noffsinger Chapter 497 How is that possible! Keep repairing!
Chapter 497 How is that possible! Keep repairing!
"Buzz!"
The moment the gray-white beam of light entered the crack in the earth's veins, the secondary node, which had been somewhat stabilized due to Chen Fan's previous repairs, trembled violently!
The spiritual energy, which was originally eroded by the evil energy and was somewhat disordered, was momentarily stagnant and corrected under the forceful intervention of the established rules!
"BOOM!!!"
Centered on that crack, the ground within a radius of a hundred feet suddenly lit up with a complex array of pale golden runes!
These runes were broken and their light flickered, but they were clearly the remaining sealing veins of the Soul Refining Sect's protective formation!
At this moment, Chen Fan's accidental intervention briefly triggered his power!
The blood-red giant hand that had been grabbing out collided violently with the pale golden sealing network that had suddenly lit up!
There was no earth-shattering explosion, only a sickening, sizzling sound of corrosion.
The giant crimson hand struck a red-hot iron plate as if it had crashed into it. Countless wronged souls screamed and vanished, and the crimson threads broke inch by inch.
The pale gold network flickered violently, its light fading and shifting, clearly reaching its limit, but ultimately it blocked this fatal blow!
"Pfft!" Inside the crimson hall, the Soul Refining Sect's patriarch shuddered, a trickle of black blood spilling from the corner of his mouth. Forcibly mobilizing his power had triggered a backlash from the seal, and coupled with the anomaly in the array's nodes, he had suffered a silent loss.
His eyes were bloodshot, filled with both rage and disbelief.
"How is this possible? How could he possibly activate the remaining sealing power!"
At the Stele Forest, the crimson giant hand collapsed, and the pale golden network quickly dimmed and disappeared, as if it had never existed.
However, the sealing aura that erupted at that moment, completely opposite to the power of the Soul Refining Sect's ancestor, left the Nascent Soul cultivators, including Qinglian Daoist, dumbfounded.
Taking advantage of this opportunity, under the protection of the golden bowl, Chen Fan traveled hundreds of miles away along the slightly loosened spatial gap caused by the collision, completely escaping the Stele Forest area.
He didn't stop, but headed towards the fifth selected node!
After leaving the Stele Forest,
Chen Fan manipulated the golden bowl, which transformed into dust particles, to silently traverse the ruins.
The tyrannical crimson divine sense behind him was still sweeping wildly, but it was no longer as impenetrable as before.
The Soul Refining Sect's patriarch had clearly suffered some damage from the backlash of the seal, and his search efforts had weakened by a third.
Chen Fan's mind was as clear as a mirror.
His accidental activation of the residual sealing power had given him a deeper understanding of the connection between the Fixed Word Technique and the Soul Refining Sect's grand formation.
The moment the pale golden rune lit up, he clearly sensed a power that shared the same origin as the Fixed Word Technique within his body!
"The rules of fixation... not only fix space, but also cause and effect, life and death, and the passage of time." Chen Fan murmured to himself, his eyes gleaming with a gray-white light.
In front of him was a half-collapsed weapon-refining hall.
The roof of the palace had long since collapsed, revealing the dark red sky.
Amidst the ruins, several forging furnaces, each over ten feet tall, lie askew, their bodies covered in cracks. The once blazing fires have been extinguished for millennia.
On the ground in the center of the hall, faint runes were still faintly discernible; they were array patterns based on earth fire, melting gold and iron.
The fifth node is located beneath this weapon-refining hall.
No, to be precise, it's right below the largest weapon-refining furnace in the center of this hall.
Chen Fan extended his divine sense, carefully avoiding the wandering crimson threads.
Although the patriarch of the Soul Refining Sect suffered a setback, he did not relax his surveillance of this place. He could sense several faint, cold divine senses lurking in the hall like venomous snakes, waiting for their prey to walk into their trap.
"The fifth node, the Li position, the main fire." Chen Fan recalled the records in the dark gold jade slip.
