Chapter 692 I have a proposition for you
It was only those who were from the fifth stage and above that he had to be wary of, but even then, they would have to be actively searching for him for them to notice him.
Yang Qing continuously nodded in satisfaction as he felt the improvement. His sensitivity to life had increased. From the plants to the animals and spirit beasts to the rocks and soils, he could distinctly feel their breadths of life and individuality. A cursory glance was enough to tell their makeup, such as their affinities and even emotions.
At the corner of his eye, he could see a daisy open up its flower to welcome the sunshine that was filtering through a canopy. As the rays of sunshine hit its petals, Yang Qing could sense its intense emotions which were of pleasant satisfaction, and the changes that sunlight was bringing into its body. Because of his physique, he could see the lines of thin yang energy trickling into the petals of the daisy, slowly transforming it. The daisy had not yet evolved into a spiritual plant, but Yang Qing could now tell exactly how long it would take for it to evolve into a spiritual plant.
He could sense things much more distinctly by just passing next to them without even using his palace sense to glean the details.
The strength of his body had improved, along with his agility. While his understanding of the phantom void steps was still where it was, which was the blooming phase, he could feel his execution was much smoother than before, which in turn influenced how much qi he expended, and how fast he traveled.
He was executing the art at maximum capacity, but the cost to his spiritual qi was an eighth of the qi stored in his body, and that expenditure was quickly covered by his body's increased ability to restore qi.
Even without Yang Qing consciously drawing the surrounding spiritual qi into his body, the spiritual qi was voluntarily filling his body like it was being magnetically drawn by some force. The quantity of spiritual qi being autonomously absorbed by his body was enough to offset half the cost of executing the phantom void steps.
"Coming to this place wasn't bad at all.." muttered Yang Qing with a sigh of gratification.
It wasn't long before he had covered 100 kilometers in just under twenty minutes, undetectable to most creatures he passed by. There had been a few spirit beasts whose strengths lay in their senses and had subtle changes in their expressions when Yang Qing passed by their territory, but the presence they sensed wasn't enough to alert them or make sense of it, so they went back to what they were doing.
Yang Qing had gone to the territories of these spirit beasts intentionally to test the innate abilities of his body to meld with his surroundings. He even went to the extent of lowering his speed just enough to see if those spirit beasts could detect him. He did the test with spirit beasts famed for their high sensory abilities.
He passed through the territory of an iridescent insight jewel beetle that was at the quasi-palace stage. The spirit beast had an innate ability to sense the warm temperature released by a living body.
While cultivators had numerous ways of lowering their temperature to the point they were no different than a corpse or certain physiques that made their bodies lower than normal, the iridescent insight jewel sensed the warmth of the life that coursed through their bodies which was difficult to hide.
The iridescent insight jewel he passed by flickered slightly as if it sensed something but went back to normal when it didn't detect anything even after concentrating within the sphere of influence of its territory. Yang Qing had attuned himself to everything around him making it difficult for the iridescent insight jewel to tell him apart from the plants and even the soil he was surrounded by.
Yang Qing conducted a few more tests with other sensory-
specialized spirit beasts in the area like the Essence echo butterfly and a soul fire resonance scarab till he was finally satisfied that his camouflaging abilities had experienced a significant increase like he had guessed.
Having already had a general feel of the wholesome changes brought to his body from the increase of essence of the vitality dao coursing through his entire being, Yang Qing focused his attention back on where he was headed.
After fifteen minutes, he finally reached it. It was a rocky mountain that at a cursory glance wasn't much different than the other surrounding mountains. If one were to pick something that made the mountain Yang Qing was looking at, different than the rest, it would be it felt slightly warmer than other places, but it wasn't to the point that it was glaring. Only someone who was acutely sensing the temperatures around different areas of the range would notice such a subtle difference.
Yang Qing sighed in admiration as he took a deep breath like he was savoring a pleasant smell as indeed he was. The entire mountain was suffused with the essence of the earth element to the point that Yang Qing could see a gold-orange veil covering the whole mountain. Of course, such a sight could only be seen by someone in the palace realm whose palace sense was able to see the materialization of an element's essence.
The veil was in the image of golden orange threads that seemed to connect and link everything within the mountain together.
The natural blend of the rich smell of earth and wood reinvigorated Yang Qing. With his robes billowing, Yang Qing flew to the peak of the mountain.
The moment Yang Qing reached the peak, something from within the peak itself spoke. It was an ancient voice filled with vigor.
"What do you want, human?" Yang Qing paused, a soft smile tugging his lips as he cupped his fists in greetings.
"You must be the mountain jade snake.. nice to meet you, I'm Yang Qing,a judge from the Order. I have a proposition for you.."
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