Chapter 216 – The Second Step

“Gosh, they’re really going all out.” The scholar couldn’t help but shake his head as he watched how the two women were fighting each other to the death. How much did they hate each other?

“Life Changing Survival Instinct – Hiding the Soul in the Heavens.”

Gu Suihan was watching the fight closely and sent these words to Xia Yun via telepathy when he could see that she was about to collapse. She seized the chance to spray a fountain of blood out from her mouth, stumble backward, and fell to the ground before executing the technique Gu Suihan taught her that would make her seem like she was dead when she wasn’t. Her eyes were filled with hatred as she glared fiercely at Rou Lingyun. She let out a sad and indignant laugh before slowly fading away.

Once she saw that her long-time opponent had finally died at her hands, Rou Lingyun relaxed and was no longer able to stand properly. The adrenaline that had kept her going instantly dissipated, so her body grew limp, and she was about to collapse onto the ground.

Thankfully, Li Yu noticed her situation and caught her in his arms. Perhaps she could sense Li Yu’s overflowing anxiety, so she couldn’t help but break into a faint but gentle smile. “Search her body for anything valuable. I’m…need to rest for a while.”

“Alright, be careful.” Li Yu carefully put the beautiful young woman in his arms down on the ground, then ran over to the motionless, bloodstained Xia Yun and pulled off her storage ring. He quickly carried Rou Lingyun again and left the streets that had turned into nothing but mere rubble without wasting any time.

After a long time, someone appeared in the distance. Li Yu had returned. He stared at Xia Yun’s icy corpse, and his expression relaxed a little. “She’s dead, alright.”

He proceeded to search her body. After finding a pouch hidden in her belt, he ran off as quickly as he could.

After Li Yu had disappeared, Gu Suihan and the rest suddenly appeared right next to Xia Yun. Tang Xiaoyun narrowed his eyes and sounded regretful as he said, “This fellow’s not bad. It’s too bad that…”

“You can stop pretending. They’ve left.” Gu Suihan glanced emotionlessly at Xia Yun lying on the ground, looking exactly like a corpse. He couldn’t believe how professional she was being about this.

“Cough cough! Argh! I got the really short end of the stick this time!” said Xia Yun weakly after she opened her eyes and swallowed the pills Gu Suihan put near her mouth hurriedly. She coughed some blood out as well.

“You’ve got to part with some things in order to gain other things,” said the scholar with a smile to console her. He waved his folding fan, creating a light breeze that carried them away in an instant. They reappeared in the next second at the same tower where the men had been watching the fight earlier.

Tang Xiaoyun rubbed his stubbly chin and looked deep in thought as he said, “We’ve done it. Now, it will all depend on what she’s going to do. Rou Lingyun would definitely recognize something like a Positioning Stone, and that young man is even dearer to her than before. I think she’s about to go through a romance-related tribulation at this rate.”

“Will she get through it and stand firm, or will she delve deeper into this relationship? That will depend on her luck,” said Chamu in a rough voice. He took a bottle of clear wine out from his storage ring and took a few swigs.

“As a safety precaution, we…need to make some changes to the way the formation is set up.” Gu Suihan carried the weak and frail Xia Yun and quietly spoke into her ears, “What sort of formation did you set up?”

His warm voice was like a trickling stream, calm and gentle, making Xia Yun’s heart skip a beat when she suddenly heard it in her ears. Her flawless fair skin and cheeks instantly turned pink and it took a long while before she noticed her own reaction and snapped out of her daze. She quickly responded, “It’s a Heavenly Illusion Space Breaking Six Paths formation. The activating formation eye is in the middle of the city, and there are a total of seven main formation eyes, 14 subsidiary formation eyes, and 96-star points.”

“Your folks spent a lot of resources on this, huh.” A shocked look flashed in Gu Suihan’s eyes for a moment. He fed her a few more pills and paused to think for a while before continuing, “I don’t know exactly what Rou Lingyun will do, and I don’t know if anything will go wrong with the plan. But to play safe, we have to take control of one of the main formation eyes. That way, we would be able to threaten her with the prospect of everyone dying together.”

Of course, he wasn’t referring to detonating the city, which was now a dao weapon. That was something that required the formation to be activated, as well as the combined effort of several Nascent Change cultivators to make it rotate the other way. Otherwise, they would require the activating formation eye and the Positioning Stone to forcibly destroy the formation.

