Little had changed since his last visit to the sealed cave systems, except this time there were a different pair of guards on duty. This was likely the reason why Meili Zhu had recommended that he wait— the same trick twice, and it would no longer be passed of has Qi Exhaustion or a trick of the mind.

Sneaking past the guards, he once again found himself ensconced in the darkness of the cave systems.

Good. That would serve his purposes well.

On his first excursion, Yao Shen’s objective had been to find a secluded spot to test out his bell artifact, so he had indiscriminately utilized his Divine Sense. Now though, he did the exact opposite.

Retracting his Divine Sense until he couldn’t perceive anything beyond a meter of his immediate vicinity, Yao Shen felt a sense of vulnerability wash over him that felt… almost refreshing. He submitted himself to the ebbs and flows of the cave tunnels, using nothing but his natural ability to perceive the earth as a Major Dao Cultivator in the element. If his Divine Sense had failed him, then he would scour the cave walls for irregularities, unnatural protrusions, false cave-ins. Only his instinct as a Master of the earth element could assist him here, or atleast he suspected so.

Yao Shen progressively increased his movement speed every ten minutes as he got more accustomed to relying on his senses. An hour later he had sped past dozens of tunnels, galleries and the occasional chamber, encountering many forked passageways and three rifts that disappointingly, lead to nothing but stalagmites that lay in wait to impale any foolhardy enough to fall through.

Five hours passed as Yao Shen followed his instinct, trusting it to lead him deeper into the cave. He had to be hundreds of feet below ground level at this point, but he kept going, kept searching, kept sensing for that spark that would prove that his half-baked theories were more than just delusions.

Yao Shen trusted his gut feeling, for it had been honed across two centuries of trials and tribulations. That did not necessarily mean that he’d arrived at the truth, but there was definitely more to the story that the Earth Division did not want see.

Abruptly, he tripped over an errant rocky protrusion in his path.

He offered no resistance as he was sent skidding forwards due to the downward sloping tunnel, his face brutally slamming against the ground multiple times. The reason why he’d gone inert without warning was because his focus was elsewhere— at the very periphery of his senses, Yao Shen had detected a faint glimmer of an unfamiliar sensation. It possessed an otherworldly chilliness that seemed to want to dissuade him from approaching it, causing a pang of fear to churn in his gut. His senses seemed to be of the belief that a single touch, a lone whiff of that sensation would cause the chill to permeate down to his bones, a phenomenon that would haunt him for the remainder of his life.

And then it disappeared from his perception, as if it had never been there to begin with.

Yao Shen’s eyes shot open, his expression brimming with intensity as the wind coalesced around him, getting him back upon his feet. His gaze shifted north-eastwards, and without further ado his silhouette blurred in that direction. The sensation along with its likely corresponding location was already imprinted onto his mind as he rocketed forth.

Out of an abundance of caution, Yao Shen activated his Human Dao Domain as he drew closer, positioning one of the farmer-silhouttes as far away as he could while still being able to maintain his Domain.

“I’ve got you now,” Yao Shen whispered, as he skidded to a halt, finding himself in a cave gallery. Sandwiched between two jagged cave walls whose mottled surface was painted with a light smattering of moss, he followed along the narrow, straight path cautiously, a blend of trepidation and the curiosity of discovery bubbling in his gut. Minutes passed as he meditated upon the sensation he had felt, his footsteps determined to trace it down to its origin.

Yao Shen paused.

“Huh,” he muttered in confusion, finding himself staring down the end of the cave gallery, the rocky walls converging to form solid earth.

How…?

Yao Shen felt chills run down his spine, his divine sense exploding outward while he shifted to a defensive stance. His farmer-silhouttes waited outside the cave gallery, so even if something were to ambush him, escape shouldn’t be a tricky prospect.

Nothing. Nothing at all.

There was no living organism besides him in the entire cave sub-section he found himself in, let alone this one gallery.

Cautiously, Yao Shen pressed his palm against the rocky dead-end.

A minute later, he scowled.

Besides densely packed soil, rock and debris, he found nothing of note. He tried again, this time with his Divine Sense instead, but the result remained the same regardless of how far he stretched his perception.

As a Soul Emperor, Yao Shen was very sensitive to the passage of time— not yet enough to pinpoint the phenomenon that he was experiencing, but enough to know that something was terribly wrong here. The only reason why he hadn’t retreated was because up until now, his Soul was yet to detect even the slightest hint of danger.

His expression solemn, he withdrew a small hourglass from his spatial ring, flipping it over and observing the small granules of sand trickled down its waist. Going a step further, he ensconced the hourglass with his divine sense, to ensure that any tampering in its flow would not go unnoticed.

Then Yao Shen began to walk towards the mouth of the cave gallery, his focus razor sharp and determined to fight off any external influences.

Again.

He found himself at the cave entrance, staring at the route he’d taken to originally arrive at the cave gallery.

There was no panic in his gaze as he raised the hourglass to his eye level, watching as the last of the sand was funnelled to the bottom part of the hourglass. Apparently, five minutes had passed but he only remembered a minute, maybe a minute and a half of it.

“What game are you playing at?” Yao Shen whispered, unsure himself who the question was directed to.

