"Hmm? You guys even got here faster than us?"

He Zhiqing stepped forward and couldn't help but feel a bit puzzled when he saw Liang Yi approaching.

With him and Pang Qingshi, the two great Divination Experts on their side, even though they had gone to the Shijijiu Domain where Xia Kun was, their speed and safety should have been much faster than that of Liang Yi's group, who had been relentlessly pursued by Ren Wu.

After all, with Liang Yi and Su Youyi attracting the main attention, there were far fewer people monitoring them.

"We've been chased by Ren Wu all across the continent; it wouldn't be good without a sense of urgency."

Liang Yi chuckled and lightly punched He Zhiqing and Ke Mengzhan on the shoulders.

"It's alright with Cang Dong gone in the Beisheng Domain, but if Xia Kun hadn't been seriously injured and in seclusion, we would probably have been discovered as soon as we approached the site of his retreat."

Ke Mengzhan couldn't help but smile wryly and shake his head, the most nerve-wracking thing for them had been tracking the spiritual energy pathways near the area where Xia Kun was in seclusion, with their hearts always in their throats, fearing Xia Kun would suddenly emerge from seclusion.

"The spiritual energy pathways of both the Beisheng Domain and the Shijijiu Domain are all here, take care of it."

He Zhiqing casually tossed the map to Uncle Ju, his face showing a sense of relief.

"Where is Pang Qingshi? Why didn't she come with you?"

Liang Yi asked He Zhiqing with some curiosity.

That third flash of light that just appeared must have been Pang Qingshi, but the streak of starlight had suddenly changed direction halfway down.

"She received a message from Wan Tinggui, saying there was something."

He Zhiqing did not know the reason either and explained casually.

"Alright..."

Upon hearing it was a message from Wan Tinggui, Liang Yi immediately understood. It was most likely that she was pulled away to soak in the hot springs again.

"Woohoo, at last we're all here!"

Uncle Ju had already lost interest in women and cheerfully spat out two other maps from his mouth, which he spread out alongside the map He Zhiqing gave him.

The three, Liang Yi included, were also curious and leaned in together to examine the result of their year of hard work.

On the three identical maps, the glowing parts were completely different.

Each map had specific areas filled with special runes, and now it was precisely these runes that gave off a bright light.

"Spirit Runes were originally just the basic form of Array Patterns; I didn't expect them to be used to record the pathways of spiritual energy."

He Zhiqing said quietly as he looked at the densely packed runes.

"After all, an Array can be activated because of these Spirit Runes infused with spiritual energy as their foundation. And since they can record a Cultivator's spiritual energy, using them to record the unclaimed spiritual energy of the world naturally poses no problem."

Liang Yi had some understanding of Arrays, but he also had not expected the method Uncle Ju mentioned to record the pathways of spiritual energy to be this, which he had never heard before.

In Liang Yi's eyes, these simplest of Spirit Runes were like blank pieces of paper. What they had been doing this past year was to stick these blank papers directly onto the various spiritual energy pathways of the Abyss Continent, imprinting the traces of the Abyss Continent's spiritual energy pathways on these "blank papers."

Uncle Ju was at this moment extremely focused, meticulously overlapping the three pieces of the map, and using a Secret Technique in his palms, he began to slowly fuse them together.

It was like digging countless trenches on the surface of the land and then filling those trenches with water from their source.

The slowly lighting-up threads on the map appeared to Liang Yi and the others like the trenches being filled with water.

The fusion of the maps didn't take too long, and in less than the time it took for an incense stick to burn, the three maps had completely merged into one, and even the runes on the maps had finally formed a complete shape.

Uncle Ju loosened his claws, and the map slowly suspended in front of him, then he slowly extended his Divine Sense into it.

Every rune on the map contained extremely complex spiritual energy information, the most direct record of the world's spiritual energy, which was astonishingly chaotic to the extreme.

If an ordinary Cultivator were to probe this information, they would only feel it was disordered and in a mess, incapable of finding any clue no matter how they looked. It was like a scholar who had received classical private schooling from a young age suddenly seeing a tome composed entirely of garbage words — no matter how well-educated, they couldn't understand a single bit.

But in the eyes of Uncle Ju, a "former Heavenly Dao," this chaotic and disordered spiritual energy information was like an unrivaled painting rendered with the spiritual energy of the world, and his task was to find that most central point in the painting.

Finding that point was not difficult for Uncle Ju; what was difficult was that this point kept moving.

But this core point, though it moved erratically, did so in a pattern.

Uncle Ju was now searching for that pattern, trying to use it to predict where this core point would appear in the coming months or the latter half of the year.

Time passed little by little, and Uncle Ju's brow furrowed deeper and deeper, and the trio, including Liang Yi, grew increasingly nervous, unsure of Uncle Ju's current condition.

They had also tried to extend their Divine Sense into it, but they couldn't see anything and were left somewhat dizzy and disoriented by the torrent of chaotic information.

Uncle Ju's vertical pupils shone with divine light, like the moving heavens on a night sky, where countless pieces of information were neatly arranged like stars.

This was a power unique to Heavenly Dao, and no one else in the world could see through it.

Yet Uncle Ju, audaciously trying to forcibly exert the power that only a Tenth Realm Heavenly Dao could control with his cultivation at the midstage of the Eighth Realm.

A hint of metallic sweetness suddenly spread in his mouth, and pale golden blood appeared along the corner of Uncle Ju's lips, but before it could fully drip down, it self-ignited without flame, the boundless power contained in the Essence Blood being rekindled into a golden mist and absorbed by Uncle Ju, as the price for exercising this power!