But think about it this way. If Rou Lingyun was able to successfully use the secret hidden in this city to break into the void and guarantee the survival of most people, any normal person would be interested in hearing more. Rou Lingyun had the Positioning Stone and a method of activating the formation now. Her words would definitely carry a lot of weight.

However, if Gu Suihan and his comrades made a small change to the formation and made the activation of it fail; as a result, they would have snatched away the hope that they themselves had given everyone. The terrible loss of hope because of this would certainly drive them insane.

It wouldn’t be surprising if Rou Lingyun and anybody with her were to be hacked into minced meat by all the cultivators who had lost their minds. Gu Suihan and his comrades would step forward at this time, and they would become the actual saviors of these people.

The cultivators mentioned here aren’t the pathetic and weak Origin Core and Foundation Establishment cultivators but the Nascent Change monsters who were fighting off every survivor they found in order to remain the last one standing.

“Make a rough estimate. How many more Nascent Change monsters are left in Fengyang right now?” said Gu Suihan quietly as he narrowed his eyes and looked down at Xia Yun.

Before Xia Yun could reply, the scholar closed his eyes to get a sensing of the number of such cultivators. His face suddenly paled terribly, then he vomited blood several times and collapsed weakly onto the floor. “About 40-odd people, if we’re not counting those hiding their actual capabilities. But it’s definitely not more than 50,” said the scholar weakly.

“Are there formation eyes nearby?” asked Gu Suihan softly. He scanned the tragic sight of rubble outside and put Xia Yun down since she had recovered quite a bit.

Xia Yun relied on the few ruined buildings and streets outside to finally get her bearings and pointed confidently toward the north. “There’s a main formation eye 150 kilometers from here.”

“Focus on recuperating. We’re starting a very risky game here,” said Gu Suihan before he shut his eyes and began thinking very carefully. He was trying to think of a way to alter the formation without leaving any traces.

Formations were a very detailed thing in the first place. The change of even the smallest detail could cause a reaction throughout the rest of it. The higher the formation’s level, the rarer and more valuable resources it would require. And it still came with several major limitations.

That was why there weren’t a lot of cultivators who chose to cultivate in formations.

Firstly, you had to follow the geographical properties of the location in order to set up a formation. Secondly, a formation that could kill required really incredible dao weapons and spiritual weapons to guard the formation so that your opponent wouldn’t be able to break through the formation and escape. Lastly, this stupid thing couldn’t be moved unless you created a formation drawing and embedded the formation runes into the drawing. But doing that would weaken the formation greatly, so you were going to do yourself in instead.

A lot of people thought that formations were fucking awesome because you could just set up one formation and kill a group of cultivators at the same level of cultivation. But that was assuming that your opponents had negative IQ levels or didn’t have much knowledge of formations at all. Otherwise, one just had to scan the road ahead with their spiritual sense, and they would know a formation that could kill them was waiting for them. Which idiot would still go ahead and walk right into a trap?

Unless there was something more valuable than life itself inside, like dao runes that could recreate life, a dao weapon that could alter the laws of nature or some ancient invincible cultivation technique within that formation, anybody with a brain wouldn’t go anywhere near it. What could be more important than your own life? As long as you were still alive, there was hope. If you died this way, you wouldn’t even have anybody to bury you.

“Do you think the people planted by Rou Lingyun have the ability to complete the second step?” asked Tang Xiaoyun in a bored voice as he hugged his halberd.

“Since she was able to get actual information on Xia Yun’s plans, plus my hints, it wouldn’t be difficult to notice a few issues. The bigger problem would be…how to spread the news and make the remaining Nascent Change cultivators believe that she actually has the power to save all of them and get out of here alive. How to stay alive and remain the one in charge despite how they could kill her easily,” responded Gu Suihan softly as he leaned back in his chair.

He didn’t have a complete plan for sure.

The more complicated a plan was, the more loopholes there were and the higher the chances were for something to go wrong.

That was why Gu Suihan only told them the outline of his plan. As for the rest, they would have to continue monitoring the situation and adapt accordingly.

All of a sudden, Gu Suihan thought of that tiger that had died as well as the mountain god that resembled an elderly gnome.

“Something’s not right.” Gu Suihan suddenly stood up and spread his spiritual sense out, covering tens of kilometers in an instant, as though he were searching carefully for something in particular. His expression grew grim. “The city of Fengyang does not only contain cultivators. There’s another group of powerful beings. But…where are they?”