He had noticed that the black skeleton mentioned something about the Sky of Heavenly Sword and Sky of Freedom, and even though he didn’t understand what those words meant, he was certain that it had something to do with the Firmament.
Furthermore, the black skeleton had initially intended to harm them, but after seeing the crimson pendant he was wearing, its attitude suddenly changed. This meant that it was able to recognize the crimson pendant, and there was a good chance that it was acquainted with Luo Ruoxin!
However, the black skeleton stood unmovingly on the spot, not responding at all
Knowing that the black skeleton wasn’t going to answer any of his questions even if he were to probe further, Zhang Xuan shook his head before retreating from the area.
Together with Du Qingyuan, they headed back in the direction where they came from. With a slight moment of disorientation, they soon reappeared above the altar.
“Let’s return.”
Even though the Aura of Divinity he had obtained was impure, there was still a chance he could cleanse it through the ritual the black skeleton had passed down to them.
Within four hours, they were back at the Starchaser Palace once more.
Han Jianqiu and the others were pacing around the room anxiously when Zhang Xuan and Du Qingyuan returned, and they immediately directed anticipatory gazes over.
“Wu Chen, prepare the altar!” Zhang Xuan instructed as he imparted the ritual process to him.
After looking through the ritual process, a tight frown appeared on Wu Chen’s forehead, “I’m afraid that it won’t be easy for the ritual to succeed…”
“What does the ritual require?” Han Jianqiu asked.
“The ritual requires the participation of 100,000 True Immortal realm cultivators. They must bare open their souls and display not the slightest resistance at all!” Wu Chen replied with a shake of his head.
Baring open one’s soul required a bold leap of faith as it would mean making one completely vulnerable before others. It was no different from entrusting one’s life into the hands of another. If anyone in the formation were to harbor any malicious intention toward them, that could spell the end of them.
Even though Zhang Xuan was the head of four sects, the idol of countless young men in the Forsaken Continent, he didn’t possess the influence to convince so many people to go to that extent for him.
No human was truly selfless, let alone a hundred thousand of them!
“I know that it isn’t easy, but we still have to give it a try,” Zhang Xuan replied solemnly.
He turned his eyes toward where Han Jianqiu, Kui Xiao, and Qin Yuan were and asked, “Are the disciples and elders of the Ascendant Cloud Sword Pavilion, Sevenstar Pavilion, and Myriad Beasts Hall here yet?”
When the grudge between him and the fake Kong shi was first brought to the surface, Zhang Xuan immediately instructed Han Jianqiu and the others to gather all of the disciples and elders of their respective sects on Starchaser island. He knew that they would require as much power as possible in order to deal with the powerful Ethereal Hall and Kong shi.
A month had passed since then, so they should have arrived by now.
“They have all arrived, and they are ready to move at your command!” Han Jianqiu replied. “However, we are only able to gather 20,000 cultivators of True Immortal realm and above.”
The greatest problem for them at the moment wasn’t whether they could unite the hearts of a hundred thousand cultivators together, but that they couldn’t even gather that many True Immortals together!
The four sects had many experts in their ranks, but there were only so many of them who were able to reach True Immortal realm. One must know that those who wielded such strength were already qualified to become a core disciple or elder of their respective sects.
Despite the several thousand years of heritage of the Six Sects, even when factoring all of their subordinate and hidden powers, they were only able to gather 20,000 True Immortals together.
Given so, it was unlikely that they would be able to meet the requirement of the participation of a hundred thousand True Immortal realm cultivators in the ritual.
In fact, it was a question whether there were even that many True Immortals on the Forsaken Continent or not.
“20,000 True Immortals?” Zhang Xuan’s face darkened.
It hadn’t been long since he and Wu Chen arrived on the Forsaken Continent, so their understanding of it was still slightly lacking. They were too caught up with worrying over how they could unite everyone’s will together that they neglected the most important problem that stood in their path—where in the world were they going to find 100,000 True Immortals?
One must know that the True Immortals on the Azure were similar to the Great Sages on the Master Teacher Continent. The only reason why Zhang Xuan was able to encounter so many of them was because he was constantly in contact with the Six Sects, where the top experts of the Forsaken Continent congregated.
It was already difficult enough to find and rally 20,000 of them together, let alone 100,000!
“Sect Leader Zhang, bad news!”
