Chapter 646: Mad Demon (2)

My killing intent toward Chen Jiuge had peaked, impossible to suppress any longer. I drew a talisman with my own essence blood and charged into the grand array.

"Come back! Are you crazy?" Wang Wu stood at the entrance of the secret passage, scared silly. I had charged straight into the grand array without warning, a scene completely beyond his imagination.

He gaped, sucking his half-exhaled breath back into his lungs. "Lunatic! You're a rabid dog!"

Chen Jiuge's main consciousness had already occupied Gu Bei's body and left. Only his physical shell remained behind the grand array. I had simply waited for the right moment to strike.

This wasn't recklessness; it was decisiveness—at least, I thought so.

The moment I violently crashed into the grand array, hundreds of talismans lit up. Warning systems, protective barriers, and various functional formations all activated at once.

The tranquility shattered. Divine patterns flowed across the hall, and dust billowed into the air as the entire earth began to tremble.

The grand array was interconnected, forming a single entity where pulling a single hair moved the entire body, to say nothing of my barbaric impact.

"Open!" The Hundred Dispel Talisman drastically countered talismanic methods and evil arts. Back during the Heart-Slaying Dao Inquiry at Xinhu High School, Lu Chen had used this exact talisman to shatter mine.

The outer warning layer of the grand array lacked lethality and was quickly dismantled. The talismans on the four walls turned to ash, drifting through the air like withered autumn leaves.

The further inward I walked, the greater the resistance. The internal formations all carried offensive properties and were extremely dangerous. If my Hundred Dispel Talisman wasn't a Blood Talisman drawn with essence blood, infused with my vital energy and unyielding will, it would have been crushed already.

"Get over here and help me!" After just a few steps, the Hundred Dispel Talisman in my palm already showed signs of dissipating. My cheeks flushed red as I shouted back to Wang Wu.

"Help you with what? Accompany you to your death?" Wang Wu stood outside the array without the slightest intention of lifting a finger. He stared at the Jade Bone clutched in my other hand, his eyes darting as if plotting something malicious.

I couldn't count on him. I could only brace myself and push further inside.

The array was profound. When I reached within five meters of Chen Jiuge's physical body, the seemingly ordinary floor tiles shattered. Pure black-and-yellow earth energy surged up, forming four enclosing walls to protect him at the center.

"Drawing out earth energy... isn't Mr. Paper's mastery in feng shui a little too terrifying?" I had read about black-and-yellow earth energy in the books at Blind Liu's house. It blocked all sorts of methods; only a true feng shui master could delve deep into the earth's veins to extract and wield it.

Shrouded in earth energy, it was as if a massive, overturned bowl were protecting Chen Jiuge's physical body.

"No wonder he dared to send his consciousness into Gu Bei's body before the internal threats were cleared. He had this trump card all along." With earth energy protecting him, his physical body was practically connected to the earth. Until that energy dissipated, it repelled all methods, granting immunity to most Daoist techniques and evil arts.

After I advanced a few more meters, the blood on my Hundred Dispel Talisman dried up, its spiritual resonance plummeting. Even worse, the original offensive formations within the grand array activated.

Streaks of silver talismans shimmered with faint light and shot toward me.

The talismans were like blades, capable of slashing worldly enemies.

I waved the Hundred Dispel Talisman to block them, but there was too much talisman light; protecting my body was fundamentally impossible.

I barely dodged the initial few streaks. Although I wasn't injured, my clothes were slashed to shreds.

"How could talismans possess such power? The experts on Two-Faced Buddha's side are truly formidable!"

But this was no time to marvel. When I stepped within three meters of the sand table, the talismans multiplied, skyrocketing from a few to dozens!

Caught off guard, every angle was sealed shut, leaving absolutely no room to dodge.

"I warned you, but you just wouldn't listen. Dying here works too, though fishing your bones out of the grand array will be quite troublesome." Wang Wu shook his head outside, apparently already anticipating the gruesome scene of my body being torn to pieces.

In truth, when I first saw those talismans, my thoughts matched Wang Wu's.

The power of those unknown silver talisman blades was massive. Even the Hundred Dispel Talisman I had drawn with my own essence blood would struggle to fend them off.

In a split second of life or death, I made the only correct choice and retreated.

