Chapter 461: Mirage

Chapter 461: Mirage

Lu Yun retreated from the zone of attack caused by the crimson eyes. The only thing he could do now was set up a formation as quickly as possible; the extinction layout was still in effect and could destroy the tomb at any time.

As for the strange power that could kill cultivators… there was nothing he could do about it for the moment. Not even the Spectral Eye could pierce through the darkness ahead and figure out what manner of monster the eyes belonged to.

“Ge Long!” growled Lu Yun into the darkness.

“Aye, at your service, milord!” Ge Long responded without missing a beat.

“Stop tangling with your yum-yum and take this to the burial place!” The Formation Orb in Lu Yun’s hand separated into two and he threw the yin portion into the darkness.

“Understood!” Ge Long scrambled to catch the orb, which flared with great formation power to scatter the yin spirits attacking him. He made a run for it toward where the tomb’s owner was buried. When he passed the giant scarlet eyes, he paused.

“It’s that thing! So it’s been hiding here all along… It mustn’t be allowed to grow, or it’ll devour not only cultivators, but the entirety of immortal dao…” Ge Long’s expression was uncharacteristically grave.

In his haste to set up a formation—or more accurately, feng shui layout—Lu Yun overlooked the old servant’s reaction. The current environment didn’t meet his needs, so he had to reconstruct the feng shui and environment here to suit his purpose. Formation disk after formation disk emerged in his hands and were laid down on the ground in a pattern that only he understood.

Mo Yi watched quietly, but couldn’t figure out what Lu Yun was doing.

“This isn’t a simple formation,” she said suddenly. “This will sway heaven and earth… You’ve tapped into the power of formations to influence the world without setting one up!”

Formation masters of the world had long since noticed the pull that formations exerted on heaven and earth, but the power was fickle, unpredictable, and seemingly impossible to control. The same formation might influence the world differently in different environments, and the impact changed as the environment changed around it.

Great formation masters had attempted to study this unpredictable influence, but to no avail. Worse, they ended up delaying their own pursuit of formation dao and falling into mediocrity.

The power that formations exerted on the world—feng shui—was so complicated that, over time, formation masters in the world of immortals had given up on studying it. By now, many formation masters didn’t even notice its nebulous existence. Knowledge about the impact that formations had on the world had been lost.

Mo Yi hadn’t expected Lu Yun to be a master of that lost art!

“It’s feng shui,” Lu Yun said as he set up the layout, his injuries mostly healed. “Everything between heaven and earth comes together to form a vast feng shui layout. Formations are secondary, it’s feng shui that dictates the operation of the world!”

Mo Yi nodded bemusedly.

“Do you want to learn?” Lu Yun suddenly asked.

She shook her head. “Everyone has their own expertise, so learning this won’t do me much good.”

Lu Yun rubbed his nose. Mo Yi was tremendously, almost horrifyingly talented. After severing her own cultivation, she’d returned to the dao immortal realm in only a few months and exceeded her previous achievements. Even with the Tome of Life and Death and the Sal Tree of Life and Death, Lu Yun still wasn’t her match.

At the same time, she was right. There were different strokes for different folks. She’d learned the way of formations simply for her combat art of the Big Dipper. While she may be a grandmaster of formations, it wasn’t where her talent lay.

“That’s a technique of the branch from the ancestor planet,” the human demon mused when he saw Lu Yun’s handiwork. “So you’re a descendent of that branch.”

“Ancestor planet?” Lu Yun blurted out in shock. “Planet, not realm or world?”

“The ancestor planet is the ancestor planet. A brilliant, prosperous star. Sadly, the planet was destroyed when the human dao met its end,” lamented the human demon. “The planet may have been destroyed, but its heritage remains. Feng shui is part of that heritage, and the ancient tombs, this one included, are ruins of heritages left from the planet.”

Lu Yun nodded silently.

Hum.

The Yang Formation Orb in Lu Yun’s hand hummed as a giant mirror emerged, reflecting a hunched over figure: Ge Long. The Yin Formation Orb in his hand was glowing as well, resonating with the Yang Formation Orb.

Mirage.

A mirage was also a kind of feng shui layout. When certain conditions were met, it could project the scenery from one place to another.

Lu Yun had changed the environment in the ancient tomb with several formation-created layouts and met the conditions for a mirage to emerge. He’d then projected Ge Long’s image here through the connection between the two formation orbs.

There was a power that killed cultivators deep within the ancient tomb. He couldn’t reach the place, so he needed Ge Long to go in his stead and destroy the layout by giving instructions through the mirage.

“Do it!” Lu Yun ordered.

Snowflakes scattered from the sky to ensconce Lu Yun within as Mo Yi made her move. Something seemed to rush past the falling snow, causing a disturbance.

Swoosh!

Flame burst out of Lu Yun’s body and he reached out to grab where the falling snow was diverted from its path.

Thud!

He crushed the attacking divine obsession with a firm clench and burned it with hellfire. Lu Yun didn’t care at all how the divine obsession became sentient. According to the human demon, this was the resting place of the human emperor and had once been doused by his blood. Anything could happen here.

Relieved, Lu Yun turned to the mirage.

“What did you discover?” he asked, noting Ge Long’s dark look.

The old servant sported a perpetual leer on his face that never changed, even when facing the greatest of dangers, but now, his expression was so broodingly serious that it made him look like a different person.

“Something terrifying,” Ge Long said in a low voice. He fell silent after responding, since he’d reached the place where the tomb’s owner was buried.

Darkness was driven away by a soft glow emanating from the coffin before him. A six-meter-long crimson coffin hovered roughly six meters above the ground; it was none other than a hanging coffin.