The Breaking Point

The death of Daoist Buyou had shaken Shaoyan Gongzi, Ji Ning, and the rest of their group. The one most deeply affected was Xue Hongyi, whose power was roughly on par with Buyou’s.

“I shouldn’t have come! I should never have come!” Xue Hongyi’s eyes were bloodshot. A talisman suddenly appeared in his hand, transforming into a layer of golden light that covered his body. Boom! He took a claw-strike from a Qiongqi puppet, the golden light around him trembling, but he used the force of the blow to flee into the distance.

He escaped far away!

Of the eighteen Qiongqi puppets, ten were being occupied by Ji Ning’s group of five and the ten Wanxiang Adept death warriors. The other eight Qiongqi puppets were all focused on Shaoyan Gongzi. Xue Hongyi had desperately fought his way out from the very center, and for a moment, no Qiongqi puppets were targeting him.

“Damn it! Damn it all!” Shaoyan Gongzi cast a cold glance at Xue Hongyi in the distance. Xue Hongyi and Daoist Buyou had at least helped him occupy three Qiongqi puppets. Now that Buyou was dead and Xue Hongyi had fled… all eight Qiongqi puppets were completely focused on attacking him.

Xue Hongyi put on a pitiful expression and sent a panicked mental message: “Shaoyan Gongzi, I simply can’t hold them off any longer. Brother Buyou is already dead. If I keep fighting, I’ll probably be dead in just a few breaths.”

Shaoyan Gongzi was furious, but he knew these men weren’t his slaves or his death warriors. It was natural for them to flee in the face of death.

“Damn, damn, damn! If only I could rejoin Uncle Fang… I swear I’ll never let Uncle Fang leave my side for the rest of my time in this Immortal estate!” Shaoyan Gongzi bitterly regretted letting Xiangliu Fang go. He should have used those two treasures to hold off the horde of demon Dao-soldiers instead.

The treasures he’d used to delay the ten thousand demon Dao-soldiers were extraordinary. Shaoyan Gongzi simply hadn’t wanted to waste them.

But it was too late for regrets now.

Shaoyan Gongzi stood there, a crimson flood dragon coiled around him. This crimson flood dragon emanated a terrifying aura, its claws repeatedly lashing out at the Qiongqi puppets that were attacking it.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Each Qiongqi puppet was sent flying backward by the dragon’s claws.

The crimson flood dragon’s long tail also swung out time and time again, but the Qiongqi puppets were themselves made of refined treasure-material, virtually indestructible. They were utterly fearless as they frenziedly attacked. Their claws tore huge wounds in the flood dragon’s body, ripping off scales and sending blood flying through the air.

But the crimson flood dragon’s body healed at an astonishing rate. It continued to fight these Qiongqi puppets with reckless abandon.

This single divine beast, the ‘Crimson Scaled Flood Dragon’, was able to hold off all eight Qiongqi puppets by itself!

“That Crimson Scaled Flood Dragon is incredibly powerful.” Ji Ning was also observing the overall battlefield situation as he fought. The strength of this flood dragon filled him with awe. “It’s a top-tier bloodline among divine beasts, and it’s clearly trained in Fiendgod Body Refining as well. Although it’s only at the Wanxiang stage, it possesses combat power comparable to a Primal Daoist at perfection. If I were to unleash my full power, I’d probably only be on par with it.”

Ji Ning was currently using the Lesser Thousand Sword Formation. While it was empowered by the Five Elements Five Directions Formation, it was still weaker than his close-combat capability.

“Hold them off!”

Ji Ning and the others were fighting with all their might, desperately holding the line. The endless volleys of icy arrows were still raining down, and the Qiongqi puppets were mixed in with the attacks. However, these Qiongqi puppets were also being accidentally struck by the ‘frozen arrows’. After all, the puppets had only been activated by the formation; no one was actually controlling it.

Only the master of the Immortal estate or its designated heir could truly control the formation.

Without a controller, the frozen arrows struck friend and foe alike. However, the Qiongqi puppets all had treasure-grade bodies, so they didn’t care about the frozen arrows at all.

