Chapter 996 Inescapable Crisis P6: Early Signs of Formation Genie in Devil's Den

Rumaal stared at the two monsters, his expression twisting with horror and rage.

His second wife had been killed before his eyes, only for her remains to become two grotesque woodland creatures that now stood among their enemies.

“YOU—!”

He surged forward, his Spirit Essence erupting around him.

But Kanis immediately moved to intercept him.

“Don’t rush blindly toward… them!” Kanis warned.

Rumaal turned toward him with bloodshot eyes.

“‘Them’? What the fuck do you mean by ‘them’? That’s my wife!”

“Look at them with your own eyes, my friend,” Kanis snapped back. “She WAS your wife. Not anymore. And if you throw your life away now, you’ll accomplish nothing!”

His words forced Rumaal to hesitate, though the fury in his expression remained.

Anaah moved closer to her husband, her face pale but her eyes sharp. She had known Mirelle for years. Whatever their personal differences, witnessing such a fate befall someone who had shared their lives was deeply disturbing.

Yet she understood Kanis’s warning.

The two creatures before them weren’t ordinary woodland monsters. Even though the imperial cultivators had access to various Connate Spells, the creatures inside this formation had also been strengthened by a malicious Intent-based technique.

It was as if the island’s owner knew firsthand how vast the difference was between Connate techniques and the Spirit Spells used by the natives of Orveth and had decided to bridge that gap through this formation. Otherwise, the imperial cultivators wouldn’t have struggled so much against a native cultivator, let alone lost their lives to one. Such an outcome had been unthinkable until it actually happened.

Deep within the woodland barrier, the Negative Emotion Essence continued circulating through the newly formed creatures. Given the recent death and destruction across Emerald Cove Island, the revamped version of the Devil’s Den was operating at its peak.

Thanks to this power boost, the formation managed to hold on even with someone like Kanis trapped inside it. This would have been impossible if Aksai had merely used the traditional Devil’s Den Formation. After all, even someone like Varesh had managed to break through the previous version of the formation.

As for how the formation had turned one of the imperial cultivators into a monster, the answer also lay in the enormous amount of Negative Emotion Essence currently circulating through it. After Aksai embraced the true nature of the Devil’s Den Formation, many more possibilities had opened up, allowing him to achieve things he hadn’t even considered possible in the past.

What was interesting was that Aksai didn’t even need to personally oversee the process. After the formation began using the Negative Emotion Essence gathered from countless mortals and low-level cultivators, it was as if it had developed a mind of its own.

The modified Woodland Devil’s Den identified the owner’s enemies and took appropriate measures to deal with them. And this was despite one of the Demon Tree’s children having failed to serve as the formation’s core. One could only imagine what might have happened if Aksai had used the original Demon Tree, which was stored inside the Enchanted Everwood Farm, as the formation’s core.

Mirelle’s Soul Space had been overwhelmed by the raw, unfiltered essence harvested from the island’s suffering inhabitants. The foreign emotions had invaded its structure, eroding the boundaries that normally maintained the integrity of a cultivator’s consciousness.

Once those boundaries had collapsed, the formation had transformed what remained.

The autonomous process initiated by the formation itself had neither preserved Mirelle as a living cultivator nor produced two conventional undead creatures possessing complete souls. Instead, her corrupted Soul Space had been divided between the two resulting entities.

The Woodland Poison Treant had formed around her severed head, while the Woodland Poison Zombie had emerged from her headless body. Each creature possessed fragments of the corrupted mental structure that had once belonged to Mirelle, but neither possessed a proper, complete soul.

Their hostility toward Kanis and the others wasn’t the result of a conscious decision made by Mirelle.

It was the instinctive aggression of two creatures born from corrupted emotions and an unnatural transformation.

The process was both gruesome and disturbingly systematic.

One could say that Aksai had improved the existing Devil’s Den Formation to an entirely new level while pursuing his goal of making it effective against imperial cultivators and their Connate techniques. Although he hadn’t had much time to work on the project, Nuri had helped him refine the formation, making it even more deadly than before.

The modified woodland formation combined its ability to harvest Negative Emotion Essence with specialized techniques capable of transforming living beings and their remains. The knowledge behind this process had been refined through the analysis of ancient inheritances, including those associated with Holy Land Torel and the Heavenly Poison Sect.

The result was a method that could exploit negative emotions to corrupt a cultivator’s Soul Space, divide its damaged structure, and transform the resulting fragments into separate woodland creatures.

