Chapter 1683: The Dark Forest

Qi Xuansu could not help but wonder, If Elder Yao’s plan had succeeded and each of the Three Daoist Sects had obtained a Longevity Stone Heart, would they really have gone to war just as Elder Yao intended? After all, the Three Daoist Sects were not fools. Would they truly dance to Elder Yao’s tune?

After thinking it over carefully, Qi Xuansu felt that this was indeed possible.

As their conflicts intensified and their differences deepened, the tacit understanding and consensus between the Three Daoist Sects were rapidly disappearing. In other words, the Three Daoist Sects no longer had a foundation of mutual trust.

Put simply, a chain of suspicion had formed among the three sides.

Even if one side remained rational and kept its ambitions in check, it had no way to guarantee that the other two sides would do the same. Even verbal assurances could not inspire complete trust.

As the saying goes, strike first and gain the upper hand; strike too late and suffer the consequences. If one refused to act while others did, one would be at a disadvantage.

Sometimes, the best defense is offense. Even without any ambition to control the Daoist Order, one might still be forced to act simply for the sake of survival.

With such an enormous temptation laid out before them, what if they actually succeeded?

Among the Three Daoist Sects, who could truly claim to have no ambition at all?

No side could determine whether the other two would maintain their tacit understanding and prioritize stability. No side could determine whether the other two might launch a preemptive attack. Moreover, no side could give up its own desire for the position of Grand Master.

Following this logic, one side of the scale held the suspicion born from being unable to guarantee one’s own safety, while the other held the enormous rewards that would come with success. Even if the leaders of all Three Daoist Sects were intelligent people, they would still inevitably end up opposing one another. Such was human nature.

This was also why Elder Yao’s scheme had only revealed itself today. It was no coincidence. Before the sixth-generation Grand Master, the Three Daoist Sects had not yet split apart. There had still been considerable tacit understanding and consensus among them, and a powerful figure like the fifth-generation Grand Master had stood above them and kept everything under control. Under those circumstances, such a chain of suspicion could not take shape, and Elder Yao’s scheme naturally could not work.

So the root of the problem did not lie in the three Longevity Stone Hearts but in the conflicts and divisions within the Daoist Order itself. At most, the three Longevity Stone Hearts merely acted as a catalyst, accelerating what was already there. After all, flies would not swarm around an uncracked egg.

This then raised a second question—what was Elder Yao’s motive?

Surely, she had not done all this just to watch the drama unfold, right?

After all, Elder Yao would not even be around to see it. Moreover, this would not be normal drama. It could cause a catastrophe.

Qi Xuansu still had far too little information to deduce Elder Yao’s full motives, so he could only speculate from his own perspective.

If Qi Xuansu were in Elder Yao’s position and orchestrating all of this, his objective would be nothing more than to seize power.

After all, that was about the extent of Qi Xuansu’s ambitions. With his current cultivation, he was still far from contemplating anything as profound as the Heavenly Dao.

But the Yao family was directly involved and stood at the very heart of the conflict among the Three Daoist Sects. It could hardly extricate itself from the struggle, which meant it could not just sit on the sidelines and wait to reap the benefits from others’ strife.

If the goal was merely to carve out a territory and rule it like a feudal kingdom, then the Yao family had already achieved that.

Qi Xuansu still could not make sense of it.

More importantly, the plan had now deviated from its original course. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that circumstances had changed. Neither the Zhang family nor the Yao family had obtained a Longevity Stone Heart. The Li family had obtained one, while Qi Xuansu, who originally had nothing to do with the matter, had obtained another and been thrust into the eye of the storm. What should have been a three-way balance of power had instead become a confrontation between two major camps.

Even more suspiciously, the Grand Master lineage, which should have remained undecided or neutral, had decisively entered the fray, supporting Qi Xuansu’s side. Meanwhile, the Yao family, which had always represented the Quanzhen Sect, had taken over the role traditionally occupied by the Grand Master lineage, shifting back and forth between the two sides. Rather than simply sitting on the fence and watching, the Yao family was deliberately maintaining a balance of power.

