Chapter 673: “Fellow Daoist” (1/2)

“Master...” Zhaoqing was about to speak, but was cut off by her new master.

“Don’t call me master, it sounds kind of weird. Eh, just call me ‘sir’ like everyone else,” he corrected.

“Yes, sir.” Zhaoqing stretched out a small, fair hand and gently poked his arm.

“What’s the matter?” Lu Yun looked at her in puzzlement.

Her cheeks bright red, Zhaoqing ducked her head. Recalling Qi Hai’s reaction, Lu Yun couldn’t help but feel a bit smug.

There’d been some sort of relationship between Qi Hai and Zhao Qing. In the past, the man had almost become the Exalted Divine Emperor’s son-in-law. But now that Zhaoqing had become his tenth Yama King, that relationship would forever be a thing of the past.

“Sir, this treasure is a formation diagram left by a human ancestor a long time ago and sealed here since time immemorial. The sword formation it’s currently releasing is nothing more than energy it’s accumulated from the land during this time. It’s not the sword formation’s own power,” Zhaoqing explained carefully.

“Not its own power?” Lu Yun almost jumped out of his skin. Was this nothing more than the remnant of some stored energy that’d manifested itself as a sword formation? If so, how potent would the sword formation be if it were to be unleashed at full power?

The thought was too frightening to pursue.

“But the sword formation might not be enough to eradicate both threats.” Lu Yun frowned.

Sword rain fell from the sky as the four vibrating sword gates unleashed rays of sword energies that assaulted the stone spirit and demon god. Unexpectedly, the two giants’ reaction was to set their enmity aside and resist the formation together.

Boom!

The world shook as three hundred and sixty-five talismans suddenly shot into the sky and arranged themselves according to the constellations, fashioning a vast talisman formation from which appeared the figure of the Ninth Heaven’s Demon-Destroying Patriarch.

Lin Yu and Lin Xuan had joined the fray.

They’d foregone the Formation of the Black Tortoise this time around, opting instead for a talisman formation to depict the cosmos and summon the Demon-Destroying Patriarch into existence. As a result, the patriarch absorbed the power of the Black Tortoise and was twice as strong as the last time he’d been called forth.

“The little fox is also taking part… Wait, what’s she doing?” Startled, Lu Yun noticed that the fox had slipped inside the sword formation around the mountain and was deploying a second one identical to the first! Explosive energy erupted from the superposition of the two sword formations!

An illusion? Refining illusion into reality?

However, this was closer to duplication... to think the fox possessed this kind of ability as well!

Soon enough, the truth dawned on Lu Yun. This sword formation wasn’t the real thing, merely the energy of the land that’d been absorbed by the formation diagram. In other words, a simple rearrangement of nature’s qi.

On top of being a grandmaster of illusion, the primordial monster celestial master had been a formation expert as well, a sublime virtuoso in both domains. Now that she’d learned Qing Yu’s formula dao, she’d used it to theorize the very structure of the world’s energy.

As a result, she’d summoned a vast amount of energy from the land and arranged it according to the exact structure of the sword formation, thereby creating a second copy. Both formations originated from the land, so stacking them together magnified their force many times over.

As if he too had been strengthened by the formations, the Demon-Destroying Patriarch stormed through Mount Exalted and obliterated all corpse demons that stood in his path.

Hailing from the dawn of known time, the divine tombs under Mount Exalted were a mausoleum for the entire divine race. No one truly knew how many divine powerhouses were laid to rest there, and it was very possible that the Exalted Divine Emperor’s remains were located there as well. Hence, there were so many corpse demons swarming forth that it seemed impossible to kill them all.

Mount Exalted—or more precisely, the divine race’s Last Repose—had been corrupted into a demonic land by the demon god’s aura. In an even more appalling turn of events, the stone spirit was similarly undergoing assimilation. By now, it was even gradually beginning to follow the demon god’s orders!

The combined force of the two titans thwarted the sword formations’ onslaught. Worse, they struck back and cracked the formations in return!

Boom!

A white scroll barrelled out of the void and shielded the sword formations.

“God’s core essence!” The demon god stiffened at the sight of the scroll.

Demon god he may be, but as a creature both demonic and divine, divine blood also flowed in his veins. Therefore, God’s essence possessed a natural restraining effect on him. Moreover, a remnant of God’s power was contained in the demonized tomb. A joint attack from both was extremely likely to leave the demon heavily wounded.