Tribulation of Myriad Races

Chapter 1011: Finding Topsoil Spirit (2)

Chapter 1011: Finding Topsoil Spirit (2)

"Is it possible that this is not the corpse of an Invincible?"

"Even if it's not an Invincible corpse, it will be a pseudo Invincible corpse. According to the witnesses, the instant the spatial pocket collapsed, waves of aura at the level of a late-stage Sunmoon spread out. Imagine that. An ancient corpse still capable of emitting an aura of that level."

"..."

The experts made one conclusion after another.

At this time, the masked individual from the Heavenly Hunt Pavilion spoke, "Traces of Tianduo's aura can be found here, but Topsoil Spirit's aura is nowhere to be found. That little guy is very cautious. And both of them have thrown their index copies away so it won't be easy to track them."

It was pointless to speculate here before finding Tianduo.

A devil coldly said, "And what will you do after finding Tianduo? That's a genius of the original devil race, also a descendant of Devil King Lade. Are you trying to challenge the devils?"

How brazen.

But at that moment, a dragon chimed in, "The moment Tianduo loses the corpse, it will no longer belong to the devils. Dawo, by your logic, that ancient dragonblood tree is rightfully ours as well. You should return it to us."

That was a stupid logic. The ownership would naturally go to anyone capable of snatching and keeping it. Dawo snorted coldly. Inwardly, he was quite furious. These people would hold nothing back in their attempts to snatch the corpse. Of course, if Tianduo was willing to return to them, that would no longer be an issue.

Were these people going to attack their base for the corpse? That would be a declaration of war. Unfortunately, Tianduo was missing. And if he was killed after he was found by someone else, there wasn't even anything the devils could do.

He had sent multiple messages to Tianduo. Since the transmission was successful, Tianduo was certainly still in the region. But Tianduo had ignored all his messages.

That fool!

Dawo cursed inwardly. Tianduo was a descendant of Devil King Lade. No devil would snatch the corpse from him. He could even offer the corpse to Devil King Lade for more benefits.

But instead, that damn kid had gone missing. What was happening? Was he trying to monopolize the corpse? What even was the point? A mere Cloudbreach would not be able to digest the benefits an Invincible or a pseudo Invincible corpse could offer.

And the value of the corpse was far higher than any other Invincible corpse. After all, that was an ancient corpse. The secrets it carried could be much more valuable than the corpse itself.

While cursing inwardly, Dawo continued ordering the other devils to search for Tianduo. They had to prevent any other experts from discovering Tianduo before them. Tianduo's life did not mean much to them, but losing the corpse would be a massive loss. One expert after another started leaving the place.

When most of the people were gone, the golden expert from the Allheaven Treasure House laughed and said, "You, the guy from the Heavenly Hunt Pavilion, can't you guys track him through your index copies? Is that not working?"

"Are you deaf?"

The masked individual replied, "Did you not hear what I said earlier? Both of them had thrown their index copies away."

The golden expert sneered, "Looks like the Heavenly Hunt Pavilion won't be able to profit this time. Who knows? Maybe the Allheaven Treasure House will be the one to profit from this."

After saying that, he vanished.

The masked individual couldn't be bothered to entertain the golden figure. He continued scanning the area. After a while, he frowned. He took out a book and started writing on it, "Spatial collapse has been verified. Ancient items have been discovered. The collapse was limited in intensity. Due to the interference of seawater, there is no way of further investigation on the ruins. The spatial fragments have all dissipated."

A row of words appeared on the book.

"Can the identity of the corpse be verified?"

"No." The masked individual replied, "Traces of an aura with the strength of an eighth-stage Sunmoon can be found. Traces of death qi are present as well. The corpse might have been eroded by death qi at one point. According to the eyewitnesses, a bow hung on the back of the corpse."

"Is there any information on the style and color of the bow?"

"We did not ask the eyewitnesses in detail. According to them, the bow is black in color with a length of around nine meters..."

Soon, a reply came, "Track Tianduo and Topsoil Spirit. If they are willing to deal, you have the authority to offer them a high price. We will start checking the ancient records to verify the identity of the corpse. Since we know that it was a bow user, we should be able to find out the identity of this expert."

