I Can Only Cultivate In A Game-Chapter 229: Tracking Technique

However it was too late... She’d launched herself over the rooftops in a flurry of silver-blue light, using her movement technique to weave through the air like a dragonfly.

Her soft laughter echoed across the tiled roofs as citizens looked up, awed by the glowing silhouette.

Victor clenched his jaw. "This girl..."

A notification popped up in his sight.

> New Objective:

> Return the City Lord’s Daughter to the palace before her absence is discovered.

> Failure Consequences: Unknown.

"Of course," Victor muttered.

He shot off the ground with a burst of wind using Wind Surge.

His figure sliced across rooftops like a shadow as he followed the trail of lingering qi.

His eyes narrowed each time her figure dipped around a corner just as he was about to reach her.

"Xuan Qing!"

"Catch me if you can, *Fang Chen*! This is Blueflame’s most thrilling chase!" she called back while twirling mid-air and flipping onto a rooftop awning.

"I swear when I catch you—"

Just as he prepared to leap again, something blinked in his peripheral vision.

He reached into his storage pouch and pulled out a fragment of the Anchor Disk.

Which was a piece of the one he had given to the player party headed to the Blight Swamps.

The shard pulsed with an ominous violet hue, blinking like a heartbeat.

His brows furrowed. "Shit..."

The trigger signal. It could only mean something had gone wrong and the team of players needed him.

But right now, he couldn’t leave.

Not with Xuan Qing still hopping over rooftops like a rogue phoenix. He pocketed the disk fragment and gathered his breath.

"Sorry, princess. Playtime’s over."

His eyes glowed faintly.

The arrow-like marks returned, trailing over his limbs in a quiet blaze.

His white hair shimmered and floated as if lifted by invisible winds, and his skin took on that telltale milky aura of the Void Emperor bloodline.

He vanished.

[ Shadow Blink Activated ]

In the blink of an eye, he reappeared directly behind the still-laughing Xuan Qing just as she prepared to leap again.

"Wha—!"

Too late.

He grabbed her around the waist and slung her effortlessly over his shoulder like a rice sack.

"Put me down!" she kicked. "You brute!"

"No more hopping rooftops. I’ve got a city-saving quest and a royal babysitting objective at the same time."

"That’s unfair! I was winning!"

"You were being a menace," he muttered.

As he began making his way across a quieter street toward the palace perimeter, the blinking disk fragment in his pocket caught Xuan Qing’s attention. Her voice dropped.

"What’s that?"

She yanked it from his pocket the moment she noticed it...

"Huh? It’s blinking—ooh, does it do something if I—"

"Xuan, don’t—"

Before Victor culd stop her, She tapped the smooth glowing sigil at the center.

A cocoon of white-blue light exploded outward, swallowing them whole.

Victor’s face was frozen in a mixture of disbelief and fury.

"Oh come *on*—"

And then they vanished from the streets of Blueflame City entirely.

...

...

In a burst of flickering white light, Fang Chen and Xuan Qing landed unceremoniously in knee-deep, murky water.

The pungent stink of decay and moss immediately hit their noses.

The reeds parted around them as the humid fog of the Blight Swamps enveloped them in a clammy embrace.

"Ew!" Xuan Qing squealed while hopping up onto Victor’s back without shame. "This place *smells* like a giant frog’s butt!"

Victor barely stopped himself from tossing her off. His expression was one of a man who had accepted his tragic fate.

Ahead, the assembled team of players turned from where they were standing in a loose circle.

Aeri Fan, the appointed group leader, squinted as she took in the new arrivals.

"Oh it worked... I thought the Celestial Rift Basin would mess with it... This tool must be really powerful," she voiced while scrutinizing the anchor disk.

She then brushed a stray lock of raven hair from her forehead as her Nascent Soul qi aura gently brushed the swamp mist aside.

"Well..." she crossed her arms with a look of amusement. "Didn’t expect you to bring your girlfriend along."

"She’s *not* my girlfriend," Victor snapped and then shot a murderous look at the giggling Xuan Qing clinging to him like a mischievous squirrel. "She’s the City Lord’s daughter. And a royal pain."

The group chuckled despite the grimness of the swamp around them.

"How did you wind up dragging a prestigious NPC to a place like this... You’re definitely dead when we get back," Mirael, the archer, laughed outright.

Beside her, the burly Brin whose arms were as wide as Fang Chen’s torso, rumbled in amusement.

