Chapter 444: Relentless Pursuit Above The Sea

Hanging idly in the air above the rubbles once known as Dong Lin city was a static, gigantic blue gourd.

On top of the gourd sat an elderly man donning a robe of blue, whom despite his snowy white heard, spotted a young face underneath it. His baggy robe, adorned with the Taoist Bagua symbols, billowed in the wind slightly, but the old man himself was unmoving as the mountain—even his waterfall-like beard and his long eyebrows remained static despite the wind in high air.

On his right and was the Mystique Mirror, where faint but sure glows radiated from its cool surface. Humanoid silhouette and shadows flickered and flitted through the mirror—a longer observation would reveal that it was in fact, re-telling the event that had happened in Dong Lin City.

The elderly man's eyes were twinkling very faintly as he watched the event refolded—how many of his juniors met painful demise, how Qing Mu had died by self-destruction, how Zi Yu died by being consumed into the monstrosity's mouth wholly. His face was still and unreactive, but deep within his eyes were strands of livid vengefulness flitting inconspicuously.

The elderly man was none other than Zi Yu's master—the great leader of the Transcending Heaven Immortal Cult, Wu Chen.

Previously, he had planned to retreat into a reclusive lifestyle a secretive place somewhere across the continent in order to break through his current bottleneck in cultivation. However, once he got winds of a strange occurrence, he had planned to use this as the point when he once again involved himself in worldly affairs. After all, being stuck on the bottleneck had been irritating, and now that there was a possible light for him to reach new insights, he was eager to seize the chance to know more.

After a while, however, the cult braced with torrents of bad news, including words that his own personally-taught disciple had died in the incident. This sent a shiver down to a sage who was mostly phlegmatic, forcing him to realize that even a total devotion to cultivation in recluse become unimportant. Extremely embittered, Wu Chen had quickly raced to the scene of the event.

Wu Chen kept the Mystique Mirror with a turn of his wrist. This time, on his palm instead was a bronze sinan*. With a right thumb and index finger assuming a ring several times while pointing at somewhere among the rubbles, a single faint glow of gold floated into the air slowly among the pile of white bones.

[Note: That's a Chinese ancient compass. It's like this soup spoon on top of a plate inscribed with directions.]

It was shaped like a miniature Jiao dragon. It snaked and swam in the air for a while before flying into the bronze sinan. Now, with the sinan in his hand where its tip glowed in green, Wu Chen's blue gourd suddenly sped into a blazing trail of blue light coursing through the air to northeast.

In a few shimmers, the blue lights vanished into the edge of the sky.

...

Half a month had passed.

On a beach along the northeast coastline of the Dongzhou Continent, a single Green-winged Flying carrier descended slowly, revealing its rider to be a young adult man in green shirt.

It was none other than Shi Mu, who had been racing against time to reach where he was now. As he watched the tides slapping into the black reefs while the scent of briny air filled his nose, Shi Mu finally regained some piece of relief.

According to Cai's message, he was only short of a few more miles before reaching island where the Azure Ape King had mentioned before. All he needed to do was to continue in journey with haste for about seven or eight days at most.

Shi Mu opened up his hands, and two greyish-white Spirit Stones fell from his palms before slamming onto the earth below. Over these few days he had been piloting the Green-Winged Flying Carriage while replenishing his lost spirit energy via Spirit Stones without rest. It took only until now for him to recover about seventy to eighty percent of his full energy.

Suddenly, Shi Mu's eyebrow raised. He could feel a familiar spiritual tingling coursing towards him quickly. In a pang, his mind was filled with an intense bout of dread.

Without any sign of hesitation, Shi Mu instantly assumed a familiar hand sign, propelling the Green-winged Flying Carriage underneath his feet to speed into a dart of green light zapping to the northeast direction.

As he piloted the carriage, he turned his head to where he came frequently, his eyes dipping in streams of golden lights. Peering far into the horizon, he could see, quite clearly, fine golden figure blazing through the air with terrifying speed.

To make matter worse, the size of that thing was getting larger by the seconds—

"—Going somewhere, little wretch?"

Suddenly, a loud voice boomed next to Shi Mu's ears like a clasp of thunder. It was Ao Zu, the golden Jiao dragon!

Shi Mu hastened his speed, driving himself forward with all of his might. At this moment, he no longer had the luxury to think how the heck did the golden Jiao dragon managed to regrow its flesh and mass within these short few days while pursuing him throughout the journey.

No—the only thing that was blasting in his mind, over and over again, was how easily would it be for the golden Jiao dragon to decimate him completely with its Heaven rank powers against Shi Mu's meager Earth-rank!

The speed of the green carriage may not be too lackluster to the average mass, but to a Heaven-rank powerhouse, it was laughably insignificant.

The game of cat and mouse went on like this for several hundred miles, yet the distance between Shi Mu and his relentless pursuer was shrinking in an alarming rate.

Within a few minutes, the distance between the two had shrunken to about a few miles left.

At this moment, the sky behind him suddenly ruffled before a single golden Jiao dragon claw suddenly tore through the air towards Shi Mu's back.

Shi Mu's heart trembled. He lifted his hand and shot out several dozens of charms from his fingers, which all transformed into a few basin-sized crimson fireballs in mid-flight before meeting the mirage of the golden Jiao dragon claw.

Boom boom boooom!

They exploded simultaneously upon getting close in range within the golden claw, forming gigantic rolls of flaming clouds the size of wheels dyeing this part of the sky red.

