Chapter 2527: Grafting the Divine Thread

The shopkeeper said that, but everyone could tell from his expression that he didn't actually agree with that statement.

Ling Jinbao still wouldn't take no for an answer: "Don't tell me the whole city is full of young people, not a single old man in sight!"

"Well, not exactly." The shopkeeper thought for a moment, "From the city lord down to the officials at the city office, they and their families—there are still quite a few in their forties and fifties."

The waiter wiping the table nearby chimed in ambiguously: "The rule that forbids settling in Bai Song City for those over thirty-four applies to us, not to the officials."

Ling Jinbao wanted to ask more, but He Lingchuan gave him a slight shake of the head, so he shut his mouth.

As outsiders, it's better not to be too curious, lest we draw unnecessary attention.

Anyway, he still had other ways to gather information.

Just then, someone strode past outside the window, eyes gleaming sharply, carrying a box on their back—clearly not an ordinary commoner at a glance.

In that brief glance, He Lingchuan couldn't discern their cultivation level, but he could confirm they were a cultivator.

And under the sunlight, the divine connection on their shoulder was actually a light red, different from other outsiders entering the city.

What does that mean—was this person specially marked?

After eating their fill, He Lingchuan and the three of them wandered around again, sticking mainly to the main streets and side alleys, picking up some small items along the way, and not venturing into remote corners.

Even if some deity behind the scenes was paying attention to their movements, they couldn't find anything unusual in the tracks of these three.

Ling Jinbao wandered back to the base of the city wall and bought a few more fried pastries. He Lingchuan glanced at the sky: "Not early anymore, time to head back."

The three walked back to Tongfu Inn.

Originally, the caravan had booked the Daitong Inn, eight people per room. For convenience of movement, the three of them had paid out of pocket for a single room, and they'd chosen one deep inside the inn—advantage being a small patch of open ground in front of the door for exclusive use, no one else could enter; disadvantage being it was close to the stables and the outer road. Still, it made scaling the wall to go out easy, and they could always overhear private chatter from outside.

After another half an hour, that patch of ground would no longer catch the sun.

He Lingchuan called the two over to stand in the sunlight: "Don't move."

Ling Jinbao didn't understand, but Dong Rui got it: "Ah, here we go again with that thing?"

He too had been subjected to the divine gaze connection several times already—he had experience.

"Right." He Lingchuan drew the Floating Life Blade and examined the yellow threads on the three of them.

Dong Rui immediately shut his mouth. To be safe, he raised his index finger to his lips and made a shushing gesture at Ling Jinbao.

Ling Jinbao looked at him, then at He Lingchuan, and stayed silent. Clearly, the Emperor knew exactly what to do, so there was no need for him to question.

"Auntie, give me three tiny spiders, as small as possible."

He Lingchuan made a request, and Auntie had no objections: "Sure, just wait."

Soon, three spiders the size of a fingertip crawled out from the mugwort garden and stood in a row before He Lingchuan.

Using the sunlight, He Lingchuan made out the yellow thread on his shoulder, then flipped the blade's hilt and lightly wound it around the thread.

If he used the blade edge, it would snap on contact;

but using the hilt, it held—didn't break, could wrap several turns.

Then He Lingchuan flipped the blade edge over and lightly severed the thread end.

The yellow thread didn't vanish into thin air—it remained wrapped around the Floating Life Blade's hilt.

He Lingchuan brought the thread end on the hilt close to the small spider and gave it a gentle tug forward—

The thread end stuck easily to the small spider.

He Lingchuan held up the Floating Life Blade and gave it a couple of test lifts—hm, good, it stuck very firmly.

He then reversed the rotation of the hilt, winding the thread loop back along its original path.

Once the Floating Life Blade was free of the yellow thread, that thread remained stuck to the small spider, motionless.

"Good, done!" He Lingchuan stepped back two steps, satisfiedly admiring his work.

The two beside him looked utterly bewildered, having seen him from start to finish merely waving the long blade in circles, as if performing some ritual on Auntie Zhu's little spiders.

He Lingchuan then repeated the same process, wrapping the yellow threads on the two others onto small spiders, then sending them off to lurk outside.

From now on, these three small spiders would serve as their puppet avatars. As long as they stayed at the inn or followed the caravan out of the city, the demons couldn't pinpoint their true location.

Once freed from the entanglement of the yellow threads, they could act freely.

This was also a newly developed use of the Floating Life Blade by He Lingchuan in recent years, tested with the divine gaze of other demons.

Once the Floating Life Blade cuts the thread, the demon above might notice. So He Lingchuan had wondered: couldn't this "gaze" be grafted onto other things?

That way, we wouldn't alarm the demon, yet could escape its surveillance.

When demons attach their threads to people, they don't need to know the person's name, birth characters, height, or weight—just having passed through their temple is enough to get stuck, so this thread adhesion must be superficial.

If so, why couldn't we just redirect it?

As long as it's a living thing, it should work. The so-called "divine gaze" sounds lofty, but in reality, most of the time it's just a tracker's function. Demons rely on this thread to learn the target's approximate location.

Of course, we can't rule out that a few demons' threads have other effects—He Lingchuan hasn't discovered them yet, but we maintain a cautious attitude.

Dong Rui briefly explained a few things to Ling Jinbao, then asked:

"Weird—when did we pick this up? We haven't even entered a god's temple."

"Probably when we passed through the city gate." He Lingchuan said, "I checked—everyone entering or exiting the city gate has it, but the city's residents don't."

"In other words, the demons are monitoring outsiders." Ling Jinbao also perked up, "I've never heard of demons caring this much about which city, except Lingxu City. It seems there's something hidden in this city—demons don't want outsiders to find out."

Dong Rui countered: "Lingxu City is very free—certainly not like this place."

He Lingchuan recounted what he'd seen that afternoon, then said: "That person we passed by the noodle shop was a cultivator—the thread on their head had turned red, likely meaning they were under intense scrutiny. If they acted strangely, the demons and their underlings would probably come after them."

"It's getting dark." The sunlight on the open ground in front of the house was gradually shifting, "After nightfall, we'll first gather intelligence."

……

That evening, the noodle shop owner returned home, first spent some time being affectionate with his wife, then inexplicably overcome with drowsiness, fell into a deep sleep after just a couple of hours, and even had a dream.

In the dream, someone was talking to him, seeming somewhat familiar, but upon waking, he couldn't remember a single word.

Strange.

Meanwhile, He Lingchuan gathered his companions, first set up a soundproof barrier, then shared information:

"I used some means to make him reveal the truth in his dream; it's safer this way."

Dong Rui yawned and asked: "What did he say?"

Many people in the convoy went to Red Mansion Lane at night, or else went to find the city's back doors and old lovers, spending the night pleasantly. The three of them, on the contrary, stayed honestly in the room.