Chapter 535: Formation (1/2)

Chapter 535: Formation

“Was it Xuan Ke from the Ice Pavilion Sect who just left?” Dong Li asked. She had learned about what had happened from Nie Tian’s message. Therefore, when she saw the four Ice Pavilion Sect disciples evacuating from this location while she descended from the air, she guessed their identities.

Nie Tian nodded. “Yeah, Xuan Ke and those people observed in the dark for a long time, hoping to steal the spoils. But after they got the rings of holding from those dead Heaven Palace Sect and Thunder Mountain Sect members, Xuan Ke made a sensible decision and left.”

Dong Li laughed. “What?! The Xuan Ke I know is no sensible person.”

“Well, I talked some sense into him,” Nie Tian said with a smile.

Dong Li realized what he meant. “Oh, I see. But your cultivation base alone isn’t very impressive. Did you somehow display your actual battle prowess to make him see the difference?”

Nie Tian’s expression grew somewhat serious. “Xuan Ke has an exceptionally keen perception and can shrewdly discover danger. Ever since he first discovered me, he constantly told his three subordinates to stand down. I guess he knew that they wouldn’t be able to take me, much less the two of us. And later, he discovered who I actually am...”

Dong Li was taken aback. “He recognized you?!”

With a grim look in his eyes, Nie Tian said, “Yeah, but that’s alright. As long as no Worldly realm or Profound realm experts can come here, I’ll have nothing to worry about.”

“Still, you should have been more careful.” Dong Li didn’t want to say too much to blame him.

Finally, she laid her eyes on the black phoenix’s enormous corpse. Her bright eyes shone with the light of excitement as she marveled, “An eighth grade black phoenix!”

WHOOSH!

With a swift leap, she landed lightly beside the black phoenix’s large head, which was partly buried in the rubble. Then, she sat down in the lotus position. Her black phoenix beast spirit hovered in the air, letting out low, sad crows.

A wisp of dark spiritual power quietly flew out of Dong Li’s head and entered the black phoenix’s corpse.

After a brief scan, she snapped her eyes open and exclaimed, “Nie Tian, this black phoenix’s corpse is going to be very helpful to me and my beast spirit! But it’s gonna take me days to absorb and refine its residual power and essence. During that time, I’d have to focus all of my attention on the process. I’m afraid that...”

“You just do what you have to do,” Nie Tian said in a low voice. “Leave the rest to me.”

Dong Li’s eyes glittered as she took a deep look at him and nodded. “That’d be so great of you.”

After a brief moment of pondering, Nie Tian took out the seventy-two tree branches from within his ring of holding. As he stepped about around the black phoenix’s enormous corpse, he planted them into the hard, stony ground one after another.

Each and every one of them became translucent and sparkled with emerald light as he infused them with his wood power.

Without much effort, he plunged them deep into the ground that was as solid as metal.

Nie Tian moved about as swiftly as a ghost as he planted the seventy-two tree branches according to the formation he remembered.

Earlier, when he had been cultivating by the dead Earthshatter Beast, he had used the same formation of tree branches to ward off Hong He’s deadly would-be hit.

The only difference was that back then, he had laid out the formation within a one meter radius around him, and this time, the formation was spread out over an area that was hundreds of times larger.

The moment the formation was finished, he saw that, inside the sparkling green tree branches that he had planted into the stony ground, numerous mysterious tree patterns seemed to be channeled by some unknown force, and started converging on the tips of the tree branches.

In the next moment, a dark-green hemispherical ward that was as thin as a cicada’s wings instantly covered a very large area over the black phoenix.

Like wisps of green smoke, one tree pattern after another rose from the tips of the tree branches and joined the thin ward, where they started floating about like ripples on the water, vesting the ward with endless mysteries.

Immediately afterwards, a profound magnetic field came to form inside the ward.

Nie Tian shrewdly sensed that fine strands of wood power were starting to rise from the nearby bushes and plants that he had never seen before. They seemed to be channeled by the newly-established formation, and rapidly converged from all directions.

As the green ward that was as thin as a cicada’s wings received the nourishment from the countless strands of wood power, it grew increasingly tough and resilient.

Seeing this, Nie Tian’s eyes gradually lit up. “The formation is automatically absorbing wood power from its surroundings to enhance its intensity!”

He didn’t even need to infuse the ward with much wood power, and it would power itself and maintain functionality by automatically absorbing wood power from the vicinity.

Nie Tian was overjoyed to uncover more and more of the incredible features and profound power of the tree branches he had obtained from the floating continent.

Sitting beside him under the green ward, Dong Li felt very relieved and calm, as if she had left all of the weariness from the traveling behind. “Nie Tian, this is the secret you discovered on that floating continent, right?”

Now that they were sitting among the formation, not only were they protected from any harm from the outside, but they were also wreathed in rich wood power.

Anyone who attempted to break into the formation would be stopped by the green ward. The great force of expulsion might even cause serious damage to the intruder.