While the crowd was frowning deeply for a solution, Elder Zhao Yue suddenly barged into the room with a panicked look on her face.
Zhang Xuan’s eyes glanced over.
“Countless beasts have suddenly appeared around Starchaser Island! I fear that it’ll be hard for us to fend them off even with our current strength!” Elder Zhao Yue exclaimed anxiously
“Beasts?” Zhang Xuan was taken aback by the sudden announcement.
He quickly headed out of the hall with Du Qingyuan and the others, only to see that the water and air around Starchaser Island had been completely filled up by beasts of varying sizes.
Crabs, clams, squids, fishes, lobsters, sea urchins…
“I’m hungry,” Little Chick, who appeared suddenly atop of Zhang Xuan’s shoulders, gulped down a mouthful of saliva and murmured.
“…” Zhang Xuan.
This was really bad timing.
There were far more enemies than he had expected, severely outnumbering even their forces.
It was reassuring that those beasts had no Semi-Divinity realm cultivators amidst them, which placed them in an advantageous position. However, if they were to fight those beasts right now, they would be winning the battle but losing the war. Given the precarious situation they were already in, they couldn’t afford to be weakened any further.
“Master, I have gathered all of the aquatic creatures who are capable of battle here!”
Just as Zhang Xuan was trying to discern the purpose of these beasts, three massive sharks and a humongous tortoise suddenly flew out from the depths of the ocean.
They were Zhang Xuan’s tamed beasts!
Seeing this sight, Zhang Xuan patted his heart in relief as he suddenly recalled something.
He had also instructed the four of them to rally all of the powerful aquatic creatures together at Starchaser Island in order to deal with the hostility of Kong shi and the Hall of Gods. It was just that he got too caught up with the matters he had on hand that it slipped his mind.
“This is perfect timing!” Zhang Xuan’s eyes lit up as he nearly burst into laughter out of joy.
He was still troubled over how he could gather 100,000 True Immortals together in one place when these aquatic creatures appeared. Perhaps, they might just be able to meet the requirement of 100,000 True Immortals like that!
With such thoughts in mind, he looked at Shark One and asked, “How many aquatic beasts are of True Immortal realm and above here?”
“Master, we have roughly 40,000 aquatic beasts who are of True Immortal realm and above!” Shark One replied.
“Only 40,000?” Zhang Xuan frowned.
To be fair, this was already plenty amazing. After all, the four sects only had around 20,000 True Immortals in total.
It was no wonder why the aquatic creatures dared to band together to overthrow the dominance of the Six Sects. Just the sheer number of True Immortal realm experts they had was enough to crush any single one of the Six Sects.
However, that only added the number of True Immortal realm cultivators they had to 60,000. They were still far from their goal of 100,000.
“We still don’t have enough people. Where else can we find more True Immortal realm cultivators?” Wu Chen asked.
“This is indeed a huge problem,” Zhang Xuan nodded in agreement.
He contemplated with a deep frown on his face for a while before passing down a new instruction, “Gather everyone whose cultivation has reached Pseudo Immortal realm in the four sects and the Ocean of Exiled Stars here!”
“Yes!”
Even though they had no idea what Zhang Xuan was up to, Han Jianqiu and the others still carried out his orders immediately.
…
Two hours later, many more cultivators and aquatic creatures appeared in the vicinity of Starchaser Island.
“We were able to gather another 200,000 Pseudo Immortal realm cultivators and 400,000 Pseudo Immortal realm beasts. Around 80,000 of them are at Heavenly Pseudo Immortal realm!” Han Jianqiu walked up to Zhang Xuan and reported the current numbers.
“80,000 of them?” Zhang Xuan nodded. “It would be have been good if there were more of them, but I can work with this number too.”
Not knowing what Zhang Xuan was up to, Han Jianqiu looked at him with a confused look on his face as he asked, “Teacher, what’s your reason for gathering so many Pseudo Immortal realm cultivators here as well? Is there anything we need to do to help?”
“Yes. I need you to bring 100,000 formation flags to me as soon as possible,” Zhang Xuan replied.
“100,000 formation flags?” Han Jianqiu was astonished. He turned to Elder Kui Xiao and said, “Our sect doesn’t have the ability to gather that many formation flags within a short period of time. Seems like we’ll have to count on your Sevenstar Pavilion for this!”
