As the thread of karma snapped, Wei Yuan's origin soul returned to its normal state, no longer able to see through the reality and illusion of the surrounding world.
Above the Ten Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains, the Red Lotus Bodhi ceased its swaying, appearing somewhat listless. It seemed that resolving such hostile karma took a toll on it as well.
The surroundings temporarily fell silent, yet the gloom lingered. The monster's assault appeared thwarted, but unwilling to accept defeat, it lurked nearby.
A strange sensation swept across Wei Yuan's heart twice more, as if the monster was still attempting to lock onto him, but both times the attempts mysteriously failed.
Taking advantage of this lull, Wei Yuan drew upon his karmic luck to issue an order: "Assemble! Form a battle array and breach the walls into the palace!"
Inside the side hall, Ji Liuli's Demon-Suppressing Pagoda flickered in and out of view; she did not drop her guard for even an instant. The monster seemed to be in an unusual state—clearly within range of the Demon-Suppressing Pagoda, yet unaffected for now, leaving Ji Liuli no way to detect it through the pagoda. However, should it prepare to launch an attack, it would have to emerge from its concealed state, at which point the pagoda would instantly reduce its speed by at least thirty to forty percent.
Zhang Sheng was surrounded by swirling sword qi, gripping his sword with one hand while using the other to retrieve a medicinal pill to ingest. Without a word, Ji Liuli handed Zhang Sheng a pill of her own, then took away the one he had intended to take.
This healing pill from Ji Liuli was roughly a hundred times more expensive than the one Zhang Sheng had been about to swallow.
While Zhang Sheng and Ji Liuli remained on guard, Wei Yuan was not idle either. He brought out square cauldrons that could serve as building components and began erecting low walls around the three of them. The monster was exceedingly fast, and these low walls would effectively restrict its movement.
Another tragic scream echoed from outside the palace walls—evidently, an isolated cultivator had fallen. Just then, crunching sounds of chewing resonated within the side hall. The mucus dripping from the ceiling grew tinged with scarlet, and a thick stench of blood began to spread. Meanwhile, the monster's aura was slowly swelling.
Fury ignited in Wei Yuan's chest. Nearly half of these Dao Foundation cultivators had achieved their breakthroughs in Qingming, and almost every one of them had contributed azure qi. Their allegiance and devotion to the domain went without saying. Had they died on the battlefield against the Shamans, they would have died a worthy death. But being devoured by a monster here was truly hard for Wei Yuan to stomach.
By now, the cultivators outside the palace had gathered in one spot and begun forming into a battle array. In an instant, military qi soared into the heavens, radiating chilling killing intent!
A military array was a way of uniting masses, and the premier choice for the weak to pool their strength against the strong. Whether a military array could take shape depended first on the commander and second on whether military qi could be coalesced. The commander served as the hub of conquest, while military qi was akin to the clear qi of the human domain, the yellow qi of the Liao domain, and the jade-green qi of Wuyu, capable of altering the surrounding environment.
The cultivators Wei Yuan had brought into the grotto-heaven were by no means weak, numbering fully a hundred Dao Foundation cultivators. Currently presiding over the array was Perfected Chuhe, and the ranks featured such formidable immortal foundations as Yu Zhizhuo, Sun Yu, and Feng Tingyu. Once their military qi coalesced, within a hundred zhang—to say nothing of driving away ghosts and gods—even a powerful True Person of the Dharma Idol realm like Perfected Fenhai would have to detour around them.
Ever since entering the grotto-heaven, Perfected Chuhe had faced frustration at every turn, harboring a belly full of pent-up rage for some time. Stirred now by the military qi, his face brimmed with killing intent. Pointing his immortal sword forward, he barked, "Advance in formation! Slay that vile beast for this old Daoist!"
The crowd roared in assent and stepped forward. Over a dozen zhang ahead of the vanguard, the towering palace walls were blasted to smithereens the moment the military qi surged over them.
Inside the side hall, Wei Yuan sensed the soaring military qi and immediately breathed a sigh of relief. With such a formation, unless the monster was completely foolish, it would not dare meet them head-on.
The sole flaw of a military array was its lack of mobility; catching up to a True Person of the Dharma Idol realm was entirely out of the question, yet it possessed miraculous efficacy for holding ground and clashing on the battlefield. Back then, the Shaman army had also used military qi to pave their way, bullrushing Qingming—a domain constructed from immortal stone—and until their military qi was exhausted, they had remained virtually unweakened by Qingming.
