Hengsheng looks to his left.
Nothing.
Then he swept his gaze to the right.
It was still nothing.
He tilted his head in confusion.
"Yunsu, do you notice anything?" Hengsheng asked the cat who was clinging to his shoulder.
Yunsu lifted her head and sniffed the air, hoping her extraordinary spirit beast's spiritual sense could find something.
After a while, she lowered her head, shifted her gaze to Hengsheng's face, and shook her head.
She meant that she also did not find anything.
"That's strange…" Hengsheng murmured, then gazed toward the sky, hoping heaven above would give him a clue.
Currently, Hengsheng stood atop the tallest tree near the volcanic mountain of Blackfin Island, trying to find a clue about whatever was shielding against his dimensional map's observation.
Yet, he found nothing. Everything before his eyes seemed normal—just an ordinary island without any trace of abnormalities like supernatural phenomena or anything else.
…
Hengsheng recalled a month ago, when he checked the dimensional map for the last time before entering the cultivation session to stabilize his new cultivation realm and recover his spiritual power.
He observed the entire continent to see how things moved forward. In the north, he spotted some suspicious activity from Blood Fiend Palace's demonic cultivators close to the North Wall, which was considered their normal behavior, since they were always acting suspiciously.
After that, he shifted his focus to the central, western, and eastern regions of the continent, one after another, and he found everything progressing as before, normal, an ordinary cultivation world.
There is no major incident like a Divine Treasure being born or a Secret Realm emerging. This normality did not make Hengsheng feel comfortable because the continent was calm like the sky before a storm.
Hengsheng thought the Heavenly Dao wouldn't let this boring realm go on; he guessed it was preparing some disaster to slam on everyone's face when the time was right.
Then, he focused on the southern region where he currently lived, observing his company's employees doing business with local merchants, buying their humble stores with a large amount of money, and putting his Endless Company's brand on the store's sign, which was generally the strategy of how his business expanded that he instructed his people to follow.
This expansion strategy worked flawlessly, even though it was just a common business expansion method in the Earth's business world.
However, his strategy seemed to be considered an immoral method by most, because in the cultivation world, people were very conservative, clung to their 'Legacy', and did not tend to sell their businesses to others or buy them from others.
Hengsheng saw through this point, but he did not see it as a problem, since he knew the cultivation world's people's weakness—greed.
The greed of people in the cultivation world is so strong, not just among cultivators but also among mortals; when they see the large sums of money his company offers, they suddenly forget all their cultural values and immediately agree to the deal.
In the local eyes, his company was a greedy demon merchant that lured others with money and took away their legacy.
This strategy made him lose large sums of money, but he did not intend to make money immediately.
He planned to extend the company's business all over the place first and then keep it small for now, waiting for the opportunity to engulf the entire market all at once when he had enough strength to protect his business from others whenever they tried to take his wealth away.
Hengsheng thought doing business in the cultivation world was quite boring; there were no extraordinary business plans, no flashy marketing methods to fight against each other to make a profit. They competed against each other in business with their faction's strength and influence.
If his Endless Wealth Company had not made a scene by bringing down the Xi Dynasty, indirectly announcing to others that they also had strength, his business might not have expanded smoothly.
When he had sufficiently observed his employees at work, he continued observing the continent through the dimensional map, from the capital of the Gu Dynasty's territory all the way to his main territory, the Xiyuan Dynasty's territory.
The Gu Dynasty was just like other places—calm. No major incidents had happened, but later he found that the Xi Dynasty being replaced by a new dynasty turned out to be the most talked-about event in the empire.
Overall, there was no threatening movement toward his company based on what he had observed so far.
Speaking of the Gu Dynasty, at that time, he thought he was about to face the Gu Dynasty's wrath after he removed the Xi Dynasty from the continent.
He was ready to flee with his people and possessions at any time if they made a move.
However, the Gu Dynasty did not seem to care about their subordinate state being replaced by a new dynasty.
They did not seem to move against his company at all. They only demanded that the new dynasty's king go to Gu City, where the Gu Palace is located, to pledge allegiance to the Gu Emperor, and the matter was settled.
Hengsheng was amazed by how easily they accepted the new dynasty to be in line.
He thought about it deeply—it was somewhat understandable. Maybe they had already grown tired of getting angry every time a dynasty under them was overthrown.
With thousands of big and small kingdoms scattered around within their vast territory, both of mortal kingdoms and fortune dynasties, getting mad every time one fell was unrealistic.
Then come to the Xiyuan Dynasty's territory.
There were minor problems here, as some small noble clans did not accept the new rule; they secretly plotted various schemes to sabotage the peace he had established for a good business environment.
Hengsheng planned to get rid of them once he saw the full picture of things—who sided with whom, who the real enemies were, and who were secret allies. Right now, he didn't know.
He could only observe them from above using the dimensional map, which was not designed to gather that kind of sensitive information. Additionally, Xiaorong's spy network was still made up of rookie spies, so it would take some time before he could act.
What he could do now was get rid of their tools, like the hostile cultivators that actively making a move against his company, or the pirates of the Southern Sea.
He had mostly marked their heads on the dimensional map and closely observed their activities.
The hostile cultivators and pirates were being taken care of by the Golden Dragon Army, the army that act like the face of the company led by Wang Dalong.
This army was scattered all over the Southern Kingdom, protecting important business sites for his company—whether it be spirit stone mines, valuable ores, or professions that had signed a contract with them, like those cultivators who knew alchemy but lacked the resources to practice their skills.
Hengsheng often sent warnings to Wang Dalong about hostile cultivators or notorious pirates about to take action if he noticed them first through the dimensional map.
And that was when he noticed the island—the one the pirates called Blackfin Island.
A month ago, while Hengsheng was observing pirate movements, he noticed that many of the pirate groups he had marked were all gathering in the same place—this island.
He learned about the Pirates' Tribute Ceremony and witnessed what they did. They came with ships filled with treasure and slaves, performing the ceremony in a way that imitated what the dynasties did.
Hengsheng felt disgusted by this scene.
Even though the dynasties were not all good, they did not actively ruin other people's lives like these scum pirates. Somehow, these trash wanted to have an honorable ceremony of their own.
No, he would not allow that, so he decided to kill them all when he was ready.
He was done with observation.
However, before he closed the dimensional map and entered his cultivation session, he noticed that one spot on the map was odd—a one-kilometer radius in that area was blank, with no visible image observable.
It looked like a bug in the map or missing data, but Hengsheng knew it was impossible for his system to make such a ridiculous mistake.
He changed his plan immediately.
At first, he had wanted to reach the Nine Gates of True Body Realm before coming here to get rid of the pirates and the Pirate King, along with the Lan Clan and Wang Clan members, to help them gain some real bloody experience, just like what Xiaorong was expreriencing right now.
He decided to secure this island immediately after coming out of his session, since his gut told him that whatever was shielding the place from his system's observation power must not be ordinary.
…
Return to the present.
Hengsheng stopped gazing at the night sky, knowing that waiting for heaven's help was useless.
He checked the dimensional map to ensure he was in the right place.
The dimensional map appeared before Hengsheng's eyes, and he saw that he was now nowhere to be found within the display; this confirmed that he was currently standing in the blank spot on the map.
He decided to observe the place once more.
However, this time not with his divine sense, but with the [Inspection].
A basic system function that he had upgraded by including the Heavenly Insight Mode of the Solar Eyes System.