After stirring up almost the entire top sects of the Mortal Ascension Heaven, the person responsible for it was now leisurely walking on the streets of the very city he had robbed a few hours ago.
Ace was now hiding in plain sight, wearing the armor of the city guards and patrolling the outer region of the city's streets solemnly, just like any other city guard.
No one would've even thought that the thief, Sky Stealer, would be daring enough to disguise himself as a city guard and pretend to search for himself while patrolling the city, which should be nothing but a death trap for him.
However, even if someone had remotely considered this possibility, they would've never thought about Ace's newly evolved innate abilities and how much dangerous they had made him.
With the Soul Signature evolved into the Archive of Thief, Ace's disguise has reached almost perfection because before Ace could only take on other appearances and memories, but now, he can perfectly imitate their spiritual signatures or marks with the Signature Imitator.
This means he can easily access someone's storage ring without any need to destroy their spiritual mark first, or he can bypass any security check. In the Mortal Ascension Heaven, the Spiritual Marks were considered proof of identity, as they are used for imprinting on treasures, tokens, and sect registries. This was because the spiritual marks could not be replicated, no matter what. That's why previously, Ace needed to think twice before infiltrating the sect through an old sect member because there was a chance he might be found out. This was especially the case with the King Sects, who took extra precautions against people like him.
But now, as long as he has a face and memories, he can perfectly become the same person to a degree where not even the King Sects would be able to tell the difference.
The problem of memories was also resolved with Soul Probing evolving into the Thievish Probe, which now works on Law State cultivators without any restriction except for realm limitations.
Previously, Ace had to be wary of stealing memories from a Law State cultivator because their soul had been integrated with the law, so there were high chances that his ability would be detected. Unless the other party was a whole realm below him, he didn't dare use Soul Probing on them. But now, the Thievish Probe wasn't much different from the Soul Probing; it was much more effective and quicker, and he couldn't be detected by laws as long as he didn't target a much more powerful target.
Now, Ace can steal an entire set of specific memories he wanted, like if he wants to know about the victim's childhood, the Thievish Probe would steal everything there is to steal about the childhood.
If anything, the Thievish Probe has become more like the Art of Mind Stealing; in fact, Ace was sure that his mastery of the Art of Mind Stealing seemed to have significantly affected the proficiency of the Thievish Probe.
That's how, after robbing the inner region of the Runic Forge City, Ace decided to take the place of this Ascension Master Realm city guard who was looking for him no less.
Furthermore, Ace had no intention of leaving the city just yet, nor was he done with it, because the result of the last 'work' was far from suppressing Ace's expatriations.
[Absolute Pickpocket (Sleight of Hand) has been successfully activated! (13,294X)]
[Thievery Rank/Count Section]
-Low-level Thievery(s): 5/10,000
-Middle-level Thievery(s): 1,000/1,000
-High-level Thievery(s): 500/500
[Thief Point(s): 16,818,010,800]
Pick pocking worth over 16 billion TP! That was the result of using Absolute Pick Pocket with the Night Collapse Travesty on 11 inns of the inner region of the Runic Forge City!
Even Ace couldn't believe the sheer number of his final tally and thought he was hallucinating at first. But he wasn't, and when he saw the rank of the thieveries, he understood why he was able to gather so much TP by simply pickpocketing.
The first factor was the location; Runic Forge City was one of the most famous cities in the world, and the inner region was a place where only the wealthy scions of the king's sects and their confidants, or at least Ascension Guardians, could enter.
The second factor was time. Due to the Vindictive Rigid Valley events, many powerful cultivators had gathered in the city, and most of them belonged to the prominent clans of the Great Crown Domain. Some were even leaders of second-grade sects.
Third and last factor was the target, 'City Inns', this was one place where you'll only visit when you are temporary staying in the city and didn't belong there, especially in a place like inner region, which also means, only those 'loaded' cultivators can afford to stay in those high-end inns. With all these factors, Ace reaped a huge haul of billions of TP with just Absolute Pick Pocket. But there were also his newly increased strength and the taboo spell involved, and he knew without missing even one of them, he would only rob a single inn after spending a huge amount of time and effort.
That's why Ace again changed his view of the importance of raising his Thief Rank, and why the system insists on giving him these kinds of tasks to increase the Thief Rank.
'It wasn't always about the higher difficulty targets, it's about choosing the correct targets. If I can collect my TP by simply pick-pocketing a few thousand cultivators, why should I take risks of going after those powerful organizations unless they have something I want, or I have some kind of grudge against them?'
Ace's lips curled up as he thought gleefully, 'I never thought one day I would be hindered because of not getting a single low-level thievery instead of high-level ones. Furthermore, in this place, only children are probably worth that much.
'Tsk, tsk, I can't target children, even I have principles. In this guy's memoirs, individual cultivators or first-grade powers who can't gain access to the city have set up their camps not far from the city. Should I go and check out?'
Ace thought as before, and he changed his direction, heading towards the southern exit of the city. As for the real owner of his current 'face,' he was alive and 'sleeping' in his home. He'll wake up in three days feeling as if nothing had happened except for a slight pain in his head!