Chapter 1287: Ancient Forbidden Ground

Chapter 1286: Ancient Forbidden Ground

The Great Wu-Feng Desolate Mountain, the Ancient Forbidden Ground of the Wujiao Tribe.

Mo Hua circled around the barren mountain, walking slowly. Big Tiger followed step by step, and Tie Shù-Gu stayed respectfully behind them.

After making two rounds, Mo Hua stopped before a narrow rock wall.

He pointed at the stone surface.

“Break it.”

Tie Shù-Gu froze for a moment, then bowed. “Yes.”

He activated his magic treasure, and with the power of a Golden Core, blasted the stone wall into dust. Behind the shattered rock lay a jagged passageway.

Past the passage was an ancient stone door.

The door was ugly—no patterns, no carvings, absurdly crude, yet carrying a heavy, ancient air.

Before the stone door sat a stone plate.

Mo Hua placed a black eyeball onto the plate.

This eyeball was the Dead-Eye of the Wujiao tribe—the divine-token of the Wujiao tribe’s Vulture Great Deity. He had picked it up from the old Shaman of the Wujiao Tribe during the battle at the Vermilion Bird Mountain Realm’s altar.

Placing the Wujiao’s Dead-Eye upon the stone plate…

The door of the Ancient Forbidden Ground would open.

This was personally told to Mo Hua by the Vulture Deity.

Beaten by Mo Hua, then pinned down by the Pixiu’s claws, it had no more strength to resist. Whatever Mo Hua asked, it answered honestly. As an ancient god, it knew far more ancient secrets of the Wu-Feng Mountain Realm than any ordinary cultivator. It didn’t dare keep anything from him…

In fact, it was eager to tell him things.

From the Dead-Eye arose a wisp of divine black aura unseen by mortals, mixed with faint feathers, seeping into the stone plate.

The long-sealed stone door trembled, then slowly opened.

Behind it was pitch black darkness. Nothing could be seen.

But Mo Hua fell silent.

Even now, as the Divine-Shaman, with pure divinity and immense authority, he still felt a deep-rooted fear emerging from his bones.

Because from behind that door… came the aura of the Deceptive Dao.

“Martial Uncle…”

Mo Hua’s pupils contracted.

He had a feeling…

A corner of the Great Wilderness’ deepest secrets, some shadowy scheme hidden in the dark, was about to reveal itself to him. Many “truths” might be behind this door.

And this door was directly connected to the karmic threads of the Deceptive Dao… connected to that unnameable…

The Strange Daoist.

Mo Hua halted, hesitant.

Part of him wanted to know whether Mister Tu was inside, whether the Great Wilderness Straw-Dog Fate Art was truly in Mister Tu’s hands.

He wanted to verify his long-held suspicions.

But another part of him… feared.

Feared Martial Uncle.

Though he was certain Martial Uncle’s true body could not be behind this door, the place was undoubtedly part of Martial Uncle’s “grand design.”

Entering was the same as stepping into Martial Uncle’s karma.

And anyone bearing the title “Daoist”… was not someone his current self could contend with.

After a long silence, after much hesitation, Mo Hua finally exhaled softly.

Some things cannot be escaped.

Some karma cannot be avoided.

The current stalemate in the Great Wilderness… could only be broken by entering this door.

Mo Hua made his decision and stepped toward it.

Tie Shù-Gu’s eyes flickered. “Divine-Shaman, I shall accompany you.”

Mo Hua turned to him.

Tie Shù-Gu lowered his gaze. “I—no, my entire Shugu Tribe—is willing to go through fire and water for you.”

Mo Hua’s expression darkened slightly, and he shook his head. “You cannot enter.”

Tie Shù-Gu tightened his lips, clearly obsessive.

Mo Hua added, “If you go in, you’ll die.”

Tie Shù-Gu murmured, “This old one… is already half a dead man.”

Mo Hua shook his head. “You not dying… would be even worse than dying.”

Because inside… belonged to the Strange Daoist.

Tie Shù-Gu’s expression changed. Though ignorant of the details, he sensed a primal fear from karmic instinct.

“Guard this place.”

Mo Hua instructed him, then gently stroked Big Tiger’s head. “You too. Stay here. Don’t come in.”

Big Tiger gave a soft “Awoo,” reluctantly agreeing.

