Chapter 1656: Small Village, Killing Pig Feast
Tần Mục walked toward the first forest of obelisks. Here, there was not only a peculiar smell of blood rust, but also an extremely heavy aura of slaughter. Besides that, what made him most uncomfortable was the suppressive force emitted by these obelisks.
These obelisks were refined by the eldest young master of Mê La Cung to suppress enemies.
This force suppressed his nguyên thần, preventing his nguyên thần power from being unleashed. Not only that, the suppressive force also locked down his thần tàng!
The eldest young master's đạo hạnh was extremely high. The obelisk forest he left behind gradually acted upon the đại đạo that Tần Mục had cultivated, causing his đạo pháp thần thông to scatter and fall silent!
The power of the đại đạo is manifested in thần thông. If đạo pháp thần thông cannot operate, then one's strength cannot be brought into play!
The situation Tần Mục now faced was exactly this.
"The eldest young master cultivates the Hồng Mông nguyên khí of the master of Mê La Cung, and Hồng Mông nguyên khí is the foundation of all his đạo pháp thần thông. If the obelisk forest can even suppress Hồng Mông nguyên khí, then he himself would be suppressed here by the obelisk forest he refined!"
Tần Mục stopped in his tracks. He was still at the outer edge of the obelisk forest. At this rate, he feared he wouldn't be able to go far before all his cultivation, strength, and even đạo pháp thần thông were completely suppressed.
Even if Thái Dịch were suppressed here, he would be powerless to rescue him, so he had to come up with a countermeasure.
"In other words, Hồng Mông nguyên khí can evade the suppressive force of the obelisk forest. However, I need to know the rune sequence used in the eldest young master's Hồng Mông phù văn seals!"
He stopped to carefully study the obelisk stele. As for the runes contained in the door panel, he already had some understanding. Over the past few years, he had been studying the Hồng Mông phù văn and thần thông hidden within the door panel.
But a door panel is a door panel, and a stele is a stele. The Hồng Mông thần thông contained in the two items was certainly not quite the same.
Just then, Tần Mục suddenly froze, staring at the ground.
On the ground, besides his own footprints, there were other people's footprints!
He examined them closely. There were footprints coming in from outside, and footprints going back out. Judging by the size of the footprints, they should belong to the same person.
"This person walked into the world behind the door, stopped here, then immediately turned around and left this place!"
Tần Mục showed a surprised expression. Judging from the footprints, this person was clearly not the eldest young master of Mê La Cung. This person had barged into the world behind the door, and his momentum should have been extremely powerful. His footprints were deeply imprinted into the ground of this world behind the door!
He came with an invincible momentum, and in just a few steps, he arrived before the first obelisk!
Tần Mục lifted his foot and stamped down heavily, but only left a shallow footprint on the ground. Compared to the footprints left by that person, his strength was clearly far inferior.
"Stronger than me!"
He stood before the first obelisk. That obelisk was already nowhere to be seen, leaving only a large pit. Clearly, this obelisk had been uprooted directly by that person!
"But his steps stopped here abruptly. After he pulled up this obelisk, it seemed he encountered something that even he found extremely terrifying."
Tần Mục stood on the footprints before the stele and looked into the obelisk forest, but couldn't see anything wrong.
Suddenly, his eyes lit up. He saw another door panel, broken in two, scattered within the forest of steles.
"This door panel?"
Tần Mục was stunned, then suddenly realized: "This door has two panels. That person must have barged in from outside and punched one of the panels flying with a single fist! That door panel was refined by the second young master, extremely hard. For him to punch it apart with one fist, his strength is indeed far above mine. The broken door was sent flying by his punch and landed in the forest of steles!"
"He came charging in with momentum, but after walking here and pulling up the first obelisk, he immediately sensed an incomparable danger and turned to leave. That's why the footprints he left when leaving became very light and faint."
