Chapter 1205: A Pair of Eyes

Chapter 1204: A Pair of Eyes

“Devour everything between heaven and earth, return all living beings to chaos…”

The instant this thought surfaced—

A wave of extreme hunger, so ravenous it drove one mad, instantly flooded Mo Hua’s heart. A heart-rending “hunger” welled up within him, an urge to eat everything: human, demon, ghost, fiend, god… devour it all.

“Not good!”

Mo Hua’s heart jolted.

The Law of Taotie was assimilating him—no, more accurately, polluting him, devouring him…

He shut his eyes at once, divine sense retreating into his sea of consciousness, severing all stray thoughts, cutting off all distractions.

Yet the hunger still persisted. Though his stomach was full, the gnawing emptiness drove him mad with the urge to eat something—anything.

Anything would do.

Even the flesh and blood of living humans made Mo Hua’s mouth water.

He could only force himself into meditation, restraining his desires, guarding his heart.

Let the spirit rule above the flesh.

The spirit is master, the body but a puppet of the will.

In this way, all stray thoughts, greedy desires, and turbid cravings become no more than fleeting clouds—illusions born of inner emptiness, not true reality.

This was the Dao-heart method Mo Hua forged after years of devouring evil spirits, using meditation to purify malevolent thoughts.

Within it was also blended a fragment of the Supreme-Emotionless Heavenly Demon Dao.

(TN: Should I translate 太上忘情的天魔道 as: ‘The Heavenly Demon Dao of the Supreme Severing Emotions’? This technique sever emotions to achieve the supreme emotionless state)

Supreme Emotionless—capable of severing both emotions and wicked thoughts.

Under the firm foundation of this tempered Dao-heart, the Law-power of Taotie slowly receded, and the hunger gradually faded.

After a while, when Mo Hua turned his gaze inward, his heart was calm as still water—without desire, without thought. Only then did he slowly open his eyes.

His expression was grave.

“Taotie… far too terrifying…”

He hadn’t even seen it with his own eyes—only glimpsed its birth through these ancient, unknown formation patterns—and he had almost been devoured by that extreme hunger.

Even now, though the hunger had subsided, recalling it made his heart quiver with lingering fear.

It was a hunger capable of swallowing all reason, erasing all conscience.

“Hunger…”

Mo Hua frowned deeply. A sudden thought struck him, making his heart skip:

“Could the famine plaguing the Great Wilderness… be related to Taotie?”

He recalled the savage scene that had surfaced in his mind earlier, silently deducing:

“On the land of the Great Wilderness, famine rages, starvation spreads for thousands of miles, corpses piling into mountains. The extreme hunger accumulates, resentment surges to the heavens, twisting the laws of heaven and earth—thus birthing a terrifying beast… Taotie?”

This was a beast born in the midst of great calamity, containing the power of Law itself. Its very existence was disaster.

“Then… how did the Taotie Runes come into being?”

As Mo Hua pondered, images surfaced before his eyes again:

Corpses littering the land, flesh evaporating, skin clinging to bone, dying upon the earth. Stained by resentment, they became black “formation lines,” merging into the laws of heaven and earth, gathering together to form the peerless fiend—Taotie.

It looked as though…

“Taotie… was a beast born of formations?”

Mo Hua was startled, then shook his head.

On the surface, it indeed appeared so.

Taotie’s aura was too overwhelming, its ferocity too great. Its features obscured, body wreathed in black qi, grotesque lines forming the Taotie Runes. This made Taotie itself resemble a “formation beast.”

But this was not precise.

Rather…

Mo Hua furrowed his brow, dissecting what he had seen, burning through his spirit to deduce, analyze, and conclude. Finally, he understood a little:

“Taotie was born when countless starved corpses became the medium, merging with the Laws for ages, undergoing some unknown change under extreme conditions—thus incubating and finally giving birth to the beast.”

The formation lines—the Taotie Runes—were the abstract manifestation of those Laws.

Formations, in essence, are the outward reflection of Law.

It is Law that birthed Taotie—not the runes that constructed it.

Taotie is not a mere “formation beast,” but a Law-beast, filled with the power of Law.

Then—

Mo Hua frowned again.

The Law embodied by Taotie—what exactly was it?

Was it “Hunger”?

Or “Eating”?

