Chapter 63: Closed Door

Chapter 63: Closed Doors

After that brief unpleasant episode, whenever the Immortal Alliance sought out demon beasts to cooperate with, Yan Zizhan would swoop in to block them, stating that he would lead a team out in a few days.

Chu Suye and Chu Tiannan stood guard where the problematic cultivators and demon beasts were held, offering their brand of tender loving care.

Since meeting Chu Jingxi, the Rock Antelope had been acting as a go-between, even persuading some demon beasts to join.

"Clever bastards." Projecting their own motives, any cultivator at the stronghold would see it as nothing but fake compassion—just a way to turn the beasts into cannon fodder.

Zhao Gang came to Chu Jingxi directly: "The Immortal Alliance originally wanted a joint investigation."

Chu Jingxi gave an enigmatic smile. "What about the Beast Taming Sect? Why not team up with them?"

Zhao Gang sighed helplessly. "The Beast Taming Sect's beasts go berserk the moment they set foot on the old battlefield. We'd end up having to bail them out."

Must be exhausting.

To head off any more attempts, Chu Jingxi decided to make things clear: "Let's just go our separate ways and investigate on our own."

"That might not be so easy..."

"None of us trust each other. Going into a dangerous place together when we don't trust each other will only backfire. Besides..." Chu Jingxi paused, his smile deepening. "If we went together and actually found the treasure, whose would it be—yours or mine?"

The two cunning men locked eyes. Hearing that, Zhao Gang knew there was no point in pushing further and gave up on persuading an alliance.

As he turned and stepped off the Warship, he saw a large crowd of demon beasts gathered outside. Unwilling to give up such handy scouts, he said, "The people inside keep putting off going to the old battlefield. You sure you can wait? The Immortal Alliance can send someone else to take you there now."

The beasts didn't budge, apparently dead set on following Chu Jingxi.

Zhao Gang watched in silence, his face unreadable.

Chu Jingxi couldn't keep stalling with just empty promises—there had to be something Zhao Gang was missing.

Back at the stronghold, Zhao Gang had the guards report on the group's recent movements. They said everything was normal.

But another person in charge at the stronghold mentioned something odd: "The day they arrived, Chu Tiannan went out at night. I followed him—he said he heard strange noises in the distance and was looking for the source."

No cultivator from the Immortal Alliance had ever heard those strange sounds before.

Zhao Gang grew suspicious. "Could be he's making it up."

The manager shook his head. "At his level, he can't lie to me."

With that much of a power gap, lying was impossible.

"Too bad—when I wanted to dig deeper, Chu Suye called him back." The manager frowned. "A lot of Chu family members died on that old battlefield. Could it be some kind of bloodline resonance? And isn't there a rumor he came here looking for direct blood relatives?"

The Chu family wouldn't send Chu Jingxi just because some family member got into trouble.

Zhao Gang suddenly smiled. "Faking the Chu family's aura wouldn't be hard."

They'd drawn blood from all the odd-acting cultivators and beasts after detaining them, and they still had blood samples from the Chu family members.

With the Immortal Alliance's methods, a little tampering could easily fool any lingering remnants of consciousness on the battlefield.

Just then, the spiritual energy in the air shifted, and Zhao Gang's smile stiffened.

"Chu Jingxi might break through in the next couple of days."

They didn't have much time. Chu Jingxi's luck was insane—if he got to the battlefield first, there'd be nothing left for them. And with that warship, they couldn't exactly ambush him from behind either.

If he sent other cultivators alone, Zhao Gang worried they'd hog any findings now that they had leads.

After a long internal struggle, despite a flicker of doubt, he couldn't bring himself to give up on the leads he had:

"No guts, no glory."

**

Back on the warship, the source of that earlier spiritual fluctuation, Chu Jingxi was actually nowhere near a breakthrough. Genius or not, he couldn't jump another major realm in such a short time.

The earlier spiritual shift was just a fake—manufactured by Yan Zizhan.

These past few days, everyone had their roles.

Chu Jingxi had told Chu Tiannan ahead of time to report anything he found to the Immortal Alliance, no matter what. The strange sounds Chu Tiannan heard actually came from the Rustless Copper Bell. And since Chu Jingxi sometimes said he heard them too, Chu Tiannan was completely convinced.

