Juelong Ridge
On the Juelong Ridge, a great battle raged between the Xuanmo and the Demon.
This was the first time Li Fan had ever witnessed a battlefield inhabited by cultivators from the Taiji Realm.
Among the Three Great Sects, the Ancient Immortal Palace's style is relatively normal, basically limited to large-scale battles, duels between generals, crossbow fire, and armored soldiers charging into battle. At most, they occasionally deploy special units such as giant demon-suppressing robots, Shangfang Divine Weapon like the Bila. In particular, the internal strife within the Immortal Palace, including the civil wars of the Three Enclosures, Eight Domains, and Twelve Countries, is basically still in the classical mode.
However, ever since the emergence of the Xuanmen sect, the war mode with a Xianxia (fantasy martial arts) style began to go astray.
After all, cultivators of the Xuanmen sect come from the martial world and are few in number. Their long-standing opponents have been constables and assassins from the Immortal Palace. Even if an individual is stronger, when faced with an army of tens of thousands, they usually choose to flee. Apart from a very few like Xuan Tian, almost no one would actually charge head-on and kill everyone.
Therefore, the Xuanmen camp, whether internally or externally, usually employs guerrilla tactics, including various flanking maneuvers, night raids, special operations, and assassinations of kings. The primary objective is to directly seize the leader and disrupt morale, with very few direct confrontations involving hundreds or thousands of cultivators. If they could truly gather hundreds or thousands of True Cultivators, they could hold a grand gathering at Yuntai.
Therefore, although history is replete with instances of 'demonic sects' assassinating powerful figures like Immortal Emperors, Grand Generals, and the Three Dukes, the entire Immortal Palace court system remains unaffected. The world is never short of people who want to be officials; if one dies, countless others will vie for the position. Thus, the Xuanmen sect can never truly destroy the entire Immortal Palace.
In the era of the God Lord, in order to completely eradicate the Three Realms and annihilate the Eight Feudal Immortal Armies, the God Lord established the Divine Cult to recruit followers, teach the Body Domination Technique, and build the Divine Cult Army. However, given the size of the Western Regions, it was still impossible for them to directly confront the armies of the Twelve Countries of the Central Plains, which numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Therefore, the God Lord meticulously studied and deduced the Ten Ultimate Formation, precisely to achieve victory against overwhelming odds and defeat the Immortal Palace's army in a large-scale battle.
In principle, it involves using Daoist formations and borrowing the spiritual energy of heaven and earth to allow dozens or even hundreds of cultivators to set up an array together and unleash a 'wide-range destructive spell' that can cover the entire battlefield to kill and destroy enemy forces.
Such a grand formation has strict ritual procedures for its setup, maintenance, and dismantling. After all, it can easily alter the landscape and trigger the killing intent of heaven and earth, so it cannot be studied without careful consideration.
However, once successfully developed, these battle formations, according to the formation diagrams, magical treasures, and Magic Treasure, can be deployed by specialized elites, with Dao Companion partners and disciples providing support and assistance. Even if there are casualties in the battle within the formation, if the opponent does not know how to break the formation, cannot destroy all the formation's cores, and cannot sever the magical power support from the spiritual veins and magical treasures, the killing effect of the formations deployed on the battlefield can be maintained for a long time, causing continuous damage to the army that falls into the formation.
To use the simple example of the arrays Li Fan set up outside the temple, even the most basic Earthly Fiend Four Gates Array, as long as Qin Jiu changes the magic flags and talismans in time and continuously activates the array, smashing earth, fire, wind and thunder wildly, those who break into the array will not have much chance of survival. How difficult it is for human power to overcome the great power of heaven and earth. If someone gains the initiative and seizes the terrain, and then launches a strong attack, they will be killed sooner or later.
However, precisely because of the difficulty and strict requirements of setting up formations, those who have mastered formations will generally have the ability to enter and exit killing formations and protect themselves.
