"Clever!"
The gray-robed elder hovered in midair, as though he already held everything in the world in the palm of his hand.
The blood mist around him swelled, and the wrinkles on his face visibly faded, making him look ten years younger.
"I have spent a century laying the groundwork in Black Wind Valley. I long ago incorporated this entire earth-vein yin grotto into my formation!"
"Whenever outsiders force their way in and break the outer restrictions with brute force, this great formation activates on its own!"
"Then the blood and vital energy of every living creature within a hundred miles will be drawn here. That will be enough for me to break through beyond the peak of the Dao Realm!"
"When that happens, who could possibly stand against me?"
"This is my final trump card!"
"Did you really think I would let you unravel it so easily?"
As soon as he finished speaking, countless hidden formation patterns throughout the underground palace lit up at once.
Pillars of blood-red light shot out of the abyss, staining the entire underground palace scarlet.
At the entrance, the fragments of the restrictions that the Luo'u Prefecture cultivators had forcibly shattered dissolved into flecks of bloody light and flowed into the formation.
Farther away, in the direction of Azure Cliff City, countless faint but visible blood-red threads spread outward, slipping into home after home.
The citizens and cultivators within the city all felt their hearts shudder at that same instant, as though something terrifying had awakened in the distance.
Bzz!
Inside the underground palace, the severely wounded evil cultivators were the first to suffer the formation's effects. Before they could even scream, the glowing formation patterns on the ground enveloped them. Their flesh rapidly withered, leaving desiccated corpses.
Their blood essence poured into the