Tần Mục turned his head and looked at the other door panel of the door. The departing footprints were very light and faint. After reaching the back of the door, to vent his anger, he punched the remaining door panel flying.
"But his momentum had already been spent, so he couldn't break this door panel in two. He only managed to send it flying into the abandoned land."
Tần Mục turned around again, suspiciously sizing up the obelisk forest: "So then, what was the danger that this great expert sensed? Was it this killing aura?"
He shook his head. The killing aura was intense, but not intense enough to scare away an existence of this caliber.
"Was it the suppressive force of the obelisk forest? That's not right either. He could uproot the first obelisk, which shows he wasn't afraid of the eldest young master's arrangements. He had full confidence before coming to break the formation. Then what scared him off..."
Tần Mục frowned deeply, having a few guesses in his mind, but none of them were certain.
"Forget it. As long as I go in and take a look, I'll know what exactly scared away such a great expert!"
He walked toward the next obelisk. The stele was like a mirror, its surface incomparably smooth, even reflecting his internal organs and his thần tàng.
If one looked closely, one could even see the composition of Tần Mục's đại đạo, see the structure of every particle that made up Tần Mục, and even see his brain, as well as the electrical currents in his neural clusters when his thoughts changed!
If one had a deep understanding of a person's thoughts, then through the mirror surface of this stele, one could see through all of that person's thoughts!
"From the surface of the stele, there's no way any runes could exist. But this is precisely the wonder of the master of Mê La Cung's Hồng Mông phù văn!"
Tần Mục stood before the stele with full confidence.
Because he knew that Hồng Mông phù văn possessed infinite detail!
When he had studied the Mê La Cung đạo văn back then, he had already discovered this point.
The Mê La Cung đạo văn possessed infinite detail, and the root of this infinite detail came from the Hồng Mông phù văn.
Therefore, although this obelisk appeared to have no flaws and could reflect infinite detail, he could still see through its composition!
Because the infinite detail reflected by the stele's mirror surface was actually the Hồng Mông phù văn reflecting the person or object before the mirror surface, and through the composition of that person or object, it revealed the infinite detail of the Hồng Mông phù văn!
The Hồng Mông phù văn encompassed all things. It could transform into all đạo pháp thần thông, could evolve into any person or object.
Tần Mục stood before the stele's mirror surface. It looked like he was looking into a mirror, but in reality, the Hồng Mông phù văn within the stele was reconstructing another him in the mirror.
"The simplest way to make the Hồng Mông phù văn array hidden in the stele by the eldest young master reveal itself is to make it unable to reflect anything!"
Tần Mục released the last remaining Hồng Mông nguyên khí he had, transforming it into four mirror surfaces, standing them around the four sides of the stele!
His Hồng Mông nguyên khí transformed into rune states, each rune extremely fine, preventing the stele from reflecting anything else.
With no object to reflect, the runes hidden within the obelisk gradually revealed themselves one by one.
The main body of the stele was composed of Hỗn Độn thạch. The Hồng Mông phù văn that the eldest young master had imprinted onto the Hỗn Độn thạch displayed an extremely dense and exquisite structure, like art, yet also like a complex and ingenious mechanical construction, constantly changing.
Tần Mục was utterly entranced, studying these rune imprints. The changes in the stele's rune imprints presented a kind of thuật số structure. Every change contained extremely profound thuật số principles.
Although they came from different cosmic eras, with different languages and scripts, the Hồng Mông phù văn were the same, and the đạo ngữ were also mutually intelligible. More critically, thuật số was also a language that could be communicated!
Tần Mục's attainments in all three of these languages were very high, which made his understanding of the eldest young master's Hồng Mông phong ấn thần thông much simpler than he had imagined.
Even so, it took Tần Mục two or three months before he fully comprehended the Hồng Mông phong ấn on the obelisk.
What he needed to do was not to violently break the seal formed by the obelisk forest, but to allow himself to enter the forest without being suppressed by the seal.
