The sound was hard to describe—cold, shrill, a sound Jiang Wang had never heard before, and it carried an indescribable sense of dread!
A savage beast? A demon beast? Or some unknown monster?
Jiang Wang focused and listened again, but the sound had abruptly vanished.
But the alarm bell in Jiang Wang's heart had undoubtedly already rung.
He could not keep wandering aimlessly like this.
Jiang Wang turned his palm over and snuffed out the white light in it.
It was the secret art known as the Treasure-Light Art, capable of detecting treasures.
Clearly, this stretch of time had yielded nothing.
Back in Qingyang Town, before his death, Hu Shaomeng had traded this very secret art to make Jiang Wang carry out his final revenge.
In truth, chances to use such a secret art were rare. Linzi was indeed full of treasures, but alas, every one of them had an owner—what good did it do when the Treasure-Light Art reacted?
Rather, the primary purpose of this trip into the Seven Stars Tower secret realm was to obtain a treasure that could extend his lifespan and make up for his own regrets.
Thus, before entering the secret realm, Jiang Wang had deliberately poured all the Merit he had recently accumulated into the Treasure-Light Art, hoping to deduce an upgrade. But perhaps this obscure secret art consumed far more Merit, or perhaps the Treasure-Light Art itself was extraordinarily special—the Merit he had gathered of late was drained to nothing, yet the art showed not the slightest change.
Of course, it had not been long since he last emptied his Merit, and he had not accumulated much in the interim.
He had no idea how vast this forest sea truly was.
He pressed his hand against the giant tree beside him; the texture was rough.
In principle, a giant tree like this was a small world unto itself, a self-contained system, and the life clinging to it ought to be plentiful.
Yet Jiang Wang, quite literally, had not found even a single insect.
To say that no living beings existed here—then that strange shriek just now was clearly a counterexample.
Yet to say the place teemed with life, Jiang Wang had plainly encountered nothing but the giant trees themselves.
Everything so flouted "common sense" that Jiang Wang's past experience of life was overturned here.
He thought for a moment, then soared into the air, flying cautiously toward the treetop.
Flying straight up into the high sky in an unknown environment was undoubtedly a risky move, but compared with blundering about aimlessly in this sea of trees, the risk was worth taking.
What kind of concept was a giant tree several hundred zhang tall?
Compared to the tree itself, a person was no more conspicuous than an ant—which was one of the reasons Jiang Wang dared to take the risk.
Every time he flew a certain distance, Jiang Wang would carefully observe his surroundings before continuing upward.
Though the wind stayed calm and the trees still the whole time, with no mishaps at all.
Hold reverence for danger; hold caution for the unknown.
At last the space before him brightened, and his view suddenly opened up.
The first moment Jiang Wang reached the treetop, he did not poke his head out; instead he stood on a fork of the branches, concealing himself among the leaves.
At this height, the wind grew very strong.
The crown of the tree swayed faintly, giving the illusion that the giant tree might topple at any moment.
There was no unexpected discovery; here at the treetop all was peaceful and serene.
As if that strange shriek he had heard earlier had been nothing but an auditory hallucination.
The giant tree Jiang Wang had chosen was not the tallest. But standing at its crown, he could already see into the distance—and it was no different from what he had seen below: as far as the eye could reach, there was only trees, stretching on almost without end.
Except that down there one could only see the trunks, while up here he could see much farther.
He could see the treetops extending all the way to the horizon—or at least, straining his eyes to their limit, he could see no end to them.
The wind howled back and forth, and those treetops swayed with it, rising and falling like waves of the sea.
Some mighty cultivators could gather the gang wind for their own use; Jiang Wang had never approached the heights where one could touch it. Flight itself also required Dao essence to drive it, and the higher one flew, the greater the consumption. With his current strength, he was far from qualified to explore the limits of the sky.
But the wind at even this height was already quite violent.
Elemental force sometimes had "emotions." In different environments and different states, it gave different reactions. Following that "emotion"—whether by soothing it or by altering it—could make a Dao art produce different results.
