flstandardbreds Chapter 187 The Far North
Chapter 187 The Far North
Stepping out of the igloo and seeing the huge python carcass, Ning Xiaoxi felt a bit of a headache. She wasn't good at dissecting a corpse!
"Forget it, I'll put them in my cave first and deal with them when I have the chance!" She accepted the pile of snake eggs without any hesitation.
Surrounded by a vast snowfield, with occasional hills, there are no more sea vents here, and all you can see is white ice and snow.
Ning Xiaoxi no longer hesitated to use the Qiankun Shift Step. This time, the same amount of energy was used, but it made her stride longer, taking two steps.
"puff!"
Ning Xiaoxi seemed to have crushed something under her feet, but she didn't care and took another step.
Stop and look around. The air here is much thinner, and it's noticeably higher than the surrounding area, though not as high as a mountain peak.
[This is the far northern plateau; keep going, and you'll reach it soon.]
The sun hung high in the sky, so bright it made one dizzy. The scenery was the same on both sides, making it impossible to tell which way to go.
Just keep climbing higher.
Ning Xiaoxi looked carefully for a while and finally figured out which side was higher, then took a step out.
【Xiao Xi, be careful.】
Before her feet even touched the ground, the Spirit Crystal Armor glowed, carrying Ning Xiaoxi away quickly.
"boom!"
A demonic aura surged into the sky, bringing with it a flurry of snowflakes. Ning Xiaoxi retreated from the area affected by the demonic aura.
[It is a descendant of Xuanming, the god of the north, undergoing the process of forming a elixir. Xiaoxi, kill it.]
With a surge of spiritual energy and a flick of his finger, the Cursed Cage enveloped the entire area of demonic energy, extinguishing the falling snowflakes and trapping the burgeoning demonic energy.
The demonic aura dissipated in the cage, revealing a human-faced bird with a green snake coiled around it, exuding a chilling aura.
With both hands placed on the cage bars, spiritual energy, carrying golden light, transformed into sharp blades that pierced the caged demon from all directions.
"Human Celestial Master, I am a descendant of the gods, how dare you harm me?"
Ning Xiaoxi channeled her spiritual power again, causing the cage bars to absorb the scattered demonic energy and transform into countless sharp swords that sliced through flesh, causing the unformed white demon core to burst forth. Ning Xiaoxi shifted her body and grabbed the struggling demon core, saying, "Trying to run away!" She casually tossed the demon core into the chest of the giant dragon mine in the cave, adding, "A demon is a demon, even if it's a descendant of gods. Monsters always know how to gild their own lily."
[Tuanzi, are there really gods?]
[The powerful beings who lived alongside Kunpeng in historical records are called gods. They created a living space for all living beings and sacrificed themselves to stabilize the world. After them, no one could rival their power. The demon and monster races were born from the divine souls, bloodlines, and desires left behind by these powerful beings.]
"[They lived in the same era as Kunpeng! That's incredibly ancient!]" Ning Xiaoxi couldn't imagine how prosperous the world must have been during Kunpeng's time. "[What's up with this little demon?]"
[This is probably a bloodline inheritance from Xuanming, but it only inherited the physical form, not the divine essence. It thinks it's a descendant of gods just because it looks like one.]
Is Xuanming very powerful?
The god of the North, who governs climate and ice and snow, originally transformed himself into ice and snow to cover the far north in order to stabilize the northern borders and ensure world order. The spiritual source of the North is his heart.
Ning Xiaoxi scanned her surroundings. [Does this mean we're currently standing on Xuanming's body?]
That's not entirely wrong.
[This little demon has quite a knack for choosing a place to refine its essence on the remains of its ancestor.]
Since that little demon has appeared here, there can't be just one of them; it's likely that the entire clan is hiding in the northern plateau, making it convenient for them to cultivate.
Ning Xiaoxi clicked her tongue in astonishment. "A whole clan? How many would that be? I can't handle them all by myself, can I?"