When it hit him, Chu Tiannan's hair stood on end. This had happened right after they arrived, meaning Chu Jingxi had been planning to outplay the Immortal Alliance from day one.

"The Beast Taming Sect's disciples and their contracted beasts all took the bait—no need to guess they got played." Chu Jingxi said flatly.

He never gave up the initiative. Blind cooperation was just waiting to die.

As his words trailed off, Yan Zizhan, who'd been keeping his Spiritual Sense over the area, said slowly, "They're on the move."

With no demon beasts joining, Zhao Gang had no choice but to round up the other cultivators at the mine and head to the old battlefield himself.

Chu Jingxi reached over and gave the lazy Rustless Copper Bell a tap, waking the alarm clock.

'Fine, fine.' The Rustless Copper Bell popped off a small bell, ready for work.

The mischievous bell shrank to the size of an eye, slipped past the guards watching in the shadows, and trailed far behind Zhao Gang's group without being noticed.

With everything in place, Chu Jingxi stretched lazily. He hadn't even bothered to comb his hair the whole time he'd been cooped up.

Now, soaking in the sunlight through the window, he finally let out a small sigh of relief.

"We've thrown the bait—hope we get a bite." He looked at the Rock Antelope leader. "The Immortal Alliance really is putting in both money and effort. This time next year, if I get a chance, I'll bring some flowers."

The Rock Antelope was quiet for a moment, then stepped up beside Chu Jingxi and gently nudged him with its broken horn.

That was how the Rock Antelope tribe showed friendship.

Chu Jingxi resisted the urge to pet it.

The Realm Spirit Origin was eager about everything. The bell had barely left when it volunteered from atop Chu Jingxi's head, claiming it was pretty good at tracking too.

Its presence really was suited for sneaking in with the wind, but it fell short in other ways. Chu Jingxi explained, "The Rustless Copper Bell's main body is here. Anything the old battlefield reveals, we'll know right away."

The Realm Spirit's true body was still in closed-door training back in the secret realm.

The Rustless Copper Bell thought this little wisp of hair hadn't got a full brain, actually fighting over work, and gave it a couple of jabs.

The Realm Spirit Origin, still grateful that the Rustless Copper Bell had taken the fall when Xuan Lu exposed it, didn't take offense. Instead, it came over to snuggle up, while the bell had a belly full of pent-up frustration and nowhere to vent.

In the end, Chu Jingxi smoothed things over with a smile.

The scene was utterly heartwarming. Yan Zizhan, watching Chu Jingxi surrounded on all sides, tried to edge in and join the conversation.

Meanwhile, Chu Tiannan and Chu Suye were on the other side, heads down, talking about something else.

People and non-people alike just kept chatting away.

Before long, the sky began to darken. The Rustless Copper Bell rolled over and started broadcasting in sync with the live feed from its sub-bells: 'It was dusk.'

'Passing through fief after fief, crossing mountain range after mountain range, they finally reached the inner reaches of the old battlefield. The weathered city gate still reflected its former glory—hard to believe this was once the site of a Dynasty's old capital.'

As that broadcast voice rang out, the expressions of everyone aboard the Warship shifted slightly, then all eyes turned to Chu Jingxi.

Like master, like bell—this was more or less Chu Jingxi's influence rubbing off.

Even Chu Jingxi was caught off guard.

"..." What did that have to do with him?

The Rustless Copper Bell had lived long enough to know a thing or two about writing little essays.

Upon learning the old battlefield was actually the ruins of a dynasty, Chu Jingxi was somewhat surprised as well: "Looks like Zhao Gang's already here."

The Rustless Copper Bell even pinpointed exactly where Zhao Gang had gotten to.

'The Immortal Alliance scouts have split into two teams. Zhao Gang's in the back, just past the city gate. From what we can see, they're moving with a clear goal...'

...

Just as the Rustless Copper Bell described, the 'soldiers' Chu Jingxi had sent out were now stopped at the marketplace in the old imperial capital.

All those years of other people's hard work hadn't been wasted—it all came together as a detailed map in Zhao Gang's hands.