And the most critical step was that he needed to make his own nguyên khí imitate the Hồng Mông phù văn sequence of the obelisks, making the seal in the forest think that he was the missing stele!
Tần Mục stayed outside the forest for a long time, repeatedly deducing and checking for any flaws in his plan.
Only when he could no longer find any errors did he step into the forest. At this point, the suppressive force emitted by the forest could no longer threaten him. Instead, it made him feel like a fish in water.
The mirror surfaces of the obelisks reflected his figure, but what they reflected was not him. Rather, they reflected a walking obelisk!
This was the most peculiar aspect of the Hồng Mông phù văn.
Tần Mục traveled through, gradually going deeper into the forest. However, the killing aura and bloody smell emanating from the forest grew increasingly intense.
"This killing aura is no small matter. It's even more intense than the thiên sát chi khí formed when Thiên Công died, and far more ferocious than the two thần đao on Trảm Thần Đài! What kind of person possesses such terrifying killing aura?"
The obelisk forest was like a maze. The mirror surfaces of the steles reflected other steles, making one dizzy and easily lost.
Tần Mục wandered for a long time, using the sun in the sky to determine his direction, and gradually walked into the center of the forest.
The outermost layer of the forest was arranged in a circle. After passing through this layer of forest, the scene ahead suddenly became beautiful—green mountains and clear waters, like a paradise. What surprised Tần Mục most was that there was actually a small village here. Smoke rose from the village chimneys, and a farmhouse was cooking a meal!
At the village entrance, a young man had hung a pig from a tree, upside down, and was slaughtering it, letting the blood drain. Below was a basin filled with pig blood.
Beside the young man was a little girl with a pair of goat-horn braids, running wildly around the tree, giggling with a crisp, clear voice.
On a stone pier at the village entrance sat an old man, puffing on a water pipe with a crackling sound, squinting his eyes as he blew out clouds of smoke.
Behind the stone pier was also an old tree, with several cocooned caterpillars hanging from its branches.
Tần Mục's gaze passed over this old man. He saw that by the old well under the old tree in the village, there was a woman sitting there, pounding clothes with a wooden stick. As she pounded, she cursed and scolded, though it was unclear who she was cursing at.
An old woman sat under the eaves basking in the sun, her hands resting on her belly, squinting as she dozed off. From time to time, she would secretly open her cloudy old eyes and sneak a peek at the cursing woman.
This small village was peaceful and harmonious, as if only a family of five lived here.
Tần Mục blinked, took a look around, but did not enter the village. Instead, he tilted his head in thought, took out the địa lý đồ that Thái Dịch had left for him, and with a swoosh, unfolded it.
Thái Dịch's địa lý đồ was drawn with the Thái Dịch quải trượng. The map was extremely complex, and Ngụy Tùy Phong had copied it and given it to Tần Mục.
Tần Mục unfolded the map, looked at it for a while, then scratched his head. He had entered the obelisk forest just now without following the route marked on this map at all!
Ngụy Tùy Phong had given him many địa lý đồ, but he had basically never followed the routes. He always just barged in randomly.
"It seems I took the wrong path."
Tần Mục rolled up Thái Dịch's địa lý đồ, turned around, and planned to leave this forest and walk it again. He said with chagrin: "If đại sư huynh finds out, he'll definitely blow his beard and glare..."
Suddenly, the old man on the stone pier at the village entrance put down his water pipe and said with a beaming smile: "A distinguished guest has come from afar. Won't you stay and have a killing pig feast before leaving? Tiểu Thương has already slaughtered the pig."
—Ten years of sharpening a single sword, the frosty edge never yet tried! From kindergarten to high school, it's more than ten years of sharpening the sword! To the younger fellow students taking the college entrance exam, after eating this killing pig feast, draw the frosty sword in your hearts, cut through thorns and brambles, and cleave open the Southern Heavenly Gate!