Not only did Elder Xun sense it—within the great hall, several Void Tribulation realm patriarchs who had studied Heavenly Secrets and possessed a keen intuition of cause and effect, as well as the Grand Elder of the Mystery Valley, Master Situ—all simultaneously felt something. They turned toward the distance, bodies chilled, pupils trembling.
A massive "omen of death" had condensed into a bone-piercing chill that made their hearts tremble in terror.
At the core of the Blood Sacrifice Formation...
Mr. Tu, who was rechecking the formation, suddenly felt a jolt of unease.
He sensed a foreboding omen, a chill as if it had come from the deepest depths of the Nine Netherworlds.
Mr. Tu's heart quivered, and his brow furrowed deeply.
The blood sacrifice had been completed. The Divine Lord had been resurrected. The grand array was still operating.
Although there had been a minor mishap and the Divine Lord had been "lured away," as long as they could find a way to retrieve Him, everything would proceed according to the original plan.
Mr. Tu's expression darkened to an extreme. "Where exactly… did it go wrong?"
Just then, cause and effect stirred—and the image of Mo Hua, that seemingly obedient but sly youth, flashed through his mind.
Mr. Tu froze. His face changed drastically.
"Mo Hua?!"
In this entire scheme, the only unknown variable was that boy named "Mo Hua"—the physical vessel inhabited by a malevolent spirit.
But with that level of cultivation, what could he possibly accomplish?
Mr. Tu lowered his head and swept his divine sense over the heart of the formation—the blood sacrifice core etched into the bones of the ancient beast.
He paid special attention to the section Mo Hua had personally inscribed, checking it repeatedly.
"No problems…"
Mr. Tu exhaled in relief, but his frown only deepened.
Mo Hua had indeed followed his instructions to the letter, meticulously inscribing the Blood Sacrifice Formation onto the ancient beast's bones without a single error.
He had already checked it before—and again now, twice—and still found no mistakes.
Mr. Tu's face was as cold as water.
The sense of unease only grew stronger.
Logically, within the entire Blood Sacrifice Array, no one could have tampered with it right under his nose.
If someone had, it could only have been Mo Hua.
Mo Hua's divine sense, talent, comprehension, and even the favor of the gods made Mr. Tu—a great sorcerer of the Evil God path at the Feathering Realm—feel genuine envy.
But Mo Hua's cultivation was low, his spiritual roots were weak, his body was fragile—barely at the Foundation Establishment stage. None of his abilities were worth mentioning.
The only thing worthy of acknowledgment was his skill in array formations.
If he had indeed left behind some hidden method, interfered with the flow of Heavenly Fate and cause and effect, and influenced the entire evil sect's grand plan—then it could only have been through array formations.
But… what kind of array formation could that boy possibly leave behind?
And what could he possibly do under the eyes of a Feathering-realm cultivator and a fourth-rank array master like himself?
Mr. Tu found it hard to believe.
But once all other possibilities are eliminated, however absurd the remaining explanation may be—it must be the truth.
Seeing Mr. Tu's terrifyingly dark expression, Shangguan Wang frowned. "Mr. Tu, what's wrong?"
Among the Feathering experts present, Shangguan Wang was the most self-indulgent and had the dullest sense for fate and omens.
The Feathering-stage demons from the Corpse Shade Valley and the Demonic Sword Sect had cruel and ruthless temperaments. Though they had not studied the Dao of Fate, their long years of bloodshed had honed their instincts—and now, even they were starting to sense a chilling dread.
As if… something terrible was about to happen.
"Mr. Tu," the Feathering cultivator from Corpse Shade Valley said coldly, "what exactly happened?"
Mr. Tu stared at the formation etched by Mo Hua, his gaze dark and heavy. He shook his head. "I… don't know."
That one sentence made all three demonic cultivators present feel a jolt in their hearts.
Someone had laid down a method that even the sinister, cunning, and calculating Mr. Tu couldn't see through?
Everyone's expression darkened.
Mr. Tu's face turned uglier by the second.
He even began to feel a ticking sound echoing in his ears—滴答,滴答—as though something was counting down.
A countdown?
Mr. Tu blinked. The current situation suddenly gave him a strange illusion—
As if a "teacher" had handed him an exam paper and imposed a strict time limit.