An undercover swordsman who wished to remain anonymous went from being universally hated to becoming the leader of the Xuanmen sect. His greatest achievement was leading his followers in a century-long struggle to decipher the Divine Sect's most precious protective treasure, the Ten Absolute Formations, and ultimately destroying the Divine Sect's headquarters! He then obtained all of the Divine Sect's secret manuals!
From then on, the once mighty Divine Sect, which under the leadership of the Divine Lord had broken through Nine Yin Mountain, trampled Xuanmen, terrified the Three Realms, and dominated the world, never recovered! For hundreds of years, it hid its true nature and was almost wiped out!
All of this was because the Divine Sect's various celestial books and secret teachings, as well as its most treasured secrets like the Ten Absolute Formations, were all looted by the Xuanmen, except for the method of cultivating the primordial spirit, which remained in the hands of the Saintess! This led to a rapid advancement in the Xuanmen's research on arithmetic and formations across its various mountains and sects! Although the Xuanmen rarely publicly acknowledged it, it was precisely this battle that caused the Divine Sect's unparalleled expertise in both arithmetic and formations to fall into the hands of Yuntai Peak, thus becoming one of the Xuanmen's Five Arts!
Incidentally, this is also why the Xuanmen (Daoist sect) still acknowledges the God Lord as one of the 'Three Venerables'. After all, they did indeed learn his true teachings.
In short, based on the algorithmic formations of the Divine Sect, various sects of the Xuanmen have optimized various formations and diagrams, not only for protecting mountains but also for internal battles. Especially when the destructive power has reached its peak, they have added various mathematical variations, increasing the difficulty of the formations and turning these killing formations into mazes. Thus, when formation cultivators fight among themselves, even if fellow practitioners who recognize the formation enter the formation, it is difficult to find a way to escape immediately, which indirectly increases the output time.
Take the Threefold Tribulation of Threefold Killing in Wangwu Mountain as an example. The variations in the formation and the killing moves are self-evident; they all involve various Daoist techniques, illusions, and magical treasures to kill. Similar formations exist in various schools, but they are not entirely the same, each with its own variations, hidden doors, and traps. Therefore, Li Fan dared not say that he could definitely break the formation. At most, he could only rely on the computing power of various chips to calculate a way out on the spot.
At this moment, Li Fan could see the power of Wangwu Mountain just by observing the formation from the outside.
This place, Juelong Ridge, has been occupied and repeatedly contested by the army of the Immortal Palace and the Divine Sect for ten years. The local spiritual energy has long been exhausted. It was also bombed by a nuclear bomb just now, and the land has been plowed up. The Taiji spiritual energy between heaven and earth is sparse, the primordial energy Dao Breath have dissipated, and the spiritual veins and earth veins have been destroyed beyond recognition. Originally, from the perspective of feng shui formations, it was not suitable to set up formations to fight the enemy.
Moreover, it was a dark and windy night, with a large, round, False Moon and rampant malevolent energy that severely hampered the Taiji Xian Dao's effectiveness. The commotion at Yuntai Peak, with its lights out, had the Divine Sect euphoric and the Xuanmen in a state of panic. All the favorable conditions—timing, location, and popular support—had turned against the enemy; it was certainly not a good time for a major battle.
But these old immortals in the Xuanmen sect are stubborn; if there are conditions, they'll go for it, and if there aren't, they'll create them to force themselves to go for that kind of monstrous type.
Therefore, the four sect leaders led their trusted disciples into battle, joining forces to cast spells, set up array foundations, and each carved out a domain. They forcibly used their own Dao bodies, magic treasures, and cloud-script secret manuals to alter the feng shui and spiritual veins of this world, filling the space with Dao Breath and maximizing the power of the array. At the same time, they used the Dao leaders' primordial spirits as a barrier to conceal heavenly secrets, resist the infiltration of heavenly demons, and prevent those outside the array from easily seeing the changes in the array's patterns and calculating the timing to break the array.
Then, the core Inner Sect disciples of various sects at the True Person realm, such as those at Wangwu Mountain, under the leadership of the acting sect leader, palace master, and elders at the Divine Transformation realm, took their positions according to the array diagram to guard the array flags and array eyes, set up the great array, and took turns repairing the array positions, supplying Dao Breath, and replacing Magic Treasure and talismans as needed.
