Chapter 186: Three Benefits with One Action |
It is common knowledge that you should never easily withdraw your Spiritual Power during the process of a Painting Formation or Calligraphy Array. This is because the unformed array is like a pool containing a torrent of Spiritual Power. Now, you open a gap in the pool and use a fine brush to "stir" a key point, disrupting the original balance and guiding it to form a new one.
Ultimately, the Spiritual Power circulates to form a self-contained "array."
This is the "finishing touch."
The finishing touch of an ordinary painting truly requires only "one stroke."
But now, what Li Yunxin is controlling is a grand array that uses Weicheng and the land outside of Weicheng as a canvas—so a "finishing touch" is not so simple.
He cannot stop now. Once he forcefully stops, the backlash will not be the Spiritual Power from a single painting, but the Spiritual Power almost equivalent to the positive energy and faith of hundreds of thousands of people.
However, he can be distracted. While painstakingly and slowly writing the final stroke, he says, "You actually knew."
He has his back to Yue Yunzi, and his voice carries no other meaning. But because he has to use all his strength to guide the grand array, he sounds a little breathless.
"I know. That's why you can't get this rain today." Yue Yunzi steps back and moves to Li Yunxin's side so he can also see San Hua's movements. "You use a Painting Formation to summon rain, and then your power of faith will skyrocket. As for who this power of faith goes to, it may not be the demon that I think. But it doesn't matter. Your plan is a chain, and so is mine."
But he doesn't make a move; he just looks quietly to the northwest.
After a moment, a stumbling figure appears in the crowd. She turns from an alley, wearing a tattered Daoist robe, and rushes through the crowd. She is a bit far from the high platform and what she is shouting is inaudible. But as she passes, people's faces show looks of panic and doubt, and they look toward Li Yunxin on the platform.
It looks like a female Daoist priest.
She attracts the attention of many people nearby, and they make way for her. This is because she is covered in blood, and torn wounds are exposed beneath her tattered clothes. They aren't sword wounds; they look more like bites from some kind of fierce beast.
Ordinary people cannot distinguish the difference between these two types of wounds, but they are all dumbfounded by the blood on her body—it is not every day you see someone so seriously injured running in public, and the content of her shouts is even more shocking—
"The one on the platform is not the Dragon King, but a demon!"
"It wants to kill all of you and refine you into Nether Spirits!"
People do not quite understand what "refining into Nether Spirits" means, but they hear the first three sentences clearly. Although the woman's wounds are shocking, her words are truly astonishing. For a moment, people only think of her as a madwoman, and no one is willing to get close to her.
In this way, no one stops her, and the woman rushes all the way to the platform. Then, with a jump, she leaps up the more than a dozen steps and pulls a thin, bloodstained sword from her sleeve, rushing directly toward the still performing Li Yunxin!
The crowd below lets out a collective gasp, like a sudden downpour of wind and rain. They had previously thought she was a madwoman, but now they see her skills—she is clearly a martial arts expert!
The sword's glow rushes directly at his face. Li Yunxin does not move, but only shouts, "Stop her!"
As soon as his voice falls, San Hua, who is behind him, rushes forward like she did when she killed the two cultivators that night, and shatters the thin sword in the female Daoist priest's hand with a single palm. Another palm goes directly toward her face, and a fiery flame roars in the air, about to smash her head to pieces!
At this moment, Yue Yunzi, who is standing to the side and watching with a cold eye, shouts, "Hold your hand!"
Then a golden light flashes on his body, and with a flick of his sleeve, he pulls the bloodstained female Daoist priest from San Hua's fiery palm wind to his front.
San Hua lets out an angry "Yi," but then she hears Li Yunxin's low shout, "That's enough. Stand down."
The Dragon Lady stares at the female Daoist priest for a while in dissatisfaction, then looks down at the platform. Shattering a thin sword with her bare hands is simply too spectacular, and the crowd below is just getting excited. When they see the female Daoist priest being saved, a few people sigh with unfinished satisfaction. "Why did they stop fighting?"
But they see Yue Yunzi helping the female Daoist priest to stand up, then he looks her up and down and gasps, "Daoist Brother Qingfuzi? Is it really you?"
"There has been a change in the city!" Qingfuzi holds onto his arm and looks at Li Yunxin with gritted teeth. "This person is not the Dragon King, but a demon! They have refined a group of Nether Spirits inside and outside of Weicheng and plan to turn this city into a dead land!"