A realization suddenly dawned on Qi Xuansu.

All the Earthly Preceptors, from Elder Yao to Yao Yueyan and the current Earthly Preceptor, Yao Ling, were undoubtedly plotting something. Yet it could not be said that everything they did was a hidden scheme. Some were right out in the open, like having three Longevity Stone Hearts. Even if everyone knew exactly what was happening, there was nothing they could do about it, because mutual suspicion meant that when the time came to fight, they would still have to fight.

Then what role did the Zhang family play in all of this?

Although Qi Xuansu was the Zhang family’s son-in-law, he did not believe for a moment that the Zhang family was truly so innocent and harmless, just as the Heavenly Preceptor was certainly not as gentle and benevolent as he appeared on the surface.

In Qi Xuansu’s view, the Heavenly Preceptor was adept at using softness to overcome hardness and going with the flow.

Over the past century, the Zhang family had actually kept a relatively low profile. The reason people did not perceive it that way was that the Zhang family was too enormous. When a colossal behemoth lay there, even if it did absolutely nothing but sleep, no one could simply pretend not to see it.

The ones who were truly high-profile were the Li family. That had always been their style.

When the Daoist Order was first established, the Holy Xuan gave the Three Daoist Sects a simple division of responsibilities. The Taiping Sect was responsible for worldly affairs, the Quanzhen Sect for creations, and the Zhengyi Sect for ghosts and deities.

The results soon became apparent. The Taiping Sect, which was responsible for worldly affairs, became joined at the hip with the Great Xuan Court. The Quanzhen Sect, which was responsible for creation, produced the Longevity Stone Heart. So what had the Zhengyi Sect been doing?

The Zhengyi Sect produced the descendants of an Ancient Immortal.

Heavenly Preceptor Yan even personally stepped forward to protect those descendants.

In the end, those descendants successfully rose to power and became the leaders of the Zhengyi Sect.

There was also another descendant aside from the Heavenly Preceptor—his younger sister, Zhang Wuhen.

Was it possible that Zhang Wuhen was a dormant piece placed on the board by the Heavenly Preceptor? Could the entire affair have been a performance deliberately staged by him, with even Zhang Wuhen herself unaware of the full truth?

This was not baseless speculation. With the Heavenly Preceptor’s cultivation, if he truly wanted someone dead, there was no way he would fail to kill them.

After Zhang Wuhen escaped her confinement, she aligned herself with the Great Xuan Court. Was it possible that, at some critical moment, Zhang Wuhen would become the decisive piece in the struggle between the Zhang and Li families?

That too was difficult to say.

Shi Hengbo had been quietly watching Qi Xuansu the entire time. Only now did she finally speak, interrupting his thoughts. “Congratulations.”

Qi Xuansu came back to his senses. After thanking her, he once again scrutinized this disciple of Elder Yao.

Shi Hengbo said nothing, and she remained expressionless.

Qi Xuansu had originally wanted to ask her something, but after thinking it over, he ultimately decided against it. ℴ

This time, after advancing to the Pseudo-Immortal stage, the totem corresponding to the Rogue Cultivator lineage finally rose to the ninth level, becoming the first totem to reach its maximum limit.

This was Wu Peng’s totem. Wu Peng was the Great Witch who represented the earth and wielded the power of the earth, also known as earth qi.

That was why Wu Peng was exceptionally skilled at setting up formations.

Back when the Six Enlightened Witches entered the Five Elements Paradise, a sub-pocket realm of the Kunlun Paradise, to refine the Undying Elixir, they came into conflict with God Luwu, who guarded the Kunlun Paradise. It was Wu Peng who presided over the formation, gathering the power of the Six Enlightened Witches, including Wu Yang, and all their followers. Using the entire Five Elements Paradise as one vast formation, they forcibly kept out God Luwu, whose strength was equivalent to that of a Second-Tribulation Immortal.