However, it managed to stop the mirage for a very small amount of time, dimming its glow a little, before once again pursuing Shi Mu with the force of a hill being hurled into the air.

But now, standing on its path were several bucket-sized wide icicles and ice javelins...

Shi Mu continued to dished out batches after batches of charm attacks towards the mirage, managing to dull its glow and attack considerably, yet they seemed to have made no dent on its momentum.

Shi Mu had taken the time to complete his totem transformation where his body was not covered in thick layers of black scales while gripping the Heavenly Meteoric Black Iron Knife tightly in his hand.

The golden claw had inched close to about three feet away from its target. Shi Mu spun abruptly, his blade covered with a layer of black glow, and gave a swing!

Tscch!

Thirteen strikes of sword beams flashed and converged into a single lustrous blade beam.

Bang!

The blade had somehow cut through the golden claw mirage, sundering it into two before the two parts shattered into pieces!

Shi Mu felt a small relief in his chest. He had won the bet—judging from this, Shi Mu could surmise that although the Jiao dragon had managed to recover its physical body, it did not recover its original powers as a Later Heaven-rank. At most, it seemed to have only recovered up to Mid Heaven rank.

His celebratory relief did not last a second. Before the fragments of mirage could even dissipate completely, another shot of golden claw quickly took its spot, its tips gleaming coldly as it dashed towards Shi Mu's back.

In a fit of panic and quick-thinking, Shi Mu released the spirit energy stored within his body, and the flying carriage dove in an attempt to evade the mirage. Nevertheless, it had barely made its descent when the mirage of the golden claw—its five claws were like golden pillars—dove just as instantly, as if it had already known where Shi Mu was about to go. It seemed that it was about to grab the Green-winged Flying carriage firmly in its grasp!

It was then when the flying carriage suddenly vanished into thin air on Shi Mu's will.

The man's body continued to plummet towards the ocean as it lost its support.

Missing its target, the golden claw readjusted its direction and plummeted, determined to grab the human in its hand. As the tips were about to close around Shi Mu when a flash of red blazed behind his back. Two orbs of flames sprung before rapidly expanding into two flames-wings.

The wings flapped in the air, and Shi Mu turned into a single trail of crimson light speeding towards off tangent such that he managed to escape the claw's grip through the eve-closing gap between its talons. Fortunately, Shi Mu's size was a bit too small for a claw this large.

Moreover, the speed of flaming wings was at least two or three folds more than the green-winged flying carriage.

Using his near-misses as openings, Shi Mu had already removed his transformation while supplying himself with a single high-ranking Wind charm to aid his flight. He flapped his flame wings with all his might, turning into a single blaze of flames zipping through the surface of the ocean, his momentum causing a sharp gale splitting the ocean surface into two white blossoming tidal waves.

He successfully extended the gap between himself and Ao Zu, much to the latter's frustration. Its previous two attempts of catching him ending up being empty did not lose on the golden Jiao dragon, neither.

Swinging the sleeves backward, Ao Zu's body glowed in a mix of crimson and gold as it shot towards where Shi Mu was.

With the supplementary aid of the Wind charm, Shi Mu's speed became even more devastating, yet it was still too weak when compared to Ao Zu's.

As time passed, the distance between them were closing in once more.

Shi Mu could feel the howling of gales behind him, telling him that his pursuer was getting closer and closer to him. He dared not turn his head, even for a glimpse, afraid that doing so may slow him down by a smidge enough for Ao Zu to gain grounds on him.

Seeing its target lying right before it, Ao Zu's golden brows raised as it placed its hands before its chest to draw a circle before itself. Its lips parted and closed faintly as it mouthed a set of unintelligible, mysterious incantation.

Then, as gold lights flashed out of its eyes, its body burst into gold showers of dazzling light that then came to wrap around it. Then, under the backdrop of that light, its humanoid figure elongated into a ten-yard long golden serpent, its golden scales completely coated its body as it barred its fangs menacingly.

As its golden eyes pierced through the air, its body flashed gold, and a single shriek boomed through the sky!

The golden Jiao dragon's speed suddenly spiked like a single bolt of golden lightning tailing behind Shi Mu.

To man being pursued, he could feel the powerful pulses behind him suddenly speeding dangerously behind him.

Shi Mu grinded his teeth, and his left arm turned scorched black. Rings of crimson glyphs surfaced before white flames blazed out of them. And the next second, the white flames oozed out from his arm and seeped into the blazing wings behind his back.

Whoossssh!

Shi Mu's wings suddenly expanded by ten folds as wisps of white flames graced through the wings. With a single flap, the sceneries around him suddenly sped behind him in such a blur that he could not even make them out anymore.

Shi Mu had turned into a gigantic, vermillion seabird bolting forward.

He could feel through the flapping of his mammoth-like flame wings that Ao Zu's presence was getting weaker and weaker as he shot forward with an unrivalled speed.

...

Fifteen minutes later.

Shi Mu could still feel the spiritual signature of the golden Jiao dragon, but he could no longer see it. At the same time, his wings were starting to shrink as his flight became wobbly.

He knew it was the sign that he was expending too much of his Real Qi. Unwilling to take the risk of overexertion, he retracted his wings and summoned the Green-winged flying Carriage and rode it, simultaneously with him absorbing the voluminous spirit energy stored in a High-rank Spirit Stone.

He had barely finished his fill when he heard, once more, a single draconic cry.

He turned abruptly, and saw that far in the horizon, a ten-odd yards long golden dragon was snaking towards him in terrifying speed.