“Could there be some peerless ferocious creature hidden underground?”
Master Longbrow’s heart skipped a beat, and he hurriedly said, “Old Bullnose, Fairy Hundred Flowers, stay where you are and don’t move. I’ll go check what’s happening.”
As Master Longbrow spoke, he was already sprinting away.
He wasn’t investigating; he was clearly trying to escape.
Fairy Hundred Flowers saw through his intentions and cursed angrily, “Bastard!”
“Utterly shameless!” Chongxu Taoist’s face darkened.
However, Master Longbrow hadn’t run ten metres when a copper pillar suddenly shot up from the ground. Caught off guard, he crashed headfirst into it with a “thud,” blood streaming from his forehead.
“Ouch, that hurts like hell!”
Master Longbrow cried out in pain, quickly retreating as the ground trembled beneath him.
In the blink of an eye, towering copper pillars emerged from the ground, encircling Master Longbrow, Chongxu Taoist, and Fairy Hundred Flowers.
The ground finally stopped shaking.
Chongxu Taoist looked around, silently counting. There were exactly twenty-eight copper pillars, arranged according to the twenty-eight constellations.
Each pillar stood dozens of feet tall, immensely thick, inscribed with mysterious runes.
At that moment, the runes on the pillars lit up, emitting beams of light that connected to form a cage, trapping Master Longbrow and the others inside.
“Charge!”
Ignoring the pain in his forehead, Master Longbrow shouted, and he, Chongxu Taoist, and Fairy Hundred Flowers rushed in three different directions.
Just as they were about to break out of the cage, an invisible barrier, like an iron wall, stopped them.
“Thud!”
The three were thrown back to their original spots.
“What’s going on?” Fairy Hundred Flowers’ eyes filled with shock.
“Damn it, we’re trapped by a formation,” Master Longbrow said with deep regret. “If I’d listened to the little rascal earlier, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
“What kind of formation is this?” Fairy Hundred Flowers asked.
Though she was the Palace Master of Hundred Flowers Palace, she knew nothing about formations.
Master Longbrow and Chongxu Taoist, both sect leaders of the Taoist school, had studied formations. After observing for a moment, they said in unison, “This is the Twenty-Eight Constellations Formation!”
After speaking, the two old men exchanged a glance, as if to say, great minds think alike.
“How do we break it?” Fairy Hundred Flowers asked again.
Master Longbrow said, “We just need to find the Gate of Life.”
Chongxu Taoist added, “The Gate of Life is in the east.”
Immediately, Master Longbrow charged toward the east, with Chongxu Taoist and Fairy Hundred Flowers close behind.
Unexpectedly, just a few steps in, three runes floated off the copper pillars. In the next second, they transformed into three peerless blades of light, descending from the sky.
The killing intent was overwhelming.
“Dodge!” Master Longbrow, startled, hurriedly retreated.
Fairy Hundred Flowers and Chongxu Taoist also quickly moved aside.
The three peerless blades landed on the ground, melting like snowflakes, disappearing without a trace.
“That scared the hell out of me.”
Master Longbrow touched his forehead, his palm now covered in blood, and he cried out again, “So painful.”
Seeing this, Chongxu Taoist smirked irritably, “That’s what you get for trying to run earlier.”
Master Longbrow said gravely, “Old Bullnose, we both got it wrong. This isn’t the Twenty-Eight Constellations Formation.”
Chongxu Taoist’s face was serious. “This formation won’t be easy to break.”
Master Longbrow said, “The runes on the pillars are extraordinary. You felt the power of those three blades just now. If they hit us, we’d be in serious trouble.”
“You old dog, you’re also versed in formations. Let’s study it again.”
“No matter what, we have to break this formation, or the three of us will be trapped to death here.”
Fairy Hundred Flowers felt deep regret. Ye Qiu had tried to warn her earlier, but she hadn’t listened.
“If only I’d listened to him.”
Fairy Hundred Flowers looked outside the formation and saw Ye Qiu watching her, his brows furrowed.
“Is he blaming me?”
For a moment, she felt like a child who had done something wrong, deeply uneasy.
Little did she know, Ye Qiu wasn’t blaming her at all. The sudden appearance of the twenty-eight copper pillars made him realise that Master Longbrow and the others were trapped in a formation.
“I knew the dragon veins wouldn’t be so easy to obtain.”
The others also saw that Fairy Hundred Flowers and her group were in danger.
“Young Master Ye, the Palace Master and the others are in danger. What should we do?” Lüluo said anxiously.
Ye Qiu reassured her, “Don’t worry. They’re only trapped by a formation. The old man and Senior Chongxu are both skilled in formations. They should be able to break it.”
But what happened next caught Ye Qiu off guard.
Master Longbrow and Chongxu Taoist tried several times, not only failing to break the formation but also triggering the runes on the pillars, which kept turning into peerless blades, attacking the three.
Within moments, all three were injured.
Fairy Hundred Flowers, in particular, was struck twice by the blades, leaving two bloody holes in her shoulders, her dress stained red with blood.
“Young Master Ye, please save the Palace Master,” Lüluo pleaded, her voice trembling.
Ye Qiu wanted to help, but he still hadn’t figured out what kind of formation this was.
The strangest thing was that he could clearly see Master Longbrow calling for help inside the formation, yet he couldn’t hear a single sound.
This formation not only trapped them but also blocked their voices from escaping.
It was a deadly formation!
Ye Qiu knew their situation was dire. They couldn’t wait any longer; he had to act.
Since he couldn’t find a way to break the formation, brute force it was!
“Hu Zi, use your strongest attack to strike the copper pillars,” Ye Qiu said, thinking that since the formation was created by the twenty-eight pillars, destroying one would break it.
“Got it.”
Hu Zi responded, riding the fire lion and charging forward, swinging his battle axe with full force at a pillar.
“Boom!”
A loud crash.
Hu Zi was thrown back, but the pillar remained unscathed.
“Hm?”
Ye Qiu’s brow twitched. He immediately summoned four Qiankun Cauldrons, which grew in size and crashed into a pillar simultaneously.
“Boom!”
The pillar stood like an immovable divine needle, completely undamaged, without even the slightest tremor.
“How is this possible?”
Ye Qiu was utterly shocked.
The combined force of the four Qiankun Cauldrons was nearly a million jin, enough to pulverise a mountain, yet it couldn’t budge the pillar. It was unbelievable!
Ye Qiu recalled the cauldrons, staring at the pillars, his brows tightly knit.
He didn’t notice that the ten dragon veins atop the snow mountain were all staring at the Qiankun Cauldrons with their massive dragon eyes, unblinking.
Moments later.
“Roar—”
The ten dragon veins let out a simultaneous dragon roar, shaking the heavens.
