102 The Celestial Qimen Formation

Luo Li rolled through the thick fog several times, landing in a dizzying heap. She let out a soft, mewling "meow," then turned to carefully lick her wounds. Her body still felt numb, and the burn marks stung with a fiery heat. Gathering her strength, she managed to shift back into her human form, retrieved a pill from her necklace to consume, and decided to rest for a moment within the mist.

However, before she could even settle down, the fog before her receded. She was no longer in the center of the plaza, but at its edge. This plaza was not the same soot-stained, vine-choked space as before; the ground was pristine, the tiles devoid of any strange mechanisms, save for a single beast lying in the center.

Luo Li struggled to her feet, adopting a defensive stance. She felt a flicker of fear: she had been in the mist for several breaths and had sensed nothing nearby. This beast must be incredibly powerful, its cultivation surely surpassing her own, which was why she hadn't detected it. But if it had already discovered her, why hadn't it attacked?

Tilting her head in thought, she raised a hand to summon a zombie, silently gesturing toward the creature. The zombie looked left and right, waddled toward the beast, climbed onto its head, and sat down with a thud. Despite this insult, the beast remained motionless.

"Aha!" Luo Li sighed in relief. "It’s just a corpse!"

She walked over and patted the zombie on the head. "Well done, very brave." The zombie wobbled its head, chirped twice, and looked down at its own rear. Luo Li followed its gaze and saw a beast horn jutting straight into the zombie’s backside—it was fortunate the creature felt no pain!

Luo Li’s face scrunched up. "Why are you sitting like that? Get down!" The zombie twisted left and right, trying to walk away, but remained hooked by the horn. Luo Li couldn't bear it any longer. "Idiot! Stand up first!" With a tap of her finger, the zombie chirped and transformed back into a black bead that flew into her palm.

Luo Li wrinkled her nose at the horn, looking disgusted. "Ew!" She raised her hand, conjured a ball of water, and began washing it off. Once clean, she observed the beast closely: a single horn on its head, resembling a Qilin, but its body was covered in thick, dark fur with a faint blue-green sheen. Its feet were not hooves like a Qilin’s, but sharp claws.

"Ha, it’s a Xie-Zhi!"

Luo Li had no intention of leaving this corpse behind. The last Kui beast had been fashioned into a mountain-guarding spirit beast by her mother; now that her children had come for an adventure, she had brought it along for protection. But a mother’s things were ultimately a mother’s, and this Xie-Zhi, being a divine beast even more beautiful than the Kui, left Luo Li feeling quite satisfied.

She stroked the Xie-Zhi’s fur affectionately. "You won't have to rot here as a corpse anymore! Your master will take you out soon, and Mommy will give you a new life! You must listen to your master from now on, okay? Hehehe... But how does one get out of here?"

She sat down, tugging at the corpse's fur while muttering to herself. "I clearly walked back, so why didn't I return to where I was? Was I teleported somewhere else? But... Brother once said there were no teleportation arrays in the Heavenly Court. Could the plaza tiles be moving?" She knocked on the floor; it was incredibly sturdy, unaffected even by the earlier dharma-lightning, and likely resistant to true fire.

"A wood formation, a lightning formation, and then a divine beast... This isn't a simple formation. Could it be a miraculous array from the *Dragon Armor Divine Chapters*?"

Many might not know of the *Dragon Armor Divine Chapters*, but the *Qi Men Dun Jia* was legendary. The latter was said to be a condensed version of the knowledge within the former. Legend held that the *Dragon Armor Divine Chapters* were the heavenly scrolls gifted by the Nine Heavens Mysterious Lady to the Yellow Emperor to help him defeat Chi You. As the Mysterious Lady was both a descendant of the ancient divine bird and a powerful figure in the Heavenly Court, it was highly probable that parts of this formation originated from those scrolls.

Since she was trapped, Luo Li didn't dare to move rashly. She retrieved a laptop from her necklace and began curiously reading through downloaded files on the *Qi Men Dun Jia* and the *Eight Trigrams Formation*.

As Luo Li began to grasp the formation, Luo Yu was in a state of infinite frustration. His luck was neither good nor bad enough to cost him his life. The moment he stood still, countless beams of light shot from the floor, crisscrossing in all directions—smarter than any infrared alarm system. His arm had been grazed, leaving him feeling "charred on the outside and tender on the inside."

He cursed the cunning, albeit mediocre, formation master while worrying about Qin Yue and the cat. Between dodging attacks, he was a mess, covered in scorch marks with the scent of roasted flesh filling the air. A centimeter-deep groove ran along his thigh—a sight so gruesome he dared not look at it. Luckily, no major arteries were hit, or his reflexes would have been severely compromised.

Fortunately, he had plenty of medicinal pills and deep spiritual power. After swallowing a few, he seized an opening to transform into a phoenix, flickering through space while using Nirvana True Fire to incinerate the light emitters.

He finally reached the edge of the plaza, only to be blocked by a wall of light. Looking around, he couldn't help but curse: "What the hell! Light walls on all six sides—up, down, left, right, front, and back—forming a shrinking cube. Omnidirectional, no-blind-spot attacks! How vicious! If it weren't for me, the cat would have died a miserable death. Even Qin Yue would have had a hard time, despite his golden skin."

When the light wall neared, he slipped into a fold in space, emerging only after it passed. Before he could catch his breath, another intersecting wall appeared. After repeating this, he decided to simply hide within the void.

Watching the endless cycle of light, Luo Yu felt deeply depressed. The mechanism emitting the light was hidden within the fog, which blocked his divine sense. Should he risk venturing in? The hidden runes were clearly the program for the array, but the mechanism had replaced the runes, hiding the logic and exposing only the raw attacks. It was a technique resembling "Dun Jia"—the "Hidden Pivot."

As a formation master, Luo Yu had often wondered why the formations he knew differed from ancient legends. He had studied the origins of the *Qi Men* eight-trigram systems, but found that besides vague predictions, they lacked the supernatural utility of rune-based arrays.

Yet today, he began to suspect that perhaps ordinary people, unable to touch upon spiritual power, only learned the superficial aspects—applying physical changes without the power to manifest magical attacks, thus greatly reducing their potency. If that were the case, the current array’s attack was likely only one ten-thousandth of its true capability.

For a cultivator, everything could be a tool: the Five Elements birthed all things, and as a foundation, attacks could be infinitely varied. This formation was impossible to brute-force; it would simply wear them to death.

Luo Yu recalled the basics of *Qi Men Dun Jia*. In a sense, if one viewed the world as a formation, every object was a rune. Any movement affected the whole. These mysterious connections, the balancing forces known to cultivators as the "Heavenly Way," allowed for prediction and regulation. Even a "superficial" version of this formation was difficult; a complete, high-level version was a nightmare. He didn't even know which of the eight gates—Rest, Life, Injury, Stasis, Scenery, Death, Surprise, or Open—they had entered through, as this array accounted for time, shifting the gates as the hours passed.

On the other side, Qin Yue was also having a hard time. His combat instincts were keen; as soon as he touched the ground, he sensed an attack from behind. He rolled, golden scales manifesting on his skin to withstand the sharp aura. The attacker was a golden sword wielded by a puppet, almost identical to the ones he had seen on the cloud platform.