"Huh?"

As he probed, Chu Mu’s expression faltered. He reached into his robes, a sudden warmth clearly perceptible.

He reached into his robes and grasped a Jade Slab.

The Jade Slab looked normal, but it was no longer cool to the touch. Instead, it faintly radiated warmth.

To the naked eye, the Jade Slab showed no abnormalities, but under the sweep of his Divine Sense, faint streams of light flickered and patterns became visible.

The Jade Slab was the inheritance Jade Scroll for the Puppetry Skill.

A Jade Scroll for passing down knowledge, originating from the mysterious old man of Qili Village, was now forming some sort of unknown connection with the mysterious white fog on East Lake, hundreds of miles away.

’So, this isn’t just a Jade Scroll for storing information? It might also be some kind of token?’

Chu Mu frowned deeply, his gaze fixed on the Jade Slab. He then looked at the white fog before him, lost in thought.

Chu Mu raised the Jade Scroll, attached his Divine Sense to it, and probed the barrier once more.

This time, there was no resistance. His Divine Sense penetrated the white fog smoothly, but what followed was a sudden, powerful suction.

Before Chu Mu could react, the white fog billowed. Standing on his small boat, he was engulfed by the mist and vanished from the lake’s surface.

After a dizzying spin, he found himself in a vast, white fog.

His Qi Blood surged as he warily scanned his surroundings. But all he could see was an endless white fog, so thick he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face.

Then, as if from nowhere, a ripple washed over him. Chu Mu had the distinct feeling that his entire being, inside and out, was being seen with perfect clarity.

"Who!"

Chu Mu demanded in a low voice.

The white fog remained still. Only his echo drifted back, with no other sign of disturbance.

Then, the white fog billowed. Chu Mu once again felt the world spin, followed by a powerful sensation of weightlessness.

SPLASH!

There was a muffled impact, and water splashed everywhere.

Chu Mu shot out of the water, warily scanning his surroundings.

The small boat was just a short distance away, and the vast expanse of white fog was... retreating?

Startled and suspicious, Chu Mu quickly looked around, only to realize that what he thought was a retreat was actually the fog shrinking!

The white fog that covered the lake was shrinking!

In the span of just a few breaths, the white fog, once too vast for the eye to see its end, vanished completely.

Chu Mu was baffled.

’What did I just go through?’

’The Jade Slab reacted, then I was pulled in, scanned, and thrown out. Now the white fog has disappeared?’

’Is this some kind of joke?’

Chu Mu raised the Jade Slab and scanned it again with his Divine Sense. The previous anomaly was gone, as if it had become a simple Jade Scroll once more.

After climbing back onto the boat, Chu Mu, unwilling to give up, rowed around the lake for quite a while, but he found no other anomalies.

Fluctuations of Spiritual Qi seemed to flash across the sky, and he could vaguely make out several streaks of sword light darting through the clouds.

’Did... some Cultivators notice the strange fog?’

Chu Mu withdrew his gaze and carefully placed the Jade Scroll back into his robes. As he replayed the recent events in his mind, the doubt in his eyes deepened.

Based on what he had just seen, this mysterious white fog didn’t seem to be a gathering place for Cultivators as he had imagined.

And this Jade Scroll seemed to be some kind of token—a token that granted entry into the mysterious fog.

When he was pulled into the fog, he had been on the lake’s surface, yet it felt like standing on solid ground. His low cry had even produced an echo.

This undoubtedly proved that during that dizzying spin, he wasn’t on the lake surface, but inside some kind of enclosed structure.

And that strange scanning ripple...

The sudden disappearance of the white fog...

His limited knowledge could not explain these unknown phenomena.

He had some theories, but no evidence to support them.

Chu Mu scanned his surroundings, committing the location to memory. Just as he was about to row away, he suddenly looked toward the horizon where the sword light had vanished.

It was hundreds of miles from Nanshan Town to this spot!

