When Yang Kai unleashed the seventh sorcery, the colossal water giant exploded with a thunderous boom, and Yang Tai's scream cut off abruptly. The churning, roaring sea returned to absolute calm in that instant.
Yang Kai's expression turned grave. He released his divine sense, scanning every direction in search of Yang Tai's trail.
But he found nothing. Within this illusion array, Yang Tai's aura had vanished without a trace. After a brief moment, Yang Kai sensed the array eye's existence and realized with sudden clarity—Yang Tai had fled. He was no longer here.
That was precisely what Yang Kai had observed. At this very moment, within that stone cavern, beside a cloud of blue mist, a figure suddenly flickered into view. Yang Tai appeared in the most wretched state imaginable, and the instant he materialized, he doubled over and coughed violently, spewing out a large quantity of blood.
"Brother Yang, you... how did you—" Not far away, Gong Yue, who was overseeing the Six Harmonies Supreme Formation, was utterly shocked by the sight. In his distraction, he nearly let a flaw appear in the formation. The Six Harmonies Supreme Formation had already been deployed—Hua Yuluo, Fang Zhuo, Wu Kuangyi, and Shen Bingru hovered in midair, their faces deathly pale, arranged according to a specific pattern. Yet they seemed to have lost all capacity to resist. Each of them bore a thin wound, and crimson blood flowed steadily from these openings, converging toward the blood-red gate under Gong Yue's guidance.
The blood-red gate seemed to have transformed into a bottomless pit—no matter how much blood was channeled into it, every last drop was swallowed clean, not a trace remaining. As the blood flowed in, the gate gradually radiated an eerie luminescence.
Gong Yue possessed cultivation at the second level of the Emperor Realm, and his strength was already formidable. Taking his opponents by surprise and aided by the formation, Hua Yuluo and the others had been no match at all. In the brief time Yang Kai had been entangled with Yang Tai, they had all been subdued collectively, utterly powerless to fight back.
Gong Yue had assumed that Yang Tai could dispatch this Yang Jiu without much effort, but when Yang Tai appeared in such a sorry state, he realized he had been wrong.
This Yang Jiu had actually managed to defeat Yang Tai within an illusion array? How could he possibly possess such power?
"How is it progressing?" Yang Tai paid no attention to Gong Yue's shock, his demeanor no longer the cordial manner he had displayed before. His brow carried authority and impatience. In this moment, he was like a sovereign lord interrogating a subordinate.
Gong Yue frowned. "Everything is fine on my end, but without the full complement of two more people, the speed of breaking the formation will be very slow. It will probably take another hour."
Hua Yuluo and the others, trapped within the formation, heard this and their faces turned ashen.
Using blood sacrifice to break the formation was far from as effortless as it appeared on the surface. With every portion of blood drawn away, they felt an excruciating, soul-rending pain—but the formation's suppression prevented them from crying out.
The moment they heard it would still take an hour, all four were seized with terror. If it truly came to that, they would rather just die immediately, sparing themselves any further torment.
"An hour is too long!" Yang Tai barked in a low voice, turning to glance warily at the pale blue mist. That Yang Jiu was still trapped within, but Yang Tai no longer had the courage to enter and confront him again.
Truthfully, while Yang Jiu's earlier performance had surprised him, it hadn't inspired that much dread. But in the final moments, the several secret arts that Yang Jiu had displayed filled him with profound horror—as though he had encountered a natural predator. All his will to face the man had utterly evaporated.
"Use my blood!" Yang Tai moved toward Hua Yuluo and the others of his own accord. His figure swayed as he stepped into another position in the formation. He formed his fingers into a blade and slashed across his own wrist. Blood surged out immediately, flowing as freely as if it cost him nothing.
"Brother Yang, you—" Gong Yue stared at Yang Tai in astonishment, instinctively sensing that something was very wrong with his current state.
This was nothing like the plan. In their original arrangement, Yang Tai was indeed supposed to join the Six Harmonies Supreme Formation, but only in a supplementary capacity. The primary source of blood sacrifice was to be the other five. Draining those five dry should have been sufficient to break the formation.
But things had deviated from expectation. First, that Yang Jiu had spotted certain flaws, causing unforeseen complications. Now they couldn't even gather enough people to complete the formation, and Yang Tai was willing to sacrifice his own blood as well, as though he were determined to breach the formation even at the cost of his life.
"What are you waiting for? Hurry!" Yang Tai saw the hesitation on Gong Yue's face and couldn't help but urge him along, his tone decidedly unfriendly.
Gong Yue frowned. "Brother Yang, is there truly something behind this gate as you described?"
At this point, Gong Yue was having second thoughts. Yang Tai's behavior was making him uneasy, and he couldn't help but wonder whether everything he had done was truly worth it.
Yang Tai let out a cold hum. "You've already glimpsed the mystery behind that single character, and you know full well its power. Behind this gate, there are more characters like it, concealing the ultimate secrets of martial arts. As long as we break the seal, ascending to the third level of the Emperor Realm will be effortless. Once that happens, who in the Tianhe Valley Gong family would dare look down on you again? As for your family's reputation—once they're all dead, who will ever know what happened here? I'm on your side, naturally I won't let today's events come to light."
Gong Yue's expression shifted several times before he finally steeled himself. "Fine!"
The reason he had agreed to cooperate with Yang Tai and deceive the others was primarily because he had witnessed the power of that single ancient character. With cultivation at merely the first level of the Emperor Realm, Yang Tai had been able to display strength rivaling the second level through that character alone—proof that it held extraordinary origins.
Though the Gong family was not a minor clan, they had no third-level Emperor Realm powerhouse to anchor their position, leaving them in an awkward standing within the Southern Region. Whenever anyone mentioned the Gong family, they thought only of formations. What no one knew was that the Gong family yearned for true power as well. Gong Yue, in particular, had taken the revitalization of the Gong family as his lifelong ambition, yet his second-level Emperor Realm cultivation was neither high nor low—truly insufficient to accomplish anything of note.
Yang Tai had assured him that once the formation was broken, he would obtain the secret to advancing to the third level of the Emperor Realm.