Chapter 1211: Dragon Transformation
Chapter 1210: Dragon Transformation
“Another Absolute Formation!”
Mo Hua’s heart trembled slightly, mixed with a hint of astonishment.
Absolute Formations were peculiar things—sometimes, even after endless hardship, one couldn’t find a single one. Other times, they appeared in clusters, throwing themselves right before him all at once.
No wonder his master once said that Absolute Formations could only be found through fate, through luck, and at times… through destiny itself.
What is destined to be, will be. What is not, cannot be forced.
But Mo Hua, thinking from another angle, felt it wasn’t entirely about “destiny” or “luck.”
Absolute Formations were connected to deeper layers of the laws of heaven and earth.
The deeper one’s comprehension of the laws, the sharper one’s sensitivity to clues of an Absolute Formation.
Similarly, the stronger the divine sense, the higher one’s mastery of formations, the more profound one’s Heavenly Secret Derivative Calculations—then the easier it was to pierce the veil of heaven and earth’s mysteries, and discover traces of these Absolute Formations.
At least, this Abyssal Bone Absolute Formation was pried out by Mo Hua himself, through deduction with laws, divine sense calculations, and various other means—forcefully wrested from the “tortoise shell”–like Abyssal Bone Heavy Armor.
This showed him clearly—if destiny was poor, then one must cultivate without ceasing, strengthen oneself, and change destiny.
If luck was lacking, then one must ceaselessly comprehend, elevate understanding of the laws, and gain a pair of eyes that could see through fate, seize luck, and grasp opportunity.
Mo Hua nodded. He felt he had gained new insights—truths that seemed useless on the surface but were, in fact, immensely useful.
Now came the time to study a new Absolute Formation.
Expectations stirred in his heart, though he kept his face calm. He turned to Iron Shugu and the armored barbarian soldier:
“All right, you two may stop now.”
The two “tools,” Iron Shugu and the Heavy Armor Barbarian, who were locked in bitter combat, finally stopped, eyes bloodshot and breathing heavily. They had been a great help to Mo Hua.
These past few days, they fought without pause. When utterly exhausted, they would stop to recover, only to resume their slaughter once strength returned.
The armored barbarian truly wished to kill Iron Shugu, the “traitor” who betrayed the Barbarian God and their ancestors.
At first, Iron Shugu had no intent to kill, but as the battle raged, anger welled up, and killing intent arose.
He was at Golden Core Realm. Even though restricted by the mountain world, his cultivation was still stronger than this armored barbarian.
Yet with the Abyssal Bone Heavy Armor—unyielding and indestructible—the barbarian managed to hold his own in true life-and-death combat.
The two fought as if locked in eternal blood feud, neither willing to relent.
It was precisely this endless battle that kept the Abyssal Bone Armor constantly under assault, forcing the formation within to flow without rest.
This gave Mo Hua an immense advantage for deduction.
Such deduction was extremely profound. Mo Hua performed it in secret, and very few knew he possessed this outrageous ability.
He had no desire to expose it. Otherwise, in the future, everyone would be wary of him, and “stealing” formations would no longer be so easy.
Mo Hua glanced at the armored barbarian, nodded slightly, and said sternly:
“I admit, your Shugu ancestors’ Abyssal Bone Armor is extraordinary. Even the blessed spear of this Shaman cannot pierce it… But don’t be so quick to rejoice. I shall seek the Divine-Lord’s oracle. There will be a way to shatter your armor, trample your Barbarian God’s prestige, bring shame to your ancestors, and let you know what true divine might means…”
Mo Hua used words to provoke him, to prevent him from committing suicide.
This armored barbarian was a blindly loyal warrior, devout and simple-minded—no match for Mo Hua, this cunning enigmatic freak. A hundred of him wouldn’t equal one of Mo Hua’s tricks.
Sure enough, the barbarian’s eyes burned with fury as he sneered:
“Good! I, A-Dagu, will defend the glory of the Barbarian God and the honor of my ancestors. I’ll let you, demon, witness the might of my Shugu Clan’s armor, and the immortal inheritance of our ancestors!”
“A-Dagu… so that’s his name?”
“These Shugu names really are strange…”
(TN: 阿打骨 (Ā Dagu) → Bone-Smasher)
Mo Hua muttered inwardly, then sneered coldly. “Overestimating yourself.”
He ordered Iron Shugu to keep watch over A-Dagu, then turned and left.
After leaving, Mo Hua sought out a secret chamber, sealed it with formations, and eagerly took out the Abyssal Bone Heavy Armor formation diagram he had just reconstructed, studying it closely.
A Rank-Two, Twenty-Runes Absolute Formation.
This formation’s rank was below Mo Hua’s Twenty-Three Rune Dao-Manifested Divine Sense, meaning he was fully capable of learning it.
The diagram was one he personally deduced and restored, so the runic forms weren’t difficult.
