31 - Unfindable

Su Tao now had a crazy thought. As he worked it out in his mind, it continued to make more and more sense and seem more feasible.

'Aura is just a leaking of Qi from something into the environment. No matter how weak a cultivator is, their body gives off an aura from their body since Qi is naturally in the body even if they're not at the silver rank.

Once someone reaches the silver rank, it becomes much stronger, and that evolves into inner energy, which is very easily sensed because it is the body directly converting Qi into inner energy, which will inevitably convert back over time and leak out a more powerful aura. This is also the basis of finding resources based on aura.

I don't know the state that the power of my eyes exists in, but if it gives off an aura, that means that it also is made of Qi.

I found that the black blood in my body can isolate and absorb Qi, so why wouldn't it be able to absorb something made out of Qi?' He mentally figured out the basis of his plan while a grin slowly covered his face.

As he thought of this plan, he quickly tried to sense the power of the green lightning on his body since it was the strongest. As he found the aura, he could realize why it would be quite easy to track him. This aura just stood out far too much compared to the natural aura of the forest.

But then, he directed the black blood to the area in his body where the aura resided, and it quickly started to try to envelop the aura, first cutting it off from the rest of the power. Then, it started to slowly consume and absorb this power.

However, he realized something weird. As he absorbed the power of the green lightning in his body, the black blood was actually dissolving with it. This was different to the other inner energies where it would be a very small disproportional loss

But once he thought about it, he was not surprised since the power from his eyes was comparable to the power from someone at the second silver star. However, he was more happy that it was working.

This meant that he had the ability to conceal his aura as long as he did not actively use the power of his eyes.

Of course, he had no clue how to conceal the aura of his body, but that would only linger around for at most five minutes and even a beast that specialized in tracking like the wolf with those from the Yin Moon Sect could only detect the aura up to a day later.

Little did he know that his body had no aura whatsoever at this point in time, and even his gaze was empty, and no one would be able to sense it even if they had that ability. Of course, he wouldn't realize this because people often couldn't sense their own aura at all.

A few minutes later, Su Tao had managed to dissolve half the power of his right eye from within his body, but he had used up all of the black blood left in his body. But he expected this since his body was already functioning to its max. This wouldn't normally happen.

The power of his left eye was actively healing him and expelling the poisonous inner energy, so he would get rid of that later. As for the black blood, it was also helping to expel the poisonous inner energy, which meant that there would not be much extra of it since he used almost all of it to make those four black barriers during the fight.

He had not let the tattoos show during the fight since he didn't want the enemy to make the connection and place even more importance on him. In that way, his injuries were just a little bit worse since he didn't use the power of his left eye to its fullest extent.

The tattoos would only show when he activated the power of that respective eye to the absolute maximum, and he could control it otherwise.

After another half day, he had recovered about half of his right eye's power while he fully expelled the poison and his whole body was free from the inner energy of those who attacked him. He had also then used the black blood that did recover to dissolve the remaining power left in his body from his eyes, which once again drained him of the black blood.

However, it was all worth it when he saw that the result was that he had no aura coming from his body at all. It was as if he was a ghost. He was extremely happy with this result.

He only felt a little annoyed that it took a long time to hide the aura and it wouldn't be any help in a short term chase. However, the fact that he could hide his aura at all made him very happy and much more confident in his ability to survive.

After all, he was in hiding right now, whether it was from the Yin Moon Sect or the City of Silver Sparrow.

As for those from the Yin Moon Sect, they were still in the area where Li Lan broke through, and they seemed to be staying there for a while. Su Tao was not stupid enough to try to go to sleep in case they tried to come find him, and he would stay awake until they left.

He had already moved away from the last place that had traces of his aura, and he would be completely unfindable unless their trained wolf locked onto his body's aura, which it couldn't because they no longer had the possibility of locking onto him from the time that had passed and they didn't have something that directly contained his body's aura anyway.

Su Tao once again went into the dimension of his eyes to see if dissolving the power with the black blood did anything. He doubted it, but he knew nothing about this stuff, and there might be some sort of reaction that he didn't know about since the black heart did actually come from the two eyes originally.

