Chapter 1192: Taotie

Chapter 1191: Taotie

The back of the skull of the white-bone evil god statue with a human face and ram’s horns, the one worshiped by Mister Tu and symbolizing the Evil God of the Great Wilderness, concealed the Taotie Twelve-Meridian-Spiritual-Skeleton Formation.

Likewise, within the cranial seams of the Shugu Tribe’s half-“demonized” barbarian god statue, there too was carved Taotie array patterns…

Taotie!

Mo Hua’s heart surged with crashing waves.

Beside him, Dan-Zhu was stunned to see Mo Hua suddenly leap onto the barbarian god statue’s head. “Mister Wu, what are you…”

Mo Hua wasted no words. “Call people over. Chop this barbarian god statue’s head off.”

Dan-Zhu’s heart trembled. “Behead it?! But this is a barbarian god…”

Mo Hua shook his head. “It is not a barbarian god, but a fiend usurping the barbarian god’s name, defying the Divine-Lord. Its head must be severed as a warning.”

“This…” Dan-Zhu hesitated, then nodded. “Very well.”

Dan-Zhu summoned several barbarian soldiers, but before they could act, a sharp cry rang out:

“Stop!”

Dan-Zhu turned and saw Iron Shugu, who had washed away his skeletal face paint and had always behaved obediently, now trembling in horror:

“You must not! You must not disrespect Lord Barbarian God! To anger Him is to invite divine retribution!”

Mo Hua said flatly, “Your so-called barbarian god is already dead.”

Iron Shugu shook his head. “Lord Barbarian God is eternal, undying.”

Mo Hua could not be bothered to reason with such a “blockhead.” “Ignore him. Cut it down.”

Overwhelmed by Mo Hua’s aura, Iron Shugu dared not stop him, though his heart was anxious and indignant.

The other Vermilion Sparrow Tribe warriors, however, recoiled in fear at the thought of dismantling the barbarian god statue—let alone sawing off its head. Though they followed Lord Shaman, to dismember Lord Barbarian God was an act that felt heaven-defying.

Seeing this, Dan-Zhu declared, “I will do it.”

He was the one chosen by the Divine-Lord, trusted by Mister Wu above all.

And seeing their young master personally take action, the other warriors could no longer hesitate. They stepped forward to help.

Though still fearful of the barbarian god, this was Lord Shaman’s command. With his protection, surely no divine punishment would fall. Moreover, if the young master himself dared risk it, how could mere soldiers shrink back?

Dan-Zhu summoned his Golden Core power, condensing a crimson Mystic-Flame blade, and directly severed the statue’s head.

Over ten barbarian soldiers caught the massive head and lowered it to the ground.

Mo Hua examined the broken neck. Seeing that no Taotie patterns continued below, he nodded, leapt down, and stepped before the colossal white-bone head.

Iron Shugu’s pupils contracted.

In his “dream,” the golden Immortal Child of divine powers had also severed the barbarian god’s head and stepped upon it—just like now.

What was happening matched his dream by eight or nine parts.

Even Lord Shaman’s face resembled that golden boy’s.

Iron Shugu’s heart surged with turmoil.

But Mo Hua ignored him, spreading out his divine sense to probe the interior of the statue’s massive skull.

Yet his divine sense could not penetrate.

The head was like a sealed space, rejecting all peering. Any divine sense that approached was wholly devoured.

Mo Hua frowned.

He touched the fissures, tracing the Taotie patterns inside. After a moment’s thought, he drew ink-lines with his array pen upon the skull, following the lines of the array.

When finished, he turned to Dan-Zhu.

“Follow these lines. Open the skull.”

“Open the skull?” Dan-Zhu’s expression changed.

Iron Shugu’s face twisted in terror. “Lord Shaman!”

Mo Hua simply said: “Do it.”

Dan-Zhu nodded. The head was already cut off—splitting it further hardly mattered.

Iron Shugu wished to stop them, but he was no match for Dan-Zhu, and feared angering Mo Hua. He could only watch in despair.

The statue was built of extremely tough stone, inlaid with durable beast bones, nearly indestructible. Moreover, it symbolized a god—since its creation, none had dared desecrate it.

But it had the misfortune of encountering Mo Hua.

And one Golden Core genius, Dan-Zhu, utterly obedient to him.

Dan-Zhu’s Mystic-Flame blade, crystallized and razor-sharp, cut along Mo Hua’s ink lines with meticulous precision.

Scarlet Golden Core power sliced like a fire-knife, line by line.

After half an hour, with a booming crack, the skull split apart.

From within burst an ancient, decayed aura that instantly flooded the hall.