“Not good.” Ji Ning’s expression suddenly changed.

“This is trouble.” Cangjiang Zhenren was also shocked.

All of them were constantly monitoring the battlefield’s situation. They saw that the eight Qiongqi puppets which had been besieging Shaoyan Gongzi, having been continuously blocked by the divine beast ‘Crimson Scaled Flood Dragon’, suddenly abandoned him. These eight Qiongqi puppets lunged directly at the ten Wanxiang Adept death warriors.

The ten Wanxiang Adept death warriors were comparatively weaker. However, by using a formation with their ten minds linked as one, they had managed to hold off three Qiongqi puppets.

Now, another eight Qiongqi puppets suddenly turned to attack them. Added to the original three, that made eleven puppets in total.

If eleven puppets had attacked Ji Ning’s group of five, they could have held out. But now, they were attacking the ten Wanxiang Adept death warriors.

“Stop!” Shaoyan Gongzi roared in anger. A huge black whip suddenly appeared in his hand, which had remained unused until now. The whip was wreathed in flowing black flames. He swung the long whip fiercely, and it shot across the sky, directly striking a distant Qiongqi puppet.

BANG!

The whip struck a Qiongqi puppet, sending it tumbling backward, flying out of the formation and disappearing from Ji Ning’s line of sight.

BANG! BANG! Shaoyan Gongzi continued to lay about him with the whip. Every strike possessed an almost inconceivably terrifying might, and each Qiongqi puppet he struck was sent flying.

“So strong.”

“How terrifying.”

“Incredible.”

Ji Ning and the others were all astonished.

None of them had expected Shaoyan Gongzi to be this powerful. Ji Ning could instantly confirm… that the flames on Shaoyan Gongzi’s whip were probably ‘Earthfire’. And from the look of it, they had reached the first-grade Earthfire level.

Having reached the first-grade Earthfire level, its power was comparable to ordinary Heavenly Fire.

“The flames are first-grade Earthfire, and the whip itself is also strange. On top of that, Shaoyan Gongzi’s aura has suddenly skyrocketed; he must be using a secret art.” Ji Ning was secretly amazed. The training of the next leader of an ancient tribe like the Shaoyan clan was clearly comprehensive and all-encompassing. At the very least, his combat power was equally terrifying.

He was definitely on the same level as Yu Wei and himself. His treasures were even superior to theirs.

“No!” Shaoyan Gongzi’s face was twisted with fury.

Although he had sent three Qiongqi puppets flying in rapid succession, he was only one man. There were eleven Qiongqi puppets in total. The other eight, accompanied by a storm of frozen arrows, had already torn through the formation of the ten Wanxiang Adept death warriors and ripped one of them to shreds.

With one man dead, the power of the remaining nine Wanxiang Adepts dropped sharply.

At that moment, the three puppets he had sent flying flew back, completely unharmed, and pounced once more on the nine remaining Wanxiang Adept death warriors.

“Kill!”

“Master, we go now.”

BOOM.

BANG.

RIIIIIP!

One by one, the Wanxiang Adepts were caught and torn apart by the Qiongqi puppets, even as they fought fearlessly. One was killed by a single wing-slap. In the span of a single breath, all ten Wanxiang Adept death warriors were dead.

Shaoyan Gongzi was incandescent with rage, but he didn’t dare let his Crimson Scaled Flood Dragon leave his side. He himself was not a Fiendgod Body Refiner, which put him at a severe disadvantage in close combat; the flood dragon had to stay by his side to protect him.

“Kill those five.”

“Kill them.”

The eleven Qiongqi puppets didn’t even glance at Shaoyan Gongzi. They lunged directly at Ji Ning and the other four Black-White College disciples.

Ji Ning and the others had seen the Qiongqi puppets massacre the ten Wanxiang Adept death warriors, and they knew this was bad. However, they were also being held back by the seven puppets in front of them. Among the five, the truly powerful ones were Ji Ning, Yu Wei, and Cangjiang Zhenren; Nine Lotos and Mu Northson were comparatively weaker.