But how could a human outrun flying talisman blades? Just as the silver talismans were about to slash into me, an unforeseen change abruptly occurred.

The incomparably sharp talisman blades slashed my clothes, but the moment they touched my skin, they lost their power. They fluttered directly to the ground, reverting into ordinary Talisman Paper.

"What's going on?" Having survived disaster, joy flashed across my face, though I remained completely baffled. 'The silver talismans only shredded my clothes but didn't harm my body. Is this related to my special fate pattern? With my Life Lock constantly opening, is my fate pattern finally awakening?'

Lowering my head to check my chest, I realized I had rejoiced over nothing.

What saved me was not my fate pattern, but the Burial Scripture from Qingtu Temple.

The tattered original copy of the Burial Scripture had actually triggered the feng shui terrain of Jianghu Cancer Research Hospital. I looked around and saw inconspicuous ancient characters surfacing on the walls, echoing the Burial Scripture from afar. The vigorous handwriting inside the ancient book swam across its pages like silver dragons, recombining into brand-new sentences.

"The living are all ghosts, ritually buried within. Cycling from beginning to end, eternal auspiciousness and no misfortune!"

"Burial is to conceal, to ride upon the energy of life."

"The breath of yin and yang belches forth as wind, rises as clouds, descends as rain, and moving through the earth, becomes the energy of life."

...

The characters in the scroll corresponded with the ones on the walls. Because they shared the same origin, they instinctively shielded me while I held the Burial Scripture.

"Could Mr. Paper's layout in Jianghu Cancer Research Hospital have referenced the Burial Scripture? Or did he learn some methods from it?" Ever since I first noticed those unrecognizable ancient characters on the walls, I had found it strange, constantly suspecting this place was connected to the Burial Scripture.

"He must have a remnant volume of the Burial Scripture." The grand array was intricately interlocked, and the failure of some functions triggered disastrous consequences. First, the Broken Face Wenqu Terrain began to lose control, and massive amounts of corpse energy surged up from the depths of the earth. Like during an earthquake, the hollowed-out area beneath the building was now battered by both earth energy and corpse energy, rendering the structure completely unstable and liable to collapse at any moment. Second, loopholes opened in the array; a small handful of white fiends could now break free from Chen Jiuge's control. In the short term, this benefited me, but in the long run, it would cause endless harm.

"The commotion is getting a bit too big." I didn't have time to flip through the transformed Burial Scripture. Putting it away, I turned and cast a casual glance at Wang Wu.

The Live Show Phone was still safely in my pocket. The only witness here was Wang Wu.

'The Burial Scripture cannot be exposed. I have another reason to kill him.' I silently turned back around. Outside the array, Wang Wu remained completely oblivious. Taking a deep breath, I shouted, "Come help! This is the best chance to butcher Chen Jiuge!"

Wang Wu hesitated before walking toward me very reluctantly.

The earth's veins trembled, and the black-and-yellow earth energy grew unstable. I raised my left hand and slowly reached toward Chen Jiuge.

My left hand had been infected by yin poison, and it had touched the Black Chess Piece in the earth veins of the Three Yin Sect, controlling the death gate of the Ten Directions Ghost Refining Grand Formation. This hand possessed a strong resistance against both malevolent yin energy and earth energy.

"Open!"

My palm passed through the black-and-yellow earth energy, grabbing the upright Chen Jiuge on the sand table. "Get out here!"

Going all out, I yanked Chen Jiuge's body upward, but to my surprise, the silver sand on the sand table clung tightly to his lower half. "How is this sand so sentient?"

"That's not sand." Just because the array wasn't attacking me didn't mean it wouldn't attack others. Wang Wu tried several times but failed to get inside. He tossed me a lighter. "I've been meaning to tell you. That's not a sand table in the center; it's an Insect Coffin. And what's inside isn't sand, but un-matured White Worms. By relying on the connection between them and the mature worms, that guy surnamed Chen can see and hear in all directions, keeping a clear grasp of every tiny movement inside the hospital."

'Been meaning to tell me?' I scoffed inwardly. Wang Wu harbored his own malicious intentions; if he hadn't seen a chance to kill Chen Jiuge, he never would have shared such a well-kept secret.

Holding the lighter, I was about to ignite the Insect Coffin when a deafening roar suddenly rang out from beyond the door.

"Stop!"