He had to answer all the questions before time ran out.
Otherwise, the teacher would "tear up the test," invalidating all his achievements, his grand ambitions—everything.
But the problem was… where was the exam?
That wretched, sly, shameless "teacher" had even hidden the paper from him?
How was he supposed to take the test if he couldn't even see the questions?
Mr. Tu felt a chill crawl across his scalp.
Time continued ticking—滴滴嗒嗒—each sound like a drumbeat on his heart, making him feel like a panicked student sitting for an exam, unable to answer the questions… or even find the questions.
The Corpse Shade Valley Feathering cultivator frowned at the sight. "Mr. Tu… could it be you've been deceived?"
"No…" Mr. Tu shook his head.
Words, texts, expressions, and actions could all deceive people—but intuition based on cause and effect… was rarely wrong.
His premonition could not be false.
Still… deceived?
The words were spoken casually, but they struck a chord.
Mr. Tu suddenly froze—his eyes wide in realization.
Deceived!
Mo Hua had used array formations to deceive him!
That meant—the array Mo Hua had inscribed… was fake?
Mr. Tu immediately crouched down, pressing close to the array. He meticulously examined every stroke, every pattern Mo Hua had drawn.
Finally—he noticed something.
"Fake! It's all fake!"
But… why was it fake?
Why?
Mr. Tu's mind spun wildly—until suddenly, he remembered something he had once said to Mo Hua:
"Puzzle arrays are meant to help array masters distinguish the real from the false…"
"The puzzle's surface is false, but the answer is true. Only by seeing through appearances can one grasp the essence of the formation."
In that instant, a thunderclap exploded in his ears.
Mr. Tu's pupils contracted violently. A chill spread through his heart.
"This brat… used the formation I taught him—to deceive me?!"
No… it was more than that…
Mr. Tu frowned again and carefully looked over the formation Mo Hua had left behind—only now did he realize that what Mo Hua had done was far more complex than he had imagined.
Puzzle formations had a false "surface" and a true "core."
But between falsehood and truth, reality and illusion often blurred.
What Mo Hua had done… was retain the "false" surface of the puzzle formation, but secretly alter the "true" core according to his own will—thus drawing a completely different array, while preserving the visible surface patterns.
He had changed the riddle.
The outer surface remained the same, but the answer had been replaced entirely.
Mr. Tu's face twitched. He found it hard to believe.
If Mo Hua could pull this off, it meant that his mastery of ancient puzzle formations far surpassed that of Mr. Tu, a fourth-rank array master.
He could not only discern reality from illusion—but also redefine it.
This brat… had been playing the fool while hiding his claws.
From the beginning, he had been deceiving Mr. Tu!
Mr. Tu's eyes turned bloodshot with fury. His chest ached with rage.
And it wasn't over…
So far, he had only discovered that Mo Hua had laid a false puzzle formation and hidden the "exam paper."
The next problem—what was hidden in that paper?
Mr. Tu dipped a finger in blood and drew a sigil to isolate one of Mo Hua's puzzle formations, then activated the array using dark power.
A faint, obscure light began to glow.
The lines of the puzzle formation shifted subtly, blooming like an ephemeral flower—the false surface peeled away, revealing a hidden array sigil.
It was arcane, ancient, and exuded a faint aura of destruction.
Mr. Tu took one glance—and his heart and lungs stopped cold.
Mr. Tu took just one glance—and his heart and lungs nearly stopped.
Reversal Spirit!
Reversal Spirit Absolute Array!
In that instant, he wanted to hack Mo Hua—the "instructor" who set this problem—into a thousand pieces.
What kind of normal person, what kind of normal formation master, would lay down such a heaven-defying formation like the Reversal Spirit Absolute Array?
And worse—right on the core of the great array?!
Mr. Tu's hands were trembling.
At the same time, he suddenly grasped a shocking truth:
Reversal Spirit Absolute Array—Second Grade, Twenty Runes!
For Mo Hua to have set this Reversal Spirit Array, it meant that his divine sense had already reached the twenty-rune level.
At the Foundation Establishment stage, yet possessing divine sense enough for a twenty-rune Core Formation—he had broken the taboos of the Dao, and leaped an entire major realm!
Mo Hua's mind—this person himself—was the true heaven-defying monster!
