"Four hundred Mid-grade Spirit Stones!"
"Four hundred fifty!"
"Five hundred!"
The price rocketed upward.
Mo Fan had actually been a little tempted at first. He'd wanted to buy this tabletop artifact of "fellow countryman" sentiment as a keepsake.
But once the price broke four hundred fifty Mid-grade Spirit Stones, he sobered right up.
Sure, he'd just sold the snake molt and had some spare cash on hand...
But he wasn't rich enough to casually toss out several hundred Mid-grade Spirit Stones for sentiment and collection value.
Besides, he hadn't even figured out those so-called artifact patterns yet. If he actually bought the thing, it'd probably read like a book from heaven.
Mo Fan picked up his teacup, settled comfortably back into his chair, and shifted fully into spectator mode.
Just as the bidding reached a white-hot pitch, with several major merchant guilds refusing to yield an inch...
From an independent guest room in an excellent position on the second floor, a voice suddenly issued forth...
Somewhat aged, yet carrying a distinct authority.
It wasn't an ordinary formation plate bid. It was being broadcast deliberately to the entire auction hall through the room's special formation.
"Fellow Daoists."
The aged voice echoed through the hall.
"This old one is Han Xuan. I happened to be passing through Cangqing City today and came to join the excitement."
"The conception behind this item aligns rather well with the direction of my research these past years."
The voice paused, its tone carrying a measure of courtesy, yet with an unmistakable weight beneath it.
"If my fellow Daoists would be willing to part with it and let this old one have it, I would certainly remember today's kindness."
The moment those words came out, a brief silence swept the ring-shaped hall.
Several boxes' bidding lights even went dark on the spot.
Han Xuan?
Mo Fan, teacup in hand, couldn't help lifting his head slightly at that.
He was new here, so naturally he had no idea who Han Xuan was.
But judging from the way the other guest rooms were extending him face, reverence, almost...
This person, or rather the power standing behind that name, carried serious weight.
Of course, the cultivation world was ultimately a place where strength and wealth did the talking.
Not everyone would willingly hand over an otherworldly relic of such research value just because someone announced their name.
After the brief silence, two boxes continued raising their bids.
In the end, after several more rounds of fierce contention...
The forging expert calling himself "Han Xuan" took the Dice of Fate for the towering price of one thousand eight hundred Mid-grade Spirit Stones.
In his box, Mo Fan silently filed away the name.
He'd developed a certain curiosity about this expert who clearly came from a higher tier, and who had a keen interest in otherworldly artifacts.
This little farce concerning "visitors from another world" finally ended with the Dice of Fate's gavel.
The formation on the central platform lit up again, and several more precious lots were brought out in succession.
But Mo Fan no longer had much interest in watching.
He leaned back into the soft chair, turning the now-cool teacup over in his hand...
His mind involuntarily replaying those few lines the host had spoken while introducing the Dice of Fate.
Visitor from another world.
Soul Search.
Confirmed identity.
A geek countryman who'd gone so far as to forge a tabletop RPG die into a treasure.
He'd come to the Mystic Realm, endured who knew how many tribulations, and in the end cultivated all the way to Golden Core.
And still, in the end, he'd died in this world.
Worse, after his death, the secrets he'd carried from another world had been dug out piece by piece by strangers as his relics circulated.
The proudest work of his life had now become a relic that others scrambled to bid on and dissect.
The smile on Mo Fan's face faded, bit by bit.
A chill crawled slowly up from his tailbone, along his spine, to the back of his skull.
Because he was a visitor from another world too.
He suddenly remembered how the Formless Demon had once mentioned, with exceeding casualness, that across the long ages their race had assimilated a number of beings from other worlds.
Back then, though it had stirred something in him, he'd never actually laid eyes on another transmigrator. It had felt more like a distant legend.
Now it was entirely different.
That Dice of Fate had been placed squarely in front of him, solid and real.
And that bloody "Critical Failure" was like an absurd, cruel reminder.
It also meant that in the Mystic Realm, not only did people know transmigrators existed...
Some of them possessed means of identifying exactly who those people were.
Mo Fan couldn't help recalling the two words the host had tossed off so lightly.