To his disappointment, there was nothing. That weird white light the size of a particle was still between the two balls of eye power, but he did not let it bother him.

The two balls of eye power were dimmer, but this was expected since he had used a portion of their power and it was still recovering.

Just as he was about to leave the dimension of his eyes, he finally noticed something.

Although it was barely noticeable, he felt it.

His body no longer existed when he went into this dimension, but he figured that that was because of the change in the eyes and the black heart. As such, he regarded it with no importance whatsoever.

However, his consciousness still went into this dimension, and it could in a way look around as if his body was here, but it actually wasn't.

However, he felt an infinitely small tug on his consciousness that was similar to when he was entering or exiting this dimension, but many many times weaker. It was so weak that it did not affect his consciousness in any way.

However, he was curious as to what this tug was. He was quite familiar with this feeling due to being sucked into the dimension of the endless grassland a few times as well as the feeling he got every time he went into this dimension of his eyes.

He was curious as to what this tugging was, but he had no clue how to find out what it was for, and he had no way to find out where it was coming from. As such, he quickly ignored it and left the dimension of his eyes.

As with everything related to his eyes so far, he would let time tell what it was. He had no way of finding out or asking anyone anything about it, so he would just let it explain itself like the words in the green and purple books had.

As for those from the Yin Moon Sect, they were still in the forest. They stayed there for the rest of the night, healing. The next morning, they left to pursue Li Lan.

The yellow-eyed man, the wolf, and the two middle tiers had recovered mostly and had about 90% of their battle power, but the lightning man was only able to have at most 60% of his battle power remaining. As such, he would be the equivalent of a normal middle tier at most.

As for the trained beast, it had recovered a bit from the wound on its side, but its snout had been cut in half, diminishing its tracking abilities permanently. Of course, it was also better than before, so they would be able to keep about the same distance from Li Lan as before, at least proportionally.

They had taken a rest to recover strength, but they were actually weaker than before they stopped to recover based on the damage that Su Tao did to their group. This decreased their chances of catching Li Lan, but they had no choice but to go after her.

They couldn't even hire help because they did not carry much wealth on them since they were on a mission. And if they chose to give up on the mission, they would be killed once they went back to the Yin Moon Sect for failing them and letting go of a top genius who was their enemy.

As they left, Su Tao let out a breath of relief. It looked like they really were going to let him off, and he had an idea of why, but he was still relieved nonetheless.

He had looked at the possessions of the poisonous woman after he killed her, but nothing she had was useful for Su Tao, so he just left it there.

As such, Su Tao just continued to cultivate in peace. He was not going to use resources right now, and searching for them would only increase his chances of being found by someone. Even if he found resources on the level of the water moon lotus, he wouldn't use them now, so there was no reason to.

He cultivated in the tree for a long time, three months straight. In this time, he had managed to reach 24.99% of the way to the silver rank.

However, as soon as he reached the 25% of barrier, he suddenly had an extreme reaction within his body.

It was unlike anything he had felt before, and he instantly used the black blood in his body to try to sense what exactly was happening to the bottleneck. However, he was stunned by what he saw.

In the bottleneck to the silver rank, there was a large amount of black blood that had gathered on the bottleneck, which surprised Su Tao.

Suddenly, the black blood started to seep through the barrier within the bottleneck, and it brought a weird feeling to Su Tao. He had no way to describe it, and it was like a special power had seeped into his very being, strengthening it.

After a few minutes, the bottleneck, which was originally white in appearance, had a tinge of black to it, making it an incredibly light gray. Su Tao could not see this, but he could sense that some form of power from the black blood had merged into his bottleneck, doing something to it.

'This is kind of like how the black blood merged into my body.' He thought to himself.

He had previously used the black blood to repair the bottleneck when he cracked it, but this was different. Then, the power had merely gone along the surface and repaired it, whereas now it was actually seeping into the bottleneck as if the bottleneck was porous and the black blood was a liquid.

He had no clue what changes this would bring, but he was sure that it was something to do with the fact that he had broken through 25% of the barrier to the silver rank.

Suddenly, he had a crazy thought. 'Could it be?'