In this way, even if they don't personally engage in combat, the grand formation will automatically activate and crush the area within it into dust. Furthermore, if they discover an opponent skilled in arithmetic attempting to break the formation, they can proactively attack in squad mode to eliminate these individuals with the ability to break the formation. This effectively transforms the large-scale battle into a small-team special operations scenario that Xuanmen cultivators are more adept at.
The unique feature of this formation at Wangwu Mountain is that the cultivators maintaining the formation are divided into three teams: one for ambush, one for heavy attack, and one for killing.
When setting up this killing formation, the manpower is divided into three teams and nine groups. The first team of three groups is in charge of the formation, surrounding and killing those inside the formation. They can change the formation to use earth, fire, wind, thunder, sword, and qi to target specific targets. The second team sets up multiple overlapping formations outside the formation to hunt down any remaining enemies who break through, or to provide support to the front line to increase output. The third team lies in ambush outside the formation. If they detect any risk of breaking the formation, they will take charge of breaking it, shifting the feng shui positions, moving the core of the formation, and altering the map of the maze to cheat and make it impossible for anyone to escape.
The three teams can take turns supporting each other, change formations in real time, and adapt to the times. They can choose specific tactics for different opponents, with layers of intricate and varied formations that can be combined at any time. This is the same powerful killing formation that the Wangwu Mountain cultivators used to assist the Grand Commandant in his Northern Expedition, sweeping away the northern demons and undergoing battlefield trials to become famous throughout the world!
However, to Li Fan's surprise, Wangwu Mountain was in a state of decline at this time!
Under the fierce attack of the Divine Cult army, the Three Kills and Three Ambush Formation was shaken!
How did this happen? It wasn't through mathematical trickery! It was broken through by brute force? That's impossible!
These formations are known to be deadly once encountered. The people who set them up can practice them constantly, but outsiders don't have that many opportunities for targeted training! If they could be broken so easily, what would be the point of the Xuanmen (mystical sects) researching these mountain-protecting formations, keeping their secrets, techniques, and formation variations hidden from others?
But in reality, the Blood God Demon of the Divine Cult who charged into the formation was extremely ferocious! It was as if Yuntai Peak had suddenly gained an incredible buff after having its lights turned off! It charged into the formation in one breath, enduring all kinds of fierce winds and Dao fire attacks! It charged and fought relentlessly! It knocked away and tore apart many of the magical abilities, magical treasures, and flying swords that were clearly enhanced by the formation! It chased the Wangwu Mountain disciples into a rout! They lost several core elements of the formation in succession and had to repeatedly change the formation to maintain it! The scene was in complete chaos!
Li Fan immediately suspected that the old immortals of the Xuanmen were slacking off and playing tricks again, preserving their strength, luring the enemy in deep, and waiting for an opportunity to launch a major attack.
But after observing for a while, he realized something was wrong, because it wasn't just Wangwu Mountain! In fact, all four major formations were activated! They could even be described as struggling to hold on!
Something's not right! The timing, location, and people were all in sync; the four sect leaders had clearly turned the tide! At least that's what the divination showed!
Li Fan knew that the four sect leaders were just as confused as he was. The divination showed no danger whatsoever, and the Xuanmen's grand formation was perfectly set up, yet it was broken and disintegrated by the demonic beasts and demon gods trained by the Divine Sect, which charged in with no skill whatsoever!
But they cannot act yet! Because the Pure Dharma King, the two Enforcement Venerable, and a large group of Divine Sect Protectors are currently gathered together, forming a sea of Blood God Child! They are circling in the sky! Encircling Yuntai Peak! Encircling the Four Mountains Formation! Searching for an opportunity to strike!
Yeah! Do you think everyone else is stupid? Don't they know who has the advantage in a four-on-three situation? So they'll just play three against one!
It's not just three against one anymore; this is the Sect Leader of the Kunlun Diocese's cult, looking for an opportunity to swarm in!
