"Fiend Formations!"
Feng Lingling gave a shocked cry, then quickly turned around to look at the teleportation formation which he had used to arrive here. His heart sunk instantly at the sight of it, as it had crumbled to pieces not knowing when. A Yaksha's shadow was seen slowly dissolving into nothingness above the formation. Meanwhile, he could sense a sticky like glue force pressing down from the surroundings. It had completely locked down the void, preventing them from escaping even with a new teleportation formation.
No one in the grand hall dared to make a move now. The people of Zhong Province carefully clustered around their Grand Oracle, Yu Mu, while the Immortals of Green City stood in a circle around Reverend Li Yang and the other Gold Immortals. Both parties were exchanging glances with restless hearts, and eventually, everyone had their eyes rested on the spot where the Heaven Immortal was killed.
After a brief moment of silence, Reverend Li Yang fished out a lower-grade immortal stone and threw it over. Under the panic glances of the crowd, the fist-sized stone glimmered with a faint red light as it bounced across the floor, finally stopping on a heap of ashes that took the shape of a human, the remains of the Heaven Immortal who was killed by the Nether Yaksha.
The immortal stone shone brilliantly in the grayish ashes, but apart from that, nothing happened.
Shadows settled upon everyone's faces. It frightened them more when nothing happened. If there were a response, it proved that there was a restrictive formation lying in ambush, and when there was none, it simply meant that the power of the formations here was beyond their imaginations. It certainly possessed the ability to identify living beings, and would only be triggered by something alive.
Restrictive formations with the ability to identify were not something an ordinary Gold Immortal could have deployed.
Reverend Li Yang opened his mouth as the words were stuck in his throat. Cold sweat was breaking out from his forehead and trickling down his cheeks. He suddenly realized that he had just stepped into a deadly trap. On the opposite side, Feng Lingling and his company were staring at Reverend Li Yang with shock in their eyes. It was the disciple of Green City who constructed the teleportation formation. So, if it was a trap, it certainly was a trouble created by Green City's own people.
After gazing at each other in speechless dismay for a long while, Reverend Li Yang finally put on a bitter smile and said, "It seems someone has laid a trap for Green City."
Feng Lingling stared angrily at Reverend Li Yang and rebuked, "And you lured us into the trap that targeted you, Green City!"
Reverend Li Yang responded that with just a cold grin and a fierce glare. Not knowing why, at the thought of Feng Lingling and those people from Zhong Province being trapped here with him, he felt his heart filling up with an unusual joy. He laughed, then stealthily crushed a jade pendant under his sleeve.
The Grand Oracle of Zhong Province, Yu Mu, gave a cold snort as he pulled out a turtle shell measuring about three feet in diameter, bit the tip of his tongue and sprayed a mouthful of blood onto it. Then, he recited a few incantations under his breath. Abruptly, a cloud flashed across the turtle shell, amidst which, the image of some mountains and rivers were shown, and the figures of Patriarch Xuan Yi and many Fiend Immortals blinked across the smoke.
"Damn it! Patriarch Xuan Yi of Dark Palace from Hui Ming Heavenly Realm!" Reverend Li Yang roared in exasperation, "So it is them who schemed us!"
"I'll definitely teach these nasty Fiends a good lesson once I leave this place!" Words spewed out from Feng Lingling's tightly clenched teeth.
"Grand Oracle, is there a way to roughly find out the formation layout of this place?" Feng Lingling asked Yu Mu.
Yu Mu nodded, his face grave. He put away the turtle shell, glancing around with a faint gray light shining from his eyes. At last, he said, "The Fiend formations here are cunningly constructed, but they are not unbreakable. Judging with my many years of experience in studying Immortal formation layouts, nobody is controlling these Fiend formations right now. We can still leave here safely with some spirit talismans."
His facial muscles jerked when he mentioned spirit talismans.
Realizing his concern, Feng Lingling quickly said, "Any spirit talismans used today will be deemed as the expenses for defeating these Immortals. No matter how many of them are used, Grand Oracle, I'll request the Directorate of Celestials in the Capital to replenish them in double."
Yu Mu's expression returned to normal instantly. He gave Feng Lingling a glance with a smile on his face and said, "That will do. But, before we leave, I think it is better for us to finish our job!" He pointed one finger at Reverend Li Yang and said, "All seven Gold Immortals are here. We can't just let this merit slip from our hands."
Feng Lingling gently patted the head of the serpent who coiled around his body and said with a sinister smile, "That's a good idea. Let's kill them first before we talk about others. Mm, please help us stabilize the surrounding void, Grand Oracle. We can't afford to let our operation be delayed by those restrictive formations."
Yu Mu chuckled. With both hands waving in the air, thirty-six huge bone talismans emerged right next to him, each measuring one hundred feet tall. Their surfaces were carved with countless runes, and embedded within were numerous energy stones and some other strange gemstones. On top of that, a total of one hundred and eight relics were mounted at the center of these spirit talismans, each as large as a fist and radiating a faint golden light. Judging from the waves of Buddhism energy emanated from them, they were extracted from the bodies of high-tiered Golden Arhats.
As the bone talismans made their appearances, clouds and mists began to spread across the hall. Amidst the clouds, an ear-splitting wail echoed out, and one hundred and eight immortal souls could be vaguely seen drifting around with trembling bodies. From the strong golden light surrounding these immortal souls, one could easily tell that they were also high-tiered Heaven Immortals.
