Stealing Immortal

Chapter 100: Chapter 99: Southern Dipper

They crossed the Great Marsh and plunged into a mountainous region. The two of them proceeded cautiously for another full day before a city appeared, standing tall on a stretch of fertile land before them.

The pair landed before the city and began to enter on foot.

"Junior Brother, this city is called Duling. It’s the largest city under the control of the Nine Nether Mechanic Divine Palace. We’ll rest here today, then head into the northwestern mountains. That’s where I found the Great Soul Scripture all those years ago."

Chen Qingyang looked up. The city had no walls. Ahead of him were only tightly packed houses of varying heights, arranged in a pleasingly chaotic way, with roads extending in all directions.

The local customs and atmosphere were completely different from what he had seen in the territories of the Tai Xu Sect.

"Senior Sister, what brought you all the way out here back then?"

Liu Tao said, "My Cultivation had hit a bottleneck, so I decided to travel and see the world. I went wherever things seemed strange or unusual."

"So... where do we start looking for the Great Soul Scripture?"

Liu Tao seemed to have a plan already. "I found it in an abandoned Cave Mansion. We’ll go there first to check things out. Whether we find anything else after that will be all up to luck."

’So she’s just counting on luck,’ Chen Qingyang thought. ’And she acted so mysterious about it back at the Tai Xu Sect.’

Chen Qingyang thought about how his Cultivation Technique was currently stuck. If this trip yielded no results, he would have a very hard time comprehending the profound secrets of the *Great Soul Scripture*’s later stages. He continued, "Then how confident are you, Senior Sister?"

Liu Tao just waved her hand. "Junior Brother, we’re here to try our luck. What’s the point of talking about confidence? It is what it is, whether it works out or not."

’This... doesn’t that mean we might have come for nothing?’

They walked up the street and entered the city proper. The clothing of the common people wasn’t much different from what one would see in the Tai Xu Sect’s lands, but every so often, they would encounter someone with gold and jade adorning their face or even their bare torso.

Chen Qingyang looked closely. They were mortals equipped with Armor. Although they hadn’t truly entered the Qi Refining Realm, wearing such items made them at least stronger than ordinary people.

Metal arms, Treasure Pearl eyes, Jade Talismans on their foreheads—some of the more extreme ones even had Arrays tattooed on their faces... While not everyone was like this, it was a common enough sight.

’It makes sense,’ he thought. ’In a world with such an advanced Immortal Cultivation civilization, someone was bound to think of merging Magical Artifacts with flesh and blood.’

"Take a good look, Junior Brother," Liu Tao whispered to Chen Qingyang. "This is what it’s like under a Demon Sect. These people have gone down the wrong path. They all seem like they’re cultivating, but they aren’t. They obtain True Qi but not a True Skill. They understand their Dantian but not the Celestial Dao. It’s just... utterly malevolent!"

The Nine Nether Mechanic Divine Palace’s Armor Control Technique, compared to the many Cultivation Dharma Gates in the world, had virtually no requirement for a Cultivator’s natural talent. Anyone with connections or resources would probably think of getting a piece or two for themselves.

If not for the fact that this technique damaged one’s foundation, making it difficult for an ordinary person to make further progress even if they entered the path with it, this Armor would be the foremost of all Immortal Cultivation arts.

Chen Qingyang didn’t pass judgment on Liu Tao’s words. He simply said, "You’re absolutely right, Senior Sister."

Liu Tao turned to him. "Hmph. Just because I haven’t taken you to task over that Warm Jade Scroll, you think you have to flatter me in everything, afraid I’ll chew you out?"

For the past two days, Chen Qingyang had been wondering when she would bring this up. Now, it had finally come. "You’ve misunderstood, Senior Sister. That’s a separate matter. You gave me the Warm Jade Scroll to save my life. I gave it to Junior Sister Lin to save her life. This doesn’t go against your original intention of saving people."

"Wait a minute..." Liu Tao collected herself. "Hmph, I almost let you talk me in circles. What does any of that have to do with me?"

Chen Qingyang said calmly, "Of course it does. After all, the Warm Jade Scroll was yours to begin with."

Liu Tao puffed up her cheeks. "Fine, fine! I’ll settle this score with you when we get back to the Sect."

...

It was dusk. The shadows of pedestrians on the ground were stretched long. The palace-like buildings lining both sides of the street looked as if they were cast from metal, giving off a very hard, rough feeling—a completely different atmosphere compared to the area around the Tai Xu Sect.

Amidst the many buildings, Liu Tao casually found an inn, paid with gold and silver, and settled in to rest until the next day.

This city was named Duling City, and the majestic mountain to the northwest was Duling Mountain. The next day, the two of them had already made their way into that very mountain.

He followed Liu Tao through the mountain peaks for an unknown amount of time. All signs of human life had long since vanished behind them, as if they had arrived at an extremely hidden place.

"It’s just ahead!"

At last, the two of them landed. Liu Tao was pointing at a waterfall. Chen Qingyang sent his Conscious Fish inside and discovered that there was indeed another world behind it.

"Senior Sister, could it be behind this waterfall?"

"That’s right. I stumbled in here by accident back then and found a lot of discarded Magical Artifacts, as well as that incomplete Cultivation Technique. I left the Magical Artifacts and only took the technique. If we want to find clues about the Great Soul Scripture, we can only start from here. So many years have passed; who knows if anyone else has come here!"

Chen Qingyang glanced around. The place felt extremely secluded. "Let’s hope not."