In the end, it was only because the other five Great Witches turned against Wu Yang and fell into internal conflict that God Luwu found an opportunity to break through the formation. The formation itself was not to blame for the defeat.

If the Ancient Wuists had never split apart and Wu Peng had remained in the Lingshan Paradise to set up and preside over its various formations, even the Ancestral Heavenly Preceptor would probably have found it extremely difficult to conquer the Lingshan Paradise.

As soon as Wu Peng’s totem was completely filled, Qi Xuansu felt the power that came from Wu Peng.

Strictly speaking, they were more like techniques for manipulating and anchoring earth qi without relying on external objects, along with various Ancient Wuist formations. All of this was infused directly into Qi Xuansu’s consciousness through the totem.

The advantage was that the knowledge could be put to use immediately. The disadvantage was that it eliminated all sorts of future possibilities. It was similar to the Holy Xuan integrating various cultivation methods and even creating a direct cultivation path for Heavenly Immortals.

Qi Xuansu was quite satisfied with this since he did not possess the Holy Xuan’s extraordinary aptitude to begin with. Being able to master what his predecessors had left behind was already good enough. Without all these fortuitous encounters, he would have struggled even to reach the Heavenly Being stage by now.

Among Wu Peng’s many formations were three fundamental formations, which had no definite names. So Qi Xuansu temporarily gave them names based on their characteristics or the events associated with them in the past.

The first was the Five Elements Grand Formation, the same one that the Six Enlightened Witches used to resist God Luwu within the Five Elements Paradise. Earth occupied the center, with earth qi linking everything together. Once the formation began operating, the five elements generated one another in an endless cycle.

The Daoist Order also had similar formations. During the Wuxing Mountain operation, the Great Xuan Court had also deployed such a formation, completely surrounding the entire mountain and sealing off the surrounding space. The Daoist Order had been forced to dismantle the formation nodes one by one. Otherwise, even a Pseudo-Immortal Banished Immortal would not have been able to enter.

However, Wu Peng’s Five Elements Grand Formation went a step further. It did not require so many formation nodes. Five cores were enough. The Six Enlightened Witches had even had one person left over at the time, who could serve as a mobile force. Qi Xuansu did the calculations. If he advanced to the Immortal stage, he would have his Three Corpse Incarnations, one Corpse Liberation Incarnation, and his true body. That made exactly five bodies. As such, he could hold up this formation by himself if needed.

The second was the Lingshan Grand Formation, which had once protected the Lingshan Paradise. Its primary function was to continuously transform those within its range into puppets. This was not limited to corpses. Even living people whose cultivation was somewhat weaker could be forcibly transformed into puppets. When the Wuist army fought within the formation, its numbers would only grow as the battle continued.

Qi Xuansu vaguely remembered seeing something like this during his glimpse into the past Lingshan Paradise. Perhaps there had been no expert left to preside over the formation. In any case, once the Ancestral Heavenly Preceptor personally entered the battle, the Ancient Wuists began to collapse. For Qi Xuansu, this formation was not particularly useful for the time being, though it might prove useful if he ever personally led an army.

The third was the Longevity Stone Grand Formation. It was not intended for use against enemies but was instead a special formation used to refine Longevity Stones. More specifically, it was the second-generation Longevity Stone improved by the Six Enlightened Witches. This meant that Qi Xuansu could now refine a Longevity Stone himself, just as the Shaman King and Chen Shuhua had done.

However, the materials posed a major problem. This type of Longevity Stone did not require human lives as sacrifices, nor could it be refined using the flesh and blood of primordial beasts. It could only be made from various rare treasures produced within the Kunlun Paradise. But Qi Xuansu did not yet have the authority to access them.

If he ever became the Grand Master, there would be nothing standing in his way.