How should one understand it?

Because of famine, countless beings fell into extreme hunger.

They all wanted to “eat.” Yet heaven and earth were barren, nothing left to consume.

In the end, all died in starvation. Their final, strongest obsession must have been “to eat.”

Not only humans—countless living beings perished with the same obsession.

That obsession grew so strong it twisted—or more accurately, polluted and altered—the laws of heaven and earth, birthing Taotie.

But at its core—was the Law “Hunger,” or “Eating”?

Could it really be so simple?

Might there be deeper meaning?

How should it be comprehended? And once comprehended, how should it be used?

How to unify such insight with the Taotie Runes, and ultimately, the Taotie Formation?

How to transform Law into formation?

Or rather—how to use formations to verify Law?

Mo Hua’s brow furrowed into the shape of the character “川.”

This “Taotie Formation” was by far the most ancient, most complex, most perilous Absolute Formation he had ever encountered.

Far more obscure than the Reverse-Spirit, Profound-Earth, Spirit-Pivot, or Five-Element Source Formations.

And this—concerned with heaven, with humanity, with calamity—was the most complete system of Law he had ever touched.

Vast in scale, immense in scope.

This was the first time Mo Hua clearly sensed the concrete form of Law itself—the first time he felt a tangible link between Law and formation.

Yet his understanding was but a superficial scratch.

Unclear, unfathomable—difficult to verify if right or wrong.

At most, he had cracked open a door, glimpsing the scene within.

As for truly entering—that was still far away.

But this was only natural.

Mo Hua sighed.

“Taotie” was a colossal Law-Beast, vast enough to blot out heaven and earth, its body covered in runes, containing immeasurable power of Law. How could he, with one fleeting glimpse, ever fully comprehend it?

Like an ant peeking at the sea, to think one could grasp the Dao in a glance—too arrogant, too delusional.

The Great Dao is long; only through tireless seeking can one hope for deeper understanding.

At least… this was a beginning.

Mo Hua exhaled slowly, a measure of relief in his heart.

Ever since obtaining the Taotie Twelve-Meridian-Spiritual-Skeleton Formation, so much time had passed, so many struggles in the Great Wilderness, yet “Taotie” remained a fog.

Now at last, he had a clue, a glimpse of cause and effect.

The first step is always the hardest.

With a lead, he could slowly probe further.

Thinking of this, Mo Hua felt a trace of joy in his heart.

But before that joy could last long, his face suddenly turned pale, and an inexplicable tremor shook his heart.

Because the Dao Stele within his Sea of Consciousness quivered slightly—as if warning him.

At the same time, Mo Hua sensed a pair of eyes.

Those eyes… were watching him.

As if they were right behind him!!

Mo Hua’s pupils shrank sharply, the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, and he instantly whipped his head around, golden light flashing from his eyes like lightning, scanning the surroundings.

Behind him was only darkness—no one at all.

Even within his divine sense vision, nothing unusual.

As if everything had merely been an illusion.

Yet Mo Hua’s heart remained heavy.

He cultivated the Heavenly Secrets Dao—he always trusted his intuition.

Even if his own intuition was wrong, the Dao Stele’s warning could not be false.

This was the first time in his life he had ever encountered the Dao Stele “resonating”—as if giving a hint, a warning.

Telling him: something—or someone—was watching.

Mo Hua’s heart trembled. His thoughts raced.

This was a second-grade territory.

Cultivators above Golden Core—too high in realm—almost never set foot here.

If it were a lower-realm cultivator, his divine sense would have detected them.

If not a person—then an evil spirit?

But Mo Hua walked the path of proving the Dao through Divine Sense, his eyes carrying Dao-transformed golden light. In his gaze, evil spirits and phantoms had no place to hide.

Therefore, it was also unlikely to be an evil spirit.

If it were an Evil God, just from the intense stench alone, Mo Hua would have been able to sense it.

Yet all around, there was truly nothing at all.

Mo Hua’s pupils deepened with focus, his eyelids twitching slightly.

“Who—or what—was watching me? To the point that… I must rely on the Dao Stele’s warning to perceive it? And… why now?

Is it because I studied the Taotie Formation, glimpsed the Taotie-Law, and thereby touched upon some karmic thread, which drew its attention?”

