Chapter 1334: Seven-Star Road

Chapter 1333: Seven-Star Road

Afterward, everyone chatted a bit longer about the battle arrangements for the Dao Court’s assault on the Royal Court, exchanging what information they had.

Mo Hua quietly committed everything to memory.

When the banquet ended, the fully fed Bai Zisheng stood up, glanced at Mo Hua, and said coldly:

“If I ever break free, I’ll kill you.”

Mo Hua returned the cold smile. “A defeated foe should worry about himself.”

Bai Zisheng’s gaze was icy. He said nothing more, chains draped over his body as he swaggered off.

No one dared stop him.

Feng Zichen looked at Mo Hua with concern and couldn’t help saying, “Mo Hua, that Bai Zisheng has really marked you as an enemy. Be careful.”

Mo Hua waved his hand and sighed. “When there are too many lice, you stop itching. When there are too many enemies, you stop worrying. Plenty of people hold grudges against me, I’m used to it.”

Feng Zichen thought for a moment, then nodded. “That’s true.”

Among this hall full of Qianxue prodigies, who didn’t bear some grudge against Mo Hua?

And if someone didn’t have a grudge against Mo Hua, were they even worthy of being called a prodigy?

Everyone nodded in agreement, deeply convinced.

Still, there was a weight in their hearts. Bai Zisheng was no ordinary prodigy—his background was towering, his bloodline terrifying, and his three-stage transformation was genuinely fearsome.

Mo Hua had humiliated him time and again, even mocking him publicly with words. This grudge had been forged deep… perhaps too deep.

If one day Mo Hua truly fell into Bai Zisheng’s hands, who knew what kind of torment awaited him.

Just imagining Mo Hua being captured and tortured by Bai Zisheng sent chills down the spines of those prodigies.

But then, picturing Mo Hua being tortured somehow brought a strange, guilty thrill.

…

Night fell.

Mo Hua and his “enemy,” Bai Zisheng, slept in the same room.

Bai Zisheng leaned near the door and window, guarding his little junior brother, he knew that while this junior brother was clever, his physical body was weak and his defenses poor, unlike himself, whose strength lay precisely in his flesh.

Mo Hua lay on the bed, lost in thought.

Matters of the Royal Court always weighed heavily on his mind.

The foreseeable brutality of the coming war also left him uneasy.

As he pondered, a wave of drowsiness suddenly swept over him, and Mo Hua inexplicably drifted into a hazy sleep.

In the blur, Mo Hua saw a figure once more.

As if eroded by countless years, the figure was already indistinct, its features unclear, its body marked with cracks.

Mo Hua could only tell by instinct that this person was the second elder of the Demonic Sect from back then, the one who had revealed to him the secrets of the Taotie Twelve-Meridian-Spiritual-Skeleton Formation.

As before, the figure bowed to Mo Hua and said:

“I beg you, Divine-Lord.”

“I beg you, Young Divine-Lord…”

“Save my Great Wilderness. Save the bloodline of my Great Wilderness…”

“I beg you, Young Divine-Lord, to extend even a single thread of fate for my Great Wilderness…”

Mo Hua frowned and asked, “Whose bloodline of the Great Wilderness are you talking about? How am I supposed to save them? And why would the fate of the Great Wilderness fall to me to extend?”

The second elder did not answer, only continuing to bow. “I beg you, Young Divine-Lord… I beg you…”

“Only you, Young Divine-Lord, can extend the life of my Great Wilderness…”

Blood-tears streamed from the second elder’s eyes. “This old one kowtows to you… kowtows to you…”

He dropped to his knees and repeatedly knocked his head against the ground before Mo Hua.

Mo Hua hurriedly said, “Don’t kowtow, explain it clearly!”

But the second elder did not respond, only continuing to kowtow, until his body seemed to weather away, turning into drifting sand that dispersed into space and time…

Mo Hua reached out to grab him, but caught nothing at all.

As he stood there in confusion, a voice suddenly sounded by his ear:

“Little junior brother, little junior brother… what’s wrong?”

Mo Hua opened his eyes and saw Bai Zisheng beside him.