Once comforting Big Tiger and instructing Tie Shù-Gu, Mo Hua stepped into the ancient stone door.

His figure was swallowed by darkness.

Big Tiger stared after him, reluctant and worried.

Tie Shù-Gu’s respectful expression faded. His eyes dimmed, a complicated glint flickering deep within as he muttered:

“You… better not die…”

“If you die, then all my effort… will have been for nothing…”

…

Within boundless darkness, Mo Hua walked alone for a long time.

Though his eyes couldn’t see, his Divine-Sense could perceive the terrain clearly.

This Wujiao Ancient Forbidden Ground was forbidden because it was once where the Wujiao ancestors conducted experiments on forbidden Divine Dao and formation arts.

After their experiment failed, many ancestors died.

The place was sealed afterward, never to be entered again.

And the Vulture Deity, suppressed by Pixiu, had told Mo Hua everything about its layout.

So Mo Hua roughly knew the way.

The entire forbidden ground was now a place devoid of living beings.

Not because there were no living people, but because it was filled with the dead.

These dead wore Wujiao tribal robes, eerie and chilling.

Normal cultivators couldn’t see them. They existed only as Divine-Sense spirits, like vengeful ghosts.

Mo Hua could tell they were the Wujiao ancestors.

They died tragically here during the failed experiments. With immense resentment, combined with heavy Yin energy and invading outer evil, they slowly transformed into wicked specters, feeding on Yin Qi and mental force.

Any living person entering would become their “food.”

Thus it became the tribe’s forbidden ground, forbidden to the living.

But Mo Hua was different. He wasn’t exactly “human.”

This “forbidden to the living” place posed no threat to him.

Any evil specter that approached was extinguished by a single glance.

Low-level ghosts acted purely on instinct.

Those with a bit more sense, detecting his faint Divine Dao authority, didn’t even dare appear.

Mo Hua walked through the forbidden ground as a divine being, untouched by all evil—yet his expression remained heavy.

And the deeper he went, the heavier he felt.

Soon, the atmosphere changed.

The surrounding specters no longer wore Wujiao robes. Some had no clothes at all, some were missing limbs—assembled from scraps.

Human limbs stitched with beast parts—forming grotesque demons.

Their twisted forms gave Mo Hua an odd sense of familiarity.

He instantly knew—he had found the right place.

Though slightly different in appearance, these demons were clearly the same “type” as those that caused havoc in the Qianxue State.

This was Mister Tu’s signature.

Clearly, Mister Tu had been here—perhaps still was.

These demons were all created by him to “guard the entrance.”

Any body-refining cultivator or spiritual cultivator who entered—so long as they didn’t cultivate Divine Dao—would be attacked by these invisible demons, their consciousness invaded, their Divine-Sense devoured. A fatal trap.

These were the deadliest “barriers.”

Mo Hua’s gaze flickered as he continued forward.

These demons were not natural spirits but man-made constructs of Divine Dao—lower in awareness, crazier in killing intent.

Sensing Mo Hua’s “mortal body,” they lunged at him recklessly.

Most were erased in an instant by the golden light of his eyes, wiped out with a single thought.

A rare few—powerful third-grade fiends—managed to burrow their way into Mo Hua’s Sea of Consciousness, glimpsed his “true form,” and were instantly refined, becoming food for his “Divine-Dao Taotie.”

Countless fiends still could not halt his advance.

Mo Hua pushed through the sea of Wujiao ghosts and fiends, eventually arriving at a massive door.

Behind this door—according to the Vulture Deity—lay the great hall where the Wujiao Tribe sealed their forbidden experiments.

Behind that hall might lie many long-sought secrets and unresolved mysteries…

Mo Hua took a breath, then, using his authority as a Divine-Shaman and his deep mastery of Great Wilderness formation arts, unraveled the Four Symbols Formation sealing the door. He pushed it open—

—and his pupils trembled.

He had expected a great hall—the Vulture Deity had said so—but now the hall was gone.

The entire mountainside behind it had been hollowed out.

The stone had been pulverized into ruin. Within the ruins, blood-black lines like writhing tentacles covered the entire mountainside, rooted deep into the earth veins, spreading far into the distance.

No one could tell how deep they reached or how far they spread—perhaps across the whole Great Wilderness.