Iron Shugu felt his liver and gall collapse in dread, a bone-deep chill overwhelming him.

“Lord Barbarian God… His head has truly been severed, His skull split…”

“Divine punishment will come…”

Terrified, he looked around frantically, bones trembling—but nothing appeared. He did not even know what form this “punishment” would take.

Dan-Zhu too sensed the strange aura, his face grave.

Even Mo Hua frowned.

“This aura… where does it come from?”

He sniffed, discerning faint traces, puzzled.

“There is indeed… a hint of divine scent. Mixed with rot. And an indescribable causal energy… But after so long, the origin is almost impossible to trace.”

Once exposed, the aura quickly dissipated within a few breaths.

Mo Hua sighed at the loss. Such ancient cause and effect could not be preserved.

Then he turned his gaze into the skull—at the array patterns within—and his eyes lit with growing excitement.

Without doubt—Taotie patterns!

Clearer, sharper than those on the evil god bone slip.

For the slip bore only the original diagrams, while this was a living array, an actual application.

Though Mo Hua did not yet know the precise function of the Taotie lines carved within the skull, they were priceless as practical array examples.

He immediately pulled out a jade slip and eagerly began to copy them.

One by one, the ancient solemn lines were recorded.

When finished, he wasted no time, at once beginning the work of reassembly.

He pieced together the fractured Taotie lines, reconstructing them into a complete array.

The process was simple—this had always been a whole formation, merely split during the cranial opening. A little repair sufficed.

Halfway through, Mo Hua’s heart pounded with realization.

When the array was fully restored, his eyes shone bright with excitement.

Twenty-three runes!

It was a second-grade, twenty-three rune Taotie Absolute Formation!

It had been so long since he had obtained a new Absolute Formation.

And this one—was a Four-Symbol Taotie Absolute Formation.

Mo Hua had never imagined that inside the Shugu barbarian god statue’s skull lay such a rare treasure.

Had it not been for Bi Jie’s siege trapping them in this stone hall so long, he might have missed it entirely. After all, even he had never before entertained the thought of chopping off a barbarian god statue’s head—and cracking open its skull.

Mo Hua’s face brimmed with joy as he gazed upon the unknown twenty-three rune Taotie Absolute Formation.

Iron Shugu and the others had no idea what he was doing.

They could barely understand even basic sacred patterns, much less such profound Four-Symbol Absolute Formations.

They only thought Lord Shaman was studying some strange, rare runes, and seemed delighted.

Only Dan-Zhu grasped a little.

He guessed Mister Wu had gained something extraordinary.

For Mo Hua, normally calm and gentle like a clear breeze and bright moon, rarely ever showed such joy—excited as a child.

But just what he had gained, Dan-Zhu could not know.

Mo Hua put away the Taotie patterns, preparing to study them further—when suddenly, from outside the valley, came violent tremors and the roar of battle.

“Bifang Tribe again?”

Dan-Zhu’s face grew solemn.

Mo Hua’s expression also darkened.

The situation was urgent—if the valley was breached, the barbarian god’s head would be lost, and his research on the Taotie Array would be delayed. Mo Hua immediately told Dan Zhu:

“Find a secret chamber. Place this barbarian god’s head inside. No one is allowed near it.”

Dan Zhu nodded. “Alright.”

He quickly gave the order.

A dozen barbarian soldiers carried the cracked barbarian god’s head into a nearby secret chamber.

Inside, Mo Hua laid down array formations, and after confirming everything was secure, he left the stone hall together with Dan Zhu.

Outside, the battle had already reignited.

The Bifang Tribe, along with several small and mid-sized tribes rallied by Bi Jie, began their assault on the Vermilion Sparrow Tribe.

Chi Feng was locked in combat with Bi Jie—the two mid-stage Golden Core cultivators clashed fiercely, shaking mountains and scattering vegetation, their momentum terrifying.

Mo Hua calculated for a moment, then leaned close to Dan Zhu’s ear and whispered instructions.

He told Dan Zhu which route to lead his troops through, who to strike first, who to strike next, and how to turn back afterward to encircle Bi Jie and force him onto a particular mountain path.

Dan Zhu committed Mo Hua’s words firmly to memory, then said:

“Yes, sir.”

He personally led a squad of barbarian soldiers into the mountain forest as instructed.

Before long, Vermilion Sparrow’s Scarlet Flame blazed through the valleys, battle-aura surging.

