"Appearances"

"Appearances"

Martial Uncle Jiu Jiu really was... too perfect.

Transforming into a wisp of green smoke, he swiftly drifted downward through the twisting, narrow crevices. As Li Changshou sensed one formation after another along his path, a faint sense of satisfaction welled up in his heart.

Why call her 'perfect'?

Jiu Jiu did not understand formations. Her cultivation was at the True Immortal Realm, not far from the Heavenly Immortal Realm; her foundation was solid, her immortal power pure, and her control over her own immortal power was unexpectedly formidable.

Most importantly, she was willing to let a junior like him direct her so freely!

Calling it directing was a little excessive. Li Changshou also admitted that there had been some 'talking her into it' involved, but one was willing to strike and the other willing to take the blow. It was a fine thing when both sides were willing.

Martial Uncle Jiu Jiu had truly helped him greatly this time.

Thanks to the elder of the Hall of Rewards and Punishments who had punished Martial Uncle Jiu Jiu by forbidding her from drinking.

Thanks to Martial Uncle Jiu Wu, who had tossed Martial Uncle Jiu into a wine jar to bathe when she was young.

Thanks to the few tattered parchment scrolls he had found on a corner shelf in the outer hall of the Daoist Canon, through which he had successfully 'tested' such 'main battle' sleeping drugs as Divine Immortal's Brew and Soft Immortal Powder...

The wisp of green smoke descended roughly a hundred zhang before stopping within a narrow crack in the rock strata. Li Changshou returned to human form.

He drew out the Jade Card that controlled the formations and lightly brushed his fingers across it. The pattern on the card shifted slightly.

At the same time, the rock before him began to ripple like water. Li Changshou stepped inside, and the rock immediately returned to its original appearance.

Li Changshou walked several steps through the great boulder without obstruction. A small Wooden door appeared before him, and after pushing it open, he entered a secret chamber three zhang square.

He took out the formation-controlling Jade Card and gently turned it. The outer formations underwent minute changes, and this underground secret chamber completely vanished into the gaps between the various formations.

No matter which direction one approached from, even if a Celestial Immortal deliberately searched for it, they could not detect the existence of this secret chamber without damaging the formations outside...

This was the true purpose of building the Alchemy Room.

A man, in the end, needed a secret space of his own.

Two bookshelves stood in the secret chamber, piled high with lone volumes of Ancient books.

Li Changshou sat directly behind the desk, took out the several dozen parchments and studied them for a while. Then he held the Jade Card in his hand and closed his eyes, a complex three-dimensional structure emerging in his mind.

This three-dimensional structure resembled the towering buildings commonly seen in cities in his previous life, except this 'building' was embedded within Lesser Qiong Peak's mountain body.

He let out a soft breath.

It had been a long time since he had felt this kind of reassuring secrecy...

"Ah." A faint smile played at Li Changshou's lips. "This would be a nice place for a bath.

Just kidding. I cannot relax for even a moment. Time to continue inspecting the arrangements throughout the grand formation."

Fortunately, Martial Uncle Jiu Jiu's cultivation was profound enough to make the plan he had prepared for decades a reality—

The Three-Dimensional Composite Formation!

Over two years, with Jiu Jiu's help, Li Changshou had pieced together his ideas on the Dao of formations step by step.

In Martial Uncle Jiu Jiu's understanding, she had helped Li Changshou set up more than a hundred medium and small formations. These formations were interconnected, vaguely forming a 'quasi-Natural Formation' that enveloped the area within thirty li of the Alchemy Room.

The combination of Li Changshou and Jiu Jiu was equivalent to having such a grand formation laid down by a powerful True Immortal. None below the Celestial Immortal Realm could break it.

And even then, it had to be a Celestial Immortal with a sufficiently deep understanding of the Dao of formations.

But Jiu Jiu knew only the first part, not the second, third, or fourth...