Reverend Li Yang's expression turned extremely unsightly when he saw these bizarre bone talismans.
They had used the relics of Golden Arhats as their energy core, and the immortal souls of high-tiered Heaven Immortals as their talisman spirits. Evidently, they were the infamous 'Immortal Extermination Talismans' produced by the Directorate of Celestials, a very powerful weapon that could inflict a devastating damage to Immortals and Immortal cultivators. Its power was so strong that it could even pose a threat to a high-tiered Gold Immortal's life. Apart from the Grand Oracles of the first-grade Provinces, no one in Great Yu could get their hands on such fearsome bone talismans.
"It is time to wage a desperate struggle, my fellow Immortals!" Without the slightest hesitation, Reverend Li Yang mustered his energy essence and unleashed three Daggers of Three Divinities in a row. They wrapped him up, then turned into a beam of blue light and shot up, approaching the ceiling in just a flash.
The other six Gold Immortals of Green City breathed out a faint sigh together. After giving the thirty-six Immortal Extermination Talismans a helpless glance with a bitter smile on their faces, each of them exercised their life-saving divine abilities just like Reverend Li Yang, transforming into beams of light that dodged the attack. However, the over one hundred Heaven Immortals who they had brought here were not as lucky as them. They had already collapsed to the ground right when the bone talismans appeared, now shrouded in smoke and lights rushing out of the talismans which took the strength out of their limbs and numbed their muscles. They had lost their strength to struggle.
"Trying to flee? Impossible!" said Yu Mu with a disdainful smile, "With the spirit talismans personally produced by the Elders from the Headquarter of Great Yu's Directorate of Celestials, how is it even possible that you, some mid-tier and lower-tier Gold Immortals, could ever escape?"
Yu Mu sighed faintly as he rubbed his palms. A strong light burst from between the palms, and abruptly, all thirty-six spirit talismans crumbled, disintegrating into countless runes that blinked brilliantly and rushed into all directions. The void trembled, and the speed of the seven Gold Immortals slowed down by at least several hundred times, now as fast as the running speed of an ordinary man. As the light continued to spread out, countless vicious runes and formations lying in ambush on the walls, ceiling, and ground were exposed.
Reverend Li Yang laughed bitterly. While sensing the fearsome force that came pressing against him from all directions, he cried out in a hoarse voice, "Xuan Die! Xuan Die! It's my fault! Please save me! I love you above all the ladies I ever met! I promise, I'll never flirt with any other female Immortals again!"
In this desperate moment, his cry filled with an unspeakable despair and a faint hope.
When Feng Lingling dragged all the Gold Immortals into a desperate moment in the grand hall, inside King Zhang Qiu's chamber, he and Lord Long Yang were playing a game of Pitch-pot [1]. They did not throw the sticks themselves, but each picked a maidservant and asked them to throw the headless arrows into a vase with a mouth the size of a fist, placed one hundred feet away.
When a maidservant landed an arrow into the vase, the other man would have to finish a pot of fine wine. It appeared that the maidservant who represented Lord Long Yang had clever hands and a good sense, as under his guidance, she had landed nearly twenty arrows into the vase in a row. As a result, King Zhang Qiu had gulped down nearly twenty pots of specially brewed fine wine. They were brewed by Miao Ying Palace using various spirit fruits, having a very strong effect even for Immortals. As King Zhang Qiu did not have a soul as strong as an Immortal, he was pretty drunk after having so much wine.
Lord Long Yang kept giggling as he and King Zhang Qiu played the game. Every now and then, white lotus flowers would emerge and swirl around him, on the petals of which were various images and scenes.
Suddenly, the image of a grand hall flashed across one of the petals, and Lord Long Yang saw Feng Lingling and the other people inside it. His face turned pale with fright instantly. "Princeling, why are there so many strangers in Patriarch Miao Ying's grand hall?" he cried out in alarm with one finger pointing at the petal.
The very drunk King Zhang Qiu gave the image on the petal a glance, then suddenly jumped up and shouted, "Damn it, this old fogey is Feng Lingling, the Prefecture Overseer of Zhong Province! His backing is my father's sworn enemy! Why is he here? Could it be that he has gotten wind of something?"
Lord Long Yang quickly asked with panic, "What should we do now?"
King Zhang Qiu was about to say something, but he felt his head was reeling, and in the next moment, he fell back and sunk into a deep slumber.
The dozen personal guards who King Zhang Qiu brought here were stunned. They glanced at each other, clueless about what they should do now.
Lord Long Yang's face flickered as he cried out in a stern voice, "Somebody, quickly bring the sober medicine here and wake the Princeling up. Send the command to the Jianlong Army, requesting them to regroup and come to Northern Ocean immediately, getting ready to bring the Princeling out from here! Quick, quick!"
With the medallion which King Zhang Qiu gave him some days ago, the token that represented the powerful authority of King Zhang Qiu, Lord Long Yang issued a series of orders.
Daring not to show any disrespect, those personal guards bowed and acknowledged the commands, then began to quickly act according to Lord Long Yang's orders.
Before long, thirty thousand soldiers of Jianlong Army, who King Zhang Qiu brought here with him and were currently hiding in a great lake not far away, boarded their flying ships and flew out of the lake, heading straight toward the Northern Ocean. When they arrived above the ocean, thirty huge dragon ships plunged right into the water and dove towards Miao Ying Palace.
When they were still far away from Miao Ying Palace, the muffled beating of drums and blaring of trumpets had already rocked the water, raising tall waves on the surface.