“Ji Ning, Fire Rainbow Immortal, Cangjiang Zhenren.” Shaoyan Gongzi sent a frantic mental message. “Be careful of those Qiongqi puppets. You have to hold on!”

“Damn these Qiongqi puppets! First they kill my ten death warriors, and now they’re going to kill Ji Ning and the others!” Shaoyan Gongzi knew very well that with Ji Ning and the others alive, they could at least help him occupy many of the puppets. If they died, and all eighteen Qiongqi puppets attacked him at once, even with all his treasures, he would have no choice but to use a ‘Greater Teleportation’ to flee.

If he fled, this trial would be a failure, and his chances of becoming the next Yunshen Gong would plummet. That was absolutely unacceptable.

“Ji Ning, let me in! Xue Hongyi, get in here too!”

Shaoyan Gongzi, the Crimson Scaled Flood Dragon, and the frantic Xue Hongyi all flew directly into the formation that Ji Ning’s five-man group had set up.

Ji Ning and the others naturally did not block them.

“Attack!” Shaoyan Gongzi gave the order, his face dark and grim.

Shaoyan Gongzi lashed out with his flaming black whip.

The Crimson Scaled Flood Dragon extended most of its body out, its claws repeatedly swiping at the Qiongqi puppets.

Xue Hongyi also did his best to use his magic treasures, trying to make up for his earlier failure in the eyes of Shaoyan Gongzi.

“Shaoyan Gongzi.” Ji Ning suddenly sent a mental message.

“What is it?” Shaoyan Gongzi was in a foul mood, but he still maintained a polite demeanor toward Ji Ning, who was a valuable assistant.

“My spirit-beast, the Whitewater Hound, has a profound understanding of formations. He’s been studying this one for a long time and has already discovered its weakness. He’s confident he can break it,” Ji Ning sent mentally.

Shaoyan Gongzi’s fury and anxiety were replaced by a sliver of hope, but he also found it hard to believe. “You say your spirit-beast, the Whitewater Hound, can break this formation? This is a formation left behind by the Celestial Immortal Wu Jiang. A formation left by a Celestial Immortal, and you think he can break it? Are you sure?”

It wasn’t that he looked down on the Whitewater Hound, but he didn’t think it was such a master of formations.

“Shaoyan Gongzi, although this is a formation left by Celestial Immortal Wu Jiang, that doesn’t mean he was skilled in formations. Secondly, while this formation is powerful, there’s no one controlling it. A formation with no one controlling it… is extremely rigid and inflexible,” Ji Ning sent mentally. “My spirit-beast, the Whitewater Hound, is confident he can use the Fuxi Staff Formation to break it.”

“The Fuxi Staff Formation?” Shaoyan Gongzi didn’t hesitate. He immediately took out a full set of Earth-ranked top-grade Fuxi Staff Formation treasures and tossed them over. “Use mine! With these, the power will be even greater!”

Behind Ji Ning, the Whitewater Hound, who had been studying the formation without fighting, immediately sent out streams of Yuan power, wrapping around the completely ownerless Fuxi Staff Formation treasures.

He easily refined them.

“Uncle White, are you absolutely certain?” Ji Ning sent a mental inquiry.

“Don’t worry, Ning, my child. I’ve studied it for a long time. I’m absolutely certain I can break this formation,” Whitewater Hound said. “Although this formation is incredibly powerful and complex, there’s no one controlling it. You have to understand: the more powerful a formation is, the more complex it is. It draws upon the power of Heaven and Earth, transforming it through layer after layer, to create such tremendous might. If I can ‘jam’ just one of those layers of transformation, the entire formation will be neutralized.”

“If this formation had a master controlling it, it would be constantly shifting and very hard to break. But with no one controlling it, it’s a thousand, ten thousand times easier to break. And now I’ve also been given this Earth-ranked top-grade Fuxi Staff Formation set. This Shaoyan Gongzi is certainly generous.”