Chapter 1307: Digging out the forgotten art (2)
Having had his fill of admiring its design and his success in creating it, Yang Qing stretched out his hand once more. The cerulean moth took that as its cue to fly off—and judging by the speed and eagerness with which it departed, it seemed it could hardly wait, having only endured Yang Qing’s examination out of filial piety to its creator.
Wenling, whose eyes had not left the moth since it appeared, looked ready to chase after it. The only thing holding her back was the faint reasoning that reminded her the moth wasn’t real—or perhaps the realization that, even if she did give chase, she wouldn’t be able to catch up given its speed.
Haishi was fast herself, but the moth was faster still, vanishing from sight within seconds of being released.
All Wenling was left with was a sharp glare she threw Yang Qing’s way, as if chastising him for his careless actions. But the look quickly softened into one of docile obedience as her survival instincts reminded her who she was dealing with. Moving fast to cover her misstep, she diverted her attention from Yang Qing to the azure cloud berries, treating them as her entire world—all while screaming at herself on the inside.
"WHY DID I DO THAT? WHY DID I DO THAT? Silly Wenling, look at you... now you’re about to die over a fake moth! Silly Wenling! Silly Wenling! If I’m going to die, then better to do it with a full stomach."
With that thought, the cicada began gorging herself, letting everything else fade from her world but the berries.
As for Yang Qing—the cause of both her fear and her voracious eating—his attention wasn’t even on her. His focus remained on the cerulean moth he had released. Even without using his spiritual sense, he could accurately track its location and distance thanks to their link. It was about two hundred meters away and steadily widening the gap between them, serving as a clear testament to its speed.
Another thing he shared with the moth was its senses. He could see what it saw and feel what it felt. Perhaps because the cerulean moth had been created from his childhood memories, it seemed excitable, curious, and brimming with energy. Yet beneath it all was a vivid sense of serenity that overshadowed every other emotion he felt from it through their link.
It functioned much like his spiritual sense in terms of detail, with the added advantage of being mobile. To perceive through it as clearly as his own senses, however, he had to focus his mind on it deliberately—it wasn’t passive. That wasn’t entirely a drawback; the moth’s speed and mobility more than compensated for it, making it akin to having a swift, far-ranging extension of his spiritual sense.
Meanwhile, the burden it placed on him was surprisingly light, bordering on almost non-existent, given that all he had to do was sit pretty and receive all the information being provided.
When it came to what he could sense passively through the moth, the detail wasn’t as sharp as when he actively looked through it, but it was still considerable. He could pick up on physical aspects of the environment: the air was humid here, so a river was nearby; there was a forest over there; the temperature cooled in one place and warmed in another; a sky-grade herb grew here, a top-tier earth-rank herb there; the ground rumbled here, a bird called out there. The details weren’t as vivid as in active focus, but they were more than enough.
More importantly, the art’s true strength didn’t lie in displaying scenes but in sensing danger. That ability came through with the same intensity whether Yang Qing was in an active or passive state. From what he had read, the creator had even emphasized greater reliance on passive sensing as one advanced further in the art.
At its later stages, the art would gain the ability to propagate itself. Yang Qing would no longer need to split a sliver of his soul essence each time he wanted to create a moth. As long as he had one, that moth could birth others with the same functionality and abilities, and they would continue reproducing endlessly without weakening or requiring Yang Qing’s command.
Those newly formed moths would fly off to roam the continent, while the mother moth continued producing more, each one spreading farther into different regions. Slowly, they would establish a vast danger-sensing network for Yang Qing. If he happened to roam into a threat, and a moth was already present in that area, he would know of the danger before it reached him. The moths would become his scouting network.
Of course, reaching such a level required not only a deep understanding of the art but also a powerful soul. As strong as his soul was now, it could hardly sustain a single moth capable of shouldering the burden of propagation. Other than that, the strength of one’s soul also determined how long the spell could remain active.
Case in point, through the shared link he could already feel the presence of the moth slowly ebbing away. Judging by the rate of decline, it wouldn’t last more than five minutes before the spell faded. To prove him right, at the fourth minute, the connection broke, and the moth vanished as the spell dissipated.
Yes, his limited understanding of the art may have played a role in the short timeframe, but so did the strength of his soul. According to the manual, a sliver of soul essence from an early-stage Domain expert could sustain the spell for four to ten years, provided their comprehension of the art had reached the blooming stage. For a middle stage, the duration extended to twenty to forty years, and for a late stage, it lasted a full century or more. As for a Soul Formation expert, the author hadn’t even bothered to list the years, because at that point the spell existed in perpetuity—so long as the cultivator lived, so too would the moth formed from their essence.
An art that could endure perpetually and even sustain itself—this was what made the Perpetual Cerulean Weaver’s Wisdom Path to Life cultivation art worthy of its title as a quasi–purple grade art or even its name.
Yang Qing sighed as he imagined how far he still had to travel to reach that level. But almost at once, he perked up at the thought of how thrilling the journey of discovery would be. Riding that surge of emotion, he quickly got to work on producing another cerulean moth, this time aiming for a shorter casting period and a longer duration of existence.
Lost in his own world—Haishi, Wenling, and Bolin each in theirs—three days quickly flew by. By the evening leading into the fourth, they were already at the border of the Deer Mountain Range. Haishi ended up taking three days and eighteen hours.
And as for Yang Qing and his experiment, after his attempts and reflections, while his mastery of the quasi–purple grade art still remained at the beginner stage, he had shortened the casting time to seventeen minutes, and increased the spell’s duration to six minutes and twenty-eight seconds before dissipating.
It didn’t sound like much, but for Yang Qing, it was plenty.