227: Chapter 227 Bewitching Soul Search, Buyer Appears (1)

The Hour of the Ox. The cold air in the underground Ice Cellar had grown a layer heavier than the previous hour.

In the Formation Affairs Room, Su Qingli dismantled the base Array Patterns of the Confusion Formation. As she dismantled them, she used a charcoal pen to draw each section on the base array. The resulting layers crowded densely on the paper, reaching nearly thirty layers. Dismantling a third-order Confusion Formation once caused about thirty percent wear and tear—the worn-away array ink would leave a layer of extremely fine, dark grey residue on the base array. She retraced the worn sections of the array path with fresh array ink. As she drew, her wrist was suspended in mid-air, and the pressure she applied with each stroke, from pressing down to lifting up, had to be completely consistent. If the pressure was too light, the array path would not conduct smoothly; if it was too heavy, an excess of array ink would seep through, causing clogs in the spiritual paths. After tracing the final section, she moved the base array from the Formation Affairs Room to the stone steps at the entrance of the underground Ice Cellar.

At the entrance of the stone steps, Leng Feng and six personal guards all stood guard with drawn swords. The guards' scabbards were all tucked inside their belts; after drawing their swords, the scabbards remained empty, and the imprints stretched out by the scabbards on their trouser legs were still visible. The cold air from the Ice Cellar poured up the stone steps. When it reached the entrance and was blown by the night wind, the moisture on the ground condensed into an extremely thin layer of white frost by their feet. Su Qingli unfolded the base array at the entrance of the Ice Cellar. Once spread out, the base array covered an area of about two Zhang. The dark green fresh array ink on the array path gleamed under the cold light stones. She placed a Spirit Stone at each of the four corners of the base array. The moment the Spirit Stones settled into place, the array paths of the base array lit up simultaneously from the four corners toward the center.

The third-order Confusion Formation was a heavy offensive formation specifically targeting the Divine Sense defenses of Cultivators at or below the Foundation Establishment Stage, and it did not kill. The underlying logic of the Array Patterns was to compress the formation creator's Divine Sense fluctuations inward—compressing them to a frequency nearly twenty times higher than ordinary sound transmission—and then use this frequency to strike the outer barrier of the target Cultivator's Sea of Consciousness. In a Foundation Establishment Cultivator, the barrier of the Sea of Consciousness was a "skin" condensed from Divine Sense. When this skin was continuously bombarded by high-frequency shockwaves, it would tear layer by layer from the outside. Once the skin tore, memory fragments within the Sea of Consciousness would leak out from the rift. The person performing the soul search would then fish out useful images from the leaking fragments.

The formation was set up in the Ice Cellar, not the interrogation room. The ice layers of the Ice Cellar could absorb excess spiritual energy impacts, preventing the formation waves from shattering the ceiling and alerting the guards outside.

After securing the Spirit Stones at the four corners of the base array, Su Qingli stood up and walked to a corner of the Ice Cellar. In the corner was a spare auxiliary Formation Plate. The sensing array paths on the Formation Plate were connected to two extremely thin sensing array patches pasted on both sides of Scarface's temples. She had pasted the patches on during the gaps in setting up the formation. Scarface had no strength left to move at the time; when she pasted the patches, his eyeballs followed Su Qingli's hand, turning very slowly, his pupils shrunk by nearly half due to the dehydration after his Dantian was drained.

"The formation is ready." Su Qingli nodded in Lu Changyuan's direction. She drew her finger across the auxiliary Formation Plate, dragging it from the center of the plate toward the upper left, stopping at the second slot interface of the sensing array path. "During the soul-searching process, his Sea of Consciousness will tear open layer by layer, from the outer rings to the inner rings. I will monitor the tearing speed on the auxiliary Formation Plate. Once it tears to the fifth layer, we cannot continue. Any further than five layers, and his central nervous system will begin to be burned by the formation waves. Once burned, the fragments will turn completely black. If the fragments turn black, we won't be able to fish out anything."

"If we search up to the fifth layer, how much can we fish out?"

"The outer three layers can be fished out reliably. The fourth layer depends on luck. With the Divine Sense density of a Foundation Establishment Cultivator, the fourth layer is usually where he has folded his deep memories several times over. When the fragments come out, they are chaotic—like a broken mirror. You can see that the direction the fragments piece together is correct, but you can't piece them together completely."

"That's enough."