And those blood-black, tentacle-like lines trembled faintly, exuding a terrifying, hungry desire—supported by law-power—seemingly ready to drain the entire land dry, consuming all living beings.

They resembled…

Blood vessels.

“Taotie’s… blood vessels…”

Mo Hua’s face paled slightly.

He looked up, taking in the grotesque network of Taotie veins rooted throughout the mountain—like watching a “flesh-and-blood Taotie” being incubated into reality…

An indescribably intense Taotie aura flowed through it.

This was—the Taotie Famine-Calamity Grand Formation.

The source of the Great Wilderness’ famine calamity.

The grand design laid down by his Martial-Uncle.

Mo Hua’s expression trembled, his pupils sinking into a deep black-white-gold tri-color. The Heavenly Secret Derivative Algorithm began to operate within his Sea of Consciousness; the Heavenly Secret Deceptive Algorithm instinctively flowed alongside it. He attempted to deduce the internal structure of this Taotie Famine Formation.

But all the deductions returned as blank, distorted data.

All the Divine-Sense he poured in vanished like mud sinking into the sea.

“Unknowable. Undeducible. Uncalculable—…”

Mo Hua’s expression changed.

This meant that the Famine Formation before him transcended everything he knew about array formations.

His foundation could not support deduction.

Even if he deduced something, it could not be represented in any known language, theory, framework, or rule he understood.

This was an absolute formation—something beyond the meaning of ordinary formations.

Something utterly beyond “human” understanding.

Even Mo Hua felt unprecedented shock and cognitive dissonance.

And this shock did not stem from his humanity—but from his divinity.

A god is born of the Dao of heaven and earth—innately powerful.

Because of this, gods only seek their own “Dao,” their own laws. They lack the ability to perceive or comprehend the laws of other gods.

Once they probe too deeply into another god’s Dao, or encounter laws beyond their own nature, their divinity instinctively rejects it.

Gods become uneasy, extreme, furious—even afraid.

A kind of divine self-defense and mental dissonance.

Mo Hua’s divinity was pure at this moment—instinctively believing itself to be a true god.

Thus, upon realizing there existed something beyond his understanding—especially in the field he excelled at the most, “formation arts”—he instinctively developed violent rejection, his Sea of Consciousness shook, and even his Divine-Sense showed signs of collapse. Gods are powerful—and therefore cannot accept their own weakness.

They appear all-knowing—and therefore cannot bear their own “ignorance.”

Mo Hua forcibly calmed his mind, trying to settle his divinity and suppress the turmoil in his Divine-Sense.

But no matter how he tried, the divine turbulence could not be fully suppressed.

Ironically, it was the tiny sliver of “humanity” remaining within him that soothed the disordered divinity.

Opposite to gods, human beings are born with nothing—knowing nothing.

Everything in life is learned slowly through growth.

From nothing to something, from ignorance to understanding…

For the human part of Mo Hua, formation arts were vast and deeply profound—naturally filled with countless unknown mysteries requiring a lifetime of study.

“Not knowing” was perfectly normal.

And precisely because of his curiosity toward the unknown, he had grown from childhood until now—constantly exploring, learning, thinking, comprehending…

Thus he continued to walk on the path of formations.

That was his true Dao-heart.

To have is divine.

To lack, and to learn, is human.

At last, Mo Hua used the harmony of existence and non-existence—using humanity’s innate “weakness” to temper divinity’s innate “strength”—achieving a relative balance in his divine cognition.

Once his Divine-Sense stabilized, Mo Hua looked again at the grand formation before him. His heart no longer felt despair—only shock and profound admiration.

This… was the handiwork of his Martial Uncle.

Compared to this, the half-baked Great Wilderness Profound-Earth Formation he’d created wasn’t even on the same scale of difficulty.

He couldn’t even clearly see where the gap between him and his Martial-Uncle lay.

Mo Hua pondered briefly, then followed the veins of the Taotie Famine-Calamity Grand Formation, walking deeper inside.

As he walked, he observed and recorded the framework of the formation.

He cast aside all his previous formation knowledge, approaching it as if learning formations for the first time—with an empty heart, studying this intricate, high-level, living “biological” formation that surpassed everything he had imagined…

(End of this Chapter)