Chapter 81: Stealth

After eating dinner, Su Chen went down.

He calmly floated down in plain view like a wisp of smoke.

The Prehistoric Beast was still running around in circles. Even though its movements were not very fast, every step it took moved it tens of thousands of feet.

This was a big problem for the Harpies standing guard below because they couldn’t keep up with the Prehistoric Beast’s speed.

Actually, the solution to this problem was very simple.

The Harpies didn’t actually follow it around; instead, they just stationed a number of soldiers in every region. After all, their goal wasn’t to defend against a Prehistoric Beast, but against the attacks of other foreign races.

They weren’t worried that the Prehistoric Beast would accidentally run into them. It traveled in a very orderly fashion around a set path, each step placed with extreme accuracy. It would slightly adjust its trajectory with every step that it took. For this reason, it had already left behind a well-defined circle in the ground.

These footsteps were not chaotic or jumbled in the slightest.

The Prehistoric Beast was probably only able to maintain such an orderly path even though it was muddled because it was still under the Harpies’ control.

For some reason, the Harpies never controlled it into stopping.

Was it because they couldn’t? Or because they didn’t want to?

Su Chen had no idea.

Right now, his current goal was to get close to the Prehistoric Beast.

He was planning on just giving it a try.

Yes, he wanted to walk right up and see how the Harpies would react to him.

He very quickly came down to the level of the beast. Indeed, two Harpies came up and stopped him. “This area is forbidden, human. Go back to where you should be.”

Su Chen glanced at the Prehistoric Beast below him.

He was already quite close to the beast, making it hard for him to make out the beast’s face. All he could see was small hills covering the turtle’s skin. Even though these were just the divots in its skin, they were so large that they looked just like spikes or like peaks of a mountain range.

“I just wanted to see the majesty of a Prehistoric Beast for myself. You all wouldn’t believe me if I said that I could harm it, right?” Su Chen chuckled.

When they heard this, the Harpy soldiers began to laugh coldly.

Of course they didn’t believe that Su Chen would be able to do anything like that.

When the humans had killed nine of these Desolate Beasts, when had they not needed the help of the other races and hundreds of Ultimate Emperor Realm cultivators, thousands of Thought Manifestation Realm cultivators, and tens of thousands of Spirit Burning Realm cultivators?

It was impossible for a little Light Shaking Realm cultivator to pose any kind of threat to a Prehistoric Beast.

For this reason, the massive turtle’s defenses were quite weak. In some sense, this duty was more ceremonial than practical.

Even so, unfortunately, the Harpies weren’t willing to let Su Chen get any closer.

One of the Harpy soldiers said, “Outsider, you are not a Harpy, so you are not allowed any closer. If you want to look, you may stand here and look. That is the most we can agree to.”

“Is that how it is……” Su Chen murmured before nodding. “That’s fine with me!”

He didn’t try to argue, instead remaining floating in the air as he gazed at the lumbering beast below him.

Secretly, however, Su Chen pulled out a vial of medicine and began to furtively drip some blood down onto the turtle’s head. Those Harpies didn’t notice what he was doing, and the Prehistoric Beast was even more unaware.

Very quickly, one of Su Chen’s blood clones formed near the Prehistoric Beast.

Because the Prehistoric Beast’s head was like a mountain, with the ridges on its skin as dense as mountain peaks. This clone had basically appeared in the midst of a densely-packed mountain range, so none of the Harpy soldiers were able to spot it.

But before the clone was able to do anything, Su Chen felt a wave of pressure roll in his direction.

A moment later, Su Chen’s clone was blasted to pieces and disappeared.

How powerful!

Su Chen was secretly stunned.

He knew that the Prehistoric Beast hadn’t tried to destroy it intentionally, but it was just too powerful. Even one of its breaths or some pressure it unintentionally leaked was more than the clone could handle, which was why it was destroyed on the spot.

No wonder these Harpies only dared to watch on from afar. Unless they were at the equivalent of the Light Shaking Realm or above, they didn’t even have the right to stand on its body.

Su Chen’s main body was probably strong enough to barely withstand this pressure.

It seemed that he would really need to use his main body for this.

Su Chen let loose another droplet of blood when he thought of this. Instead of immediately creating another clone, however, he pointed off in the distance. “Look, over there!”

The two Harpies simultaneously glanced in the direction that Su Chen had pointed in but found nothing. When they turned back around to look, they found Su Chen still standing there harmlessly. They asked him suspiciously, “What were you looking at?”

Su Chen shrugged. “Nothing, really - I just think that the scenery here is quite beautiful.”

The two Harpies glared at him, but neither of them realized that the person standing in front of them was no longer the real Su Chen anymore.

On the Prehistoric Beast’s head.

Su Chen had reappeared on the beast’s head.

He felt like a mountain of pressure was smashing down on him.

This made it hard for him to even stand and walk around, let alone fight.

Even so, the more the situation was like this, the more his interest grew.

A Desolate Beast!

He was on the head of a Desolate Beast!

Standing on the head of a Desolate Beast was something that would make anyone giddy.

To Su Chen, however, this was merely the beginning.

