Chapter 123: The Killing Formation Heavenly Wither, Chen Changsheng Scared Out of His Wits
Chapter 123 – The Killing Formation Heavenly Wither, Chen Changsheng Scared Out of His Wits
Three hours later, Chen Changsheng concluded his spiritual sweep, having flawlessly mapped the terrain radiating three hundred miles outward from the God Source vein.
“Tsk, tsk!”
“A dragon coils and a tiger crouches, gathering the primordial wind and pooling the sovereign waters. This is undeniably a peerless nexus of dragon veins.”
“A domain such as this is the absolute pinnacle for anchoring a slaughter-array.”
Reaching into his robes, Chen Changsheng produced an ancient, frayed book bound in primordial beast hide.
This was a supreme manual he had unearthed from the depths of the Desolate Ancient Forbidden Land.
The Heaven-Earth Life-Extinguishing Formation was but one of the three cataclysmic killing formations detailed within its pages. The sovereign array he intended to lay down today was another entirely.
This Formation was named Heavenly Wither. Unlike the Heaven-Earth Life-Extinguishing Formation, the Heavenly Wither demanded absolute harmony with the surrounding terrain.
The more potent the geography and the deeper the dragon vein, the more devastating the Heavenly Wither Formation became.
Once ignited, the array would violently invert the benevolent dragon vein that nourished the land, twisting it into a localized “Ferocious Dragon.” It would then weaponize the absolute backlash of the earth’s essence to obliterate all trapped within.
Once the slaughter was complete, the entire dragon vein would be violently sucked dry, permanently reducing a thousand-mile radius into a dead, barren wasteland.
Running the profound intricacies of the Heavenly Wither Formation through his mind once more, Chen Changsheng began to methodically bury the array’s foundation nodes into the earth.
Naturally, the Kunlun cultivators stationed to guard the God Source vein were seamlessly woven into the perimeter of his death trap.
……
Three days bled away in the blink of an eye.
Chen Changsheng stood amidst the wilderness, his complexion pale and his eyes threaded with violent, blood-red veins.
Weaving an absolute, world-shaking killing formation of this magnitude placed a terrifying, almost unbearable strain on a cultivator’s divine sense and soul.
It was entirely due to a few recent “minor breakthroughs” in his Dao foundation that he managed to survive the ordeal. Otherwise, the sheer spiritual taxation would have extended the process tenfold.
Surveying his flawless, murderous masterpiece, Chen Changsheng nodded with grim satisfaction.
“This degree of lethality should suffice. That ‘birdman’ possesses a speed that defies the heavens; an ordinary Dao-array could never hope to tether him.”
“Alas, no matter how swiftly a bird plummets through the void, it can never outrun the inescapable net woven by the hunter.”
His brutal preparations complete, Chen Changsheng turned to slip back toward the Kunlun Holy Land.
Before vanishing, he instinctively cast one final, sweeping glance over the distant God Source vein. It was in that exact fraction of a second that his brow violently furrowed.
“Why does the flow of Qi feel… inverted?”
“That contradicts the Dao!”
“A localized geography such as this should absolutely not harbor such a sinister resonance!”
Abandoning all thoughts of immediate departure, Chen Changsheng violently summoned dozens of mortal texts from his spatial storage, rapidly cross-referencing their contents.
These were texts concerning the mortal arts of geomancy and feng shui.
Both mortals and cultivators sought to map the flow of dragon veins and pinpoint supreme spiritual acupoints. From a purely functional standpoint, a cultivator’s manipulation of the Dao was simply the absolute, sovereign evolution of mortal geomancy.
Within the cultivation world, the individuals capable of binding dragon veins were invariably peerless Formation Masters.
A sovereign Formation Master could effortlessly hijack the primordial flow of mountains and rivers, turning the world itself into their weapon.
Despite the inherent disparities in their power, a dragon acupoint deemed perfect by a Formation Master would absolutely lack any geomantic flaws that a mortal feng shui master could detect.
Yet now, when Chen Changsheng superimposed the crude lens of mortal feng shui over this supreme territory, the resulting deduction was chilling: this was a domain of absolute, cataclysmic misfortune.
“This is impossible!”
“What unnatural law could distort the earth so completely?”
Tearing through the mortal texts, every accumulated shred of geomantic knowledge screamed that he was standing upon a cursed, mass grave of misfortune.
Yet, viewed through the sovereign eyes of a Formation Master, it remained a flawless, peerless nexus of dragon veins.
Caught in this terrifying paradox, Chen Changsheng stood frozen, deducing the laws of the Dao from the sun’s zenith until the world was swallowed by night.
“Hoo~”
A frigid night wind carrying the stale scent of frost snapped Chen Changsheng from his deep trance.