"Well then, Lord Babysitter," Juno drawled while keeping aside the spear in his grasp. "Welcome to the world’s soggiest hellhole."

Fang Chen pinched the bridge of his nose. "Just... update me. What’s going on?"

Aeri Fan gestured for him to step closer. "We reached the Blight Swamps two days ago. Searched everywhere the mission coordinates hinted at. No sign of Tarkos. Not even footprints or discarded gear. But the patch of marsh where the special Moonveil Thistle was supposed to grow?" She spread her hands. "Gone. As if it never existed."

"Which is impossible," hissed Vortex, the group’s poison and traps expert who was flicking a slim dagger between his fingers in irritation. "That moss needs acidic bog pools to thrive. But the whole terrain’s different like someone warped the place."

"Probably Serika’s doing... Hmm but no sign of Tarkos could mean he might still be alive," Victor muttered with a disturbed expression.

"Yes but no point if we can’t find him which is why I brought you here with the tool. We want to use a tracking technique to locate Tarkos," Aeri Fan stated.

Victor’s eyes narrowed. "A tracking technique?"

Aeri nodded. "We only need something belonging to Tarkos."

Without a word, Victor fished into his storage ring and produced a scrap of black cloth.

It was a torn edge of Tarkos’s robe which was scorched at one end. He didn’t miss the curious glance Aeri gave him.

"Don’t ask," he muttered. "Long story."

Vortex stepped forward and held out his hand. "Allow me."

He pressed two fingers to the cloth as his other palm glowed a dull green while he chanted under his breath.

Threads of emerald qi coiled around the fabric, then lifted it into the air like a puppet on invisible strings.

The scrap fluttered, spun once, then began drifting away from them like a lazy moth.

Aeri Fan’s flying spirit beast which was a winged mixture of lion and bird the size of two carriages, huffed steam from its nostrils, impatient to get moving.

Aeri barked orders, and within moments the entire squad had remounted the beast.

Xuan Qing squealed in delight as Victor swung her up beside him on the beast’s broad back. freёwebnoѵel.com

"You... I’ll deal with you later. For now, I have to make sure you stay alive," he hissed at her.

"This is the *best* punishment ever!" she declared while hugging his arm and ignoring his sour glare.

"Stay *still*," Victor growled as the serpent launched itself into the fetid air, beating its wings hard enough to send ripples across the swamp’s surface.

---

(( Hours Later ))

The wind battered them as they soared over twisted mangroves and shimmering pools of black water.

Victor kept his eyes locked on the floating cloth, which now bobbed in midair in a tight circle over a wide waterfall spilling from a cliff up ahead.

Mirael pointed. "It’s stuck in a loop. That usually means the target is hidden somewhere near but... we’ve combed this whole cliff twice."

Brin grunted while scratching his beard. "Could be a cave behind the falls. Or an illusion array so thick we’d fly into it and come out our own asses."

Aeri sighed. "Crude. But possible."

Victor peered at the roaring cascade. He leapt down from the beast’s back and landed on the slippery stones with a muted thud.

Xuan Qing would’ve followed if Aeri hadn’t yanked her back by her scarf.

"He’s trying to work," Aeri scolded. "You want leeches up your skirt?"

Fang Chen approached the falls, extending his qi senses but he hit a wall of turbulence, as if the waterfall itself shredded his spiritual perception.

"Tricky..." he murmured. "It’s like it’s eating my sense threads."

"Which means there is something here," Juno called down with a look of excitement.

Aeri ordered the serpent to circle the area up ahead beyond the waterfall while the others dropped down one by one to scour the rocks, roots, and shadows for any clue.

But after an hour of combing every crack and ledge... They found nothing. The cloth still spun above the falls, unbothered.

By the time dusk fell, the swamp turned sinister.

Fireflies glowed like embers above stagnant pools, and distant croaks and screeches echoed through the mist.

"That’s enough for one day," Aeri voiced while wiping sweat from her brow. "We rest here tonight. Everyone, set up a perimeter. Brin traps. Mirael, light barriers. Juno, ward the beast."

Reluctantly, the team retreated to a slightly drier patch beneath gnarled trees, pitching a makeshift camp. They lit spirit lamps that hissed and kept the mosquitoes at bay.

Victor sat cross-legged by the fire while glaring at the new notification hovering in his vision:

> Objective Failed: Return the City Lord’s Daughter before detection.

> Penalty: -200 Reputation with Blueflame Palace, Wanted by The City Lord.

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