Though severely injured, the Great Shaman still sneered at the flurry of Dao arts cast by the cluster of young masters and young ladies, focusing all his might on fighting Wei Yuan. That withered branch filled him with indescribable dread; if not for being pinned down by the immense shadow, he would have risked devastating damage to his dharma idol just to wrench himself free from it.
Yet when that barrage of half-baked Dao arts slammed into him, the Great Shaman suddenly shrieked in agony. Incredibly, every single strike brought pain that pierced down to his very soul!
He was both shocked and enraged. Could every one of these people possibly be a child of karmic destiny? But if they truly were children of karmic destiny, how could their cultivation be so meager?
The Great Shaman had long discerned that most of Wei Yuan's current might came from later augmentations, and such terrifying empowerments could never last. A serpent's endurance was the greatest; he had planned to hold out until Wei Yuan's augmentations faded before bursting forth to escape. But now, battered by so many Dao arts, his dharma idol destabilized from the sheer agony, and where the python head was impaled by the withered branch, signs of collapse were already emerging.
In utter desperation, he bellowed, "Phantom, save me!"
A cloying, sweet voice immediately sounded by Wei Yuan's ear: "Little brother, this really isn't nice! How about you release him, and we'll withdraw right away?"
A figure shrouded in a hooded robe appeared beside Wei Yuan, insubstantial and fluttering unpredictably. A rippling sheet of water materialized above her head, within which a shadow drifted to and fro.
A second Great Shaman!
Before she could utter a second sentence, the shadow above Wei Yuan's head abruptly solidified a fraction, and a mountain-like pressure instantly froze her in place!
Phantom had never imagined Wei Yuan would still have power to spare, suppressing even her! Though it was only temporary, thinking about it was truly terrifying.
Wei Yuan twisted the withered branch in his grasp with sudden force. The Blood Python Great Shaman let out a wretched scream as a gaping void tore through the python's massive head.
Phantom dared not delay. Rallying all her dharmic power, she surged fiercely outward, instantly shattering the suppressing shadow.
Yet right at that moment, a bright, silent flash of saber light flickered past. A cut suddenly split open across her lower body, carving a huge gash even through the torso hidden beneath her robe to reveal pallid flesh tinged with pink.
Phantom took fright. Her body vanished in an instant and reappeared dozens of zhang away, yet another arc of saber light flashed, opening yet another wound on her flesh.
Only after taking two strikes did she clearly see her opponent.
It was a petite young girl with straight black hair tied back loosely behind her head. She had large eyes, and her small face bore a hint of daze, yet her pale little hands—so fair they seemed to glow—gripped an eight-foot saber whose edge reeked of obliteration.
Though separated by dozens of zhang, she closed the distance with a single bound, her saber tracing a mournful gleam that carved another slash into Phantom!
Phantom flickered dozens of times in a flash, yet the tiny girl bounced and bounded along, clinging persistently to her flanks. Saber gleams flickered like dying embers, impossible to shake off. In the blink of an eye, several more wounds, shallow and deep, marked Phantom's body.
Through this clash, Phantom realized the girl was only at the mid Dao Foundation stage. Both her blade and herself were extraordinarily formidable, but held back by her cultivation, she could only inflict minor wounds. Yet Phantom's repeated counterattacks were all casually deflected by the girl, whose martial technique was clearly exalted to an unbelievable level.
Settling her mind, Phantom's figure flickered a hundred times each breath as she steadily inflicted various curses upon the girl. In moments, the girl's speed slowed by half a fraction. Although Phantom was gradually accumulating an advantage this way, she could not dispatch the girl anytime soon. She could only shout, "Blood Eye, hold on a little longer!"
With Phantom pinned down by the abruptly appearing girl, the blood python was immediately plunged into a desperate plight.
With every breath that passed, another piece of his dharma idol was ruined. That withered branch was an indisputable immortal relic; upon destroying the dharma idol, it directly absorbed the devastated portions, erasing them permanently. Those were the fruits of decades of painstaking cultivation and blood sacrifice power drawn from tens of thousands!