The two of them slipped inside, one after the other, and walked down a very long, narrow passage. It was dark, so he used the Cyan Simurgh Flying Sword to light the way. Before long, the space suddenly opened up.

Sure enough, he saw stone tables, chairs, and other things. Metal and jade artifacts were scattered all around. Looking up, he couldn’t tell what kind of channel was reflecting the sunlight from outside, but it made the visibility excellent.

Liu Tao clapped her hands and looked around. "Hmm, it doesn’t look like anyone’s been here."

Chen Qingyang stood still and continued to search with his Conscious Fish. He was surprised to find that the place was shaped like the Eight Trigrams, and the things scattered on the ground seemed to be Array Building components for an Array. They were just so old that they no longer contained any Spiritual Qi.

He then connected the positions of these Array components, searching for the profound secrets of the Array, and finally locked his gaze on the stone bed.

"What are you spacing out for?" Liu Tao asked when she saw him standing motionless.

"Senior Sister, come over here and take a look!" As he spoke, Chen Qingyang had already laid down on the stone bed, his gaze fixed directly above.

Liu Tao’s face turned slightly red, her mind suddenly wandering off somewhere. "This... how am I supposed to look..."

Chen Qingyang didn’t notice her reaction. From this spot, the light from outside refracted overhead, forming dozens of points of light that resembled a Star Map and seemed to be pointing to something.

He sat up again. "Senior Sister, if you lie here, you can see the points of light in the ceiling. It’s clearly a Star Array. The Profound Secret is probably here!"

For a moment, a nameless anger rose in Liu Tao’s heart, mixed with a faint sense of disappointment. "Forget it, forget it. I don’t know the first thing about Star Arrays. Just tell me what it means."

Chen Qingyang said, "From what I can see, the points of light above are like the Big Dipper and the Southern Dipper, each pointing in a different direction. As the saying goes, the Big Dipper governs death, and the Southern Dipper governs life."

"The direction the Big Dipper points is Duling City, where we came from. Perhaps we should follow the direction the Southern Dipper is pointing and take a look."

Liu Tao had an indifferent look on her face. "Sure. Wherever you say we should go, we’ll go."

She clearly didn’t think this would lead to any results. She might as well have just been sightseeing with Chen Qingyang.

"Alright then, let’s head out first?"

Liu Tao grew suspicious. "Didn’t you just say something about the Southern and Big Dippers? Why are we leaving already?"

Chen Qingyang said, "I took a closer look just now. This place doesn’t seem like a Cave Mansion for Cultivation. It’s more like a key that points to the real Cave Mansion. So we need to go out and search in the direction of the Southern Dipper."

After hearing that, Liu Tao didn’t ask any more questions. "Fine, I’ll listen to you."

After leaving the Cave Mansion, Chen Qingyang pinpointed the direction of the Southern Dipper. They traveled for about a hundred miles without finding anything. Having only a direction was like searching for a needle in a haystack.

He began to think again, and suddenly remembered the outline formed by the stars. Using that as a reference, he used his Conscious Fish to meticulously scan the area, searching for a matching landscape.

They searched from day until night but still found nothing. Liu Tao didn’t really care; she hadn’t had much hope to begin with.

"Junior Brother, the Sect didn’t give us that much time. You need to keep that in mind!" Liu Tao reminded him.

At that moment, the two were in a valley. Chen Qingyang seemed to have found something and pointed ahead. "Senior Sister, what does that look like to you?"

Liu Tao stared for a long time but couldn’t make anything of it. "Are you saying the place we’re looking for is here?"

"It should be."

Under the moonlight, the two continued on without rest, wandering through the valley. Finally, in an extremely hidden gorge, they heard the sound of water. Following the stream upward, they found a waterfall.

It was a gentle trickle. To the naked eye, there was nothing unusual about it at all. But when Chen Qingyang sent his Conscious Fish inside, he discovered it was different.

The Cyan Simurgh Flying Sword, burning with the Nine Flavors True Fire, led the way, illuminating a space of about a foot. Liu Tao and Chen Qingyang followed close behind, walking along the narrow cave for an unknown distance.

The cave floor sloped downwards, as if a massive Underground Palace was hidden ahead. The cave walls were smooth, and it was impossible to tell what had been used to carve them out.

To be cautious, Chen Qingyang kept his Conscious Fish scouting ahead. Other than the darkness, he hadn’t found anything out of the ordinary.

"Junior Brother, we’ve been walking for half an hour now. That’s almost a hundred miles. Could we have accidentally walked into an Array that’s trapped us?"

Liu Tao’s suggestion made Chen Qingyang’s heart skip a beat. But on second thought, he couldn’t detect any flow of Qi Mechanism. It was as if this place was completely dead.

"I don’t think so. Let’s keep walking and see."

And so, they quickened their pace. About a quarter of an hour later, the Conscious Fish seemed to hit a dead end. The cave ended there.

As they drew closer, they discovered a mural on the wall at the end of the passage.

It depicted a tall pagoda with thirty-three levels. A different figure was carved on each level, but after so much time, many were too blurry to make out clearly. He could only faintly distinguish things like True Dragons, phoenixes, and auspicious clouds.

To one side of the pagoda, a Golden Carp was particularly eye-catching. The more Chen Qingyang looked at it, the more familiar it seemed.

"This... who on earth carved out a cave like this, only to leave behind a single mural?" Liu Tao wondered aloud.

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