’Did I just happen to come here by coincidence?’

’All I received was a Jade Scroll, and what just happened was merely an ambiguous phenomenon.’

’And as the original owner of this Jade Scroll, would the mysterious old man from Qili Village truly be unaware of its purpose?’

’If he knew, and he left the Jade Scroll for that youth, why wouldn’t he have explained the reason clearly?’

Chu Mu couldn’t help but marvel at his own luck. He had traveled hundreds of miles and just so happened to choose Jingmen. By another coincidence, he had reached the Great Success stage of Qi Blood and successfully achieved Divine Appearance right when the white fog appeared.

Even more coincidentally, a month after his Divine Appearance, he still hadn’t left Jingmen, and he wasn’t cooped up in the Hundred Herbs Pavilion ignoring worldly affairs like before.

It was only through this string of coincidences that he had come here today and discovered the secret of the Jade Scroll.

’I’ll wait a bit longer.’

Chu Mu let out a long breath. The mysterious white fog had vanished, but who knew if it might reappear after a while.

Days passed, the sun setting and rising, but the small boat remained on the lake. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

When thirsty, he drank lake water. When hungry, he went into the water to catch fish. It was a fisherman’s boat, so there was no shortage of cooking tools.

By the eighth day, the lake surface was still calm. The white fog was like an illusion and never reappeared.

He did, however, occasionally see flashes of light in the sky, as if Cultivators had heard of the disturbance and were coming to investigate.

The area was near Turtle Island, so there were many fishermen and fishing boats on the lake. Chu Mu, in his small boat, did not stand out.

’Time to head back.’

Chu Mu felt a pang of melancholy. After days of being exposed to the wind and sun, he still had no answers.

Quite a few Cultivators had appeared in the sky, but the vast majority were just gone in a flash.

He, who had to row with oars on water and walk on his own two feet on land, could only watch them and sigh.

He even saw some Cultivators dive straight into the water, as if to investigate the situation.

In the span of a few days, he had seen no fewer than twenty or thirty Cultivators.

’Three directions...’

Chu Mu gazed at the sky, lost in thought.

Over the past few days, the Cultivators he had seen mostly came from the southwest, due north, and due east, and they generally left in those same three directions.

Of course, that was only counting the ones he could see. There were probably many more he couldn’t.

After all, judging from the fragments of information within the Puppetry Skill inheritance, many of the methods available to Cultivators were likely beyond his imagination.

But this was undoubtedly revealing. There must be places where Cultivators gathered in those three directions.

Chu Mu looked down at the wooden planks of the boat, on which rows of mathematical formulas written in charcoal were arranged.

He had his estimated flight speed for Cultivators, the time the mysterious white fog appeared—which he had learned from asking the fishermen—and the approximate time some fishermen had first seen the so-called Immortals.

Integrating and converting this series of known data points yielded a rough result.

Southwest, due north, due east.

Chu Mu spread the map in his hands. It roughly depicted several dozen surrounding counties. With Jingmen as the center, Chu Mu had already drawn a rough circle on the map based on his calculations.

The calculations were accurate, with no room for error, but the data used for the calculations was very fuzzy.

First, he wasn’t certain of the specific Flying speed of Cultivators; it was just a rough estimate. Moreover, a Cultivator’s realm would undoubtedly mean their Flying speed would differ.

Second, given the miraculous nature of the Puppetry Skill, the Cultivation Immortal Realm very likely had long-distance communication tools, meaning his calculated distances might have to be cut in half.

Furthermore, the fishermen’s oral accounts, distorted as they were passed from person to person, were not necessarily accurate.

He alone had heard seven or eight different versions of the story from the fishermen he’d asked.

The data was approximate and very likely inaccurate.

But regardless, for someone like him who currently had virtually no leads, it was a crucial guide.

Three directions and some approximate distance data were far better than him wandering aimlessly and trying his luck!

...