989 - Double Eighth-level Formations

“Big Brother…….”

Su Yan watched, eyes bloodshot, as Su Yiyun vanished before her very eyes. She hurried to his side only to see beam after beam of light dissipate and disappear.

Pitter-patter.

A single drop of rain fell from the sky. Before long, rain started pouring down in buckets.

“It’s raining.”

“It was a perfectly nice day. Why is it raining all of a sudden?”

Children and the elderly were staying in the rear-most part of Dragon City. When the downpour started, they all went back indoors, but Su Yan knelt at the place where Su Yiyun had disappeared, allowing the rain to soak her clothes.

“Yiyun.”

Far away, outside of Dragon City, Li Min’e collapsed to the ground as if she’d lost her soul. She looked directly into the incoming downpour. Rain mixed with tears flowed down her cheeks, dripping from her jaw and onto the ground.

Little did she know, Su Yiyun, who had become a soul body, saw it all. He looked at the world around him and smiled, then opened his hands…...

There was a pale pink barrette in his hands.

Thud.

The hair clip fell to the ground, landing right in front of Su Yan. She reached out and picked it up…...

This was the exact hair clip Su Yiyin had given her at her coming of age ceremony. Back in the Modern Realm, when they’d severed their relationship and he turned his back on her, she’d thrown it away.

Her body shook violently as she clenched the clip in her hands.

“Big Brother!”

At that moment, Su Liu’er, who’d escaped from her heart demons, woke up. When she saw Su Yan crying out in heart-rending agony, she instinctively glanced at Su Zhu.

Su Zhu only shook her head softly. At a time like this…...

What Su Yan needed was quiet.

“Ol’ Three!”

Ye Zichen stood in the middle of the massive disc, shouting at the top of his lungs, eyes bloodshot. He struggled to break free from his bonds and return to the grove of ancient trees where Su Yiyun had vanished, but…. The chains kept him firmly in place atop the disc.

“Ye-zi, don’t. A soft murmur suddenly floated past his ears. Ye Zichen instantly froze, then looked around

“Ol’ Three!”

Rumble.

Thunder rumbled overhead. Ye Zichen was still calling Su Yiyun’s name when his face suddenly contorted hideously.

“Ah!” he let out an agonized cry.

The instant the sound of thunder reached his ears, a constant stream of spiritual energy started flowing from the chains and into his body. The energy was impure. Countless waves of spiritual power gushed through his meridians, tearing them apart. Ye Zichen couldn’t help but cry out in the face of such heart-rending agony.

“Look, it’s Emperor Ye!”

The vast downpour couldn’t affect their line of sight; the people outside Dragon City immediately noticed Ye Zichen bound to the center of the disk.

One of the onlookers couldn’t help but ask, “how did Emperor Ye get up there?”

Then another asked, “should we send some people to rescue him?

“Don’t.” Unexpectedly, the White Emperor waved him away and carefully scrutinized both Black Dragon Dragon and Ye Zichen. “Emperor Ye’s situation should be different from the demons’.”

“White Emperor, could you explain?” asked the people of the Beast Region.

“If I’m not mistaken, the demons are trapped in an Eighth-level Soul-locking Formation, one of the Eight Great Inauspicious Formations from ancient times. It’s used to seal the souls of those trapped within the formation. However, the person who places the formation has to use their own soul in the process. This formation is considered one of the Eight Great Inauspicious Formations because of the immense damage it inflicts upon the user. However…. It can also be considered one of the Eight Great Miraculous Formations.”

The group outside Dragon City listened with rapt attention. Not even the Four Beast Clans had any record of what he was telling them.

“It’s miraculous nature is due to it having a twin formation, the Eighth-Level Spirit-Boosting Formation. The Eighth-level Soul-locking Formation binds the souls of those trapped within. Then, so long as you combine it with an Eight-Level Spirit-boosting formation, it will absorb their souls, refine them into spiritual power, and channel their energy into the body of the person within the Spirit-Boosting formation. Right now, Emperor Ye ought to be the recipient of the Spirit-boosting Formation.”

“This…..”

The onlookers were so surprised, they almost couldn’t speak. The way they saw it, this formation was far too heaven-defying. To think it could absorb spiritual power and channel it into another person’s body!

Wasn’t he saying that, so long as Emperor Ye absorbed all the demons’ power, he’d be invincible?

“It’s not as simple as you think,” The White Emperor, noting the others' stunned expressions, knew they’d misunderstood. “If these two formations were as great as you seem to think they are, they wouldn’t be considered inauspicious. The Eighth-level Spirit-boosting Formation really can swallow up the entrapped souls’ spiritual power. At the end of the day, though, spiritual formations are just inanimate objects. They don’t know how to cleanse impurities. What I’m saying is, they’ll just take whatever they absorb and pour it into the recipient as is. More importantly, they won’t stop.”

“Then aren’t you saying that Emperor Ye might…..” When he heard this, Xia Hua frowned, “be unable to bear all the incoming spiritual energy and explode?”

“It’s possible!” Bai Di nodded.

“Then isn’t it even more important that we rescue him from that so-called ‘Spirit-Boosting formation?’”

“We should indeed save him. However, given our abilities, there’s absolutely no way we can break the formation,” Bai Di narrowed his eyes and said, “Since ancient times, Eighth-level Spirit-boosting Formations have only appeared twice. One time, the recipient really did explode to death. The other time…… a ruler-level expert broke the formation!”

Rumble.

Endless thunder rumbled through the sky. Ye Zichen knelt on the surface of the disk, unable to bear the incoming spiritual energy.

Gradually, the same symbols that had appeared on Su Yiyun’s body earlier started covering his face and limbs.

“Ah…….”

Ye Zichen let out an endless stream of agonized howls. At the same time, some of the demonic soldiers providing his newfound spiritual energy started to reach their limit. They fell to ground, faces pale, eyes bulging from their sockets.

As they fell, the glowing blue halos above their head, as well as the lines of light, disappeared.

Black Dragon, as a sky supreme, had a vast reserve of spiritual energy. He was naturally much stronger than those ordinary demon warriors. He could clearly sense his spiritual energy leaving his body and struggled even harder to break his bonds.

“Break for me!”

All of a sudden, the chains binding him truly cracked. Then they watched as bony spurs erupted from his back, piercing right through the cracks in his chains.

“Break!”

Bang!

He forced open his arms. Now, the chains binding him truly, shockingly, burst into bits and scattered to the ground. When he broke his bonds, the others’ bonds fell to the ground as well. It was like the butterfly effect.

Everyone who’d just escaped their chains immediately sat on the ground and started to recover.

But not Black Dragon. He simply narrowed his eyes at the disk in the sky and fixed his gaze on Ye Zichen, who was sitting in its center. He gathered his spiritual power in his fist and launched himself up at the disc.

“He’s going to break that disc!”

Practically everyone outside Dragon City had initially been lost in the shock of Black Dragon breaking through his bonds. However, when they saw Black Dragon move to attack the floating disc, several figures simultaneously hurtled towards it.

Ye Zichen absolutely couldn’t be allowed to die here!