The only challenge lay in the “laws” contained within the Absolute Formation.
Formations combined with laws—that was what made them true formation arts.
Every formation contained certain laws.
Both Absolute and ordinary formations were, in essence, built upon laws.
But ordinary formations—those of typical rank—held only faint traces of law, relying more on the external operation of the formation’s form.
Without grasping laws, one could still learn ordinary formations. As long as the formation diagram could be drawn, it would have some power and utility.
Of course, if one comprehended even a little law, the formations drawn would naturally be superior.
But Absolute Formations were different.
They contained much stronger, more unique law-power.
This law-power transcended the runic form of formations.
To master an Absolute Formation, one had to comprehend the corresponding law and Dao essence.
Otherwise, learning only the outward diagram—drawing by rote—was utterly useless.
With the form but without the spirit, with the array but without the law, with the shape but without the essence—one could never master an Absolute Formation.
Thus, for ordinary formations, the “formation” was core—having the array meant there was law, however faint.
For Absolute Formations, the “law” was the core. Comprehend the law, and the array exists. Without the law, there is no array.
This difference in focus marked the fundamental divide between ordinary formations and Absolute Formations.
Mo Hua had only vaguely understood this before.
But now, having entered the Great Wilderness, touched upon the Taotie’s power, and comprehended deeper transformations of law, he gained clearer insight.
The Abyssal Bone Heavy Armor Absolute Formation followed the same principle.
Its external rune forms were not difficult for a formation master of Mo Hua’s caliber.
The true challenge lay in the laws hidden within.
According to Mo Hua’s deduction, since this armor was tied to the main Shugu Tribe, their ancestors, and the Endless Abyss Marsh, the law it contained was likely a form of Taotie power.
This Taotie power probably connected to the Twenty-Three Rune Taotie Absolute Formation inside the Barbarian God’s head image from the Shugu secret tribe division, which Mo Hua had already obtained but not yet comprehended.
If he could master this Twenty-Rune Abyssal Bone Armor Absolute Formation, he might unravel certain Taotie laws.
Then, using that as a stepping stone, he could tackle the Twenty-Three Rune Taotie Absolute Formation.
Step by step, from shallow to profound, linking the laws hidden within various complex formations—even the most abstruse Absolute Formations—dissecting and connecting them until all became clear…
This was something only true masters of formation Dao could achieve.
But Mo Hua never thought so far ahead. He didn’t even know if he qualified as a “master.” He was simply driven by curiosity and hunger for knowledge, instinctively using every means to seek the truth of formations, to uncover the Dao behind the laws.
Because of this purity, he was powerful.
And his perception, tempered by long contemplation, had grown even sharper.
This Twenty-Rune Abyssal Bone Armor Absolute Formation didn’t seem overly difficult to him.
After dozens of attempts, he soon caught the faint scent of a “law.”
But Mo Hua wasn’t overjoyed.
For he suddenly realized—things weren’t what he thought.
He had misjudged the law.
The Twenty-Rune Abyssal Bone Absolute Formation and the Twenty-Three Rune Taotie Absolute Formation contained entirely different laws.
In fact, they were completely unrelated formations.
Mo Hua sighed deeply, emotions tangled.
The Taotie law of famine, and its Famine Formation.
The Twenty-Rune Abyssal Bone Armor Absolute Formation.
The Twenty-Three Rune Absolute Formation inside the Barbarian God’s skull.
The Twenty-Four Rune Taotie Twelve-Meridian-Spiritual-Skeleton Formation.
Four Absolute Formations. Four distinct laws.
Among them, the Famine Formation, the Shugu Absolute Formation, and the Twelve-Meridian Skeleton Formation were all, to some extent, linked to the Taotie.
But the Abyssal Bone Armor Absolute Formation was different.
On the surface, it had no connection to Taotie. Its law was unique, and Mo Hua couldn’t determine exactly what the “Abyssal Bone” law truly was.
Mo Hua leaned back in his stone chair, rubbing his brow, head aching.
“So this is an Absolute Formation…”
“So this is the Taotie…”
“So this is the ancient legacy of the Great Wilderness…”
“These things… they’re far too difficult. Just who created them all?”
“Are these formations truly things humans can learn and comprehend?”
Closing his eyes, he rested for a while, calming his heart, then sat upright again and continued his contemplation.
The great Dao of the world required a lifetime of labor, endless pondering, before yielding results.
Only after pouring in enough thought could one gain enlightenment.
“Difficulty” was only natural.
If even he found it so hard, how much harder it would be for others?
And it was precisely because it was so hard—if he succeeded, if he mastered and unified it—then he would naturally surpass the rest.
Endlessly climbing toward greater heights, endlessly seeking the deeper truths of the Dao.
This was the “Dao” of a formation master.
