The Gu Immortal House, Dark Prison, hurtled toward the Silver Giant like a meteor.
At that moment, the three arms of the Silver Giant underwent a transformation.
One hand flung open its five fingers, and a nebula vortex erupted from its palm—its deep blue spirals expanding rapidly. In moments it swelled to five or six times the size of a normal nebula millstone, spinning even faster than before by another fifty to sixty percent.
Another arm folded across its chest, the forearm bones shifting sharply to condense into an enormous dark cyan shield. The shield was so massive that it concealed more than half of the Silver Giant's body, which stood dozens of zhang tall.
The last arm hung its fingers downward, pinching what appeared to be a pale yellow, translucent gossamer veil—far less conspicuous than the other two.
The Gu Immortal House Dark Prison tore through the air, closing in fast.
The Silver Giant thrust the nebula millstone forward to block.
Dark Prison slammed into it with a deafening boom and was sucked into the millstone's maw. The millstone began churning at tremendous speed, letting out creaking crashes as its volume swelled and contracted violently, repeating this several times before finally exploding.
In a burst of shattered nebula and scattering blue light, the Gu Immortal House Dark Prison burst free like a raging bull.
The Silver Giant met it head-on with the dark cyan shield.
Dark Prison crashed hard against the thick shield. After a stalemate of several breaths, massive cracks spread across the point of impact, and then the great shield shattered with a thunderous boom.
But after these two layers of defense, Dark Prison's offensive force had been reduced to less than thirty percent of its original power.
In the end, Dark Prison struck the Earthly Veil with the softness of a spent arrow. With no force behind it, it pressed against the Silver Giant's chest like an arrow that had flown to the very end of its range, inflicting only negligible damage upon its target.
Though Dark Prison was a Gu Immortal House, the Gu Immortal driving it was Hei Cheng alone.
From this perspective, the ancient Tianpo Suoluo battle formation and Gu Immortal Houses were remarkably similar—the more Gu Immortals who powered them, the greater the force they could unleash.
But there was a key difference. Gu Immortal Houses had no rigid requirements regarding a Gu Immortal's path or level of cultivation. Battle formations, however, demanded specific conditions.
The Tianpo Suoluo formation, for instance, required the participating Gu Immortals to ideally cultivate the same path. That way the Silver Giant would be far more powerful and far more agile in its movements.
In this particular battle, Fang Yuan displayed Star Path power, Mo Tansang walked the Qi Path, Langya Earth Spirit was a special existence, and the remaining Hairy Man Gu Immortals were all Refinement Path Gu Immortals.
Under these circumstances, the Tianpo Suoluo's power had yet to reach its limit. Fortunately, there were so many Hairy Men providing the foundation—if the paths had been any more chaotic, the Silver Giant would not have been able to take form at all.
And this was merely the formation requirements of the Tianpo Suoluo.
The Tianpo Suoluo was ranked second among ancient battle formations, and its requirements were not especially strict. According to historical records, many other formations had demands that were either absurdly particular or downright bizarre. In general, it was extremely difficult to satisfy the conditions needed to assemble a battle formation.
This weakness of battle formations was one of the reasons they had gradually faded from history.
As the supreme achievement of the Formation Path, Gu Immortal Houses were far more convenient than battle formations—a symbol of the march of progress.
History rolled ever onward. From antiquity to the present, every era had produced heroes and villains, geniuses and eccentrics in numbers as numerous as the stars. The accumulated wisdom of these people, layer upon layer across generations, had given rise to the current age of a hundred schools of thought contending—a flourishing era of Gu cultivation.
Though many heavenly materials, earthly treasures, fierce beasts, and extraordinary plants from the Ancient and Remote Antiquity eras had gone extinct, in this present age the overall standard was vastly superior to the ancient past, and it continued to advance ever forward.
Materials and Gu Insect were merely the foundation; it was the wisdom of Gu Cultivators that truly mattered.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Qin Baisheng had concentrated nearly all of his attention on the sky above.
His gaze blazed with intensity as he raised both hands high, plucking at the air again and again.
With each of his gestures, thunderous explosions rang out across the heavens. Patches of space shattered like mirrors, revealing Gu Insect one after another. Then, under an invisible yet wondrous force, these Gu Insect were drawn down, falling one by one into Qin Baisheng's hands.
Qin Baisheng's presence was extraordinary; he plucked these Gu Insect as if it were the easiest thing in the world.
In this moment his bearing was vast and magnificent, like a god of war harvesting stars and seizing the moon, conveying an overwhelming sense of invincibility—an awe that made mortals look up at the highest peak and know they could never climb it.
Alongside him, two other figures were also collecting Gu Insect: the mysterious black-robed Gu Immortal at another location, and Fairy Jiang Yu.
"They're extracting my Gu Immortal House, the Refinement Furnace—we can't let them succeed! If they do, the entire Langya Blessed Land will collapse on a massive scale!" From the center of the battle formation, Langya Earth Spirit screamed in desperation and fury.
But it was useless.
Though the Silver Giant had withstood the charge of Dark Prison, it could not stop its harassment. Multiple times, under the Earth Spirit's direction, the Silver Giant tried to approach Qin Baisheng, but each time Hei Cheng threw himself in the way with desperate resolve.
Boom—!
At that instant, a colossal detonation shook the heavens. Lightning flashed and thunder rolled as, for the very first time, an Immortal Gu manifested within the fractured space.
"Excellent!" Qin Baisheng cried out, unable to contain himself, his face alight with elation.