Mo Hua once again recalled those unseen eyes.

He didn’t know what those eyes truly looked like, what color their pupils were—for he had never actually “seen them with his own eyes.”

Yet those eyes left him with a feeling—so unfathomable, so terrifyingly deep, as if they had peered through the endless vastness of ancient antiquity, crossing the river of time itself, to gaze upon him.

“Whose eyes… were those?”

Mo Hua’s face was grave. He pondered for a while, but dared not think further.

Still, the doubt remained, lodged in his heart like a fishbone in his throat.

He could not sleep, could not calm his mind to draw formations. Days passed in restless unease.

Realizing this could not continue, he forced himself to let go. It was wasting his spirit, wasting time—time he could not afford to lose.

He had to comprehend the Law of Taotie, master the Taotie Formation, to pave the way for Core Formation.

The state of the Great Wilderness left him no room for negligence.

Mo Hua forced himself to forget those “eyes.”

Whoever—or whatever—they belonged to, they were not something his current cultivation could resist.

Those who pry into cause and effect… are in turn observed by cause and effect.

One cannot expect only to spy on others while denying others the right to spy back.

Besides, if those eyes came to peer at him again, the Dao Stele should still react.

As long as the Dao Stele gave no response, it was probably “safe”—no need to add unnecessary worries.

Mo Hua let out a breath of relief, yet the urgency in his heart grew stronger, as did his sense of his own “insignificance” and powerlessness before certain mighty beings and great karmic forces.

“Taotie Law…”

Mo Hua muttered under his breath, eyes obscure.

In the following days, he continued to study the twenty-three-line Taotie Formation day and night.

He drew the Taotie Runes hundreds of times.

But he gained no further insight.

That night’s strange phenomenon—the “birth of the Taotie”—never appeared again.

Perhaps this was also a good thing. Mo Hua worried that if he witnessed too much of the Taotie’s manifestation, he might lose control of his heart and be “corrupted” by its power, turning into a man-eating fiend. That would be disastrous.

The complete ferocious-beast form of the Taotie, and the Law’s power it embodied, was still far too strong.

With Mo Hua’s current level, he could not yet comprehend it.

To see too much of it would not be beneficial.

What he could do was approach from the angle of a single “formation”—progressing step by step, from fewer to more, from shallow runes to deeper principles—analyzing the Law bit by bit, grasping it, and ultimately achieving integration, thereby commanding the power of the Taotie.

This could not be rushed.

If he advanced recklessly, he could easily be backlashed by the Law, never to recover.

Mo Hua’s plan was sound, but reality was full of obstacles.

At this stage, relying only on the Taotie Runes within formations, he could no longer draw out further insights.

The Taotie Runes were the markings of the Taotie Law, the carriers of the Dao, its concrete manifestations.

From the Great Dao, to the Laws, to the formation runes—this was a top-down derivation, from the root to the branches.

But to reverse this process was extremely difficult.

Especially since Mo Hua’s realm was not high. Without a deep understanding of what the “Taotie Law” truly meant, even exhausting his divine sense and employing the Heavenly Secret Derivative Algorithm, he could not calculate anything deeper.

After all, this was no ordinary formation.

Not even an ordinary Absolute Formation.

This was a Great Wilderness Absolute Formation—symbolizing “calamity”—the dread Taotie Formation.

“Then I can only… change direction.”

After much contemplation, Mo Hua thought of another matter:

Famine.

Judging from the overwhelming resentment that accompanied the Taotie’s birth, one could roughly infer that the Taotie was born of famine.

Or more precisely, the Taotie was born from a great famine countless ages ago—vast in scale, catastrophic in consequence, nearly annihilating the Great Wilderness.

Mo Hua had confirmed this with Dan Zhu, Chi Feng, Zhamu, and other tribal elders.

Not only great tribes like the Vermilion Sparrow Tribe, but even small tribes such as Wutu, Wusha, and Black-Horn also preserved legends of that ancient Great Famine.

This famine was so severe that it was given a special name:

“The Great Famine Wasteland.”

In fact, even the name “Great Wilderness” likely originated from that ancient cataclysm—the “The Great Famine Wasteland.”

Famine brought ruin and extinction, and thus this land came to be called the Great Wilderness.

Of course, this was legend.