Instead of attempting to try and traverse the cave galley again, Yao Shen sat down on the spot and adopted a meditative posture. He drew two parallel lines onto the rocky floor with his Earth Qi, intended to be proportional to the cave gallery that took him five minutes to traverse. Then he closed his eyes, his right index finger resting at the entrance of the ‘tunnel’ he had drawn.

Yao Shen released a single strand of divine sense, willing it forward in a zig-zag pattern— as if it were bouncing off the walls while building forward momentum. At the same time, Yao Shen traced the trajectory of the Divine Sense strand with his mind’s eye, simultaneously using his finger to engrave its path onto the ground. He felt into complete sync with his surroundings, his focus directed to charting his Divine Sense’s course, hoping to find a clue in that direction.

Two minutes later, Yao Shen opened his eyes.

His finger had reached the end of the drawn tunnel half a second after his divine sense had. In his mind, his divine sense had followed a uniform path, turning roughly at a ninety degree angle each time it encountered the cave walls. The result should have been a series of roughly equal sized and inverted triangles but… the engraving on the ground told a different story.

He had followed a zig-zag pattern for the initial phase, but the moment he began to approach the middle part of the tunnel, the pattern completely change. An elongated triangle was the end result, one that completely ignored the entire middle section of the cave, or atleast it’s right side, before the pattern reinstated itself.

“How truly fascinating,” Yao Shen muttered aloud in near stupefaction. He didn’t know what manner of artifact or construct was capable of rendering an entire section of land invisible to both Divine Sense, physical sight and almost earth sense as well, but it clearly existed and… it was powerful enough to confuse the senses of a Soul Emperor.

Now that he knew it existed though, the gig was up.

Yao Shen got back onto his feet, taking a minute to measure his pulse against the hourglass. That gave him a good approximation of time, or rather, how many heartbeats comprised a minute.

One… two… three….

His focus was so honed in that moment that every heartbeat rang in his ears, the sound of his slow breathing clearly audible in the eerie silence of the cave systems. A Soul Emperor did not appreciate his perception being tampered with and Yao Shen was no exception— there were other, more violent ways of getting around this restriction, but he had not forgotten that his original objective was reconnaissance.

The hundredth heartbeat struck, but Yao Shen kept walking. That meant a minute had passed.

He kept going until the hundred and fiftieth heartbeat rang out in his ears, coming to a sudden halt.

The resistance was immediate.

His brain and soul seemed to be working in tandem as they tried to convince him that there was nothing of note in that direction. A vista so mundane lay towards his right, that deigning to glance at it would be an affront to his venerable personage. Nothing but a rocky cave wall, one of thousands he’d encountered on his way to this unremarkable cave gallery.

A sense of lethargy had enveloped him, dulling his mind, weighing down upon his soul; the sensation akin to being submerged neck-deep in a viscous liquid. As long as Yao Shen just kept walking instead of fighting against that sensation, he would find himself on the other side, unharmed. Perhaps the reason why the psychological suggestion was so powerful in the first place was because it only compelled him to ignore a portion of the cave gallery, instead of guiding him to do something that would harm his self or surroundings.

“You….,” Yao Shen’s tone was audibly strained, the suggestive powers of this artifact far more potent than he had first imagined it to be. So much so that…. despite his best efforts, he was struggling to fight back against its influence. “ ….. Dare?” he snarled, as he was forced to take a step forward.

Yao Shen’s hands blurred, reaching for his soul and plucking out a small, mottled bell from his Soul Lake. Without hesitation, without even giving himself time to brace for its impact, he rung it.

He was able to hold onto the bell artifact for ten long seconds before he let it slip from his grasp, it’s soul refining effect clashing with the psychological suggestion influencing his soul. Yao Shen was violently jolted out of his reverie as he felt the lethargy that had taken hold over him rapidly recede, his eyes once again brimming with vigor.

The next instant, a hacking cough echoed out in the cave gallery as Yao Shen spat out a mouthful of blood. That was the price he had to pay for interrupting the soul refining process midway.

“Worth it,” Yao Shen grinned, a bloodied grin that was more terrifying than ecstatic. His Human Dao Domain was still active, so he simply dispelled his current ‘self’. One of the farmer-silhouttes reformed into his spitting image, calmly walking down the cave gallery until he stood before the bell artifact. The damage to his soul had unfortunately carried over, but it had been minimal—- having much to do with his extraordinary soul.

Retrieving the bell artifact, Yao Shen’s gaze shifted to the right side of the cave gallery.

Before him rested a relatively broad alcove that was carved into the cave wall, caving out a sizable depression that Yao Shen had evidently walked past twice, without detecting anything amiss. The culprit behind his plight was revealed, as Yao Shen took in the complex rune that stretched across the curvature of the alcove, a faint crack running across its surface that indicated its inertness.

He had never seen a single rune, even amongst Greater Runes, display this level of complexity—- truly making him suspect the antiquity of these defenses and more importantly, the secret that they guarded.

Yao Shen kept maintaining his Human Dao Domain as his palm landed upon the alcove’s surface.

“Now, what are you hiding?” He muttered under his breath, once again subject to that chilly sensation again. His Earth Qi flared to life, rapidly separating the tightly packed rock blocking his path.

A minute later, an entrance had been tunneled through, a burst of aquamarine light flooding through the opening.

He gasped.