Upon hearing this, Yue Yunzi looks up at Li Yunxin. "Is this true?"
Li Yunxin glances at the two of them, and finally finishes the finishing touch.
As soon as the final stroke is completed, a cool breeze suddenly rises between heaven and earth. This wind is not blowing from east to west, nor from west to east. It seems to be a whirlwind rising from the ground, with no clear origin, just rushing through the crowd and the city.
Because of this wind, the already gloomy rain clouds press down even lower. It feels as if one could reach out and touch the water vapor in the sky if they were to stand a little higher.
The spiritual energy and power of faith in this area for a hundred miles are stirred by the finally completed Painting Formation, and begin to circulate in a cycle in accordance with the weather.
After he accomplishes this, Li Yunxin lets out a slight breath. He ignores the looks of those people and only stares at Qingfuzi beside Yue Yunzi for a while, then points at her with a finger. "I didn't find you a while ago, and I thought he had killed you too. Now I see that you are being put to great use, and your acting is also passable. Do you know what I was waiting for? I was waiting for you."
He no longer uses his divine abilities to speak, so the people below the platform cannot hear him.
But that Yue Yunzi frowns and shouts again with his divine abilities, "So you really are a demon?!"
Li Yunxin suddenly laughs. "Save it. Do you want to try and out-act me?"
"I know what you are thinking. You had this woman abduct Shi Kuizi, and then you killed her cruelly. Now you have her appear in front of me like this. You said you were an expert of the Daoist Orthodoxy before, and I didn't deny it in public, so people all know your identity. Next… since you are an Immortal, it's easy for people to question whether I am the demon this woman accuses me of being."
"And then, just as you said, my formation will not be able to summon rain."
"If I can't summon rain, you'll say I'm truly a demon. And then… if I can't hold back for a moment and kill this woman on the spot, I'll further confirm my reputation as a demon in public—someone who kills a Daoist priest beside an immortal must not be a good person."
"It's just that, you see, my formation has now been completed. The spiritual energy and power of faith inside and outside of Weicheng are circulating endlessly. I am very curious to know what you can do to make my formation fail?"
"You could directly kill me. But that would be too boring for you. I guess from the first day I told you how I killed Qingliangzi, you started planning to use the same method on me."
Yue Yunzi looks at Li Yunxin, and a look of pleasure suddenly appears on his face. "The most satisfying thing is to let someone's wishes fall through when they are complacent. Now, I am truly experiencing the kind of pleasure you mentioned."
"How to make your Painting Formation fail? Child, my Daoist Orthodoxy has been passed down for tens of thousands of years, while your Painting School has only been around for two thousand years and has since vanished. Do you really think there is no way to counter the strange and ingenious techniques of your Dao of Painting?"
"Some people think that the Painting Saint who entered the devil's path has been killed and the Painting School has also been destroyed, so there is no profound Dao of Painting techniques circulating in the world, and thus they are not willing to study the methods of countering the Dao of Painting. But I happen to have dabbled in this art."
"As for the method. Hehe." Yue Yunzi takes a step forward and looks at Li Yunxin. "Your Painting Formation has a finishing touch, and my method does too. Except—"
He turns his head to look at Qingfuzi. "The eye of my array is a person."
"It is said that a thousand years ago, when the Painting Saint was being eliminated, high-level cultivators suffered heavy casualties, and that demon was extremely cunning, so it was difficult to kill him with ordinary methods. So, a peerlessly talented person came up with a method, and with this method, and the self-sacrifice of dozens of high-level cultivators, that demon was finally defeated."
"After that, this method was sealed because it was too cruel. If you want to know what it is, it is Human Sacrifice."
Yue Yunzi reaches out and pats Qingfuzi on the shoulder. The female Daoist priest, covered in wounds, is immediately pinned to the spot by a powerful Spiritual Power, unable to move. She can only stare blankly at the True Realm Daoist priest next to her... as if she understands something.
"You killed more than twenty people, and I killed more than a dozen." Yue Yunzi looks at Qingfuzi without a care and says to himself, "She said there was a Human Sacrifice refining Nether Spirits in the city, and that is not false. Unfortunately, she is short-sighted; how can that be compared to some Nether Spirits?"