And legends had their flaw—truth and falsehood were indistinguishable, vague in detail, and time uncertain.

Moreover, the legend contained another question that troubled Mo Hua:

If it was that primordial “Great Famine Wasteland” that gave birth to the peerless ferocious beast, Taotie…

What about the famines afterward?

For even after the Great Famine, the history of the Great Wilderness was still filled with frequent famine disasters.

Such records appeared often in the annals of various tribes.

Were these later famines caused by the Taotie?

Was it famine that birthed the Taotie—

Or was it the Taotie that caused famine?

It seemed like the problem of chicken and egg. Mo Hua could not tell.

Or perhaps…

Famine and Taotie were born together?

If that were the case, then the famine now spreading through the Great Wilderness was precisely caused by… the Taotie?

At this thought, Mo Hua’s heart trembled.

So then—that crimson-yellow famine energy he had encountered, which drove people to maddening hunger and even cannibalism—was, in essence, the power of the Taotie itself?!

The very Law-power he had been seeking… had long since manifested before his eyes, and was spreading all around him?

Was it in fact the Taotie’s power… chasing him all along?

Mo Hua sighed deeply.

Indeed, the myriad phenomena of the world, the boundless and countless patterns of existence, all contained different “Daos.”

What mortals lacked was only a pair of eyes that could perceive the “Great Dao” and the “Laws.”

Without hesitation, Mo Hua arranged the affairs of the Wutu Tribe, gave some instructions to Dan Zhu, and then set out toward the outside of the Wusha Mountain Realm—toward the place where famine was spreading.

Before, he had avoided famine.

Now, he would instead pursue it—if “famine” truly signified the “power of the Taotie.”

Five days later, Mo Hua arrived at a desolate, withered mountain north of Chimu Mountain Realm, west of the Wusha Mountain Realm.

Within the mountain, grass and trees had withered, and famine-energy was proliferating.

This was the “frontline” where the famine spread.

To observe it up close, to study it, Mo Hua temporarily resided in that barren mountain.

Ba-Chuan and five Vermilion Sparrow tribal warriors set up a camp for him and guarded him.

Mo Hua had originally intended to come alone. He was used to acting by himself and disliked being burdened by others.

But Dan-Zhu’s worry was difficult to resist. He feared for his safety, so he sent Elder Ba Chuan of the Golden Core Realm along with five Vermilion Sparrow warriors to care for him. After all, Mo Hua was the Lord Shaman, his status lofty, and no accidents could be allowed.

And indeed, Mo Hua did need someone to run errands, handle chores, and take action when danger arose.

After all, his hands were now too precious to be stained with blood.

Thus, he agreed.

The original candidate for his guard had been “Ba Shan.”

But Ba-Shan was a big fellow, talkative and noisy. Mo Hua instead chose the more steady Ba-Chuan as his escort.

Ba-Chuan was quiet, rarely spoke, and simply carried out Mo Hua’s orders without asking unnecessary questions. This suited Mo Hua well.

In the days that followed, Mo Hua remained stationed at the frontline of the Famine Calamity, personally observing, analyzing, and studying the aura of famine, seeking the cause of its formation and the nature of its spread.

After a period of research, Mo Hua was almost certain that this so-called “aura of famine” was indeed a kind of “Power of the Taotie.” Yet, as for its source, he could not quite determine.

Surely it was impossible that a “living” Taotie was roaming the lands of the Great Wilderness, spreading calamity wherever it walked…

Mo Hua felt that was far too unlikely.

A “living” Taotie would be far too terrifying. Back when he merely glanced at the Taotie’s true form while studying array patterns and comprehending laws, his mind had nearly collapsed.

If it truly were a Taotie manifesting in the world, the calamity would never be limited to its current scope.

The Great Wilderness would be destroyed in an instant.

A true Taotie was nothing less than a “Dao-Sin,” far more dreadful.

“But if it is not a Taotie walking the wilderness, bringing calamity… then what exactly is this Famine Calamity?”

Staring at the ceaselessly spreading and churning aura of famine before him, Mo Hua pondered deeply. Suddenly, his heart jolted:

“Could it be… that this is also an array?!”

“Is someone using formations to cultivate the Power of the Taotie, spreading famine throughout the Great Wilderness?!”

(End of this Chapter)