This sword thrust forward, piercing through the facial bone and out again, cracking open the skull, leaving the face completely shattered. The eyeballs burst out, flying far away, leaving the face completely unrecognizable.
Having learned from past experiences, Tie Dan, to prevent any miraculous reversals, didn’t hesitate to strike ruthlessly, cutting open the chest and gutting the belly, extracting the Nascent Soul with one sword strike, and scattering it as sword aura pulsed. Then he continued to cleave and chop, dismembering the body into five pieces.
However, it must be said that the folks from Chaoyang Valley were somewhat lacking, failing to properly solidify even the basic Inner Strength, their path overly focused. Does alchemy really consume so much time and effort? Surely they’ve refined quite a bit of good stuff?
Thus, Tie Dan carefully searched, and naturally found quite a number of bottles and jars on the Elixir Cultivator’s body, though what Elixirs they contained, he couldn’t tell, and not being from the Divine Farmer’s Clan, he didn’t dare use them recklessly.
As for the other storage jade pendants, jade hairpins, jewelry, and bracelets, there were plenty, but without the corresponding spell formulas, they were essentially useless, so he took the soft whip and stored the Elixir Pills in a gourd to identify later, and burned the remaining trash.
Continuing to jump along the star positions, he quickly left the forest path and saw a Taoist Palace perched at the mountain’s peak, right at the center of the Star Dome, reachable only by a hanging path between mountains.
Before the mountain path stood a stone stele named Xingxuan Temple, indicating the convergence of three veins of Spiritual Qi within the array, continuously flowing and infusing into it—undoubtedly the Xingxuan Ancestor’s secluded place for preaching Dao.
Ascending the stone steps to the sky, one could see around the ’starry sky,’ where hundreds of magic treasures were suspended, shining brightly, orbiting like stars, seemingly able to pluck stars and embrace the moon, with celestial stars ready at hand.
But with each step, the star positions would change instantly. Unless one was a true heir of the Xingxuan Sect, capable of calculating star trajectory, or possessing a great fortune, it would be impossible to touch them, no matter how close they seemed.
However, Tie Dan didn’t care much about the teachings and techniques, casting an Invisibility Technique to climb up the path, reaching the front of the temple, feeling the whole world flipping again, clearly stepping out of the array’s influence.
Upon entering the Taoist Temple, Tie Dan immediately saw a Pill Furnace in the main hall burning with fierce flames, hot broth boiling inside, emitting wafts of medicinal fragrance. It seemed that the ’clay pot’ was all set for alchemy.
Tie Dan circled around but didn’t see the other four people in the temple, assuming they had gone to catch dogs in the other two Array Diagrams. In the main hall of Xingxuan Temple, it was filled with Daoist Books. Tie Dan flipped through them and discovered that they were all arithmetic collections, clearly the true secret teachings of the Xingxuan Sect.
Tie Dan skimmed through, and roughly calculated according to the bookshelf’s sequence, noticing that each shelf of books corresponded to the number of floating magic treasures. Once you finished a shelf of problems, you could calculate the trajectory of a piece of magic treasure and be rewarded with one. And only by getting a magic treasure could you control a treasure to fly out of the array.
It must be said that this Xingxuan Ancestor went to great lengths to encourage disciples to study arithmetic, implementing a dual mechanism of positive and negative feedback. So even if the disciples weren’t after magic treasures, they’d have to frantically solve problems if they wanted to leave...
Of course, the disciples who came for each generation’s trials at the Xingxuan Sect understood the ancestor’s intention and didn’t take too many or couldn’t stand solving so many problems. It appeared that there were still over a hundred in the sky, indicating that the ancestor was not only skilled in arithmetic but also an expert in Artifact Refining, only that deep skills like these were not taught here, being part of higher-level teachings.
Tie Dan, having no time to study other people’s secret teachings, hid in the room, as there was no Star Power to borrow. He could only use an Invisibility Technique, combine it with a Qi Sealing Skill, and squat at the door, ready for an ambush, taking down what he could.
Fortunately, he had some luck, or Ling Biao’s luck was not too good; after Tie Dan squatted for two hours, there was a noise at the door accompanied by Ling Biao’s miserable cries, clearly being brought back by someone.
But Ling Biao’s Escape Skill wasn’t that poor either. For them to catch him, it seemed those people did have some skills.