dhibooks Chapter 114 These worthless idiots dare to talk about formations?
Chapter 114 These worthless idiots dare to talk about formations?
Deep in the western mountains lies a valley shrouded in poisonous miasma.
The fog here was so thick that you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. The fog was highly corrosive, and all the surrounding trees had withered, their bark turning an eerie purplish-black.
In the center of the valley, there is a dilapidated stone altar.
A dozen or so corpses lay scattered around the altar. Some were dressed in the uniforms of the Celestial Surveillance Bureau, while others wore the training clothes of ancient martial arts families. Their deaths were strikingly similar; they were all skin and bones, dried corpses, their blood and water completely drained from their bodies.
Zhao Baichuan stood on a boulder thirty meters away from the altar.
He was dressed in a long gray robe and held a bronze compass in his hand. The compass needle was spinning wildly, making a screeching sound.
As the most senior formation master in the Ancient Martial Arts Grandmaster Alliance, Zhao Baichuan's forehead was covered in cold sweat.
"Old Zhao, what kind of damn formation is this?! Our scouts who went in didn't even last a second before they were drained of their life force!"
A bald, burly man standing nearby roared irritably. He was carrying two machetes, the blades still stained with the blood of some unknown wild animal.
Zhao Baichuan swallowed hard, staring intently at the compass.
"What's the panic! This is a test left behind by ancient immortals. This formation is called the 'Nine Netherworld Star-Absorbing Formation.' As long as enough living flesh and blood fill the formation's core with its devouring power, the formation will naturally activate. At that time, all the immortal artifacts inside will belong to our Ancient Martial Arts Alliance!"
Zhao Baichuan is lying.
He couldn't understand the formation's trajectory at all. But he knew that the blue-glowing stone at the center of the altar was an absolute treasure that could drive the ancient martial arts world mad.
As long as he can get his hands on it, he can break through the shackles of the divine realm.
As for the deaths of a few scouts, they are not worth mentioning at all.
"Send five more men to the southeast corner! Quickly!" Zhao Baichuan ordered, pointing at several timid young martial artists.
The young men were so frightened that they retreated repeatedly, none of them daring to go and die.
Just then, steady footsteps came from deep within the thick fog.
The snapping sound of footsteps on withered branches was exceptionally clear in the deathly silent valley.
Zhao Baichuan and the bald, burly man turned their heads at the same time.
A young man dressed in ordinary casual clothes emerged from the mist. He strolled leisurely with his hands in his pockets, as if he were not in an ancient ruin fraught with danger, but rather taking a walk in his own backyard.
Lu Yuan stopped a dozen meters away from the altar.
The corrosive toxic fog around him seemed to encounter its nemesis when it came within half a meter of his body, and automatically swerved to both sides.
Zhao Baichuan narrowed his eyes.
This kid showed no signs of true energy fluctuations; he looked like an ordinary college student who had wandered into the mountains by mistake. But the fact that he remained unharmed in the poisonous miasma meant he must be carrying a magical artifact to ward off poison.
Zhao Baichuan secretly made his own plans.
We were just in need of a scout, a cannon fodder. This kid's appearance was like sending charcoal in snowy weather.
"Young man!" Zhao Baichuan put on a kind face and pointed at Lu Yuan, shouting, "Ahead is an extremely dangerous natural magnetic field area. Are you lost? Come here quickly, I'll protect you and get you out of here."
Lu Yuan glanced at him.
The look in his eyes was as if he were looking at a clown.
"They changed the lowest-level 'Spirit Gathering Array' into a 'Blood Devouring Array,' and even reversed the position of the array's core. You dare call this kind of rubbish an ancient immortal array?"
Lu Yuan's voice wasn't loud, but it clearly reached everyone's ears.
Zhao Baichuan's kind face froze instantly.
"How dare you! I have studied formations for over forty years, what do you, a mere child, know!" Zhao Baichuan was so angry that his beard trembled.
The bald, burly man swung his axe, pointing it at Lu Yuan.
"Old Zhao, why waste words with this brat? I'll break his legs and throw him into the array's core to feed it!"
The burly man exerted force with both legs, and several cracks appeared on the boulder beneath his feet.