Terror filled Blood Eye completely, and he screamed desperately, "Where is that human dharma idol infiltrator? Have him come save me at once!"
Another dharma idol had sneaked in? Wei Yuan's heart tightened. An instant later, his perception was tripped: someone was already standing before the Hall of Merits, reaching out to push open the hall doors.
Yet at this juncture, Wei Yuan actually grew calm. He clamped down firmly on the thrashing blood python, as the void around the withered branch steadily widened.
The young masters and ladies were still frantically hurling their shoddy Dao arts. However, bolstered by Wei Yuan's otherworldly fortune, every single technique could genuinely harm the blood python dharma idol. Though each blow did little damage, the accumulation still had an effect.
The person before the Hall of Merits was clearly far more interested in the Hall of Merits and Qingming than in rescuing Blood Eye. After all, with two immortal relics right before him, few people could resist such temptation.
He was a young man who looked somewhat debauched from wine and women, yet carrying a faint stench of decay. He had appeared out of nowhere in front of the Hall of Merits; no one knew how he had reached the very core of the domain. Before he pushed open the hall doors, even Wei Yuan, master of Qingming, had perceived nothing at all.
Smiling faintly, the young man pushed open the doors and stepped into the Hall of Merits.
Yet the scenery before his eyes shifted. The Hall of Merits vanished, replaced by a solitary doorway standing alone on open ground.
The young man merely sneered. "I have studied formations for seventy years. What can a mere illusory formation do against me?"
He tapped the door, and a passage of text immediately surfaced upon it.
This method of guarding key locations with formations was extremely popular among major aristocratic clans and immortal sects. Such passages were generally clues for entering secret chambers. After all, these formations were meant to deter malicious outsiders, not bar all entry and exit entirely. Moreover, whether instructions were present or not, the principles of formations never strayed far from their origin, so the young man had nothing to fear.
He looked closely. The text upon the door read:
"Suppose there is a comet (of mass X, velocity Y) approaching an earth-star (of mass Z, stationary) along the following trajectory. Question: Will the comet collide with the earth-star?"
The young man froze! He recognized every individual word, but put together, he could not comprehend a single bit of it.
He paused in confusion, then ventured tentatively, "It will not collide?"
With a creak, the door swung open.
The young man blinked again, then burst into laughter. "I wondered what it was—turns out to be nothing more than pretentious mystification!"
Amid loud laughter, he pushed the door open and strode in.
Once inside, the scenery shifted once more, and the door behind him vanished. The young man looked around, only to find himself surrounded by boundless void.
His expression changed drastically. His surroundings were no longer an illusion—this was genuine void! That door just now had not been an entrance, but a teleportation formation!
The young man dared not make a careless move. A single misstep in the void could leave one completely lost, with no telling when a way out might ever be found. Obviously, whoever had set this formation would never come to his rescue.
At that moment, an earth-star materialized ahead of him, accompanied by a pleasant yet deeply malicious voice: "Please fly according to the comet's trajectory from the problem on the door; after one hundred breaths, you will arrive at the boundary stone Qingming. Note: deviating from the trajectory by more than five degrees will cause you to become lost, in which case please find your own way back."
The young man's face turned hideous. In his life, he had unraveled countless formations, but when had he ever encountered one like this?
The ancient arts passed down by the ancestors had always emphasized leaving a glimmer of hope in desperate straits, in the spirit of the one path of escape. Did the person who laid this formation have no fear of dying without descendants?
He forced down his agitation and began inspecting his surroundings carefully, calculating the formation. Yet the more he calculated, the uglier his face became.
This was true void. The formation had torn an opening in reality; stepping through that door had transferred him into the void. The portal back to the mortal realm lay where Qingming was located, which was also the entrance to the formation—the very place he had entered just now.
The entire void was utterly barren; he could not sense the entrance at all. The only solid ground was that earth-star, which was actually a refined stone. But that patch of land was pointless; even if he landed on it, without finding the exit, it was useless.
