Chapter 424: Chapter 203: Crossing the Sea Under Camouflage, Arriving at Hundred Herbs City

"Do you know of any clues or information related to Chen Xiao?"

"I don’t."

Xiao Chen just kept shaking his head, playing dumb.

The Lie-Detecting Treasure Pearl couldn’t actually distinguish between truth and lies. Its principle was to use the Enchanting Heart Secret Technique to compel a person to speak the truth of their own accord.

Hearing this, the Wen Family Cultivator stationed there cupped his fists. "Thank you for your cooperation."

"The Sea of Space is dangerous, so please travel with care. A safe journey to you, Zhu."

The Sea of Space he mentioned was the unclaimed territory between the Jingkong Sea and the Ten Thousand Immortals Archipelago.

This place went by many names, such as the Void Sea, the Common Sea, the Public Sea, or the Ownerless Sea.

Its main features were a few scattered islands, but it had few to no Spirit Veins and virtually no large schools of fish.

Aside from a few small clans who risked living here, most of the time, the only people one would find were passing travelers and the pirates who specialized in robbing them.

After all, being a Tribulation Cultivator was a popular profession in the cultivation world—an ancient and ever-thriving trade.

A blade in hand gives rise to a killer’s heart.

And it just so happened that Cultivators truly did have Flying Swords.

Thus, the Sea of Space had this one extra danger.

Fortunately, Xiao Chen’s Escape Speed was fast enough that even his normal Sword Control was enough to dissuade most Tribulation Cultivators. He didn’t run into any reckless fools looking for trouble.

As a result, he faced almost no delays and, after about three days, successfully reached the Ten Thousand Immortals Archipelago.

There was a checkpoint here as well, where a long row of wanted posters was displayed on hanging plaques.

Xiao Chen glanced over them. The vast majority of the wanted criminals were Tribulation Cultivators whose true identities had been exposed for one reason or another.

They were arranged from left to right in descending order of their bounty amount.

He took a closer look and saw that Chen Xiao’s one-million-Spirit-Stone bounty was only ranked twelfth.

Hiss!

Xiao Chen sucked in a sharp breath. ’There are even bigger fish out there?’

He curiously looked at the number-one spot and found there wasn’t even a portrait on the plaque—just a codename: Whitebeard.

The Spiritual Artifact this person supposedly used during their crimes was a uniquely shaped Duster.

Age: unknown. Name: unknown. Cultivation: unknown. However, based on the traces of their Magic, their strength was deduced to be no less than the Middle Stage of the Golden Core realm.

The total accumulated bounty was a staggering four million eight hundred thousand Spirit Stones.

Any Cultivator who brought in Whitebeard’s head and his signature Duster could claim the reward from the Ten Thousand Immortals Alliance.

The other wanted posters were much the same, offering very little useful information.

Comparatively, fugitives like Chen Xiao—with a full-body portrait, a name, and a known Cultivation level—were in the minority.

But that was to be expected. After all, the easy ones to find had likely already been caught.

Catching even one of them meant a huge influx of Spirit Stones—enough to last an ordinary Cultivator a lifetime.

Even Xiao Chen felt a stir of temptation as he looked at the bounties. He took the initiative to memorize the names of the eleven people ranked above Chen Xiao.

.

Although the Ten Thousand Immortals Archipelago also had a checkpoint, the screening process was far less rigorous than at the Jingkong Sea.

There was no process of stopping and checking people one by one. Instead, a wide channel was set up for people to pass through directly.

The stationed Cultivators simply relied on their own eyes to screen people.

’This checkpoint serves mostly as a symbolic deterrent,’ Xiao Chen figured. ’It’s hard to say how effective it actually is.’

Still, this was a good thing for him. He passed through the Ten Thousand Immortals Archipelago with ease.

He then crossed the Sea of Space again, once more without encountering any Tribulation Cultivators.

「Eight days later」

He successfully arrived in the territory of the Nanlao Sea.

The main destination for this trip to the Eastern Domain, the Hundred Herbs Secret Realm, was located on Hundred Herbs Island, just west of the center of the Nanlao Sea.

Over in the Nanlao Sea, there wasn’t even a checkpoint.

The main reason was that the largest local power, Hundred Herbs City, was a rather unique entity.

Unlike other sea regions dominated by a single sect or jointly controlled by several major powers, Hundred Herbs City’s effective control was limited to the core Hundred Herbs Island and the six other important Tier Three Spirit Veins in the Nanlao Sea.

The vast number of remaining islands belonged to various Cultivation Clans that, while nominally vassals of Hundred Herbs City, were in fact almost completely independent.

The reason for this situation all goes back to the Hundred Herbs Secret Realm.

Many years ago, the Hundred Herbs Secret Realm wasn’t called that. It was a Spirit Medicine Garden exclusively owned by an Overlord-level Sect, the Holy Medicine Sect.

However, during a routine Spiritual Root test, the Holy Medicine Sect discovered a promising youth with a Celestial Spirit Root.

They immediately brought the youth back to the sect and, as was customary, secretly left personnel behind to help him sever his worldly ties.

As it happened, a young boy from the village had gone to the sea that day to gather Spirit Grass. He chanced upon one of the Treasures of Heaven and Earth within a coral reef on the seabed, which allowed him to evade the Divine Sense search.

And then, the Holy Medicine Sect was no more.

The boy, by then a True Monarch, declared that the Hundred Herbs Secret Realm would henceforth be open to all.

In the years that followed, various powers, both large and small, rose and fell in the Nanlao Sea.

But strangely enough, any power that attempted to monopolize the Secret Realm would inevitably be destroyed by some unforeseen circumstances within a century.

Over time, it became like a curse.

So, after the umpteenth change of power, the new overlord of the Nanlao Sea decided on a different approach.

They abandoned any attempt to control the Secret Realm. Instead, they built a city not far from it and named it Hundred Herbs City.

Then, taking advantage of the Secret Realm’s abundant and inexpensive Spirit Grass, they focused their efforts on cultivating Alchemists.

Each time the Secret Realm opened, in addition to collecting Spirit Grass from within, they would also set up various stalls in the surrounding area, attracting Loose Cultivators to trade the Spirit Grass they gathered for all sorts of Spirit Pills right then and there.

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