"In that case, I won't be polite."
As Chu Feng marveled inwardly, he immediately activated the five barrier armors and placed them into the grand formation.
Although Chu Feng stood outside the formation, merely placing the barrier armors within it, the moment he did so, he felt the burden extending from the grand formation bear down on him.
Just as he had expected, helping the barrier armors undergo tempering was by no means an easy task.
But this burden, as far as Chu Feng was concerned, was nothing at all — well within what he could endure.
Even so, Chu Feng put on a pained expression.
"Not bad, this 521 — he can activate five barrier armors and actually withstand the formation's power?" the three old men muttered among themselves in low voices.
Even though Chu Feng's pain was feigned, to them, he still appeared remarkably impressive.
But Chu Feng couldn't care less about any of that. As long as they didn't discover the flaw, that was all that mattered.
Chu Feng juggled two tasks at once — on one hand, he helped the barrier armors accept the tempering; on the other, through the link that the barrier armors provided, he secretly laid down formations inside the grand formation.
After all, with so many expert Spirit World Masters present, no matter how well Chu Feng understood the formation power deep underground, if he wanted to go undetected, he had to achieve the utmost level of concealment.
To that end, Chu Feng's expenditure of energy was enormous.
And so, the pain he had been faking from the start gradually became real pain.
"521, you have to hold on! As long as you can complete this task, a future position of chief elder is guaranteed to be yours."
Watching Chu Feng appear on the verge of collapse, the three old men began urging him on with endless encouragement.
But how could they possibly know just how powerful Chu Feng's willpower was?
Although his weakened state was no longer an act, this level of weakness might have been the limit for an ordinary person — but it was far from Chu Feng's limit.
Finally, the formation was laid. All Chu Feng needed to do was activate it, and he could sabotage the grand formation used to forge that evil entity's body, preventing it from being successfully completed.
But Chu Feng did not activate it immediately.
Because he was waiting — waiting for all eighteen barrier armors to finish their tempering.
Chu Feng had hidden a concealed formation inside those eighteen barrier armors. If they could truly be completed, they would not serve Jie Tian — they would serve Chu Feng.
In truth, while secretly laying down the formation, Chu Feng had not neglected the tempering of the barrier armors. He could have finished tempering the five barrier armors well before Jie Tian.
But he deliberately slowed his pace. Although he was only activating five, he still made sure to be slower than Jie Tian.
This not only made him appear weaker than Jie Tian — more importantly, while Chu Feng had been laying down the formation earlier, he had stumbled upon an unexpected discovery.
He had found a trace of teleportation power within the grand formation.
That teleportation power could allow him to escape this place.
He had no idea why teleportation power would randomly appear inside the grand formation, or why it was so well hidden.
But it served an immensely useful purpose.
It could save Chu Feng's life!
Chu Feng was now entirely uncertain whether Jie Tian truly needed him to fight alongside him, or whether once Chu Feng helped him complete the forging of the eighteen barrier armors, he would no longer have any use for him.
If it was the latter, then Chu Feng felt his life could very well be in danger.
The best course of action was to flee.
Though Chu Feng didn't know where the teleportation power hidden within the grand formation would send him, it was still better than staying here and waiting for death.
However, Chu Feng did not rashly trigger the teleportation power — after all, he was still unsure of Jie Tian's attitude toward him.
If Jie Tian truly trusted him and intended to keep him around, then remaining by Jie Tian's side would actually allow Chu Feng to accomplish far more.
Take this grand formation, for example — if Chu Feng hadn't followed Jie Tian here, how would he have had the chance to sabotage it?
Finally, Jie Tian's thirteen barrier armors were completed.
And Chu Feng's were only just shy of completion.
"521, hold on!"
Seeing this, Jie Tian walked over to Chu Feng and, in a rare display, actually offered him encouragement.
The reason was simple — after finishing the tempering of thirteen barrier armors, Jie Tian himself was extremely drained.
He therefore hoped even more that Chu Feng could finish tempering the remaining five on his own.
As for Chu Feng, he actually didn't need Jie Tian's encouragement at all. The only reason he finished after Jie Tian was purely by design.
Now that Jie Tian had succeeded, Chu Feng dropped the act and quickly completed the tempering of his barrier armors as well.
But in the very instant he withdrew the barrier armors, Chu Feng activated the formation he had secretly laid down.
Sabotaging the grand formation!!!
Rumble rumble rumble— The ground shook violently, and the grand formation churned as though boiling over.
When everything finally settled, the grand formation was still running — but its power no longer served that body.
This was the effect of Chu Feng's formation.
And the absolute limit of what Chu Feng could achieve.
He couldn't completely destroy the grand formation — he could only disrupt the link between the formation and that body.
And this kind of sabotage was far less likely to be detected.
"What's going on?!"
At that moment, Jie Tian and the others all sensed something was wrong. Jie Tian bellowed his furious question.
"How could this happen?!"
The three old men had already begun inspecting the grand formation, but none of them could identify the source of the problem.
"Can it be repaired?" Jie Tian asked.
The three old men had been carefully examining the formation, but after a thorough inspection, their brows were tightly knotted.
They simply could not see where the problem lay.
All they knew was that the formation's power could no longer be channeled into that body.
"It can be repaired, but it will take some time," the skinny old man said.
"How much time?" Jie Tian asked.