"This node is the 'fire pivot' of the Soul Refining Sect's protective formation. When that great master set up the formation, he used the power of the millennia-old earth fire of the Weapon Refining Hall to provide a continuous source of pure Yang fire for the seal, in order to restrain the Yin Sha demonic art of the Soul Refining Sect's ancestor."
Ten thousand years have passed, and although the earth fire has not been extinguished, it has weakened to an extreme degree. Most of the array runes under the furnace are broken, and the remaining earth fire power is scattered and disordered, no longer able to form an effective seal to suppress it.
The key to repairing this place lies in reopening the earth fire veins, gathering the scattered fire power back into the sealing formation.
But that's easier said than done.
Earth fire is one of the most violent forces in the world; the slightest carelessness can result in its backlash, annihilating both body and soul. Moreover, it must be accomplished without alerting the patriarch of the Soul Refining Sect.
Chen Fan's mind raced, and time passed day by day within the bowl.
He did not act rashly, but instead focused all his attention on deducing the location of the juncture.
The true meaning of the Word-Fixing Technique was repeatedly refined in his sea of consciousness. He dissected and verified the record of "Liwei Fire Pivot" in the dark gold jade slip word by word.
"Fire's nature is to rise upwards, and its momentum is unpredictable. To stabilize its momentum, one must use Kun Earth as the foundation, Kan Water as the restraint, and Xun Wind as the guide..."
Chen Fan slowly traced the runes in the air with his hands, and the illusory runes appeared, combined, disappeared, and reappeared in the golden bowl, repeating this hundreds of times.
About half an hour had passed outside, but five days had passed inside the bowl.
On this day, Chen Fan suddenly opened his eyes, a glint of light flashing in them.
"Got it."
Without further hesitation, he manipulated the golden bowl dust to quietly approach the largest refining furnace.
The furnace was about three zhang tall and was made entirely of an unknown black iron. The furnace body was engraved with flame patterns. Although it was broken, it still emitted a faint scorching heat.
At the bottom of the furnace, a crack about a foot wide leads straight to the ground, where dark red subterranean fire can be faintly seen flowing slowly.
Chen Fan avoided the blood-red threads patrolling inside the hall, and the dust from the golden bowl drifted into the crack like a withered leaf.
The lower you go, the higher the temperature.
Beads of sweat trickled down Chen Fan's forehead, not from the heat, but from nervousness.
He had to control his divine sense with extreme precision, so as not to trigger the violent backlash of the earth fire, nor to arouse the vigilance of the Soul Refining Sect's patriarch.
However, he still quickly reached a depth of three zhang underground.
The sight before him startled him slightly.
This was not the fiery lava of the earth one might imagine, but rather a ten-zhang-square underground palace. In the center of the palace, a ball of dark red earth fire, about the size of a fist, floated in mid-air, its flames flickering as if they might be extinguished at any moment. Around the earth fire, eight stone pillars engraved with runes stood, their shafts crisscrossed with cracks, and most of the runes had dimmed and lost their luster.
"Is this the 'Fire Pivot'?"
Chen Fan's gaze swept over the stone pillars, and he understood.
These eight stone pillars were the fire-taming formation set up by that powerful being to subdue the earth fire and transform it into sealing power.
Now that the stone pillars are broken and the fire-stabilizing array is incomplete, the earth fire has lost its restraint and has become so weak.
The method of repair is not difficult; the difficulty lies in not disturbing the outside world.
Chen Fan suppressed the aura of the golden bowl to the extreme, making it appear like real underground dust. Then, using his divine sense as a brush and the true meaning of the Fixed Word Technique as ink, he began to outline and repair the runes on the first stone pillar.
This is an extremely tedious and mentally taxing job.
Each rune had to be placed precisely on the crack, with just the right amount of force and spiritual energy. Chen Fan was like a seasoned stonemason, carving the stone pillar piece by piece, each chisel imbued with his complete focus.