Chapter 157: Depth Echo

Once Su Chen had run through seventeen stores, he finally noticed Kelesda.

This disappointed him slightly.

Why had he suddenly shown up, and why now of all times? Wasn’t he only supposed to appear three days from now?

Despite the regret in his heart, however, Su Chen didn’t hesitate in the slightest. His figure instantly flickered briefly before disappearing.

Kelesda saw Su Chen’s figure flicker as soon as he came within view. He knew that Su Chen had likely used that skill of his yet again. Even though he could lock down and control an area of space, its effects were limited. If he wasn’t able to get within a certain distance of Su Chen in the first place, he wouldn’t ever be able to imprison Su Chen.

Previously, Kelesda had been able to imprison Su Chen at Thousand Poisons Mountain because Su Chen hadn’t placed any clones outside of the area beforehand, which made it impossible for him to use the Light Shaking Phantom technique. By the time Kelesda had started chasing him, Su Chen no longer had any time to release any clones, which was why Kelesda had eventually been able to trap him in that weird area of space. This obviously drastically limited Su Chen’s ability to escape.

But this time, Su Chen was prepared. He had set up a number of different clones all over the city. As soon as he saw Kelesda, he immediately leapt away, not even bothering to pick up a treasure that his fingers were just about to close in on. His decisiveness had rendered Kelesda completely helpless.

“He’s already started running?” Kelesda stopped.

He wasn’t that surprised by Su Chen’s decision, but he couldn’t help but feel a sense of regret surface in his heart.

“You old man, you’ve finally shown your face. I thought that you had been finished off by the Mother Goddess Sect, but now, it seems that you’ve given up on Fate’s Hands and become one of Eternal Night’s subordinates.” Su Chen’s voice floated over to Kelesda from nearby, but this wasn’t the real body; it was a clone who was sitting on a nearby rooftop and chuckling provocatively at him.

When Kelesda turned around and saw the clone, he didn’t immediately attack. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. My name is Kaderville, and I am under orders to bring you to His Majesty Eternal Night.”

“Kaderville?” Su chen was taken aback. “You changed your name?”

After thinking about it for a moment, he understood what had happened. “So that’s how it is. Was that one of the conditions of your alliance? You need to change your name and swap flags? That is one way to solve the issue, I suppose.”

“This is all thanks to you,” Kelesda said darkly, but his words could only be heard by Su Chen.

“Yes. Without me, you might not have been able to make such a decision. And even if you could have, those old fogeys back at Fate’s Hands probably wouldn’t have agreed.” Su Chen sighed and said, “I unintentionally helped you complete your transformation. Well, without destruction there can be no construction. You should actually be thanking me.”

“Fine. When I bring you to His Majesty Eternal Night, I’ll show you what no construction without destruction is,” Kelesda snarled fiercely. “I’ll rip you into pieces so that every part of your body can be rebuilt after being destroyed!”

“Hehe, that’s quite vicious,” Su Chen jabbed back as he smiled. “Unfortunately, the moment you submitted to Eternal Night, your will was no longer your own. Even if you are someday able to catch me, you won’t be the person who decides what happens to me. Eternal Night will make the final decision.”

Kelesda froze momentarily.

Su Chen’s words were correct. The moment he had submitted to Eternal Night was the moment that he had lost his autonomy. There were some things that he would never be able to make the final decision for anymore.

Even so, this was the price that he had to pay.

How could Kelesda have gotten all of those benefits for free? He had turned a dangerous situation into an opportunity for revival, making it possible to rebuild Fate’s Hands. However, this new Fate’s Hands had had its name changed and now served under someone else’s banner. This was the necessary price.

Eternal Night hadn’t done so without a price either.

Taking in Kelesda would no doubt anger a few of his older subjects. They would be dissatisfied and enraged, and some would even try to make a move against Kelesda. It was even possible that Eternal Night’s prestige would suffer a blow.

However, everyone had tacitly agreed to this price during the exchange.

The more you wanted, the more of a price you would need to pay.

But Su Chen ripping open the wound of what he had paid still caused Kelesda to wince in pain.

He harrumphed. “At the very least, I still have the right to decide on how to deal with you.”

Su Chen chuckled. “You might have the right to do other things, but you absolutely do not have the right to decide on how to deal with me.”

When Kelesda heard this, he fell silent.

Su Chen then said, “I came to see you not because I wanted to converse with you, but rather because there’s something I want you to tell His Majesty Eternal Night.”

“What?” Kelesda suddenly felt a trace of unease surface in his heart.

Indeed, Su Chen’s next words shocked him to the core. “It’s not much, really. It’s just that during these past two years, I’ve visited Jade Clearmist’s secret treasure realm, Fate’s Hands’ headquarters, and the Mother Goddess Sect’s holy ground. This has made me quite rich, but keeping all of these treasures on hand is not the smartest thing to do……”

He purposefully drew out the last sentence as he smiled at Kelesda.

Kelesda suddenly realized something and blurted out, “NO!”

Su Chen shook his head slightly. “That’s right, I’ve hidden them.”

Hidden them?

Hidden them!

This whole time, Serene Dream Lotus Crown and Eternal Night had treated the treasures as things that had been temporarily misplaced. As long as they caught the thief, they would instantly regain everything that they had lost.

This thought was quite logical, and there wasn’t anything necessarily wrong with it.

However, just because it was a logical assumption didn’t mean that it would definitely occur.

Su Chen had smacked them in the face with an extremely simple strategy.

He had hidden them.