Following Mo Hua’s plan, Dan Zhu’s maneuvers were like heaven-sent troops. He always evaded ambushes, struck at the weak while avoiding the strong, appearing and vanishing like a phantom. He crushed the ambushes laid by the Bifang Tribe and its vassals, routing them completely. The enemy’s morale wavered; Dan Zhu became a terror—feared like wolves and tigers, dreaded even by rumor. The Bifang Tribe’s spirit collapsed under his onslaught.

After circling around, Dan Zhu turned back and joined the encirclement against Bi Jie.

Bi Jie, enraged to the extreme, gritted his teeth and roared, “Dan Zhu, you little cur—seeking death!”

He fought Dan Zhu for several rounds, clearly holding the upper hand.

But with Chi Feng and Ba Shan present, the Vermilion Sparrow Tribe fielded three Golden Cores against Bi Jie alone. Even Bi Jie struggled to hold out.

This time, the Bifang Tribe had brought five Golden Cores in total.

Elder Zhuo and Elder Cang had both fallen victim to possession and died at the hands of the barbarian god.

Elder She, skilled in poison, rarely showed himself and avoided direct combat.

The remaining early-stage Golden Core had already been caught in one of Mo Hua’s stratagems earlier, heavily injured in an ambush—half-paralyzed, now recuperating in the rear.

Thus Bi Jie alone, with two fists against four hands, was ultimately forced into retreat.

Fortunately, he had recruited enough “lackeys” at great cost. Even if forced to withdraw temporarily, in the long run he still had the numbers to grind the Vermilion Sparrow Tribe down.

Though the Vermilion Sparrow Tribe had won yet another battle, the overall situation grew increasingly unfavorable.

Once the battle ended, both sides withdrew to their camps.

Mo Hua returned to the stone hall.

After giving Dan Zhu and the others some brief instructions, he retired to his own stone chamber, impatient to resume his research on the Taotie Array.

No matter how great the upheaval outside, nothing was more important than formations.

Especially this Taotie Array—an Absolute Formation of twenty-three runes, tied directly to whether he could form his Golden Core.

But after some study, Mo Hua found it still didn’t work…

He could not understand these Taotie Runes.

The Taotie, after all, was a legendary ferocious beast. Using it as the basis for runes to construct an array was already an incredibly difficult task.

The Taotie Array itself was a rare type of formation. To comprehend it would naturally be fraught with obstacles.

And on top of the Taotie Array’s inherent difficulty, this one was also a twenty-three-rune, second-grade Absolute Formation.

Such compounded difficulty made it utterly defiant of the heavens.

Even Mo Hua, racking his brains, remained utterly baffled, unable to penetrate its mysteries.

His divine sense currently only reached twenty-two runes.

He had not yet met the threshold to comprehend this unknown Taotie Absolute Formation.

“Is it simply too difficult, so I cannot learn it? Or is it just that my divine sense hasn’t reached the threshold, and so I cannot comprehend it?” Mo Hua frowned.

His divine sense was at the peak of twenty-two runes—only a hair’s breadth from twenty-three.

Moreover, with his divine sense Dao-Transformation, his perception and strength far surpassed ordinary people. By logic, this tiny gap shouldn’t prevent him from learning. He had previously been able to comprehend ordinary formations by leaping a small step ahead.

But Absolute Formations seemed different.

“Is the threshold of an Absolute Formation truly so strict, that not even the slightest difference is allowed?”

Mo Hua pondered deeply, his brows knit tighter and tighter.

It wasn’t just a problem of the Taotie Array…

Besides the array itself, he had many related doubts he couldn’t resolve.

“Bi Jie attacked the Shugu Tribe’s secret branch—could it be for the Taotie Array?”

Mo Hua was uncertain.

Not that he underestimated Bi Jie.

But even for someone like him, who is attaining the Dao through Divine Sense, the foremost of Qianxue, a shaman with peak twenty-two rune divine sense, this array was excruciatingly hard to comprehend. With Bi Jie’s divine sense, how could he possibly hope to understand it?

Even if handed the Taotie Runes directly, could he make sense of them?

If he couldn’t, then why would he go to such lengths to obtain them?

And then there was…

“What about the Shugu Tribe? Did they know of the secret within this barbarian god’s head?”

“Why is it that, despite the Bifang Tribe’s attack on the Shugu secret branch, none of the main, central, or subsidiary branches have shown any reaction for so long? Do they not know the importance of this secret branch? Or is it that they’re embroiled in their own internal chaos, too busy to care?”

But what puzzled Mo Hua most was…

“Who exactly carved this twenty-three-rune Taotie Absolute Formation into the barbarian god’s head?”

Was it the ancestor of the Shugu Tribe?

Or someone else entirely?

