High Martial Arts: Slay enemies to become stronger, forge invincibility from billions of corpses.

Xie Yunqing led Song Chen through every corner of the ruins of Changqing City.

City hall, commercial area, residential area, underground parking garage, subway station entrance.

The psionic detector failed to detect any abnormal residual fluctuations. Song Chen extended his Illusionary Eye to its limit, his mental energy penetrating dozens of meters underground, scanning every inch of rock strata.

We found nothing.

Xie Yunqing squatted next to a collapsed load-bearing wall, her fingers tracing the cracks on the wall.

"Something's not right. Master Lu's report said that the Earth Dragon King stayed here."

"But if a fifth-tier peak beast stays for more than a certain period of time, the surrounding environment will definitely leave traces, such as residual spiritual energy, claw marks, scale fragments, and excrement. It's impossible for there to be nothing at all."

She stood up, looked around, her eyes full of confusion.

The two wandered around the ruins for several more hours.

As the sun began to set, the ruins of Changqing City were tinged with orange-red.

Xie Yunqing closed the psionic detector and shook his head.

"I have to go back; I have an analysis report to submit at the research institute tonight."

Song Chen nodded: "I'll take you to the outside of the ruins."

"No need. There are no high-level alien beasts on the outskirts of Changqing City. I can go back by myself."

She put away the detector, took a few steps, then stopped and turned back.

The setting sun cast a long shadow behind her.

"Song Chen".

"Um."

"Thank you, you saved me. I haven't said anything yet."

Song Chen shook his head: "No need to thank me, I wasn't the only one who saved you."

Xie Yunqing didn't pay attention to his words. She turned around and waved her hand with her back to him.

"Be careful, Scholar Song."

Her figure gradually disappeared into the twilight at the edge of the ruins.

Song Chen stood there, watching her leave, then turned and walked back into the depths of the ruins of Changqing City.

He stood in front of a collapsed building. Xie Yunqing had said that this was the place with the strongest life signal.

The Mystic Eye of Illusion opened again, its spiritual power penetrating downwards without regard for consumption—ten meters, twenty meters, thirty meters…

Layers of rock, soil, underground water veins, and abandoned subway tunnels unfolded in my mind, one by one.

There's nothing there, but that's not right.

Song Chen withdrew his mental energy, sat cross-legged on a collapsed monument, placed the Heavenly Blade horizontally on his lap, and closed his eyes.

Instead of using the Vision Eye to scan, I used my intuition.

After killing tens of thousands of strange beasts, he developed a sensitivity to their auras that surpassed even psionic perception.

It's hard to explain; it's like a knife that has cut into too many kinds of flesh and blood, and the blade remembers the temperature of each kind of blood.

The Earth Dragon King has stayed here, and he will return.

Song Chen spent the entire night in the ruins of Changqing City.

The night wind from the plateau rushed into the abandoned streets, howling among the broken walls and ruins.

As the sky began to lighten with the first hint of dawn, Song Chen opened her eyes.

After a night of searching, they still found nothing.

The biggest takeaway is actually the fact that "there is nothing" itself.

Lu Chenzhou was a sixth-level Grandmaster, and his mental strength was much stronger than his. He had been squatting here for ten days and had only confirmed that the Earth Dragon King was not here.

A sixth-tier grandmaster's perception ability is no weaker than his Illusionary Eyes.

Either the Earth Dragon King really left nothing behind, or what it left behind was beyond the perception range of a sixth-level Grandmaster.

Song Chen opened the system panel and his gaze fell on the section on superpowers.

Illusionary Eyes, an A-level mental ability, has the effects of mental scanning, capturing psychic energy fluctuations, and creating illusions.

These eyes had helped him see through countless ambushes of strange beasts and the core distribution of beast tides, but when facing the Earth Dragon King, A-level was not enough.

In the system shop's ability upgrade interface, there is only one upgrade path for the Illusionary Eye.

[Illusionary Eye (Rank A) → Eye of Truth (Rank S)]

[Kill Points Required for Upgrade: 2000000]

Two million.

Song Chen then looked at the upgrade path of the Nine Heavens Thunder.

[Nine Heavens Thunder (Rank A) → Nine Heavens Heavenly Thunder (Rank S)]

[Kill Points Required for Upgrade: 1800000]

One million eight hundred thousand.

The two together amount to 3.8 million.

His current kill count is 2.12 million, all accumulated in Qinghu City, enough to upgrade his Illusionary Eyes.

Thankfully, he had to go home these past two days and didn't have time to spend money, otherwise his blood and energy would have increased long ago.

He opened the system store and selected the Illusionary Eye.

[Do you wish to consume 2000000 kill points to upgrade the ability Illusionary Vision (Rank A) to the Eye of Truth (Rank S)?]

"Yes."

The moment the two million kill points disappeared from the panel, a very thin golden halo appeared deep in Song Chen's pupils.

The halo expanded outward from his pupil, covering the entire iris, and then disappeared.

Those eyes looked no different from before, but if someone looked closely, they would find a very faint golden pattern deep in his iris, like broken amber.

A sharp pain exploded from deep within the optic nerve, but fortunately it was within my tolerance.

The pain quickly disappeared.

The world in my field of vision is collapsing and rebuilding. What was once a blurry outline of psionic fluctuations can now be clearly seen, with the trajectory of every single psionic particle clearly visible.

Previously, only the general structure of the rock strata could be scanned, but now every crack, every density change, and the orientation of every molecule is clearly visible.

He closed his eyes and spent a full ten minutes getting used to it.

Then open your eyes.

Open the eye of truth!

Clock tower, square, ruins, monument, above ground, underground.

Soil layers, rock layers, cracks, groundwater.

There was nothing there.

Song Chen did not give up. He kept his Eye of Truth fully open and moved slowly across the square.

The depth perception of the Eye of Truth requires time to accumulate; the longer the mental energy penetrates, the clearer the image becomes.

He spent three hours plowing the entire square.

There's still nothing there.

Then he walked to the ruins of the building where Xie Yunqing said he first discovered signs of life.

The golden patterns of the Eye of Truth shone brightly deep within the iris.

Suddenly, he saw a spiritual presence emanating from a crack in the load-bearing wall.

It is so fine that it is almost invisible, like a hair leaving a mark on rice paper. It is invisible to the naked eye and cannot be touched by the finger. It can only be barely discerned under specific angles and specific lighting.

The Eye of Truth has detected it.

This aura has faded to the point that it is only one step away from completely dissipating, and its remaining time will not exceed thirty days, which is the limit of the Eye of Truth's ability to detect.

Even with the strongest perception of a sixth-tier grandmaster, without a targeted scan using an S-level mental ability, one cannot detect this level of spiritual aura.

Song Chen looked down following the direction of the breath.

With the Eye of Truth fully activated, his spiritual power, like a golden needle, pierced the ground, penetrating the soil and rock layers.

The breath flows underground.

The aura wasn't descending vertically, but rather angled downwards at approximately sixty degrees, pointing southeast—perfectly consistent with the direction of the Earth Dragon King's excavation described in Lu Chenzhou's report.