But Mr. Tu had no time to be shocked.
Time was passing. This heaven-defying instructor had set him a heaven-defying exam—and placed this exam right at the core of the Blood Sacrifice Formation.
If he couldn't solve the problem, then everything he'd worked for—all his effort up to now—would go up in smoke.
A millennium of painstaking work—destroyed in a day.
Suppressing the killing intent in his heart, Mr. Tu began thinking: how could he break through the problem Mo Hua had left him?
First, the Reversal Spirit Array was intact—meaning it hadn't been triggered.
Mo Hua clearly didn't want to blow himself up either, so these Reversal Spirit Arrays were only the "solution," hidden beneath the "problem."
As long as the arrays weren't triggered, they wouldn't explode.
But Mr. Tu knew—Mo Hua didn't draw these Reversal Spirit Arrays just for fun.
He had certainly left behind some kind of mechanism—a "fuse" to ignite the arrays, using them to collapse the Blood Sacrifice Formation.
Normally, a second-grade Reversal Spirit Array wouldn't be enough to destroy a near-third-grade Blood Sacrifice Formation.
But destroying the core of the Blood Sacrifice Formation was more than enough.
And once the core was destroyed—when the energy supply to the formation eye was cut—the entire Blood Sacrifice Formation would be rendered useless for a time.
At that point, when Qianxue's forces charged in, with no protection from the Blood Sacrifice Formation, all the demonic cultivators would be doomed.
This, most likely, was Mo Hua's scheme all along.
He wanted to "destroy the formation and silence all witnesses."
But the problem was—what method had Mo Hua left behind to trigger the Reversal Spirit Array?
Mr. Tu considered directly destroying the array runes, but was suddenly alarmed and hesitated.
Doing that would be equivalent to "ripping up the exam paper."
If these Reversal Spirit Arrays used a "destruction-based" ignition method, then breaking them could instantly trigger a reversal explosion—by then, it would be far too late for regret.
So—do nothing? Just leave them alone?
After all, the Blood Sacrifice Formation was operating fine now—as long as he didn't touch it, the Reversal Spirit Arrays wouldn't activate?
Mr. Tu frowned. That thought—was far too naive.
This was a Reversal Spirit Absolute Array, etched into the very core of the formation—how could he dare ignore it?
And more importantly, Mo Hua's scheme could never be that simple.
This "exam" surely had other conditions…
Suddenly, Mr. Tu recalled the ticking sound from his intuition.
He instantly released his divine sense and began carefully inspecting the "problem" Mo Hua had laid out—eventually locating a unique rune among the puzzle formation's nodes, completely unlike any other.
Mr. Tu cut the rune, broke through the puzzle, and what appeared before him was—a formation resembling a sundial, marked with the twelve Heavenly Stems for timekeeping.
Mr. Tu's heart jumped.
"Sundial Array!"
This was an extremely rare time-counting formation—very few formation masters ever studied it.
But Mo Hua was different. He was the head of Qianxue's formation path, a prodigy who plumbed the depths of the Great Void Sect's formation legacy.
There was no formation he knew that Mo Hua might not also know.
If he could master a second-grade, twenty-rune Reversal Spirit Absolute Array, then learning an obscure time-counting Sundial Array was nothing to him.
At the same time, realization dawned on Mr. Tu.
Having unraveled this web of mystery, he finally understood what "exam" Mo Hua had given him:
The Sundial Array was counting down.
Once the timer ended, the Reversal Spirit Arrays would activate—and the Blood Sacrifice Formation would collapse.
His millennium of effort would be ruined in an instant.
And what he had to do—was everything in his power, before the sundial's countdown finished, to unravel Mo Hua's Reversal Spirit killing formation, to prevent the core from exploding and bringing the Blood Sacrifice Formation down…
This was the "gift" that Mo Hua—the brat worthy of a thousand deaths—had left him.
The Sundial Array kept spinning.
Its needle ticked, circle by circle, step by step—drawing ever closer to the final deadline.
Once the sundial reached the end—the "exam" would end, and the Reversal Spirit Arrays would detonate.
An unprecedented pressure weighed on Mr. Tu's chest—like a massive stone, heavy as ten thousand pounds.
He took a long, deep breath.