This was a bow user that was either a pseudo Invincible or an Invincible. And it was also likely that this was someone from the divine skywing race. These clues were enough for them to investigate the identity of the corpse from their records. Of course, the final result would rely on the completeness of their records.

The masked individual asked, "Should we kill Tianduo to snatch the corpse if we manage to find him?"

"Kill if there is an absolute guarantee that nobody will find out. Otherwise, proceed to trade with him."

The Heavenly Hunt Pavilion was naturally not comprised of kind souls. Violence was naturally the best option if secrecy was ensured. And if that wasn't possible, commerce was naturally the better option.

After all, their services included information pedding, assassination, and the trade of precious items. Reputation was quite important for them. In truth, this was an open secret among the myriad races.

But that did not matter. Most of the time, Heavenly Hunt Pavilion was still quite reliable. It wasn't like anyone could prove anything even if they were aware of what the Heavenly Hunt Pavilion was doing.

At the very least, Heavenly Hunt Pavilion was a lot more reliable than some of the other smaller organizations. There was no need to worry about their ability to pay once an agreement was made.

The masked individual left and began the search for Tianduo and Topsoil Spirit. As of late, the act of throwing their index copies away seemed to have gotten quite popular.

***

At the same time.

Inside a palace hovering amid the boundless void, the faceless elder said, "It's fine. Stop all your other work for now and focus on checking our records. Look for an ancient bow user between the ninth-stage Sunmoon Realm and the Eternal Realm. There is a possibility that this was a divine skywing expert with a heaven-grade bow and earth-grade arrows."

With the faceless elder's order, the masked individuals started going through their records.

After a while, one of them spoke, "Elder, as of now, six matching profiles have been found.

"First match, Feather King, divine skywing race, Eternal Realm, user of a heaven-grade bow, but he was also a user of heaven-grade arrows.

"Second match, Heavenly Arrow King, sixth patriarch of the divine skywing race, Eternal Realm, user of a divine-grade bow who had once killed an Eternal. This is not a perfect match, but there is a possibility that the bow has dropped in grade.

"Third match, Skysplit King, a mixed-breed with the bloodline of the divine skywing race and the human race...

"Fourth match..."

A list of matches was reported to the faceless elder. After going through all of them, the elder frowned, "No, this isn't right. I know some of these names, so we can remove them from our list. Continue going through the rest of our records."

"Yes."

The search continued. After thinking for a bit, the faceless elder shook his head. So be it. They had to take their time with this search. At worst, they could continue their search after getting the corpse.

Where would Tianduo be hiding? Would he leave the Sea of Stars and return to the Devil Realm? Or would he remain in the Sea of Stars?

After some thought, the elder said, "Pay close attention to the movement of the devils. Since Tianduo is still missing, it is likely that he will try to monopolize the finding. The devils might try tracking him through the blood essence of his family."

Tianduo was not someone without a family. Perhaps before long, someone from Devil King Lade's faction would arrive to track him through blood essence. The Heavenly Hunt Pavillion had to prevent the contact between Tianduo and the devils.

After all, he was still an Invincible descendant of the devil race. The moment contact was established, it would be very difficult for others to get the corpse.

***

Everyone was busy searching for Tianduo, not knowing that they were actually searching for Su Yu. Meanwhile, Su Yu was on his way to the ancient city on the island. He still viewed these ancient cities as safe houses.

Grandstar City was the nearest ancient city, so that was the only ancient city Topsoil Spirit could be in.

Su Yu was able to move rapidly even while hiding his tracks. When night arrived, the massive ancient city finally entered his vision.

It was quite similar to the other ancient cities in design, but there were also slight differences. For example, there were no moats around Heavendoom and Empyrean Cloud. But there was actually a moat around Grandstar City.

And the moat actually gave Su Yu an extremely dangerous sensation. The moat was actually filled with death qi. It felt like the death qi in this city was actually far thicker than what he had seen in the other ancient cities.

