ng Bai’s expression grew serious as he heard the man’s words. "Like a teleportation array or a hidden tunnel?"
"Possibly," the man nodded. "Or were taken by force and smuggled out."
’Doubt soone can smuggle the two high elders easily.’ Daoist Chu’s brows knit together slightly. "Have there been any... odd disappearances or abnormal activities in the city around the ti they went missing?"
The clerk tapped the panel again and pulled up a new list. "A few disappearances of rogue cultivators and rchant guards during that season. Nothing extre, but there was a slight spike."
He paused, then added, "You might want to ask around the city. We provide a broad view, but there are individuals in Ash Crown City with sharp eyes and longer mories. Sword cultivators, in particular, tend to stand out even if their faces change. The way they walk, the calm in their gaze—it’s not easily hidden."
Daoist Chu nodded thoughtfully. "Understood. Thank you."
The clerk smiled faintly. "Should you find anything significant, we’d be happy to purchase the details." The man was a businessman through and through.
As the two left the pavilion, ng Bai sighed. "So... we’ve got a year-old trail, no exit record, and a possible abduction. What now?"
"We split up," Daoist Chu replied. "You check the rcenary drinking halls and trading blocks. Look for anyone who’s been around a long ti—blacksmiths, stall owners, guards. People who pay attention without looking like they do."
ng Bai saluted. "On it!"
"I’ll head to the alchemist quarter and speak with so of the apothecaries and cultivators who work with body cultivation and qi cultivators. They tend to notice when strangers with heavy auras pass through."
The two split off into the grey-shadowed streets, each blending in with the flow of the city. They carried with them not just images of the missing elders, but the pressure of purpose.
anwhile, back in the Earth Fla Room, Lin Mu remained seated in stillness as the powerful elental energy churned around him. Unbeknownst to him, the wheels had begun to turn once more. The trail, long cold and buried in ash, was beginning to warm.
While Daoist Chu and ng Bai moved through the winding alleys and ashen streets of Ash Crown City, questioning vendors, rcenaries, and long-ti residents for any trace of the missing elders, Lin Mu remained deep within the confines of the Earth Fla Hall at Ember Hollow Inn.
The air in the chamber was thick with elental intensity—waves of radiant heat pulsed from vents in the ground, while the walls shimred faintly with inscriptions that glowed red-gold from ti to ti. The room itself felt more like a living entity than a re cultivation chamber, and Lin Mu was at its center, seated cross-legged atop a large slab of obsidian-colored basalt that humd gently beneath him.
His breathing was even, each inhale drawing in threads of Earth and Fire elental essence from the environnt, which then spiraled through his ridians before being refined and integrated into his body.
Unlike traditional Qi cultivation, the Omnicore Ascendancy Technique demanded sothing far more specialized—pure elental essence. Qi could act as a base, but the real fuel for his core formation ca from the primal energies that existed in raw elental forms.
That made this Earth Fla Hall sothing incredibly rare and valuable to him.
Normally, cultivating with materials like herbs, spirit crystals, and pills would have sufficed, but they always had diminishing returns. After a few uses, their effectiveness would sharply decline unless they were extraordinarily rare or paired with supplentary materials. Even Earth and Fire elental crystals—expensive as they were—offered only temporary gains.
But this chamber... this naturally occurring node of elental force... was different.
The Earth Fla here wasn’t just residual energy left behind by so natural phenonon. No, it was the living breath of the land itself—a lingering remnant of the ancient volcano’s core, now diffused into the basin and allowed to flow freely in places like this. Here, he wasn’t just absorbing cultivated essence, he was consuming pure, undiluted elental energy.
Lin Mu’s body glowed faintly, his Earth and Fire cores swirling within the dense structure of the Omnicore Ascendancy. The fla coursed into his Fire core, feeding its power, while the dense, pressurized weight of the land poured into his Earth core. As the two cores rotated, they created an ever-expanding internal cycle of balanced duality—Heat and Mass, Motion and Inertia, Destruction and Endurance.
With each cycle, Lin Mu could feel qualitative improvents happening—not just in strength or Qi reserves, but in his foundational core stability. He was approaching the next stage of the technique, where the dual-elent cores would begin to overlap and provide him synergestic benefits. This was sothing was never theorized even in ancient texts, but Lin Mu was making it a reality.
He opened his eyes briefly, glancing at the runes etched around the walls and floor. The Earth Fla Hall was certainly not constructed by average formation masters alone.
The ancient runic arrays that modulated and filtered the energy were masterfully crafted, controlling the volatile fluctuations of the flas so that even low to mid-stage Immortal cultivators could benefit without being incinerated. Lin Mu, however, didn’t need those buffers. The intensity others avoided was exactly what he craved.
He slowly exhaled, a wisp of red-gold vapor escaping from his mouth like dragon’s breath. A pleased smile tugged at the corner of his lips.
’No wonder a city like Ash Crown could thrive here.’ He thought.
Even with rogue cultivators, rcenaries, lawlessness, and the lack of a dominant sect presence, the city had everything it needed to survive: free and powerful energy. There was no need for complex mining operations or Qi-gathering and channeling formations spread across mountainsides.
The Earth Fla energy was the true foundation of this region. With a few intelligent investnts—like the modulation arrays and cultivation halls—anyone could take advantage of it.
Lin Mu could imagine why so many factions, both minor and major, would have an interest in this place. The Earth Fla wasn’t just a cultivation tool; it was a strategic resource. That realization made him even more alert.
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