"I asked you to kill them because I wanted their spiritual energy. I had already placed a Talisman mark on them. When they die, their bodies are destroyed and their souls are taken away, but their spiritual energy is kept in place by my secret method."
"You killed more than twenty people in the city. It doesn't matter where they died or where their spiritual energy was left. What's important is the more than twenty outside the city. You—" Yue Yunzi extends his hand and points at Li Yunxin from a distance. "You drew a person on the land outside the city."
At this moment, Li Yunxin lets out a low sigh of surprise and taps the folding fan in his hand. "Ah… I thought you knew I made a Painting Formation but couldn't see its secrets. But now you actually know that I drew a person… then you really understand."
"That's right. I used Weicheng and the land around Weicheng, borrowing the original roads, rivers, forests, and field ridges, and added dozens of strokes in the name of building bridges and roads… I drew a person."
Yue Yunzi smiles. "Now your Painting Formation has been completed. I can also sense the flow of the Spiritual Power within it—it is drawing the thick, turbid earth energy up into the clear sky. The clash of yin and yang will create rain. Such a grand formation can indeed bring a rain, and the power of faith of those people will greatly increase."
"But, who do you want this power of faith to go to?"
"Of course, it's for myself. Why would I give away such a good thing?" Li Yunxin says with a smile.
Yue Yunzi just thinks that he is just being quick with his words and does not bother to ask further.
He pats Qingfuzi on the shoulder again. "Don't bother to say. Then I'll tell you the finishing touch of my array."
"It is this person. In a moment, I will have you kill her in public, right here. Once she dies, the eye of the array will be completed. The dozen or so spiritual eyes made of Spiritual Power outside the city will trigger the Spiritual Power left by the more than twenty people you killed in the city. Then, using the endless spiritual energy in your Painting Formation, they will be refined into Nether Spirits."
"Nether Spirits, not Yin Spirits. They have no consciousness or awareness and cannot be harmed by ordinary methods. In other words… they can harm you, but you can't touch them. The form of Qingliangzi was made by drawing on the method of refining Nether Spirits, with only minor improvements and adjustments."
"As for you. Once my array is completed, I will force the demon beside you to reveal its true form in public."
"This thing called the power of faith, whether it is a good wish or an evil one, is like water poured into a human skin bag. Right now, tens of thousands of people in Weicheng believe in you. Whether it is this demon beside you or some other demon that I don't know about, once those people see that you can't summon rain and are not a Dragon's Son or Dragon King, their faith will collapse. Hehe, the water in this human skin bag will be drained in an instant, and then you will have a lot of fun—"
"Now. I will become my own grand array, using the spiritual energy that you were supposed to use to summon rain, and sacrifice it to refine my Nether Spirits. And when those ignorant people see you as liars and evil spirits—"
Li Yunxin suddenly raises his hand, takes a step forward, and shatters Qingfuzi's head with a single palm from a distance.
Then, with a swipe of his eye and a flick of his sleeve, he disperses her soul as well.
While he is doing this, Yue Yunzi is still speaking, but his words are left in his throat because of Li Yunxin's actions.
After a long while, he frowns. "You?"
"Thanks for your patience and for guiding me so patiently, but you probably don't know that villains die because they talk too much. And you don't have a protagonist's halo."
In the midst of the stunned silence followed by a sudden outburst of panicked screams from the crowd below the platform, Li Yunxin retracts his folding fan into his sleeve. Then he takes two small steps back, puts away the playful expression on his face, and says seriously, "You said all of this just to tell me that you watched me complete this Painting Formation but didn't say anything."
"Only to use the Spiritual Power of my completed formation today to complete your array for refining Nether Spirits and, at the same time, make it impossible for me to manifest my power and bring rain."
"Then you will force me and this silly woman behind me to reveal our true forms so that their power of faith will collapse."
"In this way, you will first drain our foundation, then cut off the source of our faith, and also refine your Nether Spirits. This is truly three benefits with one action."
"You should have just told me that you wanted me to kill her. There was no need to be so long-winded. Now that I understand your plan, I finally feel at peace."
"Then, Daoist Priest Yue Yunzi." Li Yunxin sighs. "Have you realized that you are a little off now? For example… why don't you try to really operate your grand array and see what kind of magical effect will appear?" (To be continued.)