Mo Hua froze. “I…”

Bai Zisheng said, “You were waving your hand around in the air for ages, mumbling incoherently, saying who knows what…” His eyes were full of concern. “Did you have a nightmare?”

Mo Hua nodded, then shook his head. “It’s nothing… just thought about some things…”

Seeing that Mo Hua didn’t want to say more, Bai Zisheng didn’t press him, only saying gently:

“Don’t overthink things. Don’t put so much pressure on yourself either. The Royal Court, the Dragon Pool, at the end of the day, they’re just stepping stones to forming a Golden Core.”

After a moment’s thought, Bai Zisheng added, “When the Royal Court is breached, I’ll take you charging into the Dragon Pool. Whoever blocks me, I’ll stab to death. Even if this trip to the Dragon Pool goes poorly and you can’t form a Golden Core, there will still be other opportunities later.”

“I know you’ve been smart since you were little. But because you’re too smart, you sometimes think too much. Some things can’t be solved by thinking, sometimes you just charge through them.”

Mo Hua paused, then couldn’t help smiling. “Alright.”

Bai Zisheng reminded him, “Take care of yourself. Don’t think too much. Save your brainpower.”

Mo Hua answered again, “Alright.”

Bai Zisheng nodded, then sat back down on the ground to cultivate, regulating his injuries.

Mo Hua lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling.

He tried to empty his mind, but his Divine-Sense was too strong, his habit of thinking too ingrained. The moment a thought stirred, countless others flooded in.

The Dao Court, the great clans, his martial-uncle’s schemes, the brutality of war, and the tangled people and affairs within the Royal Court—all of it left Mo Hua restless.

What troubled him most were the second elder’s words, and even the very “existence” of that second elder.

Mo Hua studied formations and walked the path of proving the Dao through Divine-Sense. By nature, he was a “half-god,” and had a Pixiu contract. Though his divinity was sealed, the might of his divine thoughts remained.

All demons, fiends, ghosts, and specters could not touch him at all.

Within nightmare mindscapes, no evil entity could withstand him even for a single exchange.

Yet when he entered that dream earlier, he hadn’t sensed anything at all.

He also had no idea in what form the “second elder” in the dream had existed.

Not human, not ghost, not god—more like a fragment from the long river of time.

And the Great Wilderness bloodline the second elder kept begging him to save… what exactly was it?

How was he supposed to extend the fate of the Great Wilderness?

The Great Wilderness Royal Court was a fourth-rank land. Feathered Ascension cultivators contended there, and the lives of countless beings hung in the balance. In such a situation, how could he possibly extend the fate of the Great Wilderness?

Mo Hua’s brows knit tightly, even his forehead beginning to ache. He immediately recalled his little senior brother’s warning not to think too much and forcibly made himself stop.

At this stage, all he needed to do was break into the Royal Court, enter the Dragon Pool, temper his grade, and form a Golden Core.

Just do that one thing.

Think about nothing else.

Through meditation, Mo Hua forcefully gathered his thoughts, finally feeling his head ease somewhat.

Then, feeling bored, he let his mind sink into his Sea of Consciousness and continued practicing various formations on the Dao Monument.

…

Early the next morning, Mo Hua got up and headed to the nearby barren hills to pull wild grass.

Bai Zisheng, feeling uneasy, followed along as well.

However, watching Mo Hua run back and forth through the mountains, pulling useless wild grass, Bai Zisheng finally couldn’t hold it in and asked:

“Mo Hua, are you pulling all this grass to feed a horse?”

He vaguely remembered that when they were young, Mo Hua had especially liked pulling all kinds of grass to feed the Bai Clan’s big white horse.

The strange thing was that the Bai Clan’s big white horse happened to love eating the grass Mo Hua pulled.

Grass pulled by himself? The horse wouldn’t even spare it a glance.

From that time on, Bai Zisheng had known that this little junior brother of his possessed some rather peculiar talent.

But this was the Great Wilderness, these grasses Mo Hua was pulling were truly nothing special.

Mo Hua said, “It’s for weaving straw dogs.”

“Straw dogs?” Bai Zisheng was a little confused.

Mo Hua nodded. He hadn’t intended to say much, but thinking that Bai Zisheng was his only Little Senior Brother, he considered for a moment and then said:

“Little Senior Brother, what do you think people look like in the eyes of the Heavenly Dao?”