Even with the strength of the four great sect leaders, they had to consider the matter carefully and remain patient!
After all, the Xuanmen (Mysterious Sect) is different from the Divine Sect. The infighting among the Nine Great Xuan Sects is far too intense, and they could turn against each other at any time! Even if they themselves possess the strength of a Dao Lord, even if they cannot fight them head-on, they shouldn't be defeated by these Blood God Child. But what about the disciples of their own sects who are holding out in the formation?
If we reveal any weakness and are swarmed by the Divine Cult, even if the surrounding Xuanmen (mystical sects) come to our aid, our disciples could suffer heavy casualties!
After all, the current situation was completely beyond Daojun's expectations! He had calculated everything and made all the necessary arrangements! But the dignified disciples of the Xuanmen, arrayed to guard the mountain, were actually unable to withstand the demons under the command of the Divine Sect! The enemy's elites hadn't even made a move yet, and these mere prodigies were already breaking through the formation! Who could have imagined this!
Li Fan had it all figured out!
He was the first to anticipate the variables in the game! Perhaps "anticipate" isn't quite right; he detected them!
False Moon!
The radiation from the False Moon has increased! No! It's increasing! And it's increasing dramatically!
Li Fan discovered that the star power channel he used to maintain his Radiant Star Avatar was severely affected! His Dao power was being severely suppressed! The Radiant Star light and shadow that could be projected was only one tenth... no, twenty, fifty, one percent!!
Tai Su is flourishing? A change in the timing of events? No! This situation is far too abnormal! It is definitely not a normal change in destiny and fortune!
After all, if the power of the False Moon were to increase, his main body should also receive the amplification from the False Moon! How could it be that only his shadow is being suppressed and affected?
There's something else in the sky!
Li Fan suddenly looked up at the False Moon, which was shining brightly with the naked eye!
As a result, his Radiant Star clone lost all its power, leaving only a faint shadow watching from the side.
It's too late.
The ground was covered with guardian demons and legions of monsters! Roaring, howling, and cheering under the moonlight!!
Within the grand formation of the Xuanmen sect, they were battered and shattered, their bodies covered in wounds, yet they were completely unharmed! The smell of blood and flesh, the sensation of pain, only fueled their ferocity!
Under the frenzied illumination of the power of the False Moon, the demons' power was amplified tenfold or even a hundredfold! External injuries healed! Skin and flesh regenerated! Physique exploded! Flesh and blood mutated!
They've gone berserk... The countless demons created by the cult have gone berserk...
In the blink of an eye,
The Golden Core level cultivators advance to the Nascent Soul Stage level, the Nascent Soul Stage level cultivators advance to the Divine Transformation level, and the Divine Transformation level cultivators advance to an unknown Devil Embryo!
The monster evolves into a great monster, the monster evolves into a giant demon god, and the demon god evolves into a goat's cub!
It's not that every demon only has one chance, but that all demons do!
As long as it's bathed in moonlight, it has its chance!
The Xuanmen sect could easily annihilate tens of thousands of monsters, barely manage to eliminate tens of thousands of great demon beasts, and even with the combined power of the Xuanmen sect, tens of thousands of demon gods would still require a bloody battle!
What about the tens of thousands of goat calves?
From these tens of thousands of goat calves, how many more, perhaps one, two, or even hundreds, will be born as true Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young?
Who can stop it?
Xuanmen?
Xuanmen is not acceptable.
In the blink of an eye,
The Dao Breath dissipated, the barrier collapsed, and the four great formations were instantly destroyed!
The colorful flying swords and magical treasures were being corroded by the evil energy, falling apart and scattering like dust and fallen leaves.
The disciples of the four great sects were still trying to hold their positions, but soon these True Immortals and Divine Lords were overwhelmed and torn apart by the countless demons from all directions, drowning in a sea of blood.
In an instant, the sky was filled with Nascent Soul Nascent Soul Stage and Jade Cicadas who had been unsheathed and were fleeing in all directions, but not everyone was able to escape.
