Nuwa stood in the clouds, staring down at the scene with a look of utter exasperation.
Whoever had laid out this formation was a lunatic with top-grade materials but no aesthetic sense or knowledge of formations whatsoever!
And yet, this Iron Tortoise Shell, which looked so chaotic and haphazard,
was giving Nuwa a bit of a headache.
Because it was simply too thick.
What was more, the three thousand layers of formations seemed to have been linked together by the builder with an extremely devious and shameless logic.
If you tried to force your way through the outer Illusion Array, you would immediately trigger the middle layer's gravity array.
If you tried to cut off the spiritual energy supply by force, the inner layer would ignite its Pure Yang Fire and take you down with it.
"The person who laid this formation isn't just a lunatic, but also an extremely insecure... coward."
Nuwa gave a fair assessment.
She descended from the clouds and landed before a bank of white mist at the outermost edge of the formation.
Her curiosity had been thoroughly piqued.
The source that had triggered the Purple Heaven Divine Lightning, been concealed from the Heavenly Secrets, and still retained a trace of merit aura was right inside this tortoise shell!
Nuwa extended a slender finger. A gentle Creation Azure Light gleamed at its tip as she lightly touched the outermost Illusion Array curtain before her.
"Let's see what kind of demons and monsters you've hidden inside this shell."
There was a soft pop.
The curtain burst like a bubble, dissolving into specks of spiritual light that scattered through the air.
Nuwa smiled faintly and was about to step forward.
The instant she lifted her foot, something unexpected happened.
The spot where the Illusion Array had shattered didn't reveal the scene beyond it. Instead, a thick cloud of black miasma billowed out, so dense it seemed almost solid.
The miasma reeked and was highly corrosive, rushing straight toward Nuwa's face.
"Oh?"
A flicker of surprise crossed Nuwa's eyes.
Naturally, she wouldn't be harmed by such inferior poison gas.
She calmly flicked her sleeve.
A clear breeze infused with pure, life-giving Creation energy rose from the ground. Like an autumn wind sweeping away fallen leaves, it instantly scattered the menacing cloud of black miasma.
Not even a trace of its foul stench remained.
Yet before Nuwa could draw back the sleeve she had just flicked,
the ground beneath her feet suddenly caved in without warning, becoming a reeking swamp of churning mud.
At the same time, a tremendous gravity crashed down from above, as though a ten-thousand-zhang mountain had landed directly on her shoulders, trying to force her into the mire.
The Illusion Array concealed a Poison Array.
The Poison Array was linked to the Gravity Mire Array.
The layers were interlocked, and the trigger for each was the violent destruction of the layer before it.
Nuwa stood perfectly still. She didn't even bend her knees.
The gravity, powerful enough to crush an ordinary Celestial Immortal into a meat patty, landed on her Creation Divine Body, at the peak of the Primordial Unity Golden Immortal realm. It couldn't even wrinkle the hem of her skirt.
But her expression had turned decidedly odd.
"What a vicious mind."
Nuwa looked down at the swamp, still bubbling as it tried to corrode her protective divine light, and couldn't help sighing.
On the Primordial Land, when the Innate Divine Beings fought, they prized vast divine powers and formidable treasures. They favored either fair and square schemes or overwhelming force capable of laying waste to the heavens and earth.
In all her years traveling the Primordial Land, she had never seen a cultivator devote so much thought to stitching together a bunch of low-class, underhanded formations
in such an ugly way, purely for the sake of making people miserable.
How was this supposed to be a protective formation for a cultivation abode?
It was more like digging a pit, filling it with manure, then covering it with a thin layer of dry grass!
"If an ordinary Mystic Immortal passed by, even if they managed to break through the Illusion Array, this sudden assault of poison and gravity would leave them in a sorry state, stinking from head to toe."
Nuwa looked up.
After breaking through the three outer layers of formations, she saw an even denser cluster of multicolored curtains, arranged together like a honeycomb.
A thousand layers? Two thousand?
Nuwa swept them with her divine sense. Even she couldn't help drawing in a slight breath.
This shell was thick enough to make her scalp tingle.
What was more, she could clearly sense that deep within this haphazard mess of formations, an incredibly powerful Origin of Earth was continuously supplying energy to the entire formation array.
"They've perfectly integrated an Origin of Earth at the Mystic Immortal level into the Earth Vein, using it to power these trash formations..."
Nuwa hardly knew what to say.
It was like taking a peerless piece of divine iron, one good enough to forge an Innate Spirit Treasure, and instead of making a divine sword from it, hammering it into a shovel for scooping pig manure!
What a waste!
An absolutely outrageous waste!
And yet, Nuwa's curiosity had been thoroughly kindled.
That strange being, concealed from the Heavenly Secrets and suspected to be the embodiment of Great Dao Merit, was hiding inside this thick tortoise shell.
If any other Innate Divine Being had encountered this, they would probably have brought out a powerful treasure and blasted the mountain—and the formations along with it—to smithereens in one strike.
But Nuwa cultivated the Dao of Creation, and she was relatively mild-tempered.
Looking at the dense formations before her, she didn't get angry. Instead, she felt the same urge to investigate as a child confronted with a complicated knot.
"I want to see just how many layers this shell of yours can hold."
Nuwa abandoned the idea of crushing the formations with overwhelming magical power.
She stretched out both hands, her fingers long and jade-white, their tips wreathed in gentle Creation Azure Light.
This time, she didn't simply poke through the curtain as she had before. Instead, she sent her power of Creation into the nodes of the formation patterns, beginning to dissolve and untangle the formations piece by piece.
Illusion Arrays, Soul-Bewildering Arrays, Golden Blade Arrays, Earth Spike Arrays...
Nuwa was like a craftswoman carrying out an incredibly delicate piece of handiwork.
As she dismantled the formations, she couldn't help criticizing in her mind the builder's crude techniques and devious intentions.
Time slipped by in the quiet work of dismantling.
Fifty years.
A hundred years.
Nuwa stood where she was and didn't take a single step back.
As if tireless, she used the Law of Creation to painstakingly dismantle a full hundred outer layers of interlocking, irritating formations, leaving behind a heap of rocks and scrap metal stripped of spiritual energy.
Meanwhile,
deep inside Nameless Low Mountain,
in the core cave abode of the Three Thousand Layer Array,
Lu Changsheng was sprawled on the White Jade Cloud Bed, clutching the Red Sun Fruit Tree he had replanted in a pot, fast asleep.
A full eight hundred years had passed since he had completed the comprehensive upgrade of the Three Thousand Layer Array.
For all eight hundred years, he hadn't stepped outside the cave abode once.
Every day, he did nothing but eat fruit, water his spirit plants, and lie in bed sleeping, recovering the mental energy he had worn down during the previous five thousand years of intense labor.
With the protection of the three thousand layers of the Mysterious Yellow Pure Yang Array, he felt that this was the soundest, most peaceful stretch of sleep he had gotten since transmigrating to the Primordial Land.
He even dreamed that he was walking across the Primordial Land as merit fell from the sky like rain, showering him in golden light until even Dao Ancestor Hongjun had to give him a wide berth.
"Heh heh heh... Don't take any, it's all mine..."
Lu Changsheng smacked his lips in his sleep, rolled over, and draped a leg over the trunk of the Red Sun Fruit Tree.
Just as he was about to continue counting his merit in the dream,
"Wooo—! Wooo—! Wooo—!"
Before you continue