Was it because the death spirits of this city were stronger? Or was it due to some other reasons? When Su Yu landed in front of the gate, a bunch of armored individuals stared at him silently.

Inwardly, he was calling these people the living dead. Why? Because the death qi in their bodies was incredibly dense, giving off the feeling that they were going to turn into death spirits soon.

He had seen a lot of ancient city guards before. For example, Tian Men, the commander of Heavendoom City. But these people still felt like they were alive despite the death qi in their bodies. But the guards of Grandstar City felt like they were already dead.

Su Yu had also gathered some information about this city. The mayor was a ninth-stage Sunmoon from the dragon race. And this expert was not an ordinary dragon. Rather, the mayor came from an extremely rare draconic race, the dark devil dragons.

It was rumored that this was a hybrid race of dragons and devils. This was a small race, and it was rather disliked among the greater dragon race. Many years ago, the mayor of this city had fallen out with the greater dragon race and left to become the mayor of this city. Over the years, the dragons had left the mayor alone.

Su Yu also learned that the guards of this city were actually quite overbearing. They had killed outside the city before, something rarely seen among the guards of the various ancient cities. It was rumored that this behavior was mostly due to the mayor as well. Evidently, the mayor was a rather overbearing individual.

Thus, he had to be very careful during his time here lest the mayor decide to kill him. That would be troublesome to deal with.

There weren't a lot of visitors to this city. And since it was night, the city looked even emptier than normal.

Apart from the guards, Su Yu was the only person near the gates. As he entered the city, some people passed by him. These were the visitors who were rushing out of the city as they could no longer stand the death qi.

They noticed him as well, but none of them showed any reaction. There would always be some brazen individuals entering during the night. That was not too surprising to see, and they had nothing to say about that.

***

After visiting two ancient cities in the past, Su Yu was already quite familiar with these ancient cities.

If he was Topsoil Spirit, he wouldn't hide in the outer rings. Thus, he wouldn't go wrong starting his search from the eighteenth ring.

And the search wouldn't even be too difficult. He only needed to look for occupied buildings with blank boards hanging in front of them. And the number of such buildings wouldn't be too high if he started his search from the eighteenth ring.

"Topsoil Spirit isn't weak, but he won't go too deeply. He will probably stay in the inner rings. He can only go deeper if he becomes a resident, but that might not necessarily be beneficial for him."

That was Su Yu's judgment. These ancient buildings were extremely mysterious. Not even his Perception Jade could penetrate these buildings. Otherwise, it would be much easier for him to locate Topsoil Spirit.

But he was sure Topsoil Spirit was in one of these buildings. Since Shi Zun claimed that Topsoil Spirit was not seen leaving the city, it was very possible that Topsoil Spirit was still here.

After all, it hadn't even been that long since Shi Zun departed. A lot of people were probably looking for him. Dawo had sent numerous messages to him, but he had ignored all the messages. Meanwhile, Mo Duona had gone silent after sending only one message over.

Now that Su Yu had entered an ancient city, the connection of the voice transmission talisman was starting to get unstable. He reckoned even a slightly higher level of death qi density would completely sever the connection.

"The moment the messages stop getting through, the devils might conclude that I'm in an ancient city. Or they might conclude that I've gone too far away for the messages to reach..."

In any case, some other experts might start appearing here. He had to look for Topsoil Spirit and deal with that fellow as soon as possible. Each time he saw a death spirit, he would move out of the way. Each time he sensed approaching guards on patrol, he would also take a detour to avoid any conflict.

"Buildings with five elemental race architecture..."

Such a building might be more suitable for Topsoil Spirit.

Su Yu continued his search. He was especially courageous due to his numerous trump cards. Since it was night, the streets were practically empty. This was a great environment for him to conduct his search.

He was also planning to transform into a death spirit to deal with Topsoil Spirit. That would make things easier for him. He only needed to be careful about attracting the mayor's attention.

Soon, he found a place completely devoid of people. With his Perception Jade and tribulation character active, he confirmed that nobody was spying on him. Only then did he start his transformation into a death spirit.