Chapter 222: Spies, Space, and Speed
Fu Qingshan sat in his hiding spot near the road outside the main gate leading into Sixth Flawless Flowing City. He’d meticulously pulled branches and leaves around himself, and the technique he used to mask his qi was at Mastery. Additionally, his sect supplied a treasure that further concealed his presence.
With his spyglass, he could see the road, but even though he was only in the middle of the Foundation Establishment realm, no one aside from a Golden Core cultivator specializing in detection or a Nascent Soul would ever be able to see or detect him.
Day after day, week after week, month after month, he spent all his duty hours alone in that location or one similar. Which was exactly how he liked it. No one bothered him. He could cultivate or read or do whatever he wanted as long as he kept watch with his spiritual sense.
Best of all, he earned lots of contribution points for performing his crucial task.
As the grandson of a sect elder, he’d been tested on the fourteenth anniversary of his birth, and he’d expected nothing less than an A+ rank as was his right as the young master of his house. When he’d tested as only a D-, he’d been crushed. He went to his grandfather, fully anticipating being disowned.
Instead, Grandfather had given Fu Qingshan sage advice. “Grandson, as fruit of my lineage, your spiritual roots qualify you, barely, for admission into our Jade Chameleon Sect, but you will never amount to much. Put aside thoughts of being an unbeatable warrior or formations master or alchemy expert. Find something that is useful to the sect that few people can or will do and specialize in that thing. In that way, you’ll bring honor to yourself and our family.”
Fu Qingshan had taken that guidance to heart. After three and a half years in the Qi Gathering realm and over twenty as a Foundation Establishment cultivator, he’d mastered many, many techniques. And all of them worked together to make him the best in the sect at hiding, detecting messages flying past, intercepting and copying those messages, and sending them on their way with no one the wiser.
He could barely swing a sword without injuring himself. His ability to cultivate was lacking. None of the pavilions wanted him as a member. But in the area of spying on messages sent by other factions, he was an expert, and that service he performed for the sect was deemed critical by the elders.
In the last year, not a single message going in or out of the city had slipped past while he was on duty. Well, to the best of his knowledge or as best anyone in his sect could determine, anyway. It was possible that someone had a message technique with enough stealth to avoid his detection. He doubted it, though.
His grandfather had recently honored him at a family dinner, and it had felt so good to be the one on the receiving end of that praise instead of his idiot cousin. So what if she had B roots? Had she been assigned a critical mission like he had?
No. No, she hadn’t.
He would always remember the look on her face that night, at least partially because he kept picturing it over and over and over at every opportunity. And as he continued reminiscing about that evening, he pulsed out his senses every minute or so until he finally detected … something.