Lu Qing’s sudden appearance intimidated the Ghost Bat King even though he didn’t join the battlefield. Despite the arrival of its long term captor, the bat king didn’t retreat. It decided to stay put the moment Lu Qing entered the Boundless Planes with the chaos sun and moon.
The Ghost Bat King’s true goal was to destroy this particular sun and moon. Since they’d left the second realm, there was no point in staying further. In its eyes, the chaos was far more dangerous than the fourth realm.
Although the bat king had regrouped further away, darkness still enveloped Mount Astronomia. The three ultimate treasures of the chaos sun, chaos moon, and World Star together supported a patch of illumination. As they cast light upon the entire fourth realm, they also cowed the darkness.
……
Just as Jian Bu’er had said, the Formula Dao Academy did indeed appear on the mountain. However, it went by the name of Formula Academy rather than incorporate “dao” in its title.
Lu Yun’s original plans had been to first establish the Formula Academy in the world of formula dao in Fairylands, then open a door to the fourth realm. But with the invasion of the darkness and the presence of ghost bats at Mount Astronomia, he changed his plans completely.
Establishing the Formula Academy on the mountain was a more effective manner to fight the gloom and withstand the lands of darkness. Although there was a door from Fairylands to the Boundless Planes, the world of formula dao in the former was just reinforcement for the Formula Academy—a place for more intensive cultivation.
Meanwhile, the yin and dead spirits in the world of immortals also originated from the darkness. They weren’t regular spirits, but ghosts and other undead entities born from the land of darkness.
As immortal dao developed, so did the world of immortals advance. It was gradually replacing the Hongmeng to become the strongest world in the first three realms. Thus, it was high past time for it to strike back against the yin spirits.
Modern-day developments saw a constant stream of immortals charge out of the World Gates to fully stand their ground against the endless yin spirits in the cosmos. The chaos was inundated with the power of the worlds—a power that no longer threatened chaos creatures. Added to that the absence of chaos tribulations in the future, these perfect conditions made for a renaissance in the second realm.
The chaos was developing back to the point when the six supreme gods ruled the lands and the second realm as a whole was on even footing with the Hongmeng!
In present day, the world of immortals had almost completely assimilated the chaos. All of its denizens cultivated immortal dao and when chaos sovereigns broke through, they entered immortal dao directly to become immortals. There was no need for them to ascend to the third realm to become a Hongmeng denizen.
In contrast, the third realm continuously faced rigorous challenges from the ghost race!
The ghost race came from the land of darkness, just as the yin spirits in the world of immortals did. They threatened the Hongmeng from every corner, both within and without. And with the immortal dao seeping through the realm these days, though Lu Yun had said that he didn’t seek to conquer the Hongmeng and be its master, people were still jittery and panicky.
Various schemes peppered by the Curse King and Poison King also took effect, upending the third realm into a morass of unrest and confusion.
Lu Yun ignored all of this. He couldn’t stop or affect everything, some things had to be allowed to run their course. Those who understood would make the right decision, and those who didn’t would fail to understand, even with a blade on their neck.
All the same, the little fox returned to the Hongmeng. Since she’d refined the tower and replaced Mo Yi as the realm’s mistress, she had to protect it. This was her responsibility to bear now.
Qing Yu returned to the world of immortals to resume her mantle as the Dao Sovereign and oversee the situation. The great army of yin spirits was showing signs of life lately, so she firmly squashed any hints of strength.
At the same time, she was trying to devise a method to save Violetgrave. The spatial node that the latter sat on led to the land of darkness. It was a new passage that the endarkened creatures had created. Violetgrave sat there to keep it plugged.
……
The nine hundred and ninety-ninth year of the Xuanhuang calendar.
Although timekeeping had long collapsed in the fourth realm and there was a likewise lack of it in the chaos and Hongmeng, the Formula Academy was officially established on a certain day in the nine hundred and ninety-ninth year of the Xuanhuang calendar.
A massive complex of palaces suddenly appeared on Mount Astronomia. Dazzling and resplendent, it cast the entire mountain in golden hues. Its radiance forced the Ghost Bat King’s land of darkness to retreat fifteen hundred kilometers! That wasn’t a large distance, but to compel a fifteenth level sequence expert to fall back was a monumental feat!
Lu Qing sat cross-legged in the void outside Mount Astronomia, following the light by shifting toward the darkness. Even his father didn’t understand why a Hongmeng potentate could withstand the darkness, to the point where even an entity like the Ghost Bat King feared him.
Lu Yun employed formula dao on his son again and again, but found nothing of particular note. In the past thirty-three loops, he brought misfortune to his son without fail and caused his death. Lu Yun never discovered anything out of the ordinary in those loops either.
The main body of the Formula Academy lay in the Hongmeng—the six dao palaces that’d appeared all those years ago. They represented the six orders of inception, ethos, burgeon, creation, opposition, and nirvana.
Together, they formed a complete system on Mount Astronomia, forming the power of the Six Royals to beat back the gloom. A golden avenue paved the road to the mountain; images flickered by its side. They detailed everything that the Luminaries had done over these endless eons to defy the darkness.
The sights were brutal and gruesome to the extreme. Every painting scroll was drenched with blood—reflections of true images recorded in Mount Astronomia. Anyone who entered the Formula Academy had to be first baptized by the golden avenue. They needed to understand why the academy was established here.
The Luminaries were no more, replaced by the Formula Academy. The new institution stood at the borders of the fourth realm to suppress the dark. Its headmaster was a mysterious powerhouse and its senior council was formed by Jian Bu’er, the Sun, Moon, and Star Sovereign Kings.
Such was the strength displayed by the Formula Academy.
What’d previously taken place at the mountain became common knowledge in the known expanses. Thanks to concerted effort from vested interests, everyone was aware of the meaning behind the Luminaries, unknown expanses, and invasion from the darkness.
Naturally, there were some other voices that appeared to denounce the invasion as a sham, that the Formula Academy was the true conspiracy. The Luminaries had ever sought to be the rulers of the Boundless Planes, so the mysterious headmaster of the new academy was just the one who’d established the now defunct Luminaries.
It was up to personal judgment as to which version was true, but disciples began to fill the halls of the Formula Academy.
etvolare’s Thoughts
You know, that’s a pretty solid conspiracy theory…