At this moment—no one could help him. He could only give everything he had to solve the "exam" Mo Hua had left him.
"Reversal Spirit Array…"
Mr. Tu's brows were frozen with frost.
Though he was a fourth-grade formation master, though he was a servant of the evil god—this second-grade Reversal Spirit Absolute Array, he truly had never learned.
An Absolute Array like this—required both insight and fate to comprehend. It wasn't something you could just study and master.
Otherwise, it wouldn't be called an "Absolute Array."
"Absolute Arrays," in common understanding, meant "supreme-grade formations," but also implied extinction—"extinct arrays."
Because they were rare, hard to learn, harder to master, and nearly impossible to pass on—most Absolute Arrays had gone extinct.
So Mr. Tu didn't know how to solve the Reversal Spirit Array.
And if he made a mistake—it wasn't just "marks deducted."
Could he cut off the link between the Sundial Array and the Reversal Spirit Array?
That way, without a countdown, the Reversal Spirit Array wouldn't detonate—at least not in the short term.
Like breaking the clock during an exam—then the "exam" would never end.
Mr. Tu tried—but it didn't work.
This Sundial Array was strange, surrounded by puzzle arrays with rune paths interwoven in complete chaos and irregularity.
In a short time, Mr. Tu simply couldn't figure out how it operated, nor how it connected to the Reversal Spirit Array.
Clearly, the cunning Mo Hua would never allow such a loophole to exist.
Mr. Tu had no choice but to give up—and instead consider how to directly neutralize the Reversal Spirit Array runes.
His lifetime of formation knowledge flashed through his mind.
And he didn't disappoint his rank as a fourth-grade formation master—soon, he had a plan:
If he couldn't solve it—he would disassemble it.
Isolate the Reversal Spirit runes one by one, severing their connection to the core of the Blood Sacrifice Formation, so the explosion couldn't be transmitted…
Using his sharp fingers dipped in human blood, Mr. Tu carved blood runes onto the bones of the giant beast, using the Great Wilderness Blood Array to isolate Mo Hua's puzzle formations.
The three of them—Shangguan Wang and company—watched Mr. Tu draw the array with a grim expression. They looked at each other, frowning silently.
But time was tight. Mr. Tu had no time to explain anything.
The Sundial kept spinning. Time trickled away.
His fingers moved like flying birds, leaving behind blood streaks—one by one, he began disassembling and isolating Mo Hua's formation.
But the more he dismantled—the more Reversal Spirit Arrays he discovered Mo Hua had set.
And these arrays were tightly bound to the core of the Blood Sacrifice Formation.
Nearly every Reversal Spirit rune was linked to a key node of the formation's core. If detonated, they would borrow the core's structure to spread instantly, unleashing the full destructive power of the Reversal Spirit collapse…
And not only that—none of these arrays were standalone. They had been meticulously arranged—interlinked, echoing one another—like sharp "bone-scraping knives," they dissected the Blood Sacrifice Formation from the inside out, from start to finish…
Mr. Tu's fingers trembled—suddenly, a new wave of shock hit him:
What he was seeing—**this level of mastery—**was not something a regular formation master could achieve…
This—was something only a lead architect of grand arrays, someone who had truly built massive formations, who understood their core mechanics intimately and could command the full picture with a single glance—
Only a Chief Formation Master could possess this scope, this depth of understanding, and this towering skill.
Which meant…
This means...
Mr. Tu's pupils shrank, his gaze filled with shock.
Mo Hua, a mere sect disciple at the Foundation Establishment stage... could he actually be the lead array master?
Even with generous calculations, he'd only lived for a little over twenty years, and yet he had… personally constructed a grand cultivation array?!
Mr. Tu was horrified, feeling as though his thousand-plus years of life had been utterly wasted.
This Mo Hua… was truly defying the heavens to an absurd degree.
Mr. Tu couldn't believe it.
But arrays don't lie—either you can, or you can't.
The level of formation mastery before him left no room for falsehood.
In that instant, Mr. Tu felt as if a massive mountain had landed on his back, the crushing pressure almost making it impossible to lift his head.
He realized that his current opponent wasn't some ordinary formation genius, nor just a high-tier Grade Two array master, not even merely the top array cultivator in the entire Qianxue Prefecture.