“Woo~”
Simultaneously, a haunting sound—like the sorrowful weeping of a suffocated woman—drifted from the depths of the shadowed forest.
Sweeping his divine sense outward, Chen Changsheng effortlessly pinpointed the source.
The eerie wailing belonged to a completely mundane bird.
Yet, upon identifying it, Chen Changsheng violently shot to his feet, a cold sweat beading on his skin.
A forgotten verse from a mortal feng shui text echoed in his mind: “A century-old owl rots into a wood-ghoul; phantom flames and dead laughter rise from its nest.”
An “owl” was a trivial creature, yet in the superstitious eyes of mortal feng shui, it was an omen of impending slaughter.
As for a “wood-ghoul,” it was nothing more than a localized flora corrupted by a dense pooling of Yin essence, granting it the feeblest spark of malevolence.
In truth, they barely qualified as true demonic spirits.
Yet, because these minor corruptions posed a tangible threat to fragile mortals, the mortal world treated them as taboo horrors.
Driven by a chilling theory, Chen Changsheng approached a massive, ancient tree and casually sheared away a strip of its bark.
Staring at the thick, crimson sap oozing from the wound—a liquid that smelled faintly of rotting blood—the corner of Chen Changsheng’s mouth twitched violently. The horrifying truth of this domain had finally crystallized.
Because mortals possessed fleeting lifespans and fragile forms, they were hyper-vigilant toward the most minuscule, unnatural shifts in their environment.
Conversely, sovereign cultivators, blinded by their boundless lifespans and supreme might, often ignored the subtle, “insignificant” rot creeping around the edges of the world.
This arrogance extended to ignoring the weeping of a “misfortune bird” or the bleeding of a trivial “wood-ghoul.”
While these anomalies were pitifully weak, their connection to the localized environment made them the absolute first to react when the fundamental laws of the Dao began to warp.
Following this grim logic, only one terrifying conclusion remained: Something buried deep beneath the earth was violently mutating the foundational geography.
However, the local dragon vein was so unbelievably dense that it was forcefully suppressing this buried horror, keeping the anomaly largely hidden.
But as the wheel of time turned, this sovereign domain would inevitably rot, transforming from a holy dragon vein into a cataclysmic zone of death.
Having shrewdly weighed the fated paths, a dark, predatory excitement flared in Chen Changsheng’s eyes. “The number of ancient horrors capable of actively corrupting a sovereign dragon vein can be counted on one hand, even in the oldest legends!”
“Furthermore, dragon veins of this magnitude are practically extinct across the entire Middle Heavens.”
“To witness an entity capable of violently straining against such absolute suppression… this is genuinely terrifying.”
With that chilling realization, Chen Changsheng invoked the Vertical Golden Light, his physical form melting into the soil as he sank into the depths of the earth.
Cloaked by his supreme mastery of concealment, the Kunlun cultivators standing guard above remained blissfully ignorant of the predator slipping into the abyss below.
……
The long night evaporated. The exact moment the first spear of morning light shattered the horizon…
Whoosh!
Chen Changsheng violently erupted from the earth, his momentum tearing a crater into the soil.
“Heavens above! That nearly severed my soul!”
His complexion was the color of a freshly washed corpse. He violently pounded his chest, desperately trying to force his racing heart to stabilize.
It took over a dozen breaths for the sheer, suffocating terror gripping his Dao heart to finally recede.
Staring back at the tranquil, undisturbed surface of the God Source vein, Chen Changsheng spoke with a voice hollowed by lingering horror. “The Kunlun Holy Land possesses a death wish that defies the heavens! To blindly harvest God Source directly above a horror of that magnitude…”
“If the cataclysm triggered by my Heavenly Wither Formation agitates that… thing… the resulting devastation will shatter the heavens.”
“Still, the survival of the Kunlun Holy Land is hardly my burden to bear. Their foundations are boundless; they can surely absorb the slaughter of a localized apocalypse.”
“Regardless, I must sever my reckless curiosity. My probing nearly shattered the dragon vein’s suppression.”
“Had that seal broken, this young master would have been utterly erased from the cycle of reincarnation.”
Muttering furious, terrified curses under his breath, Chen Changsheng swiftly vanished into the horizon.
……
The Eastern Wasteland Courtyard.
Chen Changsheng, having supposedly been in “Secluded Cultivation” for four days, emerged from his chambers prematurely.
Sweeping his gaze over the gathered geniuses, he immediately lunged forward, violently gripping the arm of Fu Yao, who had only just arrived.
“Fellow Daoist, during tomorrow’s Heavenly Talent Assembly, you must absolutely swear to protect my life!”
Fu Yao: ???
What kind of deranged scheme is rotting your mind now?
The rest of the courtyard: “…”
Your logic is entirely unhinged!
We are profoundly incapable of tracing the madness of your Dao.