Chapter 374: Tracking Kang Taewoo

Perhaps they did not dare to go too far under the system’s supervision, but Joo Joowon did not believe they would refrain from making even the slightest moves behind the scenes.

However, as long as Kang Taewoo did not infringe upon his interests, Joo Joowon would not pay too much attention to what it did during its month of free time. At most, he would keep an eye on its behavior to see whether it might pose a hidden threat to him.

He took out a tiny bit of cotton fiber left over from when he had stuffed the cotton back inside and began sensing it in secret.

There was only a small amount of cotton fiber, making it look just like the scraps left behind during the stuffing process. The quantity was not large, so even if Kang Taewoo could sense something about the items that had come from its own body, it would probably not become suspicious.

Besides, compared to the bear fur coat on the outside, something taken from inside its body clearly carried more of its aura and made it easier to pick up useful information.

Moreover, Kang Taewoo had given it to him willingly. He had not asked for it.

Joo Joowon had even taken the initiative to refuse at first. He had only handled it because he could not refuse any longer. Kang Taewoo had been careless, so it could not blame him for making use of it now.

He had done absolutely nothing to cause this situation. At most, his Fate had been ’stirred by a premonition’ at the time, causing it to react unconsciously. That had nothing to do with him.

Whenever two living beings came into contact, a line of Fate would naturally form between them, symbolizing the connection between the two.

At first, this line would be extremely faint, almost impossible to detect, as though it could snap at any moment. As the two interacted, it would either grow stronger or become fainter.

Fate lines rose and sank within a person’s web of Fate, drifting unpredictably and proving extremely difficult to locate. They only became easier to find when two people had just met or after they had grown very familiar with each other.

In the former case, their relationship was still shallow, so the Fate line would only wander around the outer edges of the web. In the latter case, their connection had become too deep. A person would not have many truly close relationships in their lifetime, so those lines naturally became easier to find.

The hardest Fate lines to locate belonged to relationships that were neither close nor distant. They were mixed into the vast, smoke-like web of Fate, tangled together in a complicated mess that was difficult to unravel and even harder to find.

However, with the cotton fibers carrying Kang Taewoo’s aura serving as a ’marker’, this was no longer a difficult task for Joo Joowon.

Besides, he did not want to obtain any complicated information. He only wanted to know the other party’s current location, which made things even simpler.

For Transcendents who followed the Path of Fate, peeking into the affairs of Transcendents who did not follow this path had always been an easy task.

Moreover, Kang Taewoo’s level was not particularly high, possibly because it had devoted most of its energy to its secondary profession. This made it even easier for Joo Joowon to take action.

However, to be on the safe side, Joo Joowon still avoided being too direct in his approach. He wanted to prevent Kang Taewoo from discovering anything suspicious in case it had some equipment designed to protect itself.

Therefore, he chose a relatively roundabout and discreet method to investigate.

This approach was much like how hackers operated on the internet. They would first select several intermediate devices to serve as ’zombies’ or stepping stones. That way, even if their target managed to trace the connection back to them, the IP addresses they found would not belong to the hackers themselves. Instead, they would lead to several devices being used as relays.

For Joo Joowon, accomplishing this was incredibly simple. It was even easier than a hacker typing out a few lines of code.

No matter how few people someone had met throughout their life, the number could never be truly small.

Even a passerby they accidentally bumped into on the roadside, exchanging apologies before going their separate ways, would form a line connecting the two of them.

Therefore, randomly selecting a few lucky individuals from this vast network to serve as stepping stones was hardly a difficult task.

However, people connected to the other end who were too weak would be useless. Their weakness would make it obvious that they were disguises. On the other hand, overly powerful beings would immediately notice that someone was trying to interfere with them. As a result, there were actually not that many suitable candidates.

Joo Joowon therefore chose individuals who had already entered the Transcendent realm and whose cultivation levels were not too far from his own.

As long as they were not Transcendents who followed the Path of Fate, even those one or two levels above him would still find it extremely difficult to detect this kind of ’interference’ originating from the level of Fate.

When Joo Joowon needed someone to serve this purpose, he naturally thought of Seong Seungmin.

Among all the Transcendents he knew, Seong Seungmin was the strongest. Furthermore, because Astral Fate had set its sights on it, its connection with him was also particularly close.

This was equivalent to Joo Joowon having already left a ’key’ on Seong Seungmin that could open the door. Therefore, making use of it now would not require much effort.

The next candidate was MusclePotato404, the man who had previously spun conspiracy theories about him on the trading platform.

When Joo Joowon had watched the video earlier, he had already felt that MusclePotato404’s condition seemed more like a mutation than an ability.