Chapter 666: Heart of the Formation
The dao of devouring alongside the blue cloud spread out from Hui Yue as he looked at the seal in front of him. As his energy entered the seal, he managed to push out the other soulforce that the seal was made from.
As the soulforce was pushed aside, Hui Yue’s blue cloud instantly focused on this soulforce and gathered it. After which it was delivered into Hui Yue’s body. He then refined it in his core and claimed it as his own.
The soulforce was powerful, and it was in no way easy to refine it, but Hui Yue was fully focused on succeeding. He knew that he needed more strength and the more of this soulforce he could claim the better it would be for him.
While Hui Yue was seated in front of the seal and continued to absorb the soulforce, the rest of his friends were stationed around him with alert eyes and taut muscles.
It was clear that they were worried as things were going too easy for them. The fierce ancient beast would have been troublesome to kill if they had fewer people, but they had managed to take it down fairly easily with only a handful of them being injured. Since then no other problem had occurred. It was just too silent in this weird realm as the only sound present was the wild gale that swept across the black mountains.
The process of absorbing and changing the soulforce within the seal took Hui Yue a full three days. This was much slower than if he had just dissipated the energy, but he could feel his own soulforce soaring to the heavens as a result of just absorbing one seal. He knew that he had gotten much stronger than before. He could at least compress another hundred seals now with no difficulties!
As soon as Hui Yue absorbed the last bit of soulforce from within the seal, he saw how the seal in front of him cracked. Thousands of small cracks appeared on the front of the seal, and all the soulforce he had pushed into it started leaking from these cracks before it completely collapsed and it all dissipated into thin air.
The moment the seal broke a thunderous roar sounded out, and lightning appeared in the black sky. These lightning bolts descended towards Hui Yue and the others, but none of them minded. At their level lightning could do nothing to them.
As the lightning descended, it was as if a piece of cloth had been torn asunder and suddenly the previously empty and barren land suddenly filled with sounds of screaming cultivators and ancient beasts.
“It seems like we are locked within a formation in the grand formation,” Hui Yue said carefully as he looked around. Although he could hear the cultivators and the fierce beasts, they could not see them.
“Let’s head for the next seal,” Hui Yue said while scratching his head. This formation was in no way simple, but it seemed that they had been quite lucky. They had landed in the heart of the formation which was why it was possible for them to seek out the seals and destroy them.
Had they arrived outside of the formation’s heart then they would not have been able to enter and then they would not have been able to flee before someone managed to enter the heart and then break the formation. The chance of someone actually doing this while they were stuck outside was incredibly slim, and thinking about it, Hui Yue felt a chill in his heart. Entering a world was truly dangerous, he had to be careful in the future.
Realizing this, the whole group sobered up. Previously, they had been eager to explore these new worlds, but now they understood that just one minor mishap could cause them to die or lose thousands of years, so their eagerness dimmed somewhat.
They all felt grateful that they were inside the formation’s heart, and now that they had gone through the first seal, they moved towards the second. Hui Yue could feel the seal the instant they started moving as his soulforce had become much stronger. When they reached this seal, another hellhound was chained to it, barking loudly and ready to attack.
The group had already fought one hellhound and knew what they were up against. This resulted in fewer people getting wounded as they fought the beast.
This time it took two and a half days to crack the seal, and once more lightning struck from the heavens as thunder rumbled.
The sounds of ancient beasts and experts could be heard again when the seal cracked.
“This is going to take a long time,” Xiao Ning sighed. “We can take a seal every two days, but we need a full thousand seals. That is two thousand days. That means that we will be stuck here for a very long time.”
Hui Yue and the others nodded their heads. This was not exactly the way they had planned to start their trip. Unfortunately, now they were stuck in this situation, and thus, they had no other choice than to get out of it, even if it meant that they had to spend years doing so. They could only pray that within the next few years the world would not suddenly start collapsing.
The more seals they destroyed, the easier it was to destroy the rest as the formation was slowly but steadily weakening. Soon it only took Hui Yue half a day to refine the energy from the seals and crack a whole seal into pieces.
Although he was now capable of destroying two seals a day, the speed with which they managed to deal with the formation was still slow. Day after day went by, and soon they had spent a full year within the formation.
The more seals they broke through, the more thunder rumbled, and the more lightning descended. The heart of the formation was no longer silent, but now thunder constantly rumbled across the black sky, the lightning bolts constantly descended, and the formation was growing increasingly unstable.
