Enraged

Lu Changsheng sat cross-legged in meditation at the edge of the plaza, his aura withdrawn to the utmost, like an ancient stone statue forgotten by the years. His soul power poured out in an endless tide, constructing the complete model of that eighth-grade spiritual array within his mind.

The complexity of this array far exceeded the limits of everything he had once understood about the Dao of arrays. More than eighteen hundred major nodes linked to one another, thirty-six thousand auxiliary array lines wove together like the sands of the Ganges, and nine main spiritual veins were like nine sleeping flood dragons, slowly swimming through the bottom layer of the array. The slightest change anywhere would trigger a chain backlash from the entire grand array.

Time lost all meaning in the depths of this deathly silent forbidden land.

One hour... Two hours... Fine beads of sweat gradually seeped from Lu Changsheng's temples. The instant those beads emerged from his skin, they were frozen by the cold, sinister undersea current into tiny ice crystals that hung from his brows and sideburns.

His face grew paler and paler. The high-intensity circulation of his soul brought waves of tearing agony, as if countless steel needles were stirring inside his sea of consciousness. Yet his gaze grew sharper still, like a hunting hawk, fixed firmly on the constantly rotating array model in his mind as he searched inch by inch, thread by thread, for that one possible flaw.

Finally, at the instant the third hour was about to pass—

"Found it!"

Lu Changsheng's tightly shut eyes snapped open, and two rays of azure blue brilliance shot from his pupils. In the southwestern corner of that array model, vast as a sea of stars, he had discovered a minute node that had almost been perfectly