This unknown Taotie Absolute Formation was clearly different from the Taotie Twelve-Meridian-Spiritual-Skeleton Formation. But what use did it serve?

Why inscribe it into the head of the barbarian god’s statue?

And once inscribed there—what effect did it have?

Furthermore…

Mo Hua’s eyes narrowed slightly.

Previously, he had thought that the “broken runes” on the Shugu Tribe’s barbarian armor were meant to derive some powerful “sacred rune.”

But the barbarian god’s head concealed the Taotie Rune.

Didn’t that mean those broken runes were actually used to derive the “Taotie Rune”?

But then—what kind of derivation method was this?

Mo Hua had studied the “Ten Thousand Beasts Transforming into a Dragon” and already gained some proficiency. He could roughly understand the trajectories within it.

But Ten Thousand Beasts transforming into a Taotie?

Why had he been completely unable to derive that before?

Was his method wrong, or had he yet to comprehend certain laws, making it impossible to grasp?

And if those “broken runes” truly were meant to derive the “Taotie Rune,” then that would mean the Shugu Tribe had already succeeded. Why didn’t they just directly use the “Taotie Rune”? Why still bother researching on the barbarian armor?

What exactly was the relationship between those “broken runes” and the “Taotie”?

What was the Shugu Tribe truly studying?

These threads twisted together, a thousand tangles and knots.

Mo Hua thought and thought, until his own head ached.

The more he pondered, the more he felt the problems multiplied, mysteries layering atop mysteries, all shrouded in mist.

His expression grew grave.

“When there’s time, I must think this through carefully… I must uncover all the questions hidden here…”

He could sense that a great secret was concealed within, one likely tied not only to his Core Formation, no—perhaps not merely Core Formation, but to his very Fate-Structure, and even to the path of Dao he would tread in the future.

Of course, the present situation allowed no luxury for Mo Hua to dwell too much on this.

The crisis with the Bifang Tribe had yet to be resolved.

Bi Jie still loomed nearby, eyeing them like a hungry tiger.

Bi Jie was mid-Stage Golden Core, of high status and formidable strength—not to be underestimated.

And if he truly intended to compete with Mo Hua for the “Taotie Formation,” things would only grow more troublesome…

In the following days, Bi Jie indeed refused to give up, continuing to harass them, battles breaking out repeatedly.

Mo Hua was forced to consider whether to end things in one stroke—set up a trap, ensnare Bi Jie, and then “forcefully slay” him. Only by removing Bi Jie and leading Dan-Zhu and the others to a safe place could he set his mind at ease and continue his research into the Taotie Formation. Even if he could not kill him outright, he had to at least deal a grievous wound, so Bi Jie would never forget the lesson.

But Bi Jie was no small figure. To forcefully slay him would mean the Dan Sparrow Tribe would suffer grievous losses.

Chi Feng, Ba Shan, and Ba Chuan—if any of them fell to Bi Jie’s counterattack, it would hardly be surprising.

His Cause-and-Effect Technique was still in the exploratory stage; its influence on war remained limited to a certain degree of “foresight.”

He had not yet reached the point of erasing Bi Jie’s every chance of survival, killing him utterly on the level of karma.

After all, Bi Jie was a mid-Stage Golden Core cultivator.

To leap across an entire major realm and manipulate cause and effect was extremely difficult, fraught with countless variables.

At this moment, he still could not afford to open a killing tribulation—one mistake, and he’d be going to meet his Martial Uncle.

And yet Bi Jie could not be left unresolved…

Mo Hua wavered in indecision.

Just as he was debating whether to launch a decisive battle, to clash with Bi Jie in life and death to break the current stalemate—an unexpected event occurred.

And this event shifted the situation in a most eerie way.

That day, Mo Hua was in seclusion, deducing cause and effect, arranging strategies of war, when he suddenly heard Dan-Zhu calling from outside:

“Sir!”

Mo Hua stepped out of the chamber to see Dan-Zhu’s face grave. “Something’s happened.”

“What is it?” Mo Hua frowned.

Dan-Zhu, unable to describe it properly, led Mo Hua outside the stone hall to a high cliff.

Mo Hua looked out, and his pupils instantly contracted.

In the distance, where once the vegetation had been lush, nearly everything had withered overnight.

Beasts of the mountains lay dead on the ground, starved to death, leaving only skin and bones.

A half-yellow, half-red aura of desolation spread from afar. Wherever it passed, blood vitality waned, life force withered, the earth itself fell into deathly silence.

“This is…”

Mo Hua’s pupils trembled.

“The Famine Calamity has come…”

(End of this Chapter)