The original Devil’s Den Formation had already been formidable. This modified version possessed something far more insidious: the ability to turn an enemy’s suffering into a weapon against their allies.

And Mirelle had become its latest victim.

The Woodland Poison Treant took a step forward.

Its wooden limbs scraped against the ground, leaving shallow grooves in the soil. The vines covering its body twisted restlessly, while the green light in Mirelle’s eyes intensified.

Across from it, the Woodland Poison Zombie raised its deformed head.

Both creatures fixed their attention on Kanis, Rumaal, and Anaah.

Then, as though responding to a silent command, they began advancing.

Rumaal’s hands trembled.

He had spent weeks investigating Kalina’s death, crossed a considerable distance to reach Emerald Cove, and finally found himself trapped inside a formation that seemed determined to turn every advantage against them.

Now, he had watched Mirelle die and her remains transform into monsters.

His grief threatened to overwhelm his judgment.

Kanis, meanwhile, raised his sword and allowed his Sword Intent to gather around its edge. He studied the two creatures carefully, searching for any sign of the consciousness that had once belonged to Mirelle.

He found none. Only hostility remained.

‘This… If the earlier formation was a pseudo-4th Order formation, then this miniature formation is no different from a genuine 4th Order formation. It seems the accumulated core of negative emotions is acting like a Formation Genie.

If the formation could truly isolate space itself, would the Formation Genie become a Domain Guardian? And all of this is still contained within a 3rd Order formation?

This… this is impossible. Or rather… it is supposed to be impossible by the current knowledge and legacies found in the Shinayin Empire. And yet, here I am, witnessing such a formation.

I don’t know where this man obtained the formation, but one thing is clear. I need to finish him off as soon as I obtain its details from him. I cannot let this man survive. Otherwise, he could spell doom not just for the Swordfall faction but for the entire empire itself.’

Kanis’ expression grew cold. As a half-step Nascent Soul cultivator and one of the leading figures in the Swordfall Realm, he knew quite a lot about array formations and how they worked. Although he wasn’t a formation master himself, his expertise lay in sword formations. Consequently, he had studied the fundamentals of formations thoroughly.

He wondered how the formation’s master could maintain such a complex formation without going insane. Was he truly only in the Lord realm?

***

Unknown to Kanis, Aksai had already learned his lesson. He no longer oversaw the formation’s operations personally. In the past, he had been exposed to the effects of the Devil’s Den Formation himself, which had severely impaired his ability to think logically. He had no intention of repeating that mistake.

Since then, he had researched tirelessly, seeking ways to maximize the advantages of the modified formation while ensuring that he remained unaffected by its influence. In doing so, he had drawn inspiration from his first encounter with a Formation Genie during his confrontation with the Gu Poison King.

At its core, what Aksai had accomplished was no different from a fighter pilot using a drone equipped with dedicated artificial intelligence to avoid exposing himself to enemy fire, or a bad driver relying on a self-driving car to make traveling easier without having to take the wheel himself.

Now, imagine those two individuals trying to explain their experiences to an audience from the 1980s, back when the internet had yet to become a part of everyday life. Most people would probably dismiss their accounts as absurd fantasies. Others might even consider them delusional idiots who had lost touch with reality.

Yet, that was the point. Sometimes, what seemed impossible was merely a product of limited imagination—or a failure to muster the determination needed to turn an idea into reality.

The same principle applied to Aksai’s approach. One didn’t always need to involve oneself directly in a process to benefit from it. With sufficient planning and the right tools, it was possible to enjoy the best of both worlds.

And that was precisely what Aksai had done. He had learned from his past mistakes, acknowledged his enemies’ strengths, and worked to counter them. More importantly, he had made sure not to repeat the errors that had nearly cost him dearly in the past.

He had come a long way. Once, he had been overwhelmed by just four imperial cultivators. Now, he had managed to trap and counter a genuine half-step Nascent Soul expert within a formation of his own design.

Unfortunately, he hadn’t been given enough time to perfect the formation before the imperial cultivators arrived at his doorstep. Had he been afforded a little more time, the modified Devil’s Den would have been even more formidable.

If the original corrupted druids ever witnessed what Aksai had done to their traditional Devil’s Den, their reaction would likely fall into one of two extremes. They might regard him as a promising candidate for leadership among their kind, recognizing the ingenuity behind his modifications.

Alternatively, they might decide that someone capable of reshaping their traditional formation so thoroughly was far too dangerous to leave alone and hunt him down before he could become a threat to them.

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AN: The term “formation genie” was first used in chapter 802.