Mainstream formations generally used all kinds of precious materials, spirit stones, and specially refined treasures as formation bases. The formation bases connected with one another, drawing upon the power of heaven and earth to operate, thereby creating grand formations with different effects.

The Dao of formations was broad and profound. Li Changshou knew that he had not mastered many formations, nor was his skill particularly exceptional. He certainly could not call himself profound...

One had to maintain a clear understanding of one's own strength at all times.

But his mind always produced wild and unconstrained ideas, and through repeated verification, he could bring them to fruition one by one.

About sixty-seven years ago, while studying the formations preserved by the Du Xian Sect during his spare time from cultivation, Li Changshou had accidentally discovered that the formation bases of the common mainstream formations in the Primordial Wilderness were mostly distributed across a single horizontal plane.

At the time, he had wondered: what if the formation bases were distributed vertically? The effect should have been the same.

Take a dome-shaped Mountain Protecting Grand Formation as an example. If its formation bases were distributed vertically, the resulting hemispherical barrier would rotate ninety degrees as well.

—Of course, most Mountain Protecting Grand Formations needed to draw upon the power of earth veins, so they could not be arranged with vertically distributed formation bases.

But non-defensive formations—illusion arrays, confinement arrays, killing arrays—could be turned in any direction.

On that foundation, what if the formation bases were distributed diagonally?

Then what if the formation bases of several grand formations interwove vertically and horizontally?

Suppose two grand formations, one vertical and one horizontal, shared one-third of their formation bases. When the horizontal formation activated, the vertical formation shut down; when the vertical formation activated, the horizontal formation shut down. That would achieve 'interference-free formation switching'!

As Li Changshou continued exploring, he gradually solved the issue of spiritual energy circulation within formations, as well as the issue of the 'compatibility' of formation bases for different formations...

Until today...

The Lesser Qiong Peak Alchemy Room Three-Dimensional Composite Formation project was a successful application of his theory!

Divided according to horizontal formations, the formations here consisted of three layers.

And all Jiu Jiu knew was the uppermost layer: the more than one hundred confinement and illusion arrays surrounding the Alchemy Room.

With every hundred zhang deeper into the mountain counted as a stage, there were also a middle layer and a lower layer beneath it. The formation bases of the core grand formations in those two layers had also been buried with Jiu Jiu's help.

But that was only how the formation bases here functioned when operating horizontally.

Those formation bases also concealed an unknown number of vertical and diagonal configurations, among them quite a few killing arrays...

The secret chamber where Li Changshou currently stood lay at the center of all the formation bases.

Only when several vertical core grand formations activated and several horizontal core grand formations reversed would this secret chamber appear within this stretch of rock strata.

To reach this place, even if one had mastered Earth Evasion, without the Jade Card in Li Changshou's hand and its special control methods, the only way was to split Lesser Qiong Peak apart directly.

If Lesser Qiong Peak truly had a day when it was split open, the Du Xian Sect would probably already be at the brink of life and death. Before that happened, Li Changshou would ninety-nine percent surely have...

Ahem. There was no point in perishing with the sect. The proper path was to preserve a useful body and avenge his master's sect!

Incidentally, the primary purpose of the lower-layer formation bases was actually to draw upon the power of the earth veins.

To avoid drawing too much power from the earth veins and spirit veins, thereby alerting the Qi Refiners of other peaks or attracting the notice of the sect's higher-ups, Li Changshou had deliberately avoided all spirit veins. He directly drew upon the most abundant 'turbid' power within the earth, then used the Return-to-Purity Array passed down from the Wu Tribe to filter it into spiritual energy.

Though this slightly weakened the killing arrays, it was more reliable.

And even if some expert within the sect noticed the many formations he had set up on Lesser Qiong Peak, as long as he did not activate the vertical and diagonal configurations, they would merely be confinement and illusion arrays. There was nothing that violated the Sect Rules.

Previously, using ordinariness as camouflage had been 'passive camouflage.'

Now, because he needed an Alchemy Room to refine pills, he had no choice but to go into business, pushing 'active camouflage' to the limit of his current stage.