The dangers on the outskirts were manageable, but once past the marketplace, they were likely to encounter numerous residual formations. The beasts he'd tricked into coming before had been lost to these very formations.

"Go around to the south, watch out for spatial rifts," Zhao Gang commanded calmly. "Avoid anywhere with fresh signs of battle or bloodstains."

He didn't want to step into the same traps the Beast Taming Sect disciples had fallen into.

Even with plenty of intel, the dangers of the old battlefield were never fully predictable.

The squad ran into bloodthirsty spirit plants disguised as ordinary moss, leftover puppet constructs attacking everything in sight, and the most unsolvable of all—the self-contained worlds left behind by Great Cultivators from when the cultivation world's power system hadn't collapsed yet.

With their living will no longer in control, the laws the Great Cultivators had comprehended melted into these mini-worlds. One Immortal Alliance cultivator got unlucky and was dragged in, only to be ground to pieces by a storm of laws.

Half an hour had passed, and the team still hadn't made it into the inner city. In that time, Zhao Gang had unavoidably gotten hurt too.

A fellow cultivator was in even worse shape, spitting out a mouthful of blood as he hacked at a puppet construct, cursing, "Damn those Chu family bastards."

If there'd been beasts charging in recklessly, casualties could've been cut way down.

The second those words left his mouth, Zhao Gang shot him a warning look. He still planned to use the fake bloodline aura to search for clues—if that complaint got picked up by some lingering remnant, everything would fall apart.

The cultivator caught on. Right now, they really had to take 'pride' in being Chu family members.

The team kept moving, and no one noticed that from a crumbling eave in the distance, a yellowish-brown 'eyeball' rolled around, watching their every move.

...

As the sun set, the Warship turned on its lights. Outside, it looked calm, but in reality, the Immortal Alliance cultivators guarding the mines were all watching this place. If not for the Warship's strong defenses and an immortal sitting on board, they'd have long since 'invited' Chu Jingxi, that wild card, to their camp for some soft detention.

Yan Zizhan said, "This stronghold's combat power is more than what we've seen."

He could sense more than one powerful presence.

"The stronger, the better—only the strong get to explore the world," Chu Jingxi replied. His sense for malice was razor-sharp now, but he didn't have time to deal with it, focusing on other things instead.

Behind one tracking bell-eye stood countless more bells.

The Rustless Copper Bell reported every little detail, and Chu Jingxi quickly sketched out the scenes. Rough but vivid outlines flowed from his brush, and whenever something was off, the bell would immediately point it out, and Chu Jingxi would quickly fix it.

Cultivators didn't get tendonitis; drawing tons of pictures was probably less tiring than swinging a sword a few times.

In just a short time, Chu Jingxi, relying on the snowstorm of sketches, gradually pieced together the basic layout of the old battlefield.

Compared to Recording Stones, hand-drawing was way less efficient, but it had one advantage: while drawing, it was easy to notice things that might otherwise be missed.

"Find a way to lure them to the drainage system under the city. That's the only area without wild spirit plants—I suspect something's going on underground."

After a bit, the Rustless Copper Bell reported back.

'There's a demon beast buried down there, once suppressed by the dynasty. It's extremely poisonous, and an Immortal Alliance cultivator who knows Zhao Gang nearly lost an arm.'

Chu Jingxi frowned. "Looks like I misjudged."

In weird places, danger and opportunity were fifty-fifty. This time, Zhao Gang and his crew were just unlucky.

"Can you lure them to the street with the abandoned tavern? Bell towers and drum towers are usually built in central areas or at crossroads—they shouldn't be this far out."

'Can do.'

By using illusions and deliberately making some noise, they could get Zhao Gang's attention.

But the Rustless Copper Bell had learned from Chu Jingxi—it never used the same trick twice. Ever since forging the path of life, it could let out a vibrant, life-filled aura.

Sure enough, a group followed the scent over.

This time, the main body waited a bit before broadcasting: "That place is cursed land! I almost fell for it too!"

After confirming the bell was safe, Chu Jingxi told it to stay farther away from the spots he picked before guiding again.

"That's weird—how does someone as lucky as me keep getting it wrong?" Chu Jingxi muttered, then pressed his lips together. "What about the others?"