Some were surrounded by an overwhelming horde of Blood God Child and devoured until their bodies and souls were destroyed; some were captured by Chi Mei Wangliang and torn into countless pieces; and some, by accident, looked at the Moon and in the blink of an eye, lost their human form and transformed into Devil Embryo was neither human nor ghost, devoid of blood and flesh.
Li Fan suddenly understood why everything had gone so smoothly today, and why he hadn't foreseen any calamities.
The magic of the Xuanmen sect has lost its effectiveness.
At this moment, in this place, at this very moment, is the 'Tao' of the Great Simplicity.
"Fellow Daoists! Let us fight side by side!"
"Can!"
"All disciples, listen to my command! Retreat to Yuntai Peak!"
"We're blocking them! Move Yuntai Peak away immediately!"
Fueled by their perceived betrayal, the four Dao Lords roared in unison and launched their attack simultaneously!
They manifested enormous Dharma forms, gathering divine light and power, revealing four giants of light. Together, they transformed into a radiant light, blocking all sides of Yuntai Peak and instantly slaughtering thousands of goat cubs! They desperately bought time!
In fact, at this point, it was no longer possible to borrow spiritual Dao Breath from heaven and earth.
Although the four Dao Lords could use their own Dao power to hold out for a while and annihilate the endless giant beast Devil Embryo, most of the core disciples had already perished in the formation. As for those who disintegrated, no one knew how many of them were able to fly out and be reincarnated.
As for those old Xuanmen masters who had been stuck at their cultivation levels for a long time, although not many died at the hands of the beasts, very few returned to Yuntai Peak.
At least half of them looked up to embrace the moon's power, transformed into human form, and joined the beast cubs in their revelry.
The remaining half, its skin peeled off, its human form torn away, and it was added to the ocean of the Blood God Child.
Yes, the Pure Dharma King and his followers of the Divine Sect were unaffected and continued circling around Yuntai Peak.
Although the Blood God Child Great Law won't be enhanced by the False Moon, it won't collapse either, right? Tonight, they really are just here to be bystanders. It seems there's no need for them to even intervene. With just a bunch of beasts, they can accomplish the second major task that the Divine Cult has been trying to do for years.
The first thing, naturally, is to massacre the Three Walls.
The second task was to capture Yuntai Peak to avenge the repeated defeats of the main altar.
Although the four sect leaders were trying to buy time, Yuntai Peak had not yet escaped.
It wasn't that those selfish, cold-blooded, and ruthless guys from the Xuanmen sect didn't want to escape. It was that Yuntai Peak didn't react; after all, there was a short circuit and the power went out. This base is probably too old; restarting it would cause problems, and none of these immortals are electricians...
Oh right, there's still one repair robot left. Even though it was that guy who switched the switches, it should be able to fix it well...
Damn it, what kind of mess is this...?
Li Fan couldn't stand by and watch the Xuanmen sect be destroyed at Juelong Ridge, Yuntai Peak fall into the hands of the Divine Sect and the Legion.
With two of the Three Great Sects wiped out at once, the balance of power in the world will be completely disrupted. Moreover, the Xuanmen sect doesn't have many people; if Yuntai Peak is lost, it will probably take hundreds of years to recover.
Li Fan immediately activated the Thousand-Faced Magic Puppet, searching for instructions from the memory fragments of the three agents, and manipulated the Thunder Kylin to jump up and repair the circuit.
Yes, the agents from the Third Bureau have died again.
After all, judging from the current rate at which a large number of goat cubs are being born around here, the intensity of the False Moon radiation in the Juelong Ridge region has far exceeded that of the ordinary Tai Su Demon Devil Domain.
Even if Li Fan's true form were here, he would probably lose several hundred points.
With the limited soul strength of Earthlings, they simply couldn't hold on and their consciousness would collapse. Well, at least that solves another problem...
Then a shrill roar echoed throughout Yuntai Peak.
"Aaaaaah! Who is it?! Who's messing with me?! I finally found someone who can edit pictures! And they killed him too! Aaaaah! Who the hell is messing with me?! Die!!!"