As for the direction of future development, Li Changshou had already planned it out...

Using the many formation bases beneath the Alchemy Room as a foundation, he would slowly expand outward and turn Lesser Qiong Peak into an inconspicuous fortress within the immortal sect.

Life came only once, and the Primordial Wilderness was so magnificent.

We Qi Refiners should first seek longevity through steadiness, inquire into the Great Dao, and only then go experience the splendid beauty of the Three Thousand Worlds.

"At last." Li Changshou rubbed his hands together, put away the parchments and Jade Card, then took out several Storage magic treasures and poured out several more Storage magic treasures from within them.

The unexpected gains from his trip to the Northern Continent of Julu had waited two years. At last, it was time to take stock of them!

"Let's first see just how poor this immortal Yuwen Ling was."

Li Changshou chuckled, took out two paper figures and turned them into avatars. He had the two avatars carry two Storage magic treasures to a corner and begin slowly refining and merging them.

Half a day later, the paper figure watching the pill furnace was nearly out of magical power, and Li Changshou had finished sorting through the spoils. He rose and left the secret chamber.

He held a brocade box in his hand. Inside the box lay two sleeping 'beetles.'

If his guess was correct, these things should be...

Love Gu.

"Good stuff," Li Changshou praised. "Unfortunately, it is not much use for now.

I'll keep them.

If the immortal birds or spirit beasts I raise ever lack the urge to reproduce, I can use these to stimulate them, increase the number of offspring, and save some rare species."

In the blink of an eye, the day he had agreed to help refine pills arrived.

Jiu Jiu yawned as she sat sleepily atop her Large Gourd, wearing a rough linen short shirt that some senior sister had apparently washed clean for her. She drifted unsteadily toward Lesser Qiong Peak.

As one of the sect's main True Immortals, backed by a powerful force, she was not particularly restrained when flying through the air. Other than forbidden areas, she could go wherever she pleased.

"Today is the twentieth day, right?"

Jiu Jiu counted on her fingers as she flew, becoming a little muddled for a moment.

Earlier, in pursuit of excitement, she had taken a sip of the 'original solution' of Divine Immortal's Brew and ended up sleeping groggily for five or six days...

She had not deliberately spread out her immortal sense while traveling, so she failed to notice a patch of cloud mist floating in the forest below.

After Jiu Jiu arrived at Lesser Qiong Peak, two heads emerged from that cloud mist below. The person on the left was the short Daoist Jiu Wu, while the one on the right was a young woman who looked no older than sixteen or seventeen.

Though she appeared to be a young girl, with a lovely face, graceful curves, and overflowing youthful vitality, she and the other were actually about the same age—both more than two thousand years old.

The young woman's Daoist title was Jiu Shi. She was Venerable Wangqing's fourth disciple, Jiu Wu's Dao companion, and the fairy Jiu Wu often secretly watched with the silk of his three Double-Pupil Spiders...

Jiu Wu said quietly, "Isn't this a bit improper? This is Lesser Qiong Peak, after all."

"What are you afraid of? If they don't like it, they can fight the peak master here!"

The young woman snapped back irritably, then narrowed her almond-shaped eyes slightly. "She ran here the moment she woke up. There must be something going on.

When have you ever seen Little Jiu this diligent?

Today, I want to see whether this Junior Brother Qi Yuan has three heads or six arms, to make our Little Jiu come here every day before he has even become an immortal."

Jiu Wu immediately gave a bitter laugh. Suddenly, his thick, short brows twitched. "There are formations here too? I can no longer sense Little Jiu's aura."

"What is there to fear from formations? Who hasn't learned a thing or two?"

Jiu Shi curled her lips, casually grabbed Jiu Wu by the collar, and without another word concealed both their forms and auras. They turned into two shadows and flew toward the forest of Lesser Qiong Peak.

"We're two half-step Celestial Immortals. Are we supposed to fear formations set up by someone who has not even become an immortal?"