Running over the ocean's unstable water slowed Shen down a little, so he took almost five minutes to reach China.

Once there, he found an empty coast and moved inland. He saw many small towns and fortified big cities, but none had tall walls like that Australian city. However, many places were protected by similar magic domes.

China was a cultivator country, so he wasn't surprised by the many people in cultivators' robes he saw. Many medium-sized towns had become a sect or the headquarters of some clans, all filled with cultivators and commoner servants. That was expected, as in both the Eternal Empire and the chaotic era before, cultivators ruled, and commoners obeyed. The Alliance was no different.

As he had ascertained many times, power was the multiversal language.

Shen avoided getting spotted with some timely applied invisibility and kept using the technique as he moved on. He reached the very center of mainland China without trouble, sat down, and used a technique known only by the Keepers of Knowledge and the clan leader:

Blood Resonance.

All matter vibrated in set frequencies that were often unique to each object or its smaller parts. Well, not truly unique, but close enough for most purposes. The ability made the qi around him vibrate according to his living blood's frequency. Said frequency was then broadcasted in the hopes his clan had left behind a magic artifact that would recognize it and respond.

Shen used the technique for an hour because the longer he used it, the further it reached. That didn't make intuitive sense because the power fueling the technique remained the same; therefore, its reach should not increase over time.

However, he was making qi vibrate. Like mana, it had both physical and metaphysical properties.

All metaphysical energy, as in the Aspect of Energy, had willpower. That willpower was weak and easily influenceable. Whenever a stronger will touched any energy particle, that particle got under that will's control.

That's how cultivators absorbed qi in the first place; by taking control of the qi around them and pulling it into their dantians. That's also how Guardians could use mana. Even those who got the nanobots' injection were just using the bots to interface with mana. It was their willpower that did the heavy lifting.

The Drow Maiden had taught him that the Laws of Mana exploited energy's natural submission to protect Reality. They propagated a Guardian's willpower—or at least their will to exist—through the surrounding mana.

The Blood Resonance technique worked on a similar yet different trait.

The technique forced the surrounding qi to vibrate in his blood's frequency. His willpower was directly used for that. But then, the particles he now controlled "told" the uncontrolled particles nearby that they were obeying a stronger will. Qi was so easily influenceable that those particles submitted, too, then also "told" the following particles about it.

Shen's willpower didn't affect any particle other than the ones nearby. Therefore, his willpower's strength didn't matter as long as it kept his technique going. While he did, each particle influenced the next.

In a way, his blood's frequency propagated via metaphysical "word of mouth."

That process took time, as each indirectly touched particle took a little while to get "convinced" to submit. However, if he stopped the technique, they would all also stop almost instantly. They didn't take any "convincing," then.

The same characteristic that made the method easy and cheap to use also made it fragile. Whenever an indirectly convinced particle met someone else's direct willpower, it would acquiesce to it instead. If two indirectly convinced particles with opposing "orders" met each other, both orders would stop propagating right there. Each individual qi particle's willpower was the same as any other, so neither overpowered the other.

To make matters worse, because the convinced qi particles kept their weak willpower, that didn't help protect against the Void. It wouldn't work even if Shen somehow broadcasted his will to exist. Only a cultivator's directly applied willpower, through a domain, aura, or purposefully used qi, could protect Reality.

Mana was superior to qi in that regard.

Shen was really curious to know what things were like for the Alliance's cultivators. How did they protect their land? Did qi have a unique trait he wasn't privy to? Or did they just need to develop domains and stay stationed in an area?

One day, he would find out, but not today.

Today, he used the technique for one hour. The lack of a response after that long meant the artifact that was supposed to respond wasn't close enough to detect his broadcast.

So he stopped, moved north, and tried again.

Shen also got no answer in the second, third, or following attempts. He started moving clockwise throughout the country and repeating the process. After a full circle, he kept smaller distances between each spot.

After the first day of failures, his hope of finding something his clan had left for him decreased.

The thing was, even if there was a responding artifact, it might not answer his call. The thing would contain the blood of every living clan member who was officially allowed to know the Blood Resonance technique. It would read incoming frequencies, analyze them, and only respond if it found a match with the stored blood.

Shen didn't really know whether his blood drop would be there.

After also failing on the second day, he decided he would only try for five days.

Even that long would only be because the book containing the Blood Resonance technique hadn't said how far it could reach. The book only stated he should try using it repeatedly, keeping a "very long" distance between each attempt, then closing the gap if it failed.

He finally got a response in the middle of the third day.

Shen was sitting in the country's center-east when a dagger of pure qi struck him, coming from the east-northeast. It harmlessly went through him and would've continued if he hadn't forcibly crushed it with a quickly deployed aura.

That was it; the artifact was telling him where it was located.

Shen smiled widely.