"Some barely escaped with their lives, a few died, a few ran. Zhao Gang has a magical artifact way inferior to mine—be careful if you run into it."

Watching Chu Jingxi command from afar, Chu Suye, who'd never said a word about his cultivation speed, couldn't help but say, "You're something else."

Without leaving his seat, he was exploring an ancient battlefield thousands of miles away.

Yan Zizhan's gaze stayed fixed on one person. When he finally spoke again, it was to ask, "What if they accidentally find something?"

Chu Suye, who'd just been marveling, froze for a moment—there was another expert here?

The way he said it sounded like he was worried about Chu Jingxi's interests getting hurt.

"Whoever finds it, it's theirs."

Chu Jingxi wasn't the type to take credit for other people's work.

"Unfortunately, if things go as they normally do, even if they find treasure, they'll think there's more good stuff ahead and get clever trying to scheme against us. In the end, their cleverness backfires, and they lose both people and treasure. Meanwhile, as the righteous side, we get everything and break through in cultivation."

As he spoke, his brush never stopped drawing.

After a long silence, Chu Jingxi looked up.

Everyone's expressions were somewhat complicated—was he literally predicting their whole schedule for the next few days?

Chu Jingxi: "Anyway, I've been through this before."

That's just how it goes for a Heaven's favored one.

The Realm Spirit Origin picked up another trick and took careful notes.

Only Yan Zizhan's eyes flickered as he quietly checked the Array Talismans and pills he had brought on this trip. Whenever Chu Jingxi sounded that sure of himself, he knew to prepare for unexpected events.

Just as Chu Jingxi was drawing the inner city area, the Rock Antelope's horn suddenly pressed urgently against one spot, its movements so hard it nearly lunged forward.

Chu Jingxi froze, then quickly caught on.

Since the horn was too big to zero in on a specific spot, he initially looked at a collapsed mansion: "You want me to check this out?"

The Rock Antelope got even more frantic, desperate for him to notice something.

Chu Jingxi mulled it over. When he had bandaged the Rock Antelope earlier, he noticed some wounds were recent, but not brand new.

That meant before Chu Tiannan and the others saved it, this older Rock Antelope had already been to the old battlefield more than once, possibly even surviving to reach the inner city.

Chu Jingxi told it to hold on, running his finger along the drawing.

"This one?"

"Or this one?"

The Rock Antelope was already stomping its hooves on the ground. Just as Chu Jingxi's finger was about to skim over a few broken planks, the Rock Antelope suddenly let out a loud bleat from deep in its throat.

It moved so violently that Chu Jingxi froze, his nail nearly tearing through the paper.

He looked back at the drawing—what was so special about a few pieces of wood?

Chu Jingxi frowned. According to the Rustless Copper Bell's livestream, the thing was less than a foot from Zhao Gang, yet he hadn't noticed it.

Zhao Gang was strong and came fully stocked—if the Rock Antelope sensed something off, why hadn't he picked up on it?

"Can you get Zhao Gang to check it out?"

This time, the Rustless Copper Bell jingled, signaling that it wouldn't be easy.

Zhao Gang was too close to the wood, and the Rustless Copper Bell couldn't figure out how to get his attention without being too obvious.

Chu Jingxi stared at the Rock Antelope, unable to communicate with it, and thought for a moment. "Got it."

He took out a Message Talisman and tried to contact the Demon Clan Elder. She'd stepped away from the medicine workshop to go into seclusion, but during seclusion, she might not have completely shut off her senses.

Just as the Message Talisman was about to fizzle out, a tense, tired voice came through—she was clearly deep in cultivation seclusion.

"What is it?"

Chu Jingxi: "Senior, can you understand what the sheep's saying?"

A beat of silence on the other end.

She'd been pulled out of seclusion for this? The Demon Clan Elder said flatly, "I can bleat. Baa."

"..."

Chu Jingxi let out an awkward laugh and was about to try something else when the Rock Antelope suddenly bleated too, as if answering from afar.

Chu Jingxi was floored.

You actually can?!

Author's note:

Chu Jingxi: Let me send my 'drone' to scope out the old battlefield. Fly, fly, my little scout.

Zhao Gang, annoyed by the toxic music: ...Fly your whole family.