Chapter 201: Battle with Linghu (2)

The two sides clashed, neither gaining the upper hand. The battle had fallen into a stalemate.

Linghu Shou gritted his teeth. With a flick of his withered wrist, a pitch-black, square Token appeared in his palm, faintly carved with the word "Ming."

He slammed his other palm against the Token, muttering an incantation. Black light flashed between his fingers, and the Token flared to life. A muffled rumbling echoed from deep within the surrounding stone walls, shaking loose a shower of gravel.

Jiuyou halted. The formation attacks bombarding him suddenly ceased, as though his opponent had finally realized those methods were useless and decided to change tactics. Taking advantage of the brief lull, Jiuyou quickly swallowed two drops of Ten-Thousand-Year Spiritual Milk. His mana instantly surged back to full capacity, like a dried riverbed flooded with fresh water.

The stone walls shifted. Dirt and debris poured from the widening cracks to reveal eight stone coffins. Their lids slid ajar, and thick black qi seeped from the gaps, carrying a damp, freezing stench of rot that had festered for untold years.

The crash of the coffin lids being kicked open echoed through the cavernous mountain interior. Eight Corpse Puppets lunged out simultaneously. Wearing identical talisman-inscribed hoods, they surrounded Jiuyou from eight directions.

Jiuyou's gaze sharpened. He wouldn't have cared about these eight Corpse Puppets on their own. But combined with the hidden formations buried here, working together in this confined space, even he would struggle to break free quickly. Linghu Shou was clearly counting on exactly that.

Linghu Shou let out a fierce shout. The black light on his Token flared, and the eight Corpse Puppets simultaneously dropped into combat stances before howling and pouncing at Jiuyou from every direction.

Jiuyou didn't hesitate. He shot up from the ground, weaving through the air and leading the Corpse Puppets on a winding chase to keep them trailing right behind him. Once the eight pursuers had clustered together, a golden light flashed from his sleeve. The Golden Luo Bowl flew out, expanding rapidly upon contact with the air. It crashed down over the eight Corpse Puppets with a heavy, muffled thud, trapping them all securely inside.

Muffled thuds echoed from the inverted bowl, sounding like heavy objects battering against it from within. After only a moment, several fine cracks fractured across its surface. The treasure wouldn't hold out for long.

"A decent treasure, but a pity it won't hold them for long," Linghu Shou sneered.

He raised his left hand slightly. Golden light flared in his palm, and three golden flying wheels materialized behind him. Each was one zhang across, their violent rotation tearing through the air with an ear-piercing shriek as they hurtled toward Jiuyou in a deadly line, intent on shredding him to pieces.

Jiuyou's eyes turned icy. He slapped his Spirit Insect Pouch while darting backward to put some distance between them. Hundreds of thousands of Soul-Eating Insects swarmed out at once. Their collective buzzing rang through the entire mountain as they formed a dense, purple cloud that wrapped Jiuyou's figure in layer after layer of protection.

The three flying wheels tore into the swarm, hacking wildly. Every strike sent down a rain of insect corpses, but the blades couldn't reach his true body.

Suddenly, a thick white mist exploded outward, filling the entire cavernous space in the blink of an eye.

Jiuyou slipped through the white mist like a fish darting into deep water, vanishing from Linghu Shou's line of sight in an instant.

Linghu Shou furrowed his brow. While the white mist couldn't completely block his Divine Sense, it was enough to scramble his perception and prevent him from locking onto his target. Between the obscured vision and his opponent's aura-concealing arts, his Divine Sense simply couldn't pinpoint Jiuyou's location.

'Damn it,' Linghu Shou cursed inwardly. He raised his hand to recall the three golden flying wheels as golden light flickered uncertainly in his eyes. He looked down at the black Token in his hand; its glow was stuttering, as if disrupted by some outside force. Meanwhile, out in the churning white mist, a flash of golden light would occasionally streak past.

He snapped his head up as a sudden realization hit him.

