Chapter 298: The Soul Reaping Formation (2/2)

Soon the house was nothing more than a massive pile of rubble and trash, baring the ground underneath the house that it had been built on. When they were finally able to see the exposed ground, the expression in their eyes became severe.

The ground underneath the house was one massive rock, but the rock was clearly unnatural. All over the rock were carvings of what looked to be runes that belonged to a formation.

The runes kept on for as far as the rock was visible above the cleared floor, and seemed to continue even underneath the grass and soil that was between the houses.

“Let us try and empty every house to see if it is the same underneath them all. Let us unmask the entire formation; I would like to see how big it is, and hopefully we will recognize some of the runes,” Hei Gou said, but when he saw that Xue Wei was staring intently at the formation with furrowed brows and an expression of recognition on his face, he quieted down.

“These runes.” Xue Wei pointed at a few of the carvings, “I saw them in the Soul Tower before.”

The King was a specialist in formations as well, and she had attended the Garden of Shadows before she was crowned, so she looked at the runes that Xue Wei pointed at, all five of her eyes widening in surprise.

“It is indeed the same runes,” she agreed. “Let us do as Hei Gou suggested and strip the entire place so we can see the rest of the formation, maybe we will understand more about what it does.”

As Hei Gou suggested, the group began uprooting the entire forbidden area. They pulled out the earth, the roads, and the houses and tossed everything in a massive pile of waste materials and soil.

The more they excavated, the bigger they found the formation. It stretched as far as all the houses that were located around Luoluo’s house, and the closer one came to the center, the more rune carvings were crammed together in the rock.

It was obvious that it had intentionally been hidden beneath the vegetation, the roads, and the house.

Now that it was revealed for all to see, they could easily tell that all the runes were heading towards Luoluo’s small house, the place with the densest soul energy throughout the entire forbidden area.

“I feel like I have seen this formation before,” the King said tentatively, her brows twisted together as if she was seeing something she could almost remember but not quite.

“It resembles the Soul Power Gathering Formation, but there has been made some slight adjustments to the outer formation. In the middle, the one that is underneath Luoluo’s house seems very different too,” Xue Wei said as he looked at the formations in front of him.

“This is a forbidden formation,” the King said with a grave and slightly chilling voice. “The formation drags all soul power out of a living being little by little. It is known as the Soul Reaping Formation, and it was forbidden many many years ago.

“The Soul Reaping Formation would explain why Luoluo is so young, both physically and mentally,” the King continued. “I saw a Soul Power Transfer Formation as well. It seems that this massive formation is a combination of many formations together, and all of them have various purposes.”

“First is the Soul Reaping Formation which slowly but surely removes all the soul power from little Luoluo, then the Soul Power Transfer Formation moves the absorbed soul power she was formed of towards the Soul Tower, and finally the Soul Power Gathering Formation gathers energy towards her house, to try and nurse her a little back to life.

“The reason that we did not feel the dense soul power before was that Luoluo was absorbing it all, but now that she has been missing for some time, all the energy has just gathered and hasn’t been consumed by anyone.

“As I said, it explains it all. Luoluo has slowly been drained every single day of her soul power to fuel the Soul Tower. She is a Spirit, so she is a dense cluster of soul power, but even so, she has a limited supply of energy within her.

“She had already regressed to a five-year-old child when we found her, so it was obvious that she could not continue to have her energy dragged out of her indefinitely, and that she would die sooner or later.”

The King looked disgusted as she thought about how the Garden of Shadows had used a living being as a prisoner and forced her to hand over her own life force for the sake of increased cultivation bases for others.

The Garden of Shadows prided itself with being a fair and just place, but everything they had was built on a lie.

The King looked at Xue Wei and saw his expression had darkened drastically. After listening to the King, he also now understood what it was that had caused Luoluo to have the mentality and body of a child.

He then looked at the King with eyes that were trying to look through her.

“I want all of Yan Dalu to know about this,” he said sternly. “I know it will change how the continent looks on the Garden of Shadows, but to ensure this never happens again, I want everyone to know what has fueled the Soul Tower.”

“Don’t you fear that some greedy people will come after Luoluo?” The King was not against his decision; she just had to make sure that he would not regret it.

“I already assisted the strongest people in the continent with getting Qi cultivation techniques. I am quite sure that the Yuan and Gu families will let her be, and those others who dare to touch her, I will deal with them.”

The King nodded her head solemnly and gave a last glance at the Soul Reaping Formation on the ground.

“Let us destroy the formation before we return,” she said, prompting Xue Wei to take action. He summoned all his Qi into a massive Qi sword which he then used to repeatedly pierce and smash up the rock that had been the medium for the formation.