He moved like a cannonball, swinging his axe down towards Lu Yuan's head. The axe blade tore through the air, emitting a sharp whistling sound.
He possessed external martial arts skills at the late stage of the Transcendent Realm. This burly man was a formidable figure, ranking among the top in the Ancient Martial Arts Alliance.
Lu Yuan didn't even glance at him.
He simply raised his right hand, put his index and middle fingers together, and casually made a gesture towards the burly man in mid-air.
There was no booming sound of true energy erupting.
There were no earth-shattering phenomena.
A transparent ripple spread out in the air.
The bald, muscular man's body froze in mid-air.
Immediately afterwards, the two steel machetes in his hands snapped in two. The cuts were as smooth as mirrors.
The strong man's body was also neatly cut open at the waist.
His upper and lower body crashed to the ground, his internal organs mixed with blood, spilling everywhere.
The bald, burly man wasn't quite dead yet; his upper body was crawling frantically on the ground, making gurgling sounds from his throat, and his eyes were filled with extreme fear.
The air in the valley instantly dropped to freezing point.
The bronze compass in Zhao Baichuan's hand fell directly to the ground.
He gripped the rough hem of his clothes tightly, the edges of his fingernails losing their color, his strength so great that the muscles in his entire forearm were twitching silently.
One-hit kill of a late-stage Transcendent Realm cultivator!
This is no ordinary person; it's a monster in human skin!
"Who...who are you?!" Zhao Baichuan's voice trembled.
Lu Yuan ignored him.
He walked straight toward the stone altar that Zhao Baichuan regarded as a place of death.
"You're courting death! That's the death gate of the formation!" Zhao Baichuan roared through gritted teeth.
Lu Yuan stepped into the area of the altar.
The once peaceful altar suddenly went berserk. The blood-red array patterns on the ground lit up with a blinding light, and the remaining resentment from the dozen or so dry corpses around them transformed into a tangible black mist, like countless tentacles, wrapping around Lu Yuan.
This was the terrifying killing intent that had just drained more than a dozen martial artists dry in an instant.
Lu Yuan stood at the center of the formation.
"This kind of crudely made garbage doesn't even deserve to be called an array."
He raised his right foot and stomped heavily on the center of the altar beneath his feet.
The true essence of the Mahayana stage flowed down the soles of the feet and into the ground.
An extremely sharp noise scraped against their eardrums. Zhao Baichuan and the remaining martial artists instinctively covered their ears tightly, and even felt a hallucinatory taste of blood in their mouths.
Click!
The surface of the stone altar was covered with dense cracks.
The black tentacles, baring their fangs and claws, evaporated completely the moment they came into contact with Lu Yuan's true essence, just like ice and snow meeting boiling water.
Dozens of stone pillars surrounding the altar shattered simultaneously.
The sky was filled with flying pebbles, which flew everywhere like bullets.
Zhao Baichuan was hit in the chest by a piece of gravel, and he flew backward for more than ten meters, spitting out a mouthful of blood.
The formation has been broken.
Lu Yuan bent down and picked up a blue crystal about half the size of his palm from the center of the shattered altar.
An extremely complex rune is engraved on the surface of the crystal.
Lu Yuan touched the rune, his face expressionless.
"The teleportation coordinate stone of the Tianyan Sect. It seems that there really was a passage between Earth and the cultivation world back then."
Just as Lu Yuan put the crystal into his pocket...
From the depths of the thick fog, a highly discordant mechanical electronic sound suddenly rang out.
"Energy field dissipated. Target locked. Danger level reassessed... Recommendation to deploy Class A annihilation weapon immediately."
Three figures dressed in silver, tight-fitting combat suits slowly emerged from the mist.
They weren't breathing, their hearts weren't beating, and even their body temperature was as cold as the surrounding stones.
Lu Yuan turned his head.
The rats in Yanjing City are truly numerous, one nest after another.
(The aroma of zongzi fills the air, wishing you a peaceful and healthy Dragon Boat Festival! Thank you to all the readers who have accompanied us along the way. May you all be safe and sound every year, free from illness, and have everything go smoothly. May you enjoy reading the stories every day!)