334: Hidden Dragon Formation

Late at night in the Black Pine Forest, it was so cold that even one's Soul could be frozen solid.

Su Ming walked at the very front, leaving a deep footprint in the snow with every step. His face was terrifyingly pale, and his lips had turned a bluish-purple, but his eyes shone with a frightening intensity in the darkness.

Under the dual enhancement of his Micro-Observation vision and the formation heart seal, this originally pitch-black and chaotic pine forest transformed into a world composed of countless lines.

"kan position, thirty-seven feet, at the base of that half-broken pine tree."

Su Ming stopped and pointed at an unremarkable snowdrift ahead, his voice raspy. "Lu Jun, go. Peel back the bark and carve a 'Lian' character seal three inches from the ground. Do not activate it with Spiritual Qi; only carve the form, do not inject Qi."

Although Lu Jun was full of doubt, seeing Su Ming's serious expression, he didn't dare to delay. He hurriedly led his men, stumbling through the deep snow to follow the instructions.

"Instructor Su, it's carved!"

"Good. Next one, east of the li position, that rock that looks like a toad."

Su Ming turned and pointed in another direction. "Dig a foot into the soil beneath the rock and bury a 'Silence Talisman' inside. Remember, the Talisman must be buried upside down, with the head facing downward to draw in the Earth Qi."

"Bury it upside down?" another apprentice stammered. "Won't that make it useless?"

"Just do as I say!" Su Ming didn't have the strength to explain. The broken bones in his chest throbbed with a piercing pain under the erosion of the cold wind. "This is called 'Earth Listening'; it's not for making sound, it's for absorbing it."

Time passed bit by bit.

Leading the three men like a group of sleepwalking lunatics in the snowy night, Su Ming continuously dug holes, carved characters, and placed stones within a five-hundred-foot radius of the stone house.

It was an extremely tedious and painful process.

The Spiritual Qi in Su Ming's body had long since run dry; he was completely overdrawing his life force to maintain the Micro-Observation state. Every time he pointed out a direction or calibrated a node, it felt like forcibly squeezing water from a bone-dry sponge.

"Only three nodes left..."

Su Ming bit the tip of his tongue, using the metallic sting of blood to stay conscious. "Master, help me calculate the position of the Formation eye. The Formation eye on this partial diagram is fluid; I can't pin it down."

"Nonsense, this Formation draws from the wind and Earth Qi, so of course it's fluid."

Lin Yu grumbled, but his Divine Soul power surged out generously, helping Su Ming stabilize his crumbling Sea of Consciousness. "Shift from the qian position to the dui position, the center of that vortex at the wind vent! Right there!"

Su Ming's gaze sharpened, locking onto the long-decayed chimney atop the stone house.

That was exactly where the wind and snow converged, the node where the airflow in this area was most chaotic.

"Lu Jun! Give me all the spare Formation Flags!"

Su Ming caught the bundle of Formation Flags Lu Jun threw to him.

"Scatter!"

Su Ming's fingers moved like a spinning wheel. In that instant, he felt as if he had returned to the backyard of the Repair Hall, filled with scrap metal and the smell of machine oil, back to the countless days and nights spent dismantling Formation Plates.

The dozen or so Formation Flags scattered in the air but did not fall. Instead, they were guided by Su Ming's last bit of Water Spiritual Energy, precisely piercing into the gaps between the roof tiles.

The position of every single flag was perfect.

"Close!"

Su Ming landed, kneeling on the roof with one knee, and slammed both hands onto the chimney opening.

Pfft.

He spat out a mouthful of fresh blood, splashing it onto the Formation eye.

However, this blood did not freeze; it was instantly absorbed by the Formation.

The next moment.

There was no world-shaking light, nor any deafening roar.

Only an extremely eerie sensation instantly enveloped everyone present.

Lu Jun was standing in the snow shivering when suddenly, he felt the sound of the wind... vanish.

No, it hadn't vanished.

The wind was still blowing and the snow was still falling, but he could no longer hear that howling noise. The wind and snow seemed to bypass this area, or perhaps this area itself had become a part of the wind and snow.

He subconsciously turned back to look at the stone house.

A scene that made his skin crawl unfolded—

Even though the stone house was right before his eyes, and Su Ming was still kneeling on the roof, in his perception, there was nothing there.

If he closed his eyes and scanned with his Divine Sense, that spot was just an empty part of the Black Pine Forest, a cold rock, or a pile of lifeless snow.

"This... this is..." Lu Jun's eyes widened as he looked at his hands in disbelief. "Has my Divine Sense failed?"

"It hasn't failed."

Su Ming's weak voice came from the roof. He looked as if he had been fished out of water; sweat and blood mixed together, instantly freezing into ice shards.

"It's assimilation."

Su Ming struggled to slide down from the roof, collapsing into the thick snow without even the strength to move a finger.

"This is the 'Hidden Dragon Formation'."

"As long as you don't actively release Spiritual Qi to attack... to the outside world, this stone house, along with all of us, is just a rock or a piece of rotten wood in this Black Pine Forest."

Lin Yu added in the Sea of Consciousness: "Otherwise known as—the Playing Dead Formation."

With the Formation complete, the Spiritual Qi fluctuations around the stone house were suppressed to the extreme. The heat radiation originally generated by the 'Earth Dragon' burning was also cleverly locked inside by the Formation, then dispersed into the earth through underground nodes, no longer leaking even a sliver of heat.

Lu Jun and the others scrambled to carry Su Ming into the house.

Once inside, the feeling of isolation became even stronger. The sound of wind and snow outside became extremely distant, as if separated by a thick layer of water.

"Everyone, be quiet."

Su Ming lay on the stone bed, his face as gray as paper, but his gaze was more solemn than ever before.

"Although the Formation is complete, it has also shielded most of our perception. Right now, we are blind and deaf."

"Lie still! Don't move!" Lin Yu barked. "Leave the rest to me. Since this Formation is connected to your seal, I can use your Divine Sense to treat this Formation as a giant stethoscope."

Su Ming gave up struggling and slowly closed his eyes.

Using the resonance between Su Ming and the ley lines of the 'Hidden Dragon Formation', Lin Yu's perception was infinitely magnified, piercing through the wind and snow to extend toward the ruins of Iron Wall Pass three hundred miles away.