This was an insight Jiang Wang had gained when he nearly drowned in the Ethereal Realm. He had felt that the water enveloping him seemed to carry the "emotion" of that robed young man in splendid garments. Perhaps that was why the youth's Dao arts had been so powerful.
The wind-element force of this place and moment gave Jiang Wang the feeling of "violence."
The sky was azure blue, without clouds, without a single blemish.
In the whole sky hung only a distant "orb of light," from which the daylight filtering through the leaves originated.
He called it merely an orb of light because Jiang Wang was quite certain it was not the sun.
At most it was a projection of the sun, or some kind of refraction.
Through the morning and evening lessons he had once practiced without fail—greeting the purple qi at dawn, drawing in the crimson haze at dusk—Jiang Wang had grown thoroughly familiar with the Sun Star.
This orb of light felt completely different to him.
The dossier on the Seven Stars Tower made no mention of it. In fact, Jiang Wang was more inclined to believe this orb was one of the seven stars of the Big Dipper. But he had no complete star map in his mind, and could not judge which one it was.
After all, apart from this orb, the sky at this moment was blank.
"Jiang Yan, do you think the thing above our heads could be the sun? I don't think it looks much like one," Jiang Wang asked in the Celestial Palace.
This "quiet and peaceful" forest sea had grown hard even for the solitude-accustomed Jiang Wang to bear, so much so that he scraped up small talk, chatting with Jiang Yan just for something to say.
"Jiang Yan?"
"Jiang Yan?"
"Jiang Yan?"
Jiang Wang fired off question after question, refusing to let up.
He even shook the Soaring Dragon Dao meridian, sending tremors through the Celestial Palace.
"The Jade Balance." Jiang Yan's attitude was very cold, but he gave a reply all the same.
Was he at a critical juncture of cultivation? What changes had occurred within the Nether Candle? Was he secretly doing something?
At times Jiang Wang truly wanted to enter the Nether Candle in spirit-soul form and take a peek, but the risk was too great, so it remained only a fancy.
As for Jiang Yan, beyond never relaxing his vigilance, Jiang Wang had no good options.
But without a doubt, growing strong himself was the royal road that solved everything.
Jiang Yan's intentions could not be fathomed, but his breadth of knowledge was certainly worthy of trust.
If he said the orb of light in the sky was the Jade Balance star, then it was nine parts out of ten so.
If the entire Seven Stars Tower was divided into seven worlds, with all participants scattered across different worlds, then it was perfectly reasonable that he, holding a Di Sha slot in the thirties—the Earth Circuit Star—had entered the world of the Jade Balance star, the fifth of the Big Dipper.
The Jade Balance star was also known as Lianzhen. "Since ancient times, Lianzhen has been the hardest to read"—the saying referred to this star's endless transformations, impossible to fathom.
Judging by that, dealing with whatever one encountered in the Jade Balance world might demand, above all, the talent of discernment.
Jiang Yan had no interest in idle chat, and Jiang Wang did not quite dare to let his attention wander either.
The growth rings of trees, even the density of their leaves, can be used to judge direction.
Jiang Wang had examined the nearby trees carefully and found no contradictions among them; in other words, the direction could be fixed.
Naturally, he would go north.
In the Seven Stars Tower secret realm, if one meant to probe for secrets, there was no reason to head south.
After silently confirming the direction, Jiang Wang dropped back down to the ground.
In this unknown land so different from what the dossier recorded, conserving Dao essence was a matter of great importance.
Traveling north, he walked a very long time without meeting a second living creature.
He did not even hear that strange shriek again.
Crack, crack.
The sound of withered leaves and dry twigs snapping underfoot went on and on like this.
Crack, crack.
That maddening dryness and tedium did not shake Jiang Wang's will in the slightest.
On the contrary, he maintained a high degree of alertness from beginning to end.
And so, when the "dry twig" under his foot suddenly sprang up, Xiangsi had already reacted a step ahead!
Swish!
Frost light like a bolt of white silk!
In the dim forest, it was as if a slice of moon had been torn open.