Lu Changyuan stood directly opposite the Ice Cellar, about one Zhang away from Scarface. His position was at the edge of the Confusion Formation's array path; when the formation waves were released inward, his own Sea of Consciousness would also be grazed by the edge of the waves. The Divine Sense barrier of the Late Foundation Establishment Stage was nearly twice as thick as that of the Foundation Establishment Middle Stage. Being grazed by the edge would only cause a momentary, extremely faint ringing in his ears, which would not affect the soul-searching.

Scarface tilted his neck forward—the angle of the tilt was less than ten degrees—and the sensing array patches on both sides slid down by less than half a finger's width. His mouth moved, wanting to speak, but after his jaw had been dislocated by Leng Feng and then put back, his masseter muscles had completely lost their strength due to continuous tension. He only managed to produce a few syllables, the ends of which were entirely breathy.

"Wait... I'll... speak..."

Su Qingli pressed down on the activation button of the Confusion Formation.

The moment the formation waves exploded inward from the four corners of the base array simultaneously, the six cold light stones in the Ice Cellar all shuddered. The color of the light did not change, but the intensity of the light jumped up a notch. Scarface's head slammed against the iron post—the collision was extremely heavy, the sound of the back of his head hitting the iron surface like a hammer hitting an anvil. After that, he could no longer make any sound. His mouth remained open, the breath in his throat still pushing outward, but his vocal cords were temporarily paralyzed after being swept by the first wave of the Divine Sense shockwave.

The high-frequency shockwaves of the Confusion Formation began to tear his Sea of Consciousness barrier from the outer ring. The outer barrier—the Divine Sense hardness of a Foundation Establishment Middle Stage Cultivator was roughly equivalent to the thickness of a layer of limestone. The first wave of impact from the third-order Confusion Formation tore open nearly half of the outer layer. The speed of the tearing was like ripping a layer of semi-dry cement apart from the very center, with the rift expanding nearly one-third of a circle from the center to both sides in less than half a breath.

Scarface's pupils went from shrinking into tiny pinpricks in his eye sockets to suddenly dilating. The speed of the dilation was completely synchronized with the speed at which the first layer of the outer Divine Sense barrier was torn open. His pupils dilated immensely in the dark green light of the cold light stones outside, expanding to nearly three times the normal size. All the fine blood vessels on the whites of his eyes bulged out simultaneously, turning from a light color to a deep red—so red that the edges of the blood vessel patterns became blurry, each one strained to the point where they seemed ready to leap directly out from the depths of his eyes.

Su Qingli watched the auxiliary Formation Plate, her finger resting on the sensing line between the first and second layers. The outer ring tearing was complete; the second layer began to tear. "The outer ring yielded... three fragments. Fishing them out now."

Lu Changyuan probed his Divine Sense into Scarface's Sea of Consciousness. His Late Foundation Establishment Stage Divine Sense condensed into an extremely fine thread, drilling inward along the rift torn open by the Confusion Formation. The exterior of the Sea of Consciousness felt completely different from direct visual observation. It was a chaotic field of translucent but disoriented fragments—there were no complete pictures, only fragments with incomplete colors and outlines drifting aimlessly upon the dark green essence of the Sea of Consciousness. The fragments drifted aimlessly upon the dark green essence of the Sea of Consciousness; each piece had color and an outline, but the outlines were incomplete. Piece by piece, they could not be assembled into a whole. He split his condensed Divine Sense thread into two—one sweeping left, the other sweeping right—to fish for the fragments.

The first fragment: A hand. A left hand—the skin on the back of the hand was extremely rough, with old, polished calluses between the knuckles. At the base of the thumb was an old burn scar. The shape of the burn scar was right above the web of the hand—the edge of the scar was irregular, looking as though it had been pressed down by a red-hot thin iron rod. The background of the hand was the brick wall of a dark alley, the mortar in the brick joints already half-blackened.

The second fragment: A cloak. Dark grey—the edge of the cloak fluttered to the left in the draft of the dark alley. The owner of the hand kept their head down, the brim of the cloak's hood completely obscuring their face. The background was deep in the alley—about fifty paces away, people in military uniforms walked past. The color of the uniforms could not be seen clearly; they were too far. However, the sound of military boots stepping on the stone slabs carried into the alley—the steps were extremely heavy and regular, the stride length and the frequency of the iron plates on the soles of the issued military boots hitting the ground perfectly aligned.

The third fragment: A piece of paper. On the paper was a structural diagram drawn with ink lines—an Formation Platform. A square Formation Platform built of dark blue-black giant stones—the structure of the sealing Main Hub that Leng Feng had rub-copied from inside the undersea mountain range. The lines of the Array Patterns on the diagram were about half of what was in Leng Feng's original rub-copy—it had been traced. The paper was folded back; on the reverse side were a few handwritten words. The handwriting was extremely sloppy—written with the left hand. The content could be read at a glance: "Deliver the goods at the old place once obtained."