Soul Search.
No. I need to get to the bottom of this.
Mo Fan set down his teacup, his eyes turning grave.
Without hesitation, he immediately reached out mentally to Mo You, deep in the [ Necrotic Realm ].
"Mo You."
Inside the Necrotic Realm.
Mo You was sitting cross-legged upon the throne of white bone, using the Nether River Bone Lotus to refine and cleanse his formless body.
Hearing Mo Fan's consciousness reach him, he slowly opened his eyes, a flicker of confusion crossing his face.
"What is it?"
"Suddenly so urgent to find me."
Mo Fan didn't waste words. He laid out everything that had happened at the auction, along with his own concerns, in full.
Especially the core question...
"If a cultivator really does come from another world."
Mo Fan's tone was exceedingly serious.
"Can the immortal cultivation world's Soul Search technique actually see it, clear as day?"
Hearing the question, Mo You was silent for a while.
He seemed to be leafing through the inheritance memories of the Formless Demon race within his mind.
A moment later, Mo You's voice sounded in Mo Fan's head.
"You're thinking of 'Soul Search' far too simply, and as far too omnipotent."
Drawing on those memories, Mo You explained:
"Soul Search is, at its core, using external force to violently invade another's sea of consciousness and hunt for memories in the depths of their soul."
"But human memory is vast as an ocean. Even for a mortal, a lifetime of memories, laid out in full, is exceedingly enormous."
"In the overwhelming majority of cases, what the searcher sees is nothing but a mass of interlinked yet fragmented images, emotions, and chaotic stray thoughts."
"Older memories in particular have long since blurred into indistinctness."
Mo You paused, then offered a vivid comparison.
"It's like throwing you into an enormous library stacked with ten million books."
"Even if the caster's cultivation reaches the heavens, he may well fail to extract, within any limited span of time and without omission, the entire coherent course of a person's life from birth until now."
"Knowing what you're looking for and rummaging aimlessly through memories are two completely different things."
Having heard Mo You out, Mo Fan let out a long breath in his box, feeling the boulder on his chest shift a little at last.
"So as long as I don't display anything wildly abnormal, anything obviously otherworldly, and don't draw the suspicion of those powerhouses..."
Mo Fan muttered to himself.
"Then even if some old monster takes a disliking to me and forces a Soul Search, he might not be able to dig out my life on Earth before transmigrating from all those memory fragments?"
But before Mo Fan could fully set his mind at ease, Mo You's voice landed another cut.
"Correct."
"But that's on the premise that..."
Mo You's voice carried a trace of gravity.
"If the other party already suspects you're a visitor from another world."
"If, from the very start, he goes in with an exceedingly clear purpose, conducting a deep search specifically targeting memories that contradict Mystic Realm common sense..."
"Then it's an entirely different matter."
Mo Fan: "..."
Well now.
The heart he'd just lowered shot straight back up into his throat.
Mo You's explanation had dismantled the "Soul Search equals guaranteed exposure" crisis, but that didn't mean he was in the clear.
So long as he didn't deliberately expose himself, searchers without a clear target genuinely might not be able to piece together his true origins from that sprawling mass of memory.
But if one day someone truly did suspect him...
Then Soul Search would remain an exceedingly dangerous tool aimed straight at him.
And worse still...
Leaning back in his chair, Mo Fan couldn't help reaching up to rub his brow.
He suddenly realized that beyond the lethal identity of "visitor from another world," he was carrying another secret...
One even more taboo, even less exposable.
The Necromancer System!
If he were Soul Searched, then even if the searcher never dug out where his hometown was...
The moment they saw the images in his memory of the System, the [ Necrotic Realm ], and the army of white bone...
The outcome probably wouldn't be much better!
Mo Fan silently took inventory of all the time bombs strapped to his person.
He suddenly realized that in barely over a year since arriving in the Mystic Realm...
He'd already accumulated this many secrets that couldn't see daylight.
Any single one of them going off would be more than enough to bury him.
"This Mystic Realm..."
Mo Fan looked at the glittering lots on the central platform and let out an exceedingly helpless sigh.
"Why does it feel like the whole place is nothing but pitfalls?"