“The Heavenly Dao?” Bai Zisheng frowned, then quickly realized. “You mean, ‘Heaven and Earth are unkind, and treat all things as straw dogs’?”

Mo Hua nodded and pointed at the wild grass covering the ground.

“In the eyes of the Heavenly Dao, all of us—regardless of cultivation level, wealth or poverty, status or rank, male or female, beautiful or ugly—may be no different from these wild grasses before us…”

“Strength and weakness, wealth and poverty, nobility and peasantry, beauty and ugliness—these discriminations exist only for people.”

“In the eyes of the Heavenly Dao, all of these are ‘false,’ illusory.”

Bai Zisheng was stunned.

Mo Hua’s eyes brightened slightly as he continued, “Man models himself after Earth, Earth after Heaven, Heaven after the Dao. Since people seek the Dao, naturally they must comprehend what the mortal world looks like in the eyes of the Heavenly Dao.”

“No matter how high one’s cultivation, how great one’s power, or how wealthy one is, none of that is worth a single coin in the eyes of the Heavenly Dao.”

“In the end, a person is just a person, from birth to death, no different from the multitude of living beings under Heaven.”

“And no different from the most ordinary straw grass in this world.”

“This is the Dao’s original intent, and also the human heart’s true nature,” Mo Hua said solemnly.

“In the end, a person is just a person, no different from the multitude of living beings under Heaven…”

Bai Zisheng stood there dazed. Though he didn’t fully understand what Mo Hua was saying, he vaguely sensed that his little junior brother was telling him something very important.

Bai Zisheng knew this well, when it came to fighting, he was strong. But when it came to thinking and comprehension, he was no match for this little junior brother.

His little junior brother’s sharp intellect was something even their master acknowledged and cherished.

Bai Zisheng silently engraved Mo Hua’s words in his heart and nodded. “I understand.”

Seeing that his Little Senior Brother had understood, Mo Hua smiled gently.

Bai Zisheng asked, “How much more wild grass do you need?”

Mo Hua replied, “A lot more… the more, the better.”

The more wild grass he had, the more straw dogs he could weave; the more straw dogs, the higher his chances of survival—and likewise, the more times he could strike.

One straw dog was one life.

It could preserve his own life, or take someone else’s.

For the upcoming journey to the Royal Court, the number of straw dogs would be his greatest reliance.

Bai Zisheng didn’t understand the principles behind it, but since his little junior brother found it useful, he said, “Tell me what kind of grass you need. I’ll help you pull it.”

Mo Hua nodded. “Mm.”

…

In the days that followed, Mo Hua continued pulling wild grass to weave straw dogs for himself, while also planning the campaign against the Royal Court, and at the same time seeking ways to further expand the Royal Slave Mountain Realm and gather more barbarian slaves.

As the war progressed and Dao soldiers advanced on a massive scale, more and more tribes in the Royal Capital region were conquered by the Dao Court.

With tribes defeated, the number of displaced and scattered barbarian slaves grew ever larger.

Mo Hua had to take in as many of these barbarian slaves as possible, taking one was saving one.

At the same time, he was secretly observing the movements of that barbarian slave youth named “Huai Nu.”

Seeing that this child was studying formations day and night without rest, and following Mo Hua’s guidance by using the abilities of a “God-Favored” to display small-scale divine miracles—uniting most of the barbarian slaves of the Royal Capital region and even attempting to stimulate crop growth through formations so these slaves could at least have something to eat—only then did Mo Hua feel at ease.

Of course, for Huai Nu, this process was also accompanied by all kinds of dangers.

He would draw the attention of great clans, face exclusion from within the barbarian slaves, and suffer oppression from even more vicious barbarians.

These problems, Huai Nu relied on his own abilities to resolve one after another.

Those he couldn’t resolve, the barbarian god within his Sea of Consciousness would borrow divine power to help him resolve.

And if even that barbarian god couldn’t resolve them, only then would Mo Hua intervene to help the youth.

But he would not reveal himself, only controlling the development of the situation from the shadows, tempering this youth burdened with a difficult mission through all manner of setbacks and hardships.

