Infiltration

Shen Luo and the others followed Feng Shui through corridors and courtyards until they reached a garden in the southwest corner of the residence's rear courtyard.

Before they entered, Shen Luo saw seven or eight hideous ghosts guarding the garden gate. Their bodies swayed from side to side like duckweed on water.

A plaque hung above the gate, bearing the words "Rebirth" in black lacquer.

Past the gate, Shen Luo saw mounds of grave soil piled across the ground, with decayed bones scattered among them. Some had been trampled and kicked into fragments.

He made a rough count. There were bones from seven or eight bodies, probably all ancestors of the Zhang family.

They built a tomb to seek a flourishing official career, only to leave their dead exposed and their bones broken. What a ruinous bargain. As Shen Luo thought this, Yu Lu's control brought him to the center of the garden.

A pit over a dozen zhang across had been dug in the garden's center. Built upon a mound of human heads, seven altar-like formation nodes stood inside it in the pattern of the Big Dipper.

As the saying went, "The Southern Dipper governs life; the Northern Dipper governs death." The Body Refining Altar had constructed the Big Dipper Death Formation in this land of Southern Bright Hidden Yin. This was indeed where the core Magic Formation lay.

Shen Luo swept his gaze across the pit, and his pupils contracted slightly.

A pale yellow curtain of light shrouded the pit ahead, seemingly some kind of barrier Restriction. Four people sat cross-legged within it.

The one at their head was a thin, middle-aged man in a black robe. With his prominent cheekbones, sunken eyes, and hooked nose, he looked like a bird of prey.

Across the Magic Formation from