Once the Heart Demon Oath was sworn, the man surnamed Fu calmly extended a hand toward Qin Chaoyang.
"The Source Crystals?" Qin Chaoyang asked, his expression grim.
The man surnamed Fu sneered. "A mere ten million Source Crystals — you think I can't afford that?"
As he spoke, he produced a spatial ring from his chest, tidied its contents briefly, and tossed it to Qin Chaoyang.
Qin Chaoyang caught it and inspected it carefully. Only after confirming everything was in order did he produce a blank jade slip, infuse it with Divine Sense, and inscribe the complete method for activating the Black Tortoise Seven-Section Formation.
Moments later, he handed the jade slip to the man surnamed Fu.
The latter suppressed the excitement welling inside him, took the jade slip, and gave it a cursory inspection. A look of delight immediately surfaced on his face. He laughed heartily and tucked the jade slip away with great care.
The outcome of this exchange clearly satisfied him enormously — even the earlier unpleasantness was temporarily forgotten.
"Everyone, we need to speed things up. If we don't move now, we're going to be surrounded," Yang Kai suddenly warned in a low voice.
Everyone swept the area with Divine Sense and discovered that during their brief delay, demonic creatures had already converged from every direction. Layer upon layer, countless enemies packed together around them in dense ranks.
"A bunch of jumped-up clowns!" Duan Yuanshan roared. His hands flashed as he began forming a series of spirit seals.
The others, positioned inside the formation and bound by its pull, had no choice but to move in sync with him.
In moments, the colossal Holy Spirit phantom opened its massive jaws, and the surrounding atmosphere's dense water-element energy surged inward like a maddened tide. In the blink of an eye, an enormous sphere of water coalesced before the dragon-shaped head.
With a deep grunt from Duan Yuanshan, the Holy Spirit phantom — as though controlled by an unseen hand — spat forward.
The massive water sphere transformed into a beam of white light that hurtled straight ahead, annihilating everything in its path. Countless demonic creatures were obliterated on contact, reduced to ash in an instant.
A safe corridor over a hundred zhang long opened up before them.
Duan Yuanshan said nothing. He charged forward first, and the others followed close behind.
The City Lord was apparently so disgusted by the man surnamed Fu that his anger had reached a boiling point — yet he couldn't actually turn on the man. So he could only vent his fury on the demonic creatures instead.
The formation's movement also drew in the surrounding demonic creatures. They swarmed forward without any regard for self-preservation, continuously bombarding the formation with every manner of force they could muster.
From the outside, the enormous Black Tortoise phantom was blanketed on all sides by a teeming mass of demonic creatures.
Yet it still couldn't slow the group's advance.
After roughly half an hour, they finally arrived at the spot where the original mining pit had been.
Although the area within a thousand li was blanketed in pitch-black demonic qi, at one particular location the qi was far denser. There, a towering pillar of black energy pierced skyward, connecting heaven and earth in a display of terrifying power. Unimaginably pure demonic qi radiated outward from that source point, continuously spreading in all directions.
No one needed to be told. The moment they saw that colossal pillar of black energy soaring into the heavens, they knew — this was the origin point. This was where the seal had to be.
Duan Yuanshan led the group, charging toward it at breakneck speed.
However, the closer they drew to the origin, the faster they felt the Source Power draining from their bodies. Alarmed, they each pulled out restorative pills and popped them into their mouths to sustain the flow of power within them.
Suddenly, Duan Yuanshan's stride halted. He frowned, his gaze fixed on what lay ahead.
Less than ten zhang away, a row of over a dozen powerful auras stood motionless, as though they had been waiting for a long time.
The instant the group stopped, those dozen-plus figures let out a synchronized, frenzied roar and charged forward like gales of wind.
The sheer force of their attacks approached the Dao Source Realm — the only thing they lacked was the ability to harness the power of laws.
"The Jiang family!" Yang Kai narrowed his eyes, recognizing the figures ahead, and barked out the warning.
"Scum — die!" Duan Yuanshan's spirit seals shifted, and the Holy Spirit Black Tortoise phantom raised one of its forelegs and swept it forward with devastating force.
Boom, boom—
The sweep sent two of the figures flying. While still airborne, they exploded into mists of blood, not even bones remaining. The others, however, nimbly dodged aside.
The Jiang family cultivators were all Void King Realm, now bolstered by demonic qi. While this did elevate their strength to roughly touch the Dao Source Realm in some respects, how could they possibly stand against a group united in a grand formation?
Under the Black Tortoise Seven-Section Formation, the Source Power of seven Dao Source Realm cultivators merged into one. Among them were two at the third level of the Dao Source Realm.
A single strike from the Black Tortoise phantom carried the combined force of all seven!
"That's Jiang Lin, that bastard!" Du Lishen, positioned at the left side of the formation, caught sight of a demonic figure charging close. The figure's body was covered in demonic runes, his eyes blazing crimson-black. One look was enough to identify him — it was none other than the Jiang family patriarch, Jiang Lin!
Jiang Lin had clearly already lost his sanity. The gruesome deaths of his clan's Elders had not brought him fear — instead, they had only inflamed his bloodlust. Demonic qi churned wildly around his body as he unleashed a barrage of potent secret techniques, hammering against the formation.
His frenzy startled Du Lishen, and for a moment his hand seals wavered.
When a person maintaining the formation stumbled even slightly, the effect cascaded through the entire array. His momentary lapse nearly threw everyone else's rhythm into chaos.