324: Chapter 323 Unforeseen Changes 324: Chapter 323 Unforeseen Changes Hou Niao returned to Crab Claw Island half a year after leaving.
The scenery remained unchanged, the island was the same, and the stone houses were still there.
Even Chihu and her children remained the same, although there were many fewer of them.
In the stone house, someone had left a message in the formation; it was from one of the Island Masters he had visited before, and also from a passing stranger, a Sword Cultivator senior.
Everything seemed calm and peaceful.
As a cautious person, one who always placed his life safety first, and someone still quite limited in his understanding of formations, he couldn’t determine whether anyone had set traps here to wait for him during this time.
True experts wouldn’t carelessly leave any trace that would allow him to discern their tactics and take precautions upon his return, though that might be possible in the future, not now.
But he had his own unique methods, such as the Thousand-Mile Earth Map beneath the soil layer?
After scouring Crab Claw Island and finding no anomalies, he planned to make a final confirmation.
At a random spot in the grass, he grasped his body and instantly submerged into the soil, vanishing.
With years of practice, he had dug deeper into his Earth Element Technique; now, if it were ordinary soil, he could burrow three fathoms deep, a very powerful skill.
Submerged in the soil, he needed to do a comprehensive re-examination of the Thousand-Mile Earth Map, focusing on a dozen key nodes, and then he could determine if any unfamiliar presences had come to Crab Island or if any potential traps were laid in the last six months.
The first node was intact; at the second node, there seemed to be some displacement?
But that might have been caused by the Earth Element Beasts.
On Crab Claw Island, there were quite a few Earth Element Beasts that fed on long worms, and such incidents had happened before; it was not strange.
At the third node, the energy was wrong!
It seemed to have been reset by someone!
But he was very familiar with his own technique, and this was certainly not his work!
Realizing something was amiss, his first instinct was to leave the soil.
The safety of the Earth Escape Technique lay in the opponent’s ignorance of Earth Element; if the enemy also specialized in Earth Escape and had spent a long time preparing on such a narrow island, it meant danger for him.
The trap was beneath the ground; he must quickly return to the surface, up into the sky.
But that was when the sudden change occurred.
When he tried to leave the soil, the ground above seemed to have a layer of steel cap added on top of it—impenetrable!
The Earth Escape Technique differed from the Earth Element Beasts’ method; it did not break through forcibly but left behind a human-shaped passage.
The Cultivator’s Earth Element Technique involved merging oneself with the Five Elements Soil, allowing unobstructed movement.
It was like oil mixed with water—not blending but permitting mutual passage.
Therefore, feeling a steel cap above did not mean that someone had actually laid a steel plate or turned the soil into a steel layer, but that someone had altered the soil’s properties, making his previous Earth Escape Technique ineffective.
The solution was actually quite simple, stop using Earth Escape, and just burrow up forcefully like an Earth Element Beast!
Merely over a fathom deep, half soil and half gravel, and without worrying about breathing, this distance would take no more than a dozen sword strikes to dig through.
But he could not dig because he did not know what awaited him outside!
The danger was not in the soil below, but in the unexpected assault he might find upon rashly sprinting upwards!
Below the earth, as a Tongtian Realm cultivator, his ability to wield effective spells was still very limited, hence Hou Niao chose to lie low, quietly escaping outward.
This was an embarrassing predicament for him, a Sword Cultivator trapped beneath the soil, and he had burrowed in himself.
This was the essence of combat, where everyone tried to fight in their own way.
For a Sword Cultivator, the best approach was to be pinned to the ground!
After escaping a dozen fathoms, he again felt that firm resistance above, not a steel cap, but an underground iron cage.
He still had the chance to abandon Earth Escape and dig through this iron wall with his sword.
The consequence would be revealing his precise location; he could never dig faster than his enemy could fly above ground—it would be a dead end.
After many attempts, he finally confirmed his situation, trapped in an underground cell spanning several dozen fathoms.
This cell was constructed using some secret technique that blocked Earth Element Power, rendering his Earth Element Escape ineffective.
Moreover, this cage was shrinking!
One could imagine that when the cell contracted to a certain size, he would become like a doomed mouse in the soil, with no escape.
Above ground, neither to the left nor the right, and unable to proceed downward, he seemed to be caught in a dead-end situation.
Hou Niao realized that he had come to a very critical juncture, and the slightest mishap or wrong choice would leave him with lifelong regret.
He did not know how many people the opponent had?
What Realm were they?
How many measures were they keeping in reserve above ground?
From the beginning, he had been plunged into complete ignorance of the battle situation.
His visual sense couldn’t see anything, and his Divine Sense couldn’t transmit out.
He did not want to force himself into a dead end before making a choice.
If that were the case, he wouldn’t have many options left—what else could there be but a fight to the death?
… Above ground, a Daoist floated thirty fathoms low in the sky, leisurely waiting for the changes below.
In the Lizhi Sea, he had many identities—he was an Island Master, a member of a power, a pirate… and one very special identity, a Whaler.
To be a Whaler wasn’t truly about hunting whales; the huge whales of the ocean mostly resided in the deep sea, especially the whale beasts with high Realm Levels, simply too formidable for a Tongtian Realm Cultivator to handle.
This ‘whaling’ actually referred to hunting people; plainly speaking, they were a group of assassins, tasked with settling disputes and resolving crises for others.
Part of the Mirage’s business community was quietly maintaining an underground network with extensive wealth, widespread connections, and insightful information, subtly running this underground organization.
This was the real Lizhi Sea, where beneath the surface prosperity, chaos was everywhere.
To them, no cultivator here was beyond killing—as long as the price was right.
Depending on the target’s Realm Level, strength, and power backing, everyone had a price, a bounty on their head.
Like his current trip to Crab Claw Island, the price tag was high.
Although only a Tongxuan Cultivator, his affiliation with the Quanzhen Sect had added a premium to the price.
Having been here for nearly a month, he had expected perhaps a fierce battle in the skies, but it had turned into a subterranean crush instead.
A chance discovery of the secret beneath Crab Claw Island had enlightened this experienced assassin to the significance of the Earth Map, allowing him to adjust his plans accordingly.
After all, assassins rarely preferred the method of frontal confrontation.
They favored more covert tactics, which distinguished a warrior from an assassin.
Thus, the not so popular Earth Escape Technique was a standard among those in this line of work, including himself.
What remained was the waiting game.
For him, patience was an essential attribute for this line of work.