When Heaven is about to entrust someone with a great responsibility, suffering and torment are things that can never be avoided.

…

On the other side, the Dao Court was also accelerating the progress of the war.

The pace was even faster than Mo Hua had anticipated.

In just a little over a month, the Royal Capital region was completely pacified by the various great clans.

Although there were still some scattered barbarian tribes fighting on independently and resisting the Dao Court, they no longer affected the overall situation.

The “prerequisites” for attacking the Royal Court had been met.

Formation masters clad in the dao robes of the Imperial Celestial Bureau, under the protection of Dao soldiers, began entering the Royal Capital region in large numbers.

For the most part, the battle arrangements Feng Zichen had spoken of were correct.

The purpose of these Imperial Celestial Bureau formation masters was to use Seven-Star array formations to construct a passage that would run through the entire Royal Capital region.

Using the Seven-Star formation to sever karma and block various curse-killing and divine-sense based techniques.

Once the passage stabilized, the Dao Court’s Feathered Ascension experts would use this “Seven-Star Road” to pass directly through the Royal Capital region, their swords pointed straight at the Royal Court.

With Feathered Ascension as the vanguard.

This was the true beginning of the decisive battle.

The laying of the “Seven-Star Road” was something the Dao Court allowed no outsiders to touch.

Mo Hua couldn’t help even if he wanted to, pulling strings was useless too, even though he was the Qianxue Prefecture’s foremost figure in formation arts.

Mo Hua could only sigh inwardly at the pity of it. If he had been allowed to help, perhaps in the time spent laying the road, he could have already grasped the basics of Seven-Star array formations.

But if he couldn’t help openly, it didn’t mean he had no way at all. He could still watch from afar and secretly calculate.

Thus, in the days that followed, Mo Hua gained an additional task:

Secret calculation.

While the Imperial Celestial Bureau was laying the Seven-Star Road, Mo Hua found a cliff in the distance, spread out a blanket, brewed a cup of tea, then released his divine sense to perceive the array fluctuations during the construction of the Seven-Star Road. At the same time, he activated the Heavenly Secret Derivative Algorithm, reverse-deducing the foundational structure and operational laws of those formations.

This kind of deduction was certainly not as effective as “personally participating.”

Just like the Arhatian Blood-Sacrifice Grand Formation back then, Mo Hua had personally taken part in its construction and learned a great deal.

But opportunities for “personal participation” were rare and could not be expected every time.

By contrast, being able to secretly observe from afar and deduce some of the fundamental array patterns and underlying logic of Seven-Star formations was already extremely valuable.

Mo Hua didn’t even dare speak of it aloud.

Because if one were to be strict about it, according to Dao law, spying on the Imperial Celestial Bureau’s Seven-Star formation secrets was a grave taboo of the Dao Court—serious enough to warrant execution by beheading.

So Mo Hua understood: contentment brings lasting joy, and one must stop while ahead, absolutely no greed.

Taking advantage of this opportunity, he would quietly learn as much as he could.

And because this was wartime, with the situation urgent and every second counting, everyone was working overtime without pause.

From marking out the lines to laying it down, the entire Seven-Star Road took only a little over half a month to complete.

Mo Hua felt regret in his heart.

If there had been a bit more time, he could have deduced even more array patterns.

Seven-Star formations were something one might never encounter under normal circumstances.

True Person Zhuge knew them, but even as a True Person, without the Dao Court’s grace and the Imperial Celestial Bureau’s approval, he was not permitted to teach them.

But now there was no time left for regret.

Because Mo Hua knew that once the Seven-Star Road was completed, it would be the day Feathered Ascension descended.

Two days later, Mo Hua saw countless Dao Court armies enter the territory, advancing endlessly along the Seven-Star Road, golden spears and iron steeds in vast, rolling ranks, stretching beyond the horizon.

The murderous aura alone made the earth tremble.

And within the great army, upon the Seven-Star Road itself, no fewer than seven Dao Court Feathered Ascended—including True-Person Zhuge and True-Person Huá—advanced side by side.

The Feathered Ascended had entered the realm.

Which meant that the true blood-soaked battle for the Royal Court was about to begin…