Chapter 392: Dragon-taming Ruins
Translator: Transn Editor: Transn
The night scene resembled clear waters, and the shadows loomed over the vast northwest land.
A heavy snowfall covered the whole prairie, giving it a silvery white sheen and it looked very enchanting.
A full moon hung in the sky. In the moonlight, a figure clothed in cyan walked briskly in the seemingly unending field of snow. A breeze blew against the green cloth, but it was only a slight one and merely lifted up a corner of it and did not blow on his face.
A big Silver Wolf tailed behind him meekly, uttering a low whimper from time to time.
“Little Du, we’ve been walking for a very long time. Is it here?”
“Huh, huh, huh, al-al-al-almost, almost there, there!” After a few exhalations, Little Du replied in a human voice. Although his speech was not fluent, it would have been a shock to anyone who heard it. What did it mean when an evil beast was able to converse in the human tongue?
Demons were different from evil beasts.
Some monsters and evil beasts outside of the Seven-deity Regions were born conversant in the human language, because their ancestors were powerful monsters from long ago. Thus, not only were they able to converse in the human tongue, but they were similar in appearance to human beings as well. But Little Du was different. It had only a slight trace of the evil beast’s bloodline from ancient times. His ancestors had lived in the Misty Mountain, and in fact, they were almost indistinguishable from ordinary wolves. There was actually no difference at all. Generally speaking, this kind of evil beasts were able to converse in the human tongue only when they broke through the Mysterious Realm and became an Individual Immortal. To assume a human shape was even more difficult, because they have to go through the purification of Thunder Tribulation and become a Genuine Immortal first. However, Little Du whose strength was between Level Eight to Level Nine was able to speak in the human tongue ready. It was really amazing.
“Here?” Zhou Bao suddenly stopped. In front of him was a huge canyon covered with snow. As he approached, he found that the canyon was deep and foggy, but Zhou Bao’s magical eyes were able to see through it.
He looked directly and saw the layout of the canyon clearly.
There was not much difference between this canyon and the other canyons in the northwest. They were all deserted and desolate. The only difference was that there was a well at the bottom of this canyon.
Yes, a well, dug entirely by human effort but it had dried up already for years.
It was totally unnatural to have a well located in such a place.
That was why Little Du notified Zhou Bao about it.
“Good job, Little Du!” Zhou Bao nodded. In a flash, he descended to the well at bottom of the canyon.
It was really an ancient well. Its mouth was narrow, made of ordinary bluestone, and was nothing special. Zhou Bao touched it and found it to be extremely cool, due to the surrounding environment and also the material it was made from.
Standing at the mouth of the well, Zhou Bao couldn’t sense any abnormality in the well.
But that did not mean it was any ordinary well.
“Eh?” Pressing himself to the edge of the well, Zhou Bao spotted an abnormality. A faint force seemed to seep out from the seemingly ordinary bluestone, pitting itself against his strength, which ensured that the well’s edge held fast.
This was not what ordinary bluestones could do.
“It’s a formation! This well seems to be protected by a formation!” Reflecting on this, Zhou Bao walked away from the edge and began to look around intently. As expected, a moment later, he noticed something awry, and extreme shock replaced the easygoing expression on his face.
“A formation, completely set up by the essence of the world? How could this be?”
No wonder he was shocked. Because as far as he knew, there were many formations in the world, but they all needed materials and tools. For example, his Yin and Yang Dust Formation, though powerful, required an enormous amount of materials. Even a mediocre small formation required a lot of materials. Here, however, this formation, which was of medium size but exquisite and arcane, was totally made up of the essence of the world, without even using any forms of material. How could that be?
If it could be done in this way, it would be possible to bring along all types of formations with you, and once you reached a place and did some configurations with the essence of the world, the formation would be completed. This was totally insane!
Zhou Bao’s heart began to thump wildly. He was not very proficient in formations, but he could grasp the aftermath of this method of setting up any formation.
“If I master this method of setting up any formation, there is no one I need to fear!” I can travel around with the Yin and Yang Dust Formation and be totally invincible. I can wipe out the damn Divine Wind Palace!” he murmured deep down in his heart. However, he dared not touch those formation suppressions, but circled around the mouth of the well twice. Then he picked up a stone from the ground and threw it into the well where it landed with a plop.
The stone fell directly to the bottom of the well with a thump, and seemed to bounce back. Then nothing happened.
