The Immortal Gu House Black Prison hurtled toward the silver giant like a meteor.
At that moment, the silver giant's three arms transformed.
One hand suddenly spread its five fingers wide, and a nebula vortex surged forth from its palm, the deep blue vortex rapidly expanding. It quickly swelled to five or six times the size of a normal nebula millstone, spinning fifty to sixty percent faster than before.
Another arm folded horizontally across its chest, its forearm bone suddenly shifting, condensing into a massive dark-blue shield.
The shield was so enormous that it concealed more than half of the silver giant's body, which towered dozens of zhang tall.
The last arm let its fingers droop, as if holding a translucent, pale-yellow gauze — unremarkable compared to the other two.
The Immortal Gu House Black Prison tore through the air, closing in fast.
The silver giant thrust the nebula millstone forward to block.
With a thunderous boom, the Black Prison was absorbed into the nebula millstone.
The nebula millstone began grinding rapidly, emitting deafening cracks. It swelled abruptly, then contracted violently — after cycling through this several times, it detonated completely.
The nebula disintegrated, and amid the scattered blue light, the Immortal Gu House Black Prison burst forth like a raging bull.
The silver giant then drove the dark-blue shield forward to meet it head-on.
The Black Prison slammed into the shield with tremendous force. After a stalemate of several breaths, massive cracks spread across the shield near the point of impact, and then the great shield shattered with a thunderous crash.
But after these two layers of defense, the Black Prison's offensive force was less than thirty percent of what it had been.
In the end, the Black Prison Immortal Gu House crashed into the Earth Element Gauze. The gauze was soft and yielding, absorbing all force — like an arrow at the very end of its flight, it pressed against the silver giant's chest but caused only negligible damage to the latter.
Although the Black Prison was an Immortal Gu House, the Gu Immortal powering it was Black City alone.
From this perspective, the ancient battle formation Heavenly Essence Treasure Lotus and Immortal Gu Houses were quite similar.
The more Gu Immortals powered them, the greater the strength they unleashed.
But there were differences between the two.
Immortal Gu Houses had no strict requirements regarding a Gu Immortal's path or cultivation level. Battle formations, however, had specific demands.
For instance, the Heavenly Essence Treasure Lotus formation required the Gu Immortals within it to ideally cultivate the same path. This would make the silver giant more powerful and more agile to control.
In the current battle, Fang Yuan displayed Star Path power, Mo Tansang was Qi Path, the Langya Earth Spirit was a special existence, and the remaining hairy man Gu Immortals were all Refinement Path Gu Immortals.
Under these circumstances, the Heavenly Essence Treasure Lotus's power had not yet reached its limit. Fortunately, there were so many hairy men forming the foundation — otherwise, with such a chaotic mix of paths, the silver giant would never have been able to take shape at all.
This was merely the formation-assembly requirement of the Heavenly Essence Treasure Lotus.
The Heavenly Essence Treasure Lotus was the second most powerful among ancient battle formations, and its requirements were not particularly strict.
According to historical records, many other battle formations had requirements that were either tricky or eccentric. Generally speaking, it was very difficult to meet these requirements and assemble a battle formation.
This weakness of battle formations was one of the reasons they gradually faded from history.
As the supreme achievement of the Formation Path, Immortal Gu Houses were far more convenient than battle formations — a symbol of the progress of the times.
History rolled on, and from ancient times to the present, every era had produced heroes and warlords, prodigies and eccentrics, numerous as the stars. The accumulated wisdom of these individuals, layered generation after generation, had given rise to today's flourishing and diverse era of Gu cultivation.
Although many natural treasures, fierce beasts, and plants from the primordial and ancient eras had gone extinct, the present era was, on the whole, far superior to the ancient past and was constantly advancing forward.
Materials and Gu Insects were merely the foundation; the wisdom of Gu cultivators was the key.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Qin Baisheng had concentrated almost all of his attention on the sky above.
His gaze blazing, he raised both hands high and pinched toward the air again and again.
With each of his movements, thunderous explosions rang out across the sky, and patches of space shattered like mirrors, revealing Gu worms one after another. Then, under an invisible and mysterious force, these Gu worms were plucked free, falling one by one into Qin Baisheng's hands.
Qin Baisheng's presence was extraordinary as he gathered these Gu worms as if it were effortless.
At this moment, his aura was vast and imposing, like a celestial god battling immortals, plucking stars and grasping the moon — giving people an overwhelming sense of an insurmountable, towering figure.
Gathering Gu worms alongside him were the mysterious black-robed Gu Immortal and Fairy Jiang Yu from two other locations.
"They're seizing my Immortal Gu House Alchemy Furnace — we can't let them succeed! Otherwise, the entire Langya Blessed Land will collapse on a massive scale!" In the center of the battle formation, the Langya Earth Spirit shouted in anxious fury.
But it was useless.
Although the silver giant had blocked the Black Prison's charge, it couldn't prevent its interference.
Several times, as the Earth Spirit tried to maneuver the silver giant closer to Qin Baisheng, Black City desperately blocked each attempt.
Boom—!
At that moment, a tremendous explosion erupted. Lightning flashed and thunder rolled across the sky as, for the first time, an Immortal Gu appeared amid the shattered space.
"Excellent!" Seeing this, Qin Baisheng couldn't help but cry out in delight, his face brimming with joy.
He reached out to seize it. In principle, this Immortal Gu belonged to the Langya Earth Spirit, but at this moment it offered no resistance, and Qin Baisheng captured it with apparent ease, tucking it into his pocket.