Chapter 135 Breaking the Formation

Seeing those streaks of glowing light about to fly out of the bronze tripod, Old Master Yu was well prepared. With a flick of his arm, a jade bottle appeared, and he swept it fiercely into the air, capturing all the glowing light within the vessel.

Old Master Yu lowered his head to inspect it for a moment, a trace of satisfaction dawning on his face. He chuckled and said, "Ning'er, my luck is quite good this time. Thirty-six pellets were formed; I fear even the alchemists within the sect could hardly achieve this standard. Today, you have also refined a natal corpse of immense potential. It seems today might just be our lucky day, father and daughter."

"After tonight, this top-grade Nether Spirit Grass will reach maturity. Upon ripening, it will absorb all the blood-fiend vital energy of this place. Without the blood-fiend flame, even if there are superior-grade Nether Spirit Grasses in the future, your father will no longer be able to refine the Nether Spirit Pills. Fortunately, adding the forty-four pills left over from previous alchemy sessions, there are eighty Nether Spirit Pills in total. Combined with other supplementary medicines, your father believes you will only need two or three years of secluded cultivation to reach at least the fourth heaven of the Dharma Gathering realm. By then, we will head to the Nether Spirit Sect to find your mother."

"Keep these thirty-six pills for now. Later on, your father will give you a storage stone, but you must remember never to display it in front of others. The world of immortal cultivators is far closer to us than you imagine. A moment of carelessness could easily invite a fatal disaster. This is why your father did not pass the storage stone to you earlier."

"Now that the top-grade Nether Spirit Grass has matured, this Yu Family Village holds virtually no value anymore. Coupled with the fact that you have already refined your natal corpse and possess a measure of self-preservation capability, your father can finally give you the storage stone with peace of mind. Do you understand?"

With these words, Old Master Yu placed the jade bottle beside Yu Ning.

Hu San, who had been holding his breath and listening intently, immediately controlled Yu Ning to reply, "Rest assured, Father, Ning'er will certainly be careful and cautious."

Having spoken, Yu Ning reached out to take the jade bottle into her hands, played with it briefly, and tucked it into her bosom.

Old Master Yu nodded, and just as he was about to say something more, a flash of blood-red light suddenly erupted across his body, immediately followed by a series of urgent, piercing shrieks echoing from within that radiance.

"What is going on?"

Old Master Yu's expression, which had remained unchanged for countless years, shifted for the first time. He hurriedly lowered his head to pinch an incantation and calculate, and when he raised his head again, his face was ashen.

"Father, what has happened?"

Yu Ning also knitted her delicate brows, looking at Old Master Yu with a hint of worry.

"Heh, I never would have imagined this!"

A mixture of resentment and complex emotions washed over Old Master Yu's face, seeming somewhat astonished yet mocking, and tinged even more deeply with profound sorrow. He then forced a smile and said, "It is nothing, merely a few petty thieves who have sneaked in. This place is exceedingly safe, and the top-grade Nether Spirit Grass will ripen shortly. Therefore, you must remain here and ensure you harvest the grass in a timely manner when the time comes. Otherwise, for every moment past that deadline, the medicinal efficacy of the Nether Spirit Grass will decrease by a fraction. You must keep this firmly in mind."

Saying this, Old Master Yu swept his arm, revealing in his palm a jade bottle carved from an unknown yellow jade—presumably the vessel intended for storing the top-grade Nether Spirit Grass.

"Father, please be extremely cautious. Leave the matters here to Ning'er; Father need not worry. If anything seems amiss, retreat back here immediately."

Feigning an expression of deep concern, Yu Ning nodded repeatedly in agreement.

"Mm, you need not worry about me. In this mortal realm, in this Nether City, and within my Nine-Nether Blood-Fiend Great Array, there is virtually no one who can do anything to me."

After a brief pause, Old Master Yu seemed to adjust his state of mind, regaining his previous domineering aura. However, before leaving, he hesitated slightly, retrieved a small pitch-black banner from his storage stone, and handed it to Yu Ning while saying: "Although there are layers of formations and mechanisms guarding this place, theoretically no one should be able to break in. Yet one must always guard against the unexpected. The top-grade Nether Spirit Grass and the lotus soil here are far too important. Though you have practiced for a long time, you lack combat experience and will inevitably panic upon encountering external enemies."

"This is the Myriad Ghost Banner, a lower-grade Dharmic artifact your mother gave your father back then. When the banner stirs, ten thousand ghosts come to aid. It has miraculous effects against cultivators in the early and middle stages of the Dharma Gathering realm. Even if you cannot defeat the opponent, it can at least temporarily entangle them to let you retreat at your leisure. The moment there is any abnormality here, activate the Myriad Ghost Banner immediately. Your father will naturally sense it through the formation and come straight away to help you."

"Then Father, you must take care."

Hu San naturally would not refuse this windfall falling from the sky, and immediately controlled Yu Ning to take the Myriad Ghost Banner.

With all matters instructed, Old Master Yu lingered no longer, immediately returning by the path he came to the second floor and exiting the stone pagoda within mere breaths.

Waiting for a moment to confirm that Old Master Yu had indeed departed, Hu San lightly pursed his lips and directly activated the Soul-Operating Technique. He swept the thirty-six Nether Spirit Pills in Yu Ning's bosom, the five incomplete spirit stones on the ground, and the twelve spirit stones Old Master Yu had no time to gather into the storage stone all at once. Even the alchemy materials left behind by Old Master Yu were not spared.