Once again, Zhou Bao put his hand into the mouth of the well, and mimed the act of catching something. But all he grasped was air, as if he had reached into the mouth of any ordinary well.
“Interesting!” He turned his head to look at Little Du, and Little Du gave him a perplexed look, “I, I, I also, also tried. You can do anything, but you, you can’t get into the well!”
You could not get in!
This was what he learned from Little Du.
A very strange well that people could not get into.
After pondering over it, Zhou Bao gritted his teeth and jumped into the well. But in the next moment, he bounced back up to the top of the well.
“What a smart Five Elements Reversing Formation!” This formation caused him to disappear and appear. After one try, Zhou Bao could grasp a little of the workings of the mysterious formation. He found out that this formation had created a perfect spatial loop in the well. No matter how you tried to get into the well, it would just reverse your action and you ended up where you started because of this particular, fixed loop.
Zhou Bao had not mastered the art of this formation, but he was highly attuned to the senses of space and the spatial fluctuation could not block his spiritual mind.
“This formation seems to work only for living things!” Zhou Bao thought to himself and had an enlightening thought. He launched the Snake-like Breath Holding Skill to restrain his spirit, thus making himself like a stone statue, without any breath of life. Then with a flop, he fell into the well.
This time, the formation did not launch him back but instead allowed him to fall into the bottom of the well.
The bottom of the well was much wider than the top, but it was still quite small with just enough space for him to stretch himself. The stone he had thrown earlier was a little way to the side. When he looked up, he saw Little Du looking around and purring at the mouth of the well.
Waving to Little Du, Zhou Bao began to take a close look around the bottom.
His first impression of the well was that it was dry and primitive; the second impression was that it appeared to be a rather odd place.
He could clearly sense that the bottom of the well was the Formation Eye of the formation, because not far from his feet, a ball of pneuma gathered, flowing around an ingenious track. The pneuma was of a common type, but the flow was smooth and endless, containing the most profound truths of Great Ways. It was one thing to see and another to understand how it was done.
Zhou Bao knew that there were a lot of truths in it, but he did not understand how it worked. This level of truth was not something he understood. The only thing he could do was to focus on the track of the pneuma he felt and the wonderful feeling coming out of it.
“Who has set this formation and what’s the use of it? Just to show his ability to set a formation?” After a thorough examination of the bottom of the well, Zhou Bao found nothing, and felt a little discouraged.
He knew that some of the mighty ones in this world had decidedly queer temperaments, but there was a limit. Was there really someone who was so eccentric that he set up such a puzzling formation here? Or, did he lack the power to solve the mystery?
Zhou Bao had a fair sense of what he expected and also some ideas on the next move. “Hump, I don’t believe that with my combat capability of a Genuine Immortal and inheritance of the Innate Deity, I am unable to undo a formation! Then let me try using brute force!”
Zhou Bao was never lacking in brute force. His eyes narrowed slightly and the dark golden Gang Qi flowed out of him. Raising his hand, a blow of the Great Fusion Technic hit the stone wall at the bottom.
“Swish—” The sounds were familiar to the sounds that issued forth when Zhou Bao was practicing the Three Realms Division in the beginning. The Great Fusion Technic that could fuse space had just risen in the wall and disappeared.
But Zhou Bao could still feel the violent spatial fluctuation surrounding him.
“There’s hope!” Zhou Bao was inspired. Then he successively launched the Great Fusion Technic three times, each time with more effort. Given such continuous strong attacks, even this extremely mystery formation could not hold on for too long. After all, it was not a big formation but a common Five Elements Reversing Formation. Being attacked successively by Great Fusion Technic, the flow of pneuma in the formation began to stagnate, and its flow was not as smooth as before. After a careful observation, Zhou Bao gave a faint smile. Then he swished his hand in a wave, but this time he was not using the Great Fusion Technic but the Space Division Skill. A crack appeared in the formation and a passageway opened up. Without any hesitation, Zhou Bao entered this passageway and the next moment, he found himself in a fantastic place.
“It’s underground?”
Zhou Bao took one glance of the surrounding environment, and saw that he was in an underground cave. The cave was not a natural cave but a man-made cave. Before he could react, the Dragon Chimera Fire in his body stirred uneasily, and a great rapacity came over him.
“This is, dragon, dragon vein!”
Zhou Bao looked into the center of the cave with great horror. There were corpses of some large creatures bound in thick black chains, hanging in the air. The end of the chain stretched out into the infinite hollow.