What was more, calculating by ancestral methods, that earth-star was where the Gate of Death lay in this desolate zone; he was completely unwilling to set foot on it unless pushed to extremes. In truth, going onto it wouldn't do much, but it simply felt unnatural and ominous.
It seemed that to get out, he truly had to follow the comet's trajectory. But could such a trajectory really be calculated? Shouldn't formations be drawn by hand?
Caught in this impasse, a figure suddenly appeared on the earth-star, surrounded by four floating immortal swords. It was none other than Zhang Sheng.
Standing upon the earth-star, Zhang Sheng said leisurely, "Fourth Elder has come from afar, and I have yet to fulfill my duties as host. Since you have come, there is no need to leave."
The young man sneered, "A mere Dao Foundation dares boast so arrogantly!"
Zhang Sheng smiled faintly. "You are not the first to say such things to my face, nor will you be the last. But all who said so have become heavenly merits for me, Zhang Sheng. You will naturally be no exception."
Fourth Elder laughed in furious indignation. "Fine! Then let me see just how formidable a Dao Foundation of the Palace of Grand Beginning can be!"
On the battlefield, Wei Yuan finally withdrew Ephemeral Multitude, and the immense shadow above his head vanished as well. But the blood python's head had completely disappeared, leaving only its body thrashing instinctively in desperation.
Losing the empowerment of Ephemeral Multitude, all human cultivators instantly dropped back to their original strength. Yet in that brief span of enhancement, the Shamans had suffered catastrophic casualties—over twenty thousand dead and wounded, with the vanguard cannon fodder nearly wiped out.
After that extreme eruption, everyone was on the verge of collapse; many could not even hold their weapons and dropped directly to their knees.
The bear-like Shaman upon the high terrace saw the opening and beat the human-skin war drum once more. Large swarms of retreating Shaman soldiers turned back to attack, joined by a vast contingent of center-army troops.
Yet just as the Shaman host returned to the battle lines, Ephemeral Multitude arose anew from Qingming! Countless human cultivators who had collapsed in exhaustion leaped up once more, slaughtering the Shamans indiscriminately!
This slaughter once again turned rivers red with Shaman blood, shattering their formations completely. Then the human ranks lost their power once more, falling to the ground panting. This time, even more collapsed than before.
Refusing to give up, the bear-like Shaman pounded the human-skin war drum yet again. The Shaman army rallied to charge back, only to collide head-on into a third wave of Ephemeral Multitude, broken and routed in an instant. This time, he did not even dare beat the drum again, and troops in the Shaman rear had already begun to flee in secret.
In truth, by this point, the water in Qingming's pool had nearly run dry, leaving him unable to invoke Ephemeral Multitude again. But Wei Yuan had deliberately ended Ephemeral Multitude prematurely to bait the Shamans into counterattacking, only to deliver crushing blows each time. After two such ruses, the Shamans had lost all courage and dared not probe again.
Phantom was still locked in combat with the petite girl wielding the eight-foot saber. Though she held the upper hand, she could neither claim victory nor shake off the pursuit. Suddenly, she screeched, "How long do you intend to just watch?!"
That shriek forced a figure out from the air. He too was cloaked in robes, and the scream jarred an ancient tree into appearing above his head. The ancient tree flickered and vanished. This concealed third Great Shaman's gaze darted between the withered branch in Wei Yuan's hand and the entrance of the Hall of Merits, showing no intention of intervening.
At that moment, the doors of the Hall of Merits opened, and Zhang Sheng walked out, carrying the severed head of the youthful Fourth Elder.
Horns finally sounded, and the Shaman remnants retreated like a receding tide.
Had they won just like that? Amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood, human cultivators crawled out of the trenches one by one. Injured cultivators slowly struggled to their feet from among the piles of dead. They looked around in bewilderment for a moment before bursting into wave after wave of cheers and shouts!
Within Ten Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains, the karmic luck had been completely exhausted, but now wisps of pale azure qi began to emerge, eventually coalescing into thirty-three wisps of azure qi. Among them was one wisp of pure azure, distinct from the pale azure of the others and noticeably thicker and denser, on par with the fortune bestowed by the shadow within the moon.
Chapter 157