Mo Hua’s heart grew lighter, braver, calmer in facing hardship.
“If this law is different from the Taotie’s, that’s also good. If I master it, it means I’ll comprehend yet another law…”
Thus he immersed himself wholly in studying the mysteries within the Shugu ancestors’ Abyssal Bone Armor.
As for whether Iron Shugu and A-Dagu were still fighting, he didn’t bother to care.
He left General Lu-Gu’s assault to Dan-Zhu and Chì-Fēng.
With Wufeng mountain Ridge as a barrier, victory against the Shugu Tribe was unlikely, but defending for now and “holding on” shouldn’t be a problem. Battle-hardened Chì-Fēng needed no further words.
And Dan-Zhu, the prodigy, after all these battles, was slowly learning to stand on his own.
Mo Hua, meanwhile, devoted himself wholly to formations.
After all, his identity as “Shaman” was fake—being a Formation Master was his true craft.
He entered seclusion, ignoring outside affairs, pouring all of his concentration into dismantling and studying the Absolute Formation hidden within the Abyssal-Bone Heavy Armor.
As time trickled by, the sealed and silent stone chamber became filled with the array-runes that Mo Hua had taken apart, analyzed, reconstructed, and deduced.
At a glance, they were dense and abstruse, profound beyond measure. Ordinary cultivators—even Formation Masters with solid foundations—would find it nearly impossible to understand this self-created, self-styled “dissection” method of Mo Hua’s.
Formation and law as one.
A formation was the bridge of a law, the vessel of a law.
When no clear clue existed, and one could not begin from the perspective of “Laws,” the only way was to use the fundamentals—deduce, distort, and cross-compare runes again and again…
In hopes that, by doing so, the deeper “Laws” might reveal themselves, offering insight.
Through this process, Mo Hua’s understanding of the Abyssal-Bone Absolute Formation grew gradually deeper.
Yet after long analysis, a sudden doubt arose in his heart.
This Abyssal-Bone Absolute Formation… was a strange, even deformed, type of Four Symbols Formation.
Its structure was riddled with ancient, bizarre, and even irregular demonic runes.
It didn’t seem like a strict, complete, coherent, systematically designed “Absolute Formation.”
Rather, it looked more like…
After a long moment of thought, Mo Hua finally found a fitting word:
“Patchwork.”
It was like a formation pieced together from scattered, fragmented runes.
In his mind, an image surfaced—
The ancestors of the Shugu Tribe wandering along the edge of the Endless Abyss Marsh, scavenging broken fragments of hardened demon beast bones, piecing them together into a suit of “Heavy Armor,” which they named the “Abyssal-Bone Heavy Armor.”
But armor alone wasn’t enough—it needed a formation.
So those ancestors gathered fragmented “bone runes” from unknown sources, patching them together, fusing them again and again, until they finally produced this “Abyssal-Bone Absolute Formation.”
At this thought, Mo Hua’s expression shifted, and a sudden flash of familiarity stirred within him.
“Patchwork…”
“Using scattered demon runes to piece something together… isn’t this…”
“Ten-Thousand-Demons Transforming into a Dragon?!”
His pupils contracted sharply.
“Collect countless Four Symbols demon runes, refine the essence of myriad demon runes, and converge them into dragon runes…”
“That’s essentially the same approach as the Shugu ancestors—piecing together various runes into the Abyssal-Bone Absolute Formation.”
“In other words, these two seemingly unrelated formations might actually share the same underlying Law?”
Mo Hua was stunned, his thoughts racing rapidly.
“The Abyssal-Bone Absolute Formation and the Four Symbols Azure Dragon Formation… at their core, their structural ‘principle’ is the same: patching together demon runes, then converging them into one whole?”
“That goes against common sense somewhat…”
“The root cause is that people, taking the concept of ‘dragon’ for granted, never realized that the Four Symbols ‘Azure Dragon’ is itself a patched-together construct. The Four Symbols Azure Dragon Formation is also a ‘patchwork formation.’”
“As for the Abyssal-Bone Absolute Formation, it’s obvious—an ancestral Shugu creation made from scavenged demon runes at the edge of the Abyss Marsh, like piecing together ‘trash’ into a so-called Absolute Formation…”
“Which means these two Absolute Formations may indeed share the same Law?”
Shocked, Mo Hua felt as if he had just lifted a hidden corner of some ancient, unknown secret buried within the Great Wilderness.
“And if the Abyssal-Bone Absolute Formation and the Four Symbols Azure Dragon Formation share the same essential Law… that would mean…”
“That I’ve actually studied the principle of the Shugu ancestors’ formation before?”
“Because I once studied ‘Ten-Thousand-Demons Transforming into a Dragon’—always attempting to ‘piece together’ a dragon.”
“But the problem is…”
Mo Hua’s expression grew complicated.
He had never comprehended the Law of “Transforming into a Dragon.”