He was up against a monstrous talent—one who had formed a Golden Core through sheer spiritual will.
A freak capable of comprehending absolute formations and mastering ancient riddle arrays.
A peerless genius who, at such a young age, could already serve as the lead master of a grand formation.
This level of talent couldn't be measured by the word "genius" alone.
Ordinary formation prodigies couldn't even approach the threshold of such fortune.
For the first time in his life, Mr. Tu felt fear—real, gut-wrenching fear—toward a Foundation Establishment cultivator.
This monstrous talent made Mr. Tu feel a crushing, indescribable pressure. Instinctively, a thought emerged in his mind: "This child must not be allowed to live—if he grows any further, I'm as good as dead."
If such a freak were allowed to rise, to advance his cultivation and skyrocket in array mastery—who else in this world could compete with him?
Who would dare compete with him?
Who could even afford to?
Mr. Tu clenched his teeth, cold sweat pouring down.
And now, what lay before him was precisely a "test" left behind by this monster.
But Mr. Tu had no choice.
He could only bear the immense pressure, suppress his fear of Mo Hua's terrifying talent, and do everything in his power to stay calm—solving, one by one, the impossible problems Mo Hua had left behind.
But time was running out.
This devious "instructor," Mo Hua, was simply too shameless. He'd hidden the problems too deeply. The "exam time" he left Mr. Tu was fundamentally impossible to complete.
The danger of the Reverse Spirit Array…
The obscurity of the Heaven-Obscuring Formation…
The complexity of the grand formation's structure…
Mo Hua, Prefectural Leader of the Dao of Arrays. Golden Core of spiritual will. Master of absolute formations. Array freak. Lead master of grand formations… this entire string of terrifying titles…
Especially that rotating, ticking, ever-counting-down Sundial Array…
All of it made Mr. Tu feel like he was drowning in the deep sea—suffocated.
His pressure multiplied again and again.
His mental defenses were on the verge of collapse.
And very soon, the countdown of the Sundial Array was about to end. That pointer—after turning round and round, notch by notch—was now nearing its final deadlock.
Time was almost up.
But huge sections of the Reverse Spirit Array still hadn't been dealt with.
Mr. Tu had completed less than one-third of the "exam."
"It's over!"
Driven to despair and humiliation, Mr. Tu finally broke down.
Seeing the sundial nearing zero, he threw a punch and smashed the entire Sundial Array.
The Sundial Array stopped.
But… nothing happened.
Mr. Tu froze for a moment, his mental state slowly calming, then he frowned.
"…Nothing?"
Was the Sundial Array… fake?
But in the next instant—a sudden change erupted.
The shattered circular Sundial Array began to shift—its lines rearranging into a small, eerie smiling face.
That face… seemed to be mocking Mr. Tu.
And hidden within the smiling face was a Reverse Spirit Array pattern.
Mr. Tu's pupils dilated as he suddenly understood.
This Sundial Array was fake!
From the beginning, it had been spinning meaninglessly!
The countdown meant nothing.
Even if it reached the end—it wouldn't explode.
Because Mo Hua himself couldn't precisely predict when he would retreat. If he misjudged the timing, or something went wrong midway, he would blow himself up too.
So, he wouldn't set a real countdown.
This Sundial Array was merely a decoy.
However, the Sundial Array absolutely could not be touched—because it was actually the trigger for the collapse of the Reverse Spirit Array!
The moment it was destroyed, it was the same as manually lighting the fuse!
Cunning Mo Hua… never played by the rules.
Which meant… this entire "exam" had no real "test."
The true test was this twisted Sundial Array that messes with your mind.
You must never touch it!
Or it would rip up the exam paper and forcibly trigger the self-destruction!
Mr. Tu's face went pale in an instant, his heart frozen cold.
He'd been played…
Everything—everything—had been part of Mo Hua's scheme.
All of it fell into his wicked calculations.
From beginning to end, he had been completely toyed with by this shameless, manipulative little demon…
And on the Sundial Array, that eerie little face… was still smiling at him.
Then, a strand of pitch-black, inverted spiritual power seeped out from the strange smile and flowed into the blood-sacrifice formation.
The Heaven-Wasting Blood Sacrifice Array… began to collapse.
(End of this Chapter)