“Of course, this isn’t a problem at all!” Elder Kui Xiao chuckled confidently. He quickly took out a Communication Jade Token and passed down an order.
Not too long later, he brought a storage ring to Zhang Xuan and said, “Teacher, here are the 100,000 formation flags you require.”
Tapping into the Sevenstar Pavilion’s resources and channels, it wasn’t too difficult for Kui Xiao to gather 100,000 formation flags swiftly.
“You have my gratitude!”
Given that the entire Forsaken Continent was in danger, it would be pointless to harp too much on formalities at this point in time. Zhang Xuan grabbed the storage ring and leaped into the sky. He ascended for over ten thousand meters before coming to a halt.
He flicked his wrist.
Hula!
100,000 formation flags materialized in the air around him. With a wave of his hand, they swiftly descended to the ground, creating the bizarre sight of raining flags.
“This…”
Han Jianqiu and the others were stunned speechless by what they were seeing. The same went for the aquatic creatures and the disciples of the four sects too.
Usually, most formation masters would plant a formation flag at a time to set up their formation, but even so, there was a huge chance that there would be some kind of deviation in the setup which they would have to slowly identify and correct later on.
A person who could plant 10 formation flags simultaneously was worthy of being called a formation grandmaster. Similarly, a person who could plant 20 formation flags at once was known as a formation grand-grandmaster.
And Zhang Xuan was a person who had just planted 100,000 formation flags at once.
This was one of the few happenings in life that filled one with incredulity, prompting one to wonder if one was dreaming. It was something that none of them dared imagine to be possible.
Even the most talented formation master of the Forsaken Continent would have never been unable to pull off such a feat!
“Let me see what kind of formation it is. If it’s a simple formation, it might still be plausible to pull off something like this…” Amidst the crowd, an elder who was skilled in formations mumbled to himself.
As the elder, the formation flags fell into the ground and the ocean.
Then, the young man in the air stomped his foot lightly.
Weng!
The formation immediately came to life. A shimmering light of seven colors began to ripple in the surroundings, causing the surroundings to reflect the iridescence of bubbles.
“It’s the Seven-colored Spirit Locking Formation, one of the top formations of the Forsaken Continent!”
“Not only so, it appears that there are Spirit Gathering Formation, Heart Calming Formation, and many other formations compounded over it. There must at least be dozens of formations stacked over one another!”
“He actually managed to set up such a massive compound formation in an instant?”
The word that should be used to describe everyone’s emotions was not ‘shock’ but ‘horror’.
The difficulty in setting up a compound formation was much greater than that of setting up an ordinary formation. Attempting to compound two formations together would already increase the difficulty of the process by manyfold, but Zhang Xuan actually set up a compound formation of dozens of layers, spanning over a distance of hundreds of li in an instant.
It was an ability that had surpassed their imagination!
“It seems to be an ability which only gods are capable of pulling of…” Du Qingyuan muttered to herself with widened eyes.
She thought she was already deeply in awe with the young man’s capabilities, but the sight before him still rendered her incapable of words.
It was no wonder why the young man was able to win the fancy of the Spirit God.
He was indeed an extraordinary individual!
Above the air, Zhang Xuan was starting to feel a little fatigued after setting up and activating the formation.
Even though he made it seem as if he had pulled it off easily, setting up such a massive and complex formation still took its toll on him. If not for the fact that he had comprehended Pathos of Heavens and had reached Semi-Divinity realm, he would have depleted himself dry before he could fully activate the formation and plummeted from the sky.
He quietly gasped for air as he drove his Heaven’s Path zhenqi to swiftly replenish his energy. After he had recovered a fair degree, he stepped into the formation and flicked his wrist.
Over a dozen Semi-Divinity realm corpses appeared around him in an instant.
They were from the headquarters of the Ethereal Hall.
“Disintegrate!” Zhang Xuan said with a snap of his fingers.
Peng peng peng peng!
The dozen corpses immediately burst apart. Different from an explosion though, the diffusion of energy was controlled. The shockwave induced wasn’t enough to hurt any of the cultivators present in the area.
Tzzzzz!
In just a few moments, the dozen Semi-Divinity realm cultivators had already fully released the power from their cultivation, filling the massive formation with energy.
Sorry for the late chapter, really had a lot to do over the weekend. I’ll still be a bit busy over the next few days too :X so do bear with me
