care, only squinting at the gray sea outside the window: "But speaking of which, Chen Fan is indeed quite bold. When he was at the peak of the Nascent Soul stage, he dared to kill Li Jiuyuan, destroy Black Reef Island, and fight Song Tianren to a draw. Now that he has broken through to the Divine Transformation stage, his combat power has increased by who knows how much. The Zhao Kingdom sent more than a dozen Divine Transformation cultivators to search for him in the Boundless Sea, but they haven't even caught a glimpse of him. I reckon that he has either escaped to the deepest part of the Boundless Sea, or he has already left the Boundless Sea."
The bearded demonic cultivator downed the last mouthful of wine and slammed the bowl down on the table: "No matter what, we won't get those seven million spirit stones. It's a battle of gods; we'll just watch the show."
Chen Fan picked up the wine bowl and took a sip, his expression remaining calm. The inferior magic wine was sour, astringent, and spicy, quite different from the sheep's milk wine he had become accustomed to drinking on the grasslands over the past two years, but it wasn't unpalatable.
He placed a few low-grade magic crystals on the table, got up, and walked out of the tavern.
The alleyways of Black Reef City appeared even darker and narrower in the gray fog, with a few streetlights made from whale oil hanging under the eaves of stone buildings, emitting a dim, yellowish light.
Chen Fan walked slowly through the alley, extending his divine sense to its limit, taking in all the movements within a few hundred feet around him.
He thought that Zhao Guo had already issued a warrant for his arrest throughout Tiannanxing. Although the Boundless Sea was the territory of demonic cultivators, it was not a monolithic entity.
A bounty of seven million mid-grade spirit stones is enough to tempt any Nascent Soul cultivator.
Chen Fan needs to carefully consider what path to take next.
The teleportation array has been destroyed; only the Zhao Kingdom possessed such an array in the entire southern region. Repairing it would indeed take fifty years.
Fifty years is not a long time for a cultivator, but it was too long for him.
Tianxiangzi could wait, but the Soul Refining Sect Ancestor in the Sealed Land couldn't.
The Boundless Sea is a gathering place for demonic cultivators, who often have ingenious methods in the realm of space. Perhaps some clues can be found in the depths of the Boundless Sea.
As Chen Fan was pondering, the golden bowl in his arms suddenly trembled slightly. The tremor was extremely subtle, yet it carried a sense of vigilance he had never felt before, as if reminding him that some danger was approaching.
Chen Fan paused, and his divine sense suddenly expanded under the enhancement of the Fixed Word Technique.
In an instant, he sensed it—more than a dozen extremely powerful auras were converging on Black Reef City from all directions, moving at an astonishing speed.
Although those auras were concealed by some kind of secret treasure, they still left traces in front of his divine sense, which had cultivated the Fixed Word Technique. There were six people in the early stage of the Nascent Soul realm, four in the middle stage, and one in the late stage.
He was very familiar with several of the auras; they were the same ones that had chased him down in the capital of Zhao a few days ago.
The people of Zhao are coming after us.
Without any hesitation, Chen Fan's feet flashed with spiritual light, and he sped away from Black Reef City like a black lightning bolt.
Instead of flying into the sky, he moved swiftly close to the ground, using the low stone buildings and narrow alleys on the reef island to conceal himself.
But just as he had flown less than three miles outside Black Reef City, a huge rift was suddenly torn open in the gray fog in the sky by a powerful force. More than a dozen streaks of light shot out from the rift, forming a fan shape and blocking all escape routes from all directions.
The leader was an old man with white hair and beard, his face as stern as thousand-year-old cold iron. He wore a dark gold robe of an elder of the offering hall, and his aura was as deep as an abyss. He was clearly a late-stage Nascent Soul cultivator.
Behind him followed a dozen or so worshippers at the early and middle stages of the Nascent Soul realm, each holding a palm-sized ancient bronze mirror with faint blood-red runes flowing across its surface.
The dozen or so ancient mirrors echoed each other, forming a strange mirror array in the sky. The interlacing mirror lights locked down the space within a radius of several miles. Chen Fan felt his aura being firmly held by those mirror lights, unable to escape no matter which direction he tried to flee.
Tracking down the secret treasure.
The Zhao State's Imperial Palace has stood for thousands of years, and its accumulated heritage is far beyond what ordinary cultivators can imagine.
These dozen or so ancient bronze mirrors were clearly a set of magical artifacts specifically designed for tracking and locking onto targets, all of them at least at the Nascent Soul level. Once locked onto by them, one could not shake them off even if they fled to the ends of the earth.
Chen Fan stopped and pulled Eleven out of his waist.
The gray-white sword light on the sword shone in the gray mist, and the three concepts of cause and effect, life and death, and stillness flowed and blended on the sword, exuding a harmonious and profound aura.
A golden cicada flew out from his sleeve, flapped its wings, and landed on his shoulder. Its dark golden compound eyes stared intently at the worshippers in the sky, and the pure black tentacles beside its mouthparts trembled slightly, emitting a very faint but battle-ready buzz.
The Black Soul Banner also flew up from the waist, growing to a height of three zhang in the wind. Millions of souls on the banner howled in unison under the pull of the Soul Array, and dark red blood light spread out in all directions like a tide.
Since we can't escape, then let's fight.
The elder at the late Nascent Soul stage, who was in the lead, stood with his hands behind his back in mid-air, looking down at Chen Fan with a detached scrutiny in his calm, ancient eyes.
He spoke slowly, his voice aged yet majestic, like the tolling of a bell from the clouds: "Chen Fan, you killed the Fourth Prince Zhao Yu and destroyed his soul; your crime is unforgivable. I, the Imperial Preceptor, have come to arrest you on the orders of the King. If you surrender and return to the capital with me to face justice, the King, considering your past service to the Zhao Kingdom, may grant you a more dignified death."
Chen Fan did not answer.
He raised his sword, the tip pointing diagonally to the sky, and released the combined power of immortals and demons around him without reservation.
Seeing his posture, the old man in the late Nascent Soul stage felt a pang of regret. He shook his head slightly and waved his hand: "Take him down."
More than a dozen Nascent Soul cultivators attacked simultaneously.
In an instant, the entire world was engulfed by various kinds of spiritual light.
A hundred-foot-long dragon formed from flames, a rain of arrows formed from frost, a sky full of sword formations condensed from metal-elemental spiritual energy, and a hundred-foot-long stone mountain formed from earth-elemental spiritual energy all poured down on Chen Fan.
The combined force of the impact caused a huge, arc-shaped crater to form in the sea surface within a radius of several dozen feet. The seawater at the bottom of the crater was instantly evaporated, revealing the dark seabed rocks.