Having completed all this, Hu San stepped out of the lesser gathering-spirit array, walked around it a few times, and then, with a twinge of heartache, pried out every single spirit stone embedded within it.

As a result, although these spirit stones could still be used, their spiritual radiance was severely diminished, and their value if taken outside would likely be less than half of what it originally was.

Nearly a hundred spirit stones were completely uprooted by Hu San, and the spiritual Qi trapped within the formation naturally dissipated into thin air. It was not that Hu San did not wish to absorb the spiritual Qi inside, but doing so truly required time, and time was precisely what he needed most right now. Otherwise, once Old Master Yu returned, finding another opportunity would be harder than ascending to heaven.

Stowing these spirit stones into the storage stone, Hu San circled the bronze tripod once more. Seeing that no early-warning formations had been set up around it, he stood upon ceremony no longer; with a flick of his hand, he stowed this item into the storage stone as well.

At this moment, Hu San was like a mouse that had fallen into a rice vat, transporting items with sheer glee. In the blink of an eye, almost every valuable item in the entire secret chamber had been swept clean, not even sparing the two futons. Finally, he shifted his gaze toward the jade platform—or to be precise, toward the top-grade Nether Spirit Grass resting upon it.

Inspecting the top-grade Nether Spirit Grass up and down, Hu San could not help but frown slightly. There was no other reason than the fact that he simply could not find the lotus soil he desperately needed.

Though this top-grade Nether Spirit Grass was immensely valuable, in terms of practical utility for Hu San, who had yet to truly integrate into the world of immortal cultivators, it truly could not compare to the lotus soil required to repair the Black Wind Formation Disk. Although he ought to have been satisfied with so many harvests, failing to acquire the lotus soil was, by any measure, a massive loss for him.

Observing the spot for a long while and estimating that Old Master Yu should soon finish handling the situation outside, Hu San dared not delay any longer. Gritting his teeth, he leaped forward and pulled the top-grade Nether Spirit Grass straight out of the jade platform.

Though he knew that if he simply waited a little longer, the top-grade Nether Spirit Grass would ripen completely, and its value upon extraction would be vastly greater than now, Hu San understood that he lacked the ability to wait and could not afford to wait. Once Old Master Yu returned, everything would be over; time was everything right now.

Quickly packing the top-grade Nether Spirit Grass into the yellow jade bottle and storing it away with the storage stone, Hu San showed no mercy whatsoever. He directly summoned the black sword and swept around the secret chamber in a circle.

Although he could not unleash the divine abilities possessed by the black sword, the inherent indestructible property of the black sword could not be erased. Over the past three months, Hu San had spent his leisure time earnestly studying the Black Wind Array, and his understanding of formations was no longer that of a novice.

Even if he could not fully recognize this so-called Nine-Nether Blood-Fiend Great Array at the moment, standing right at the core of the formation—which was designed to guard against external threats rather than internal ones—if he still could not break it, he might as well just bang his head against a wall and die.

The sharpness of the black sword was something the foundational pillars of the formation could simply not resist. Coupled with Hu San's current terrifying physical strength, within mere moments, the blood-colored patterns connecting the perimeter of the third floor of the stone pagoda were completely severed.

Afterward, deciding to go all the way, Hu San simply used the black sword like an axe, hacking the central jade platform off at its roots in a few swift strokes.

The very instant the jade platform collapsed, countless black-red liquids pooled within it violently gushed forth.

With the fierce influx of the red liquid, the exterior of the stone pagoda—which had been heavily guarded and seemingly impenetrable even to immortals—flashed with red light and rapidly shattered like tofu.

Simultaneously, the massive array centered around the stone pagoda that had enshrouded the entire estate ground to a halt with a deafening roar. A pillar of fiendish energy soared into the sky, instantly dispersing the dark clouds blanketing the firmament.

In that very instant, bright moonlight poured straight down. Across the battlefield teeming with superior-grade Nether Spirit Grass, the corpse-beings that had previously held absolute dominance began to wail one by one. Soon after, under the illumination of the moonlight, they gradually dissolved, finally transforming into pools of foul-smelling yellow pus.

All of this happened so swiftly that just as Hu San had activated the Myriad Ghost Banner and summoned the shadowy throng of ten thousand ghosts, the terrifying formations deployed within the second floor of the stone pagoda were thoroughly detonated due to the destruction of the array core.

This detonation was no trivial matter. The terrifying spiritual power churned everywhere, coupled with the countless terrifying mechanisms on the second floor, instantly turning the place into a chaotic ocean. The erupting might was so intense that even space itself seemed distorted.

Amidst the thunderous rumbling, even with Hu San's current cultivation and bodily endurance, he felt as though he had been smashed fiercely away by a tremendous force like a moth against a flame. He only had time to stow the Myriad Ghost Banner and the black sword into the storage stone before he could do nothing more.

As for his refined natal corpse, Yu Ning, that unfortunate puppet was struck squarely in the chest by a boulder-sized chunk of iron, sent flying like a snapped-string kite into some unknown corner.

Because the distance was too great and exceeded the range of Hu San's Soul-Operating Technique, he completely lost the ability to sense where his living-corpse subordinate was, nor could he tell whether that impact had killed her or not.

By the time Hu San regained his senses, he was thoroughly dazed and battered. His protective protective-Qi shield was entirely shattered, and his formidable physical body was covered in shocking, gruesome wounds. Had he not used the white bone war-slave from his storage stone as a cushion against his back at the critical moment to block the majority of the impact, he likely would have lost half his life even if he survived.

As for the fate of the pitiful white bone war-slave, Hu San had no leisure to care whatsoever.