Cheng Heng hovered high above the Drum Tower at the center of Xunyang Prefecture. His gaze dropped, and his Illuminating Dao Heart spread out in an instant.
The Delusion-Slaying Illuminating Seal quietly began to turn. The faint light at his brow drew inward, and his clear martial heart stripped away every false appearance.
The bustling nightscape before him faded layer by layer, turning insubstantial and peeling away.
Warm lamplight became a dull gray glow. A faint black haze shrouded the lively crowds. Across the ley lines beneath Xunyang Prefecture, threads of blood-red Demonic Aura spread like a spiderweb, following the furrows of the earth throughout the city. At last, every strand converged beneath the abyss deep underground at the city's heart.
There, the Demonic Aura was black as an abyss and oppressive as a prison. It barred all probing by divine sense and all divination of heavenly secrets. This was the foundation at the heart of the Ninefold Demon-Concealing Maze Formation.
"A city for its lid, the earth for its prison, and the karma of ten thousand souls for its feed."
Cheng Heng spoke softly, the chill in his eyes deepening.
The formation's most vicious trait was not its killing power, but its silent corruption. Over the years, the joys and sorrows, greed, anger, delusion, and resentment of the city's mortals would all be absorbed by the demonic formation below and turned into karma to nourish the Mother Embryo. In time, everyone in the city would become fodder for the Demon Embryo, oblivious until death and powerless to resist.
If it were allowed to mature, the Demon Embryo would emerge in a month. Hundreds of thousands of lives in Xunyang Prefecture would become dry bones and vengeful souls in an instant, while a thousand miles of ley lines in the