His plan to refine myriad demon runes into dragon runes had never succeeded.
He had long kept the Ten-Thousand-Demons Dragon Transformation Formation under research, but never truly grasped it. Later, after entering the Great Wilderness, too many matters arose, and he put it aside. Yet now, the problem resurfaced before him.
Mo Hua felt as if unfinished “homework” had suddenly come knocking, demanding repayment.
He rummaged through his Storage Bag, pulling out a thick stack of research notes and discarded rune drafts from his past attempts at converging dragon runes. Now, these two paths had conveniently merged into one.
With mixed feelings, he placed the Abyssal-Bone Absolute Formation and the Ten-Thousand-Demons Dragon Transformation runes side by side, comparing them.
But after a while, his brows furrowed once more.
It still wasn’t that simple…
Though the two reflected each other, deepening his insight, and though he gained a more intuitive understanding—
the essence of the problem remained the same.
He still did not understand how this “Law” actually functioned, nor how it drove the Absolute Formation to operate.
The Dao that can be spoken is not the true Dao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
Laws, like the Dao, can be given names by men—but those names are human inventions, not the names of the Laws themselves.
The Law of “Dragon Transformation” was the same.
Mo Hua could only vaguely speculate on its existence and manner of operation.
So-called “Dragon Transformation” seemed to mean using scattered demon runes to patch together an entirely new, stronger “demon rune.” But Mo Hua only knew the phenomenon, not the principle.
In practice—how exactly does one “transform into a dragon”? How should the “materials” for dragon transformation be chosen? Where do they come from? How does the process evolve? How are all the runes fused into one? Why can demon runes merge into “dragon runes”?
All of these were concrete yet thorny questions.
Before he knew it, Mo Hua had reached another dead end.
And by comparing it to the Abyssal-Bone Absolute Formation, he realized that his previous understanding of “Ten-Thousand-Demons Transforming into a Dragon” had flaws as well.
Its essence might not simply be the “convergence” of dragon runes.
“Convergence” was the Dao Court’s style—the school of formations in the Nine Provinces.
But “Ten-Thousand-Demons Transforming into a Dragon” belonged to Mister Tu’s tradition—a lineage rooted in the Great Wilderness.
The inner driving Laws were different.
Perhaps that was why, despite long study and countless attempts, he had never managed to truly converge a “dragon.”
And so—what exactly is the real method of Dragon Transformation?
Mo Hua’s brow knit tighter.
“Are these laws… beyond my understanding because I haven’t witnessed enough of their manifestations?”
“Or is it that… I have already seen them, but simply failed to comprehend?”
Settling his mind, Mo Hua replayed every experience he had undergone since entering the Great Wilderness, pondering deeply:
“Ten-Thousand-Demons Transforming into a Dragon, and the Abyssal-Bone Absolute Formation… they share the same type of Law. This type of Law is different from the Taotie…”
That had been his previous conclusion.
But… were they truly different?
The very existence of the Taotie was bound to the Great Wilderness. The degree to which Taotie-related laws permeated the Great Wilderness was so profound that even Mo Hua found it unfathomable. If the Ten-Thousand-Demons Transforming into a Dragon truly was some supreme inheritance of the Great Wilderness, then could it not be related to the Taotie after all? Dragon transformation… connected to the Taotie?
Mo Hua pondered for a long while but found no thread of connection. He shifted perspective, considering it instead from the standpoint of the Shugu Tribe.
The Abyssal Bone Absolute Formation was inscribed upon the heavy armor.
That formation very likely contained the laws of “dragon transformation.”
Yet within the Shugu Tribe, another Taotie formation was hidden… the twenty-three-rune Taotie array embedded within the Barbarian God Statue’s head.
That Taotie array… Mo Hua had never comprehended it, not even understanding its purpose.
But such a formation could not possibly be irrelevant.
Suddenly, images surfaced in Mo Hua’s mind—fragments of what he had once seen inside the Shugu Divine Temple.
The Barbarian God Statue of the Shugu Tribe, the Taotie array in its head, the barbarian armors surrounding the statue… and etched upon those armors were broken, incomplete demon runes.
None of the demon runes were whole. They looked just like…
The corpses of formations?
Corpses… of formations?!
In a flash, Mo Hua’s scalp tingled as a terrifying realization struck him.
The Taotie was a Law-Beast… the Law-Beast of Ferocity—it could devour formations!
The remains of devoured formations became “broken runes.” Those broken runes could then be pieced together… into entirely new formation patterns!
Thus, the Taotie law was the prelude to the dragon transformation law.
First comes “Taotie Devouring Demons,” dismantling demon runes, and then follows…
“Ten-Thousand-Demons Transforming into a Dragon”?!
The laws of the Great Wilderness were like a savage beast born of heaven and earth—interlinked, indivisible, one whole!
(End of this Chapter)