Chapter 112

Chapter 112: Twin Cities Merge

Yun Xi didn’t tell the others what she had found. She couldn’t explain why her spiritual sense was far stronger than her cultivation should allow. Instead, she silently split off a thread of spiritual sense and left it on that male cultivator.

He wore a black robe and looked like a rogue cultivator. Other than the spirit sword in his hand, nothing on him seemed worth much. His face was ordinary too, so he didn’t draw attention.

An hour later, everyone gathered in the courtyard of the City Lord’s Residence. They asked each other what they had found, but everyone was disappointed.

Zuo Die Er’s attention was fully on escaping, and she no longer pestered Zhou Lang Chen. Ming Ya, on the other hand, kept glancing at Zhou Lang Chen from time to time.

Yun Xi quietly sent Qin Tong Shuang a voice transmission about her discovery. Qin Tong Shuang gave her a look that said, how do you still have the mood to gossip about that, and she almost couldn’t maintain her cold, aloof image.

“You didn’t find anything else?” Qin Tong Shuang asked.

“…Not yet,” Yun Xi replied.

She didn’t close the door completely with that answer.

No one else had found anything either. Everyone’s expressions grew uglier and uglier. The longer they were trapped, the slimmer their chances of escaping.

After thinking for a while, Zhou Lang Chen said, “Fellow Cultivators, don’t lose heart. Just because we didn’t find it doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Maybe we have to wait for that special day, the right trigger.”

He continued, “If I remember correctly, tomorrow is Li Cang Yuan’s bonding day. We’ll watch and wait.”

He had a feeling that tomorrow would bring a turning point.

Everyone could only convince themselves again, then return to their temporary lodgings in groups.

Yun Xi and the other three gathered together and quietly discussed everything they had gone through.

Zuo Die Er no longer had the mood to cling to Zhou Lang Chen. They were about to die trapped here, so she needed to think of a way out. Ming Ya could only follow after her powerful patron, turning back again and again.

When morning came, the empty Twin Mountain City returned to its original state, as if the spatial crushing last night had never happened.

Everyone endured a torturous day. When night fell, all eyes turned toward the empty city outside the City Lord’s Residence.

As soon as the Zi hour arrived, the entire space began to shake again, and the spatial crushing happened once more. But this time was different from every previous time.

Through the thread of spiritual sense Yun Xi had left on him, she saw that the rogue cultivator slipped into the backyard of the City Lord’s Residence. He raised a hand and slammed a talisman into the pond. In a single breath, the pond churned with splashing water, and rings of red light spread out through the whole City Lord’s Residence.

The commotion alerted the other cultivators as well. Someone immediately released their spiritual sense to investigate and discovered the rogue cultivator’s abnormal actions.

“Qu Sheng, what did you do?” someone shouted.

The mid Foundation Establishment man called Qu Sheng only said, “Sorry, everyone. I just want to live.”

Then he crushed a teleportation talisman in his hand, preparing to flee.

Everyone watched Qu Sheng’s figure fade, and attacks flew out instinctively. This person clearly knew the inside story. They had to keep him here.

Unfortunately, the first two attacks missed, and Qu Sheng’s figure vanished.

But in the next instant, everything flipped. Qu Sheng’s figure appeared again. His face was full of shock, and then a sword light chopped him down to the ground. That strike came from Zhou Lang Chen.

Qu Sheng groaned and collapsed. Then everyone saw one figure after another appear inside the City Lord’s Residence.

Yun Xi stared in shock toward the city outside. The empty city, which should have been crushed away, was overlapping with the real Twin Mountain City. Figures slowly appeared in the empty streets and rooms, all wearing blank, confused expressions.

“What’s going on?” someone cried out.

Zhang Yan said, “The two spaces are overlapping. Maybe the real Twin Mountain City has been pulled into this space.”

“What does the one behind this want?” Zuo Die Er asked in panic.

Yun Xi blinked. As she watched more and more people appear, and saw the confusion on their faces, a bad feeling rose in her chest.

Mu Ning Zhu clearly sensed it too. She spoke at once, “Activate every defensive artifact you have. This isn’t simple.”

The others did as told, staying on guard while more cultivators appeared around them.

Zhou Lang Chen dragged the injured Qu Sheng over. He had also noticed the abnormality. He used a technique to wake Qu Sheng and demanded, “You’d better say everything you know. You’ve lost your value now, and you’re trapped here too. If you don’t say anything, you only have death ahead of you.”

Qu Sheng clutched his chest. He knew he had no retreat. After a deep breath, he said, “Master Li told me to do it. He told me to monitor the cultivators who were transported into this space. If you discovered anything, I had to report it to him right away. And at a designated time, I had to activate the formation in the pond.”

“What is that formation used for?” Zhou Lang Chen asked.

“I don’t know. Master Li didn’t tell me.”

“Then how did you get here?”

“Master Li sent me in.”

Qu Sheng only wanted to earn spirit stones. He never expected to gamble away his life, but his plan had clearly failed.

While everyone was still confused, a red pillar of light shot up from the pond in the backyard of the City Lord’s Residence. When it rose into the air, it expanded into a massive red formation centered on the City Lord’s Residence.

Elsewhere in Twin Mountain City, other red pillars of light rose as well, each forming a huge array. In the sky, nine large arrays slowly turned, covering every cultivator in the city.

“Not good! That’s the Nine-Wheel Sacrifice Array!” a cultivator who specialized in formations shouted.

Yun Xi didn’t know much about formations, but just from the name she could tell it was nothing good. When sacrifice was involved, the only thing she could think of was human lives.

Someone immediately explained, “It’s an evil array. It should have been destroyed long ago. How is it here?”

“The one behind this is using an entire city of cultivators as a sacrifice. What do they want?” another cried.

“Is City Lord Li insane? If this many people die, it will definitely be discovered!”

“But City Lord Li is in seclusion!”

Yun Xi tightened her grip on the Seven-Star Doom Staff. This situation was going to be hard to handle.

“This space has merged with the real Twin Mountain City. Even if we all die here, we’ll vanish along with the real Twin Mountain City. No one will discover anything.”

“The empty city being crushed before was City Lord Li testing how to fuse the two spaces. We were the test subjects he caught.”

“What do we do now?”

“Do we have any formation masters here? Hurry up and think!”

As voices piled up, everyone pieced together the truth. But the mastermind still hadn’t shown their face, so the only choice was desperate self-rescue.

A quarter of an hour later, the Nine-Wheel Sacrifice Array fully formed. The formation experts among them were still calculating its weaknesses, making everyone anxious.

Two breaths later, everyone felt an attractive force coming from the array as it started to draw out their spiritual power.

“Everyone, activate your defenses and replenish your spiritual power! Don’t let the array drain you dry, or it will start absorbing your soul power!” a formation expert’s voice echoed through the air.

Qi Refining stage cultivators had already fallen. After their spiritual power was drained, their souls quickly left their bodies and floated up toward the array, while their bodies slowly crumbled into dust.