Su Chen glanced behind him and found where the Chaos Tower was connected to the beast. The massive tower penetrated deep into the turtle’s body, and countless soldiers were stood guard around it. Most of them were probably incredibly powerful Arcana Masters.

Even so, Su Chen still wanted to try getting into the tower.

Because of Halcyon Wing Streak, Su Chen didn’t want to reveal the fact that he had an illusion technique just yet, so he decided to conceal himself instead.

His figure slipped into the darkness as he began to advance towards the base of the tower.

Each face of the Chaos Tower had a copper mirror suspended on it. The copper mirrors revolved under the power of an Origin Formation, shining beams of light back and forth.

Su Chen knew that this was likely what the Harpies used to scan their surroundings. If he let these beams of light touch him, the concealment technique he was using would likely be exposed.

But as long as he could avoid this light, everything would be fine.

But when he thought about it more, he realized that the light coming from the copper mirrors was a bit too obvious and would be very easily discovered and dealt with. The Harpies were smart, so how could they have possibly been so lazy in setting up their defenses? There was most likely some other kind of mechanism in hiding. If someone tried to sneak in by avoiding the light, they would probably fall right into the real trap.

Su Chen stopped advancing when he thought of this, instead creating another clone that he then concealed and directed around the beams of light.

The clone was able to nimbly advance without any issues. As it got closer and closer, however, a sudden streak of light shot out, bisecting the clone even when it hadn’t really been doing much.

Su Chen’s gaze shrunk.

Ninth-Ring Arcana Technique, Spatial Edge.

This Arcana Technique was impossible to defend against, as it attacked out of nowhere and could ignore any kind of concealment.

So the Harpies did have other preparations hidden away.

Two Harpies came charging out of the tower but found nothing nearby and said, “That might be another mistake. The formation has been a bit unstable recently.”

“There’s nothing we can do about it. The chaotic energy around here is too much for most Origin Formations to behave reliably.”

As the two Harpies spoke, they flew back to their stations.

Su Chen fell deep into thought as he watched them leave.

It was about six thousand feet from here into the tower. In other words, as long as Su Chen could get a thousand feet closer, he would be able to teleport right into the tower.

However, the Harpies’ defenses had quite a bit of range, and how to cross the final thousand feet was indeed a problem. Ninth-Ring Arcana Techniques weren’t easy to deal with. Even if Su Chen wasn’t killed on the spot by one of those attacks, he would probably be seriously injured.

After a moment’s thought, Su Chen pulled out a vial of medicine from his Origin Ring and drank it.

This was the Spirit-Sobering Medicine. It would allow Su Chen’s consciousness to become much stronger. At that moment, Su Chen could only rely on his incredible consciousness power to sense out the dangers around him.

After drinking the medicine, Su Chen’s consciousness power surged. He unleashed it to its fullest extent as it spread into every corner of his surroundings. He had no consciousness perception Origin Skills, so he could only use his consciousness itself to probe his surroundings and develop a plan of attack.

As Su Chen closed in and was about to teleport, he suddenly felt his heart tense up. His consciousness perception was warning him about something.

Su Chen forcefully prevented himself from taking that step and diverted it in another direction.

Even though that step seemed like it would have totally been fine, Su Chen knew that he had narrowly avoided being attacked by a Spatial Edge. His heart pounded violently as adrenaline coursed through his body.

After recovering, he continued to carefully advance. The Harpies had set up a number of different mechanisms in place, and traps were everywhere. However, Su Chen’s extremely high consciousness power finally came into use, and he was able to detect danger moments before it affected him. Even though he lacked consciousness perception Origin Skills, a thought surfaced in Su Chen’s mind as he began to feel like he was beginning to grasp at the fringes of the principles behind consciousness perception.

So he had learned it just like that?

Su Chen was quite surprised.

Consciousness perception Origin Skills were hard to master, and humans could only learn a few of them. On the other hand, the Astrals had quite a few at their disposal. This was why Su Chen had never been able to use this ability despite having an incredibly powerful consciousness.

Now, however, Su Chen found that, under extreme duress, he was beginning to develop the ability to perceive his surroundings with his consciousness alone.

Of course, he was still a far cry from actually figuring out how the traps and mechanisms around him were set up or where they were located. Even so, the little bit he was able to perceive was already helping him immensely.

As he cautiously advanced step by step, Su Chen finally passed the thousand-foot threshold. At this point, he could easily teleport into Chaos Tower.

However, this rare sensation made it so that Su Chen couldn’t bear just teleporting like that.

As such, he decided to continue walking.

He continued to unleash consciousness power, sensing everything around him as he carefully dodged the traps and mechanisms around him.

If an Astral was really present, they probably would have cursed him out for his poor perception and its limited distance. He could only sense dangers that were within a one-step radius of where he was standing, yet he was expending almost all of his consciousness power to do so. At the same time, his perception could only warn him of static dangers.

On the other hand, however, if they were to find out that Su Chen had managed to reach this state without a teacher, their jaw probably would have hit the floor.

In this manner, Su Chen carefully embarked down this treacherous path, miraculously not triggering any traps as he walked towards the entrance to the tower.