[You can only learn area-of-effect spells after you surpass the advanced level. Although your spiritual veins are now fully developed, there are still three skills that are not yet at max level and cannot be upgraded.]
[Tuanzi, I didn't realize you were becoming so useful.] A useful Tuanzi is far better than a decoration. [Let me see... Hmm, I have a Heaven and Earth Forbidden Formation, but this formation is fixed. Setting it up on someone else's territory would be too difficult. So there's only one way...]
First, set up a formation, then lure the whole flock over.
"A lowly celestial master like me can't possibly attract them all at once, can I?"
[Can your formation kill all the large numbers you attract at once?]
[Haven't set it up yet, don't know how it will look.]
[Let's lure the smaller one first and see how it goes. Once the smaller one is killed, the older one will eventually come out.]
Ning Xiaoxi looked around with sparkling eyes. [Great idea!]
Without hesitation, he was about to pluck more Spirit Gathering Grass from the ground to make juice for later use when he discovered that the Ice Python he had previously thrown into the cave was now just a snakeskin, shimmering with light.
The little beast was still asleep, the black bead buried in its cloak, the little silver dragon and the mermaid were also obediently hiding in the dragon mine, and the little red fish wouldn't come out without her permission. Who did it?
After searching the cave, I found nothing unusual, and thankfully the pile of eggs was still there.
He plucked a small pile of spirit-gathering herbs, grinding them while pondering the formation.
It looks like an overlapping version of the Cursed Cage. The basic version has eighteen overlaps, the enhanced version has thirty-six overlaps, the advanced version has seventy-two overlaps, and the super-advanced version has one hundred and eight overlaps. There seem to be more later, but it's a bit hard to see.
[The Heaven and Earth Forbidden Formation is an upgradeable technique. Once you surpass the higher levels, you will be able to see the later stages.]
[If we keep pushing this forward, it'll just be an endless series of overlapping cages!]
"If only it were that simple. Don't underestimate the initial overlaps. The basics are manageable, but the spiritual energy required for the later stages increases exponentially. Even with ample spirit crystals, you wouldn't be able to support drawing the array if your spiritual veins weren't clear."
Ning Xiaoxi looked at the Spirit Gathering Grass juice in her hand and felt that it was not quite good enough for this formation. It seemed that she would have to find some good natural treasures to improve the auxiliary ability later.
They put away the Spirit Gathering Grass juice and began moving bricks, placing square spirit crystals one by one on the snow. Soon, they had created a spirit crystal floor that was a hundred meters in diameter.
Standing at the edge of the spirit crystal floor, he planned where to begin.
Spiritual energy flowed through her fingertips and was etched into the spirit crystal. She had used the Cursed Cage many times. She liked the three arrays on her first spirit crystal dagger very much. However, after the dagger was destroyed, she continued to use the transformation function of the spirit crystal heart and did not make herself another weapon.
Since this is an experiment, let's start with the basic version: eighteen layers, which sounds simpler.
The first level was indeed simple, and the technique was skillful. However, this rune array could not be closed; the second level needed to be inscribed along the lines. As the lines began to be drawn, the consumption of spiritual energy noticeably increased, and the spiritual meridians within the body became active.
The second layer was a closed formation. The moment it closed, it absorbed about one-third of Ning Xiaoxi's spiritual energy, and the entire second formation began to shimmer with a faint silver light. The third layer of the formation surrounded the second and first layers, superimposing the two layers together. Just before it closed, Ning Xiaoxi didn't mobilize the spiritual energy within her body; instead, she activated the spirit crystal beneath her feet to replenish the spiritual energy needed by the formation.
The fourth layer opened another cycle, and so on, every three arrays nested together to form a cycle array. When the six cycle arrays were completed, the spiritual energy of the entire spirit crystal floor was completely absorbed, and the eighteen layers of Heaven and Earth Restriction Array instantly merged into the ice and snow, emitting a burst of golden light before disappearing.