The group had tried to use their power a few times to shatter the formation. But even with all their efforts at most they had managed to just shake it, they were still a long way from breaking it.
Some of the hellhounds that were guarding the seals had died on their own before the group came to attack them. Some of these beasts had died not long before, but others had turned to skeletons long ago. But, the majority were still alive and killing them became easier and easier as they became more and more proficient with their attacks and their patterns and strength.
The Ancestral Worldpower within the world was much stronger than in the outside world, and although everyone was on constant alert and did not have the time to cultivate, their Ancestral Worldpower pool was constantly increasing.
Although their understanding of the dao did not expand during this year, what they had gained was in no way meager. They had focused fully on the dao previously and had neglected the Ancestral Worldpower part of their cultivation.
This meant that although they had managed to comprehend many daos, they were not in a position to sustain the usage of them for a long time. Now, however, they were finally catching up.
The beast Gods had already quite a large Ancestral Worldpower pool as the Ancestral Worldpower in their bodies were what had caused them to be promoted into Immortals of Creation, but all the ones who had become Gods just recently were benefitting greatly from this year of fighting and absorbing Ancestral Worldpower.
After a year the family and friends were stronger than ever, and even Hui Yue was stronger to a frightening extent.
“Let us take down a few more seals,” Hui Yue sighed. “We managed to shake it rather badly last time, with a few more seals down we will be able to completely break through the formation and get out of this godforsaken place.”
The others nodded their heads. They were feeling exhausted after spending a full year being constantly vigilant, but even now they dared not let their guard down.
A few more days went by like the others. Hellhounds were killed, and seals were broken.
“Let us try again. Use your strongest attacks!”
Hui Yue and the others had broken more than seven hundred seals, all of which were next to one another and the formation was on the verge of collapsing. Hui Yue was surprised that it had even managed to sustain itself for as long as it had.
He had initially hoped that there would be people from the rest of the world who would try and break the formation, but he soon found that they seemed to have given up. Although they could hear the experts fighting the ancient beasts outside the heart of the formation, they could not hear anyone trying to and break the formation.
“Okay now is the time!” Hui Yue called out and everyone tensed. Their attacks started raining down upon the formation, one attack more powerful than the other, all of them going all out in their attempts to break the formation. Hui Yue launched three attacks at the formation in one go, one from fire, one from the wind, and one from earth.
The others used their minor or major daos to attack, and booms sounded outwards as the formation slowly showed signs of cracking.
“More!” Pei Ziqi called out, and everyone poured all their Ancestral Worldpower into their attacks allowing for their energy to fully explode outwards.
They were hovering just below the formation, and they were aiming at the part where there were no seals to keep it in place, but even so, the formation stubbornly refused to give up.
However, they did not spend a full year here for nothing. After a while when they had almost fully exhausted their Ancestral Worldpower pools, cracks finally appeared on the surface of the formation. It was finally showing signs of breaking!
“Lend me more energy!” he called out to Lan Feng, and the phoenix within the core poured the Ancestral Worldpower that he could control towards Hui Yue.
Hui Yue had been the vanguard of their attack. He had attacked first and was using three major daos at the same time. The use of Ancestral Worldpower that he had was simply enormous, and the only reason he could still stand and attack was because of his shared soul with Lan Feng. If he had not had Lan Feng’s Ancestral Worldpower to use, then he would have become an empty shell long ago.
Pills were consumed, and although everyone had used all their energy and it returned to them slowly from the pills, their eyes shone brightly as they kept attacking the formation. After a year in this god forsaken barren land, they all dreamed of leaving as soon as possible, and the only way to do so was to break through this formation.
More and more fine cracks spread through the sky and thunder rumbled while lightning descended. Everything was chaotic, but suddenly it all stopped.
The sounds of fighting stopped, the thunder quieted down, and the lightning vanished. The dark sky turned bright, and where the barren land had been before, lush grasses and other plants started to sprout.
The formation collapsed. Where they had been this whole time was the heart of a major formation, and thus it had seemed different from what was the real world.
Now that they looked around them, they found that they were in the middle of a dense jungle filled with fierce beasts at every side of them, but these beasts, although fierce and having ancestral bloodlines, were nothing compared to the hellhounds they had been fighting against.
“Time for us to leave,” Hui Yue said with a sigh, and the others all nodded their heads. They were not here for treasures, and although, it looked like a world filled with many secrets, it was not a world with the herb garden they were looking for, so they had no reason to stay.