Lu Changyuan pushed the third fragment one layer deeper, wanting to clearly see the stroke endings of the writing on the back of the paper. However, just as the Confusion Formation tore into the third layer, the transition layer of Scarface's Sea of Consciousness barrier from the third to the fourth layer was directly pierced by the formation waves. The density of fragments in the transition layer nearly tripled. Fragment crowded against fragment—new fragments pushed the old ones flying all over the place. Lu Changyuan's Divine Sense threads were struck nearly twelve times by the fragments—all hitting the hard shell of a Late Foundation Establishment Stage Sea of Consciousness. It could not harm him, but the interference was immense. He probed a third Divine Sense thread inside as well, with all three threads fishing in three directions simultaneously.

The fourth fragment—leaked just as a crack tore open in the fourth layer. The image lasted for only half a breath—a figure from behind. Scarface was retrieving a pathfinding talisman from a hidden compartment; there was another person in front of him, a hand reaching out from the side to help him block the reflection from the compartment. The action of retrieving the talisman was coordinated by the two of them. On that hand—it was the same hand that had handed over the paper in the alley. The burn scar was at the base of the thumb—the same position. When blocking the reflection, the fingers spread open—there was a ring of old calluses worn on the second knuckle of the fingers. Ring calluses—calluses worn on the fingers by the ring band of someone who wore rings year-round.

Then, the crack in the fourth layer was pushed outward by the fifth wave of the Confusion Formation's impact—all the split pieces flipped from the inside out. Scarface's body convulsed all the way up from his Dantian, jerking for nearly three breaths. The spirit-sealing chain was yanked by his body's spasms, dragging out two new dents on the iron post—the dents were about half a finger wide and less than a millimeter deep. His eyes began to roll back, showing more whites than pupils.

"The fourth layer is completely torn—we cannot go any deeper." Su Qingli lifted her finger from the auxiliary Formation Plate; the sensing line for the fifth layer on the plate was already flashing red. "Stop. If we search further, all the fragments will turn black, and he will be brain-dead within half a breath."

Lu Changyuan pulled his three Divine Sense threads out simultaneously. During the pulling process, the fourth-layer crack in Scarface's Sea of Consciousness did not close. The crack collapsed inward, sucking the already torn fragments of the outer three layers into the rift together. The sucked-in fragments twisted into a mass deep within the crack, and were then scattered by the residual waves of the Confusion Formation. The Sea of Consciousness barrier collapsed layer by layer from the outer ring to the inner ring. This collapse was shown on Su Qingli's auxiliary Formation Plate as the sensing lines from the first to the fourth layer turning from bright to black in sequence.

Ten breaths later, Scarface's Sea of Consciousness collapsed completely.

His body was still breathing. His chest rose and fell, the amplitude shallower than when asleep. His eyes were open, his pupils dilated to the maximum, but there was no longer any reflection on the surface of his eyes. A person whose Divine Sense had collapsed had eyes that were technically alive, and the pupils could contract, but there was nothing left in the Sea of Consciousness behind those pupils. His mouth remained open, the joint of his jaw sliding outward again by nearly half an inch from its reset position. Saliva dripped from the corner of his mouth, dripping onto the spirit-sealing chain in front of his collarbone, freezing into an extremely thin thread of ice.

Leng Feng walked over to Scarface, bent down, and glanced at his eyes. He peeled open the right eyelid with his thumb, letting Lu Changyuan see. "The pupil still reacts to light. But we can't search any further."

Lu Changyuan reassembled the images fished out from the soul search in his Sea of Consciousness. Four fragments—the first and fourth could be pieced together: the left-hand burn scar + the ring callus belonged to the same person. The second fragment: the dark grey cloak + the military boots passing outside the alley—the location was a dark alley on the periphery of the Central Army Main Tent of the Zhenhai Fortress, no more than one Li away from the Central Army Main Tent. The third fragment: the traced diagram of the sealing Formation Platform structure—the source was Leng Feng's rub-copied excerpt attached to the Blue Moon Island battle report, which had been traced from the report by someone and handed over to Xue Lang. "Deliver at the old place"—the delivery location was at a fixed spot in the Zhenhai Fortress, where Xue Lang and the buyer had already conducted transactions before.

"The buyer... is in the fortress. The military boots could be related to the military department, but military boots do not mean the buyer is someone from the military. To enter the dark alley, one only needs to know the sentry shift times—the frequency of the military boots hitting the ground is public knowledge to any attentive Cultivator in this area."