"Wait, my puppets—"

Before he could finish speaking, the black Token in his hand went completely dark. Linghu Shou's expression sank. Those Corpse Puppets were the culmination of painstaking effort from generations of Supreme Great Elders, created to control the Guiming Sect from the shadows. Now that his opponent had uprooted them completely in one fell swoop, starting over and rebuilding them would be nearly impossible.

"Good. Very good," he laughed in a fit of pure rage, a cold, ruthless edge seeping into his voice like a man forced to his absolute limits. "Since this grand formation was built, it has never been pushed to its maximum power. Today, I'll let you experience what true suppression feels like."

He formed a hand seal, and the golden light in his palms erupted violently, instantly illuminating the cavern's entire dome.

Within the white mist, a pair of golden eyes slowly glowed to life.

Jiuyou easily saw through his opponent's intentions. The moment the golden light flared, the runes etched into the dome and walls began to violently contort. They lit up, ring after ring, like a lit fuse racing toward a single center. The Five Elements Heaven and Earth Ring spun at blinding speed, frantically bleeding the canyon dry of its remaining spiritual qi.

The spiritual water on the surface evaporated in mere breaths. Plants withered and died as all life force was brutally stripped from the area. Boundless spiritual qi was siphoned away, surging into the massive, five-colored halo before pouring endlessly into the grand formation. The once-vibrant valley was instantly reduced to a desolate wasteland of bare dirt and spreading fissures.

Jiuyou took a half-step back in the white mist, his vigilance pushed to its absolute limit.

Then, his eyes went wide.

A colossal cylinder of golden light suddenly blasted upward from the ground, engulfing the entire hollowed mountain. The walls of light were terrifyingly thick, swirling with spiritual energy like the fingers of a giant hand closing tight. Jiuyou whipped his hand out to fire several sword slashes, but they only left shallow scores on the barrier that the ambient spiritual qi instantly repaired.

The golden cylinder surged higher and higher, eventually tearing the entire upper half of the mountain free and hoisting it into the air. Massive boulders cascaded from the fractured dome, striking the ground with deafening crashes. Jiuyou raised his hand, conjuring a barrier to deflect the falling debris.

He looked up through the swirling dust and tumbling rocks. The severed upper half of the mountain had taken the shape of a colossal triangular prism, hovering ominously in the empty air. Its flat, mirror-smooth base was etched with endless concentric rings. Layer upon layer of these rings slowly rotated, like an unfathomably complex and precise instrument zeroing in on its target: Jiuyou.

The triangular prism ascended higher and higher before finally coming to a dead stop three hundred zhang in the air. The carved rings spun faster and faster, their glow intensifying to a blinding degree. The surrounding spiritual qi of heaven and earth frantically poured into the array, converting into streams of five-colored light that pooled in the very center. An aura of apocalyptic destruction began to bleed outward from the mechanism.

The suffocating pressure far exceeded the absolute limits of a Nascent Soul cultivator. It felt like the rumored, all-out strike of a Deity Transformation Cultivator.

Trapped within the golden cylinder, Jiuyou locked his eyes onto the blinding sphere of light. A genuine trace of panic finally bled into his voice.

"Are you insane?" he shouted. "An attack of this magnitude at such close range—are you trying to kill yourself too?"

"Hahaha—!" Linghu Shou threw his head back and roared with laughter. He raised two fingers high into the air, pooling the very last dregs of his mana at their tips. "Insane? I am perfectly sane! If I dare to unleash this, I naturally have the means to survive it!"

The moment his words fell, the rings' rotation blurred to an absolute extreme. Every trace of light snapped toward the dead center of the array, condensing into a single, terrifying sphere. It started small, but as it violently devoured the surrounding spiritual qi of heaven and earth, the intense compression of the rings forced it to rapidly expand. The sphere shifted from white to gold, and then back to a blinding, incandescent white that was impossible to look at directly.

Once this attack fell, a radius of several hundred li would be razed to flat ground.