In other words, even if they captured Su Chen, they probably wouldn’t be able to regain those treasures any longer.

These weren’t piddling amounts of treasures either. They had been gathered by a few powerful organizations over a span of thousands of years. If their total cost was converted into Origin Stones, they would probably be worth hundreds of millions.

In particular, Divine-class Origin Tools were basically priceless and couldn’t be bought with Origin Stones no matter how hard one tried.

Virtually no one would be able to stomach this kind of a loss.

Kelesda stared angrily at Su Chen. “You couldn’t have possibly hidden them. I’ve been keeping a close eye on you this entire time. You haven’t left Sky City even once.”

Su Chen shrugged. “Don’t be stupid, Kelesda. You should know me and the tricks that I have up my sleeves. I don’t even need to go out on my own — I can just send out a single clone, and that should be more than fine. And I wouldn’t need to do something too grandiose to hide a few Origin Rings — I just found a few random places, dug some holes, and buried them in the ground.”

Kelesda’s heart sank into the depths of despair.

Gone.

The treasures were all gone!

This bastard!!!

How could he have done something like that?

What would he tell His Majesty? Or Her Majesty?

When Su Chen saw Kelesda’s enraged expression, he chuckled. “That’s all I wanted to tell you. Do you still want to fight? Then you should hurry up and make your move.”

Kelesda stared intently at Su Chen, but then suddenly turned and shot off in a direction as he growled, “You won’t be able to get away with this, Halcyon Wing Streak!”

That was the direction of Su Chen’s main body.

“Is that so?” said the clone calmly. “I don’t think so. Depth Echo is strong, but that doesn’t mean that there’s nothing I can do about it.”

“What?” Kelesda trembled violently. “When did you know?”

“Yes, I already know,” Su Chen’s clone said as he laughed. “I already know how you were able to lock onto my position. Kelesda, it won’t be this easy in the future.”

As the clone spoke, it began to retreat into the distance and gradually disappeared.

“NO!” Kelesda howled as he raced toward Su Chen’s main body’s direction.

This time, he really was panicking.

But just as he reached the halfway point, his perception of Su Chen suddenly began to fade…...

On the other end, Su Chen gulped down the medicine that he had concocted and let out a long sigh.

This Arcana Technique, which had frustrated him for over a year, had finally been almost completely nullified.

The technique that Kelesda had used on him was a Tenth-Ring Arcana Technique, Depth Echo.

This Arcana Technique had originally been protecting the resources in Fate’s Hands’ treasure stores and had been prepared by Kelesda as a last resort. Since Kelesda had been a thief himself for a long time, it was only natural that he was incredibly protective of his stash. Anyone who took his items would be doomed to be constantly hounded by this Arcana Technique, giving Kelesda access to their position at any time.

Because the technique merely transmitted a location and didn’t actually harm the user in any way, it could completely ignore any and all defensive techniques. Additionally, its influence actually was impossible to perceive, making it incredibly difficult to remove. These characteristics made this location-perceiving technique one of the most effective ones of the current era.

Su Chen had thrown two Demonic Emperor Origin Crystals and a Demonic King Origin Crystals at the scepter to obtain an answer. Since Kelesda was a forbidden Arcana Master, making him stronger than most Demonic Emperors, making a prediction that was related to him would be incredibly expensive.

Su Chen’s clone had only exchanged a few sentences with Kelesda to inform him about Halcyon Wing Streak’s “treasure stores,” but Su Chen had come up with at least a hundred other plans. Each one of them involved getting in contact with Kelesda and conversing with him in order to obtain an answer.

The Origin Bone Scepter’s predictions didn’t necessarily have to come true, but there nonetheless still needed to be a foundation of truth incorporated into the prediction.

For instance, after the Origin Bone Scepter predicted what Su Chen would eat, Su Chen was then able to use that information to determine a potential plan of attack. This new future would then be revealed to him by another prediction from the Origin Bone Scepter, as it was now possible.

But after he made that prediction, Su Chen had changed his mind and hadn’t gone to eat breakfast.

The future had changed, but not because the Origin Bone Scepter’s prediction wasn’t accurate. Rather, it was because the future was full of limitless possibilities, and the Origin Bone Scepter only showed one of the “unknown” possibilities. Once the unknown became known, it wasn’t all that surprising that the future would change as a result.

For this reason, Su Chen could predict that he would encounter Kelesda but could choose a different route. However, he needed to come up with a specific plan for the Origin Bone Scepter’s prediction to come true.

As such, Su Chen had chosen to send a clone down one of the hundreds of paths that he had chosen in order to make one of those possibilities happen.

The goal of sending one of his clones to meet with Kelesda, in addition to having him pass that message on to Eternal Night, was also to confirm his suspicions and make sure that the Origin Bone Scepter’s prediction was accurate.

Now that he knew that the tracking technique that had been used on him was Depth Echo, Su Chen had then attempted to divine a way to nullify it. The cost of this was much lower, and he was able to very quickly concoct a medicine to deal with Depth Echo.

But even the medicine that he had spent so long trying to perfect was actually not possible to fully concoct as he was lacking some resources. This had weakened the medicine’s overall effect and meant that he couldn’t completely escape from Depth Echo’s grasp.

Because the issue was a lack of resources and had nothing to do with Su Chen’s skill, the Origin Bone Scepter wasn’t able to provide Su Chen with a way to deal with the situation.

The result was that now, Kelesda could no longer determine where exactly Su Chen was hiding. However, he could still determine what general direction Su Chen was hiding in.