He hadn't been abandoned. He was still a member of the Feng Clan, and they left something for him on Earth before leaving—or getting exterminated.

Whatever the circumstances, emotion filled him. He would get in touch with his past.

It felt marvelous.

Shen moved east. From now on, he would keep using Blood Resonance to get closer and closer to the artifact. The closer he got, the less time he would have to use it before the qi dagger came.

He stopped at China's east coast, a few dozen miles north of Shanghai. Crossing the sea from there and moving further East would have him arrive in Japan. Hopefully, the artifact would be closer.

Shen, still smiling, used the Blood Resonance technique for an hour...

...but got no response.

His smile turned into a frown. Had he moved too far? He returned to the previous spot and used the technique again. One hour later, he still had gotten no response.

That was unexpected. How could he not get a response at the exact same spot where he had gotten one?

He could think of two main possibilities: interception—hostile or unwitting—or an artifact malfunction.

He quickly Shen discarded the possibility of hostile interception, though. He had destroyed the qi dagger too easily. An enemy wouldn't have let it pass once before intercepting another.

That left both accidental interception, possible but unlikely, and artifact malfunction, which included a whole plethora of new possibilities.

The Drow Maiden had explained the weaknesses of enchantments to him. Shen didn't know if qi and mana enchantments behaved the same. However, if they were similar, Shen bet the artifact was running out of fuel.

It was an obvious conclusion. The thin passively analyzed any frequencies that got to it, which was cheaper than sending the daggers, but it had been a very long time since the Eternal Empire was around. His father had mentioned the "Great Cosmic Blueness" had been foretold to arrive in tens of thousands of years.

Fortunately, that possibility was also the easiest to test for.

Shen stayed in the spot where he had gotten a dagger and kept using the Blood Resonance method beyond his usual one-hour limit. If the artifact was running out of fuel, it would be in energy-saving mode, sending new responses only a long time after the previous one.

He ran the technique for two hours, then three, then four. Even after the fifth hour, he didn't stop. He had been in China for over two days, so he would repeat the technique for that long.

Fortunately, it only took nine hours for a new qi dagger to finally come his way.

Shen took a closer look at the qi construct this time. Any energy was supposed to stop when meeting any energy being directly controlled by someone's willpower or filled with a Path, like the qi in his body. Yet the dagger could go through his qi as if it weren't there.

He had seen mana users interpose their energy before. It was a matter of keeping the right perspective while using mana. However, it was his first time seeing qi behaving like that. Maybe even more impressive was that there was no will actively controlling that qi dagger. It was a mere qi construct that had been shot from far away yet kept that unique property.

Shen could think much faster than the speed at which the construct moved, between Mach 2 and 3. When it got inside him, he analyzed its structure to the last detail before destroying the thing. There was no willpower or Concept in the qi dagger, but he took notice of its inner qi structure—it was more packed and purposeful than whatever he did with his qi. He also analyzed its frequency and lack of magnetism.

He couldn't experiment with it now, but he would remember it later.

Now, it was time to move on.

Shen stood up.

The world lit up.

Shining runes and mystic symbols suddenly appeared all around him, from four hundred yards up to miles away. A gigantic circle surrounded everything.

He was inside a magic formation—one fueled by qi rather than mana.

A cultivator had come for him.

The formation didn't become visible as a warning but because it had just been activated. Thousand of thick qi chains rushed from the ground from all directions to bind him down.

They felt strong, their qi more condensed than his own.

The higher his cultivation level, the more condensed his qi became. Finding qi more condensed than his meant the formation was either under the control of a higher leveled cultivator or was fueled by a strong qi container.

After his Fate Origin realm was Ethereal Harmonization. In Eternal Empire terms, he was inside an Ethereal Harmonization-level formation.

In Alliance's terms, he was inside a C- or B-tier formation.

Yet, for all the qi's potency, the chains weren't fast, Mach 20 at most. They sought to trap him with numbers rather than take him over in the speed department. They also contained only Concepts, no Laws. So he concluded no Eternal Harmonization realm cultivator was actively involved.

The chains were so much slower than him, in fact, that their numbers didn't matter. He could easily escape and considered doing so.

But he wouldn't. Not yet.

Shen took a quick look at the pages in his hand. "Flow," "Gentle Breeze," and "Boundlessness" all looked like they might benefit from such a situation.

Shen was tranquil, but this was a life-threatening situation. His enemy had the means to control at least part of an Ethereal Harmonization's power, while he didn't. Moreover, using such a slow method against him, and chains to boot, instead of just an unbreakable dome, evidenced they wanted to analyze his reaction before moving forth with other schemes he was ignorant of.

Yet, the Drow Maiden had been clear that Shen wouldn't reach far in his Path without taking risks. He didn't need to be suicidal, but weighing risk and reward was necessary for every Guardian.

And right now, he concluded he would use this trap as an opportunity to try to Rupture another Concept.