Perfected Chuhe's voice, soaked in murderous intent, carried far into the side hall. Wei Yuan couldn't shake the feeling that the phrase "vile beast" had been aimed at him, but he had no proof.
Crushing all resistance, the battle array flattened several layers of palace structures along the way, crossed the plaza, and swept toward the side hall.
Without roofs to provide cover and with no shadows left inside the halls, the monster might no longer be able to hide.
Right at this moment, the entire palace suddenly began to tremble. The ground cracked open, and countless motes of starlight drifted upward. Several rifts abruptly appeared in the vault of heaven, and a fragment tumbled loose, revealing the deep void behind it.
Wei Yuan was thoroughly shocked. What sort of array was this? It appeared boundlessly powerful, so much so that even the fractured grotto-heaven could not withstand it, hastening its process of disintegration!
Before Wei Yuan could react, his surroundings shifted, and he suddenly found himself within a canyon.
The canyon was barely a hundred zhang across, flanked on both sides by sheer, vertical cliffs. The sky hung exceptionally low, clamping down overhead like an inverted massive bowl.
Seeing this scene and recalling the various anomalies when the array activated, Wei Yuan was reminded of an illustrious grand array: the Xuan Heaven Astral Shifting Great Array.
This array formed its own world within, which could be partitioned into numerous independent worlds. When the array activated, anyone within whose origin soul exceeded a certain threshold would be shifted and placed into these separate worlds. During the shifting, because it was not a direct attack and posed no immediate threat to life, coupled with the array's exceedingly high status, even someone newly ascended to True Monarch would fall victim to it. Only a Scenery Command True Monarch whose heart-manifestation world could already project externally would be immune to its effects.
This array excelled most at dispersing foes who moved in groups, picking them off one by one. If laid out with meticulous detail, it could even feature numerous distinct extreme environments within, dropping designated enemies into them before annihilating them.
For instance, the region where Wei Yuan currently stood lacked even a trace of moisture. If a cultivator practicing water-phase arts or a Shaman powerhouse were cast in here, their combat prowess would instantly be docked by thirty percent.
Having recognized the array, Wei Yuan inwardly counted himself lucky. Generally speaking, arrays of this sort were set up with perilous dead ends such as molten lava, vast oceans, or poisonous swamps. Being thrown into this canyon was already quite hospitable.
To break this array, one had to slay the guardians defending each space and then shatter the spiritual object serving as the array eye. Doing so would dismantle that pocket world, allowing entry into another pocket world, repeating the cycle until all pocket worlds were broken or the grand array's spiritual energy ran dry.
The reason this array was so renowned lay in its effectiveness against numerous powerful foes. If manipulated properly, even if invading enemies outnumbered defending cultivators three- or fourfold, they could easily be divided within the array and defeated in detail. However, for such a grand array, the cost of deployment was also immense; even prominent clans and great families could not set them up at will, able only to place one or two in critical clan strongholds.
Wei Yuan had never expected the Xu family to spare no expense like this, actually deploying such a grand array within a grotto-heaven. Still less had he expected that even with the grotto-heaven broken, this grand array would remain functional.
At this moment, countless armored sand wolves walked out from both sides of the canyon, fixing their gazes on Wei Yuan. These sand wolves were the guardians of this pocket world, only in extraordinary numbers. An ordinary armored sand wolf was equivalent to a cultivator at peak Blood Merging, but the sand wolves appearing in the canyon were visibly a size larger than normal, with far denser auras, every one possessing the strength of peak Body Casting.
Watching the swarm of sand wolves close in, Wei Yuan grasped the array defender's plan for this trial: use these formidable, lightning-fast sand wolves to wear down the intruders. Even if they couldn't kill the intruders, they would deplete a massive amount of Dao power, at which point the defenders could concentrate their forces for a decisive strike, virtually ensuring victory.
Only, wanting to exhaust Wei Yuan's Dao power was bound to be a bit difficult.
Unperturbed, Wei Yuan casually severed the first sand wolf to pounce with a single sword slash, calmly deliberating his countermeasure. Right then, however, a shadow suddenly appeared above the canyon, followed immediately by a jet of black water spewing forth and drenching Wei Yuan!
The black water penetrated straight through his body and surged into his sea of consciousness, turning into a torrential black rain that showered down upon Wei Yuan's Dao Foundation. This venom possessed tremendous power; even a True Person of the Dharma Idol realm who took a direct hit might perish. As this poisonous rain descended, it directly scorched a hundred li of wasteland in Wei Yuan's Dao Foundation into charred earth.
Chapter 279