Chapter 300 - Eight Bells and the Returning Cloud

Chapter 300: Chapter 300 - Eight Bells and the Returning Cloud

The sound from the bells was strangely soft.

It should have disappeared beneath the noise of the battlefield, yet every cultivator nearby heard it clearly.

There was no violent explosion of Qi and no visible spiritual wave.

The change occurred directly around the eight demonic cultivators.

Their figures suddenly blurred.

Su Bai narrowed his eyes from within Radiant Sky Sect.

For an instant, it looked as though his vision had simply lost focus. When he sent his spiritual sense toward them, however, the sensation became far stranger.

His perception reached the correct area, but it refused to settle on the people standing there.

Each time his spiritual sense tried to lock onto one of the demonic cultivators, it slipped away from the target and passed beside him.

The same thing happened to everyone else.

Jian Wushuang released a narrow sword light as a test.

The attack crossed the suppression field.

The demonic cultivator barely moved.

Yet the sword light passed beside his body, missing by several feet.

Li Xuanzong watched carefully.

"It interferes with targeting."

The Zhuge Clan expert reached the same conclusion.

"It isn’t making them intangible."

That distinction mattered.

The bells did not erase the cultivators from reality, nor did they make their bodies impossible to strike. Instead, they distorted the perception needed to accurately locate them.

A large enough indiscriminate attack could still reach them, but a precise technique dependent on spiritual-sense locking was much easier to mislead.

The bells rang again.

The blurring strengthened.

Even Shen Youran’s next cluster of ice shards spread slightly wider than intended when she tried to track the cultivators individually.

Her expression grew colder.

Inside the suppression field, the demons began moving again. While several remained standing to watch the righteous side, a few of them suddenly sat down and placed dark discs across their laps.

Su Bai’s attention shifted toward those seated cultivators.

Dense formation patterns covered the surfaces of the discs, and his eyes narrowed almost immediately.

’Those were not ordinary artifacts. They looked more like compact formation plates.’

Su Bai activated the Dao-Shattering Jade within him only long enough to sharpen his perception of the patterns.

His expression changed the moment he understood what he was seeing.

’Space.’

The outer markings were definitely interacting with space.

He could not determine the exact structure from such a distance, especially while the bells continued disrupting spiritual sense, but the spatial nature of the formation was already enough to make his expression turn serious.

"They might be preparing to escape."

Lu Canghai heard him and immediately followed his gaze toward the seated cultivators.

Meanwhile, the demons who had remained standing reacted almost at the same time. They suddenly reached into their robes and produced another group of talismans.

Their movements were too coordinated to be improvised.

This time, however, none of the talismans were aimed at the righteous Void-Shattering cultivators surrounding them.

The demons turned toward Radiant Sky Sect.

A moment later, dozens of talismans shot through the air.

The spiritual pressure released from them was weaker than Void-Shattering, but there were enough that their combined threat could not be ignored.

Su Bai recognized the power contained within the talismans almost immediately.

Each one carried the strength of a Nascent Soul cultivator.

Their direction made the demons’ intention obvious.

They were aimed directly at Radiant Sky Sect.

More importantly, they were attacking from inside the suppression field while Shen Youran was responsible for controlling the entire formation.

If she diverted too much attention toward protecting the sect, the pressure suppressing the eight demons could loosen.

If she ignored the talismans, dozens of Nascent Soul-level attacks would reach the mountains behind her.

Shen Youran understood the intention immediately.

Her fingers moved, and layers of ice formed across the incoming paths.

Several talismans struck the frozen defenses and exploded, but too many remained. Stopping all of them would force her to divide too much attention from the suppression formation.

At that moment, white mist began gathering above Radiant Sky Sect.

It thickened rapidly, spreading outward until a vast bank of cloud covered the space between the sect and the incoming attacks.

The first talisman disappeared into the cloud, and the spiritual pressure within it vanished almost at once.

More followed.

Flames sank into the white mist without spreading, while streaks of sword light disappeared before they could emerge from the other side. Even a Nascent Soul-level palm manifestation was swallowed whole, as though the cloud had no end.

Within moments, the entire wave of attacks had vanished.

Only after the last talisman disappeared did a familiar figure step onto the cloud.

Lu Canghai stroked his beard.

The eight demonic cultivators turned toward him.

The reaction was immediate.

Their expressions became considerably uglier.

One of them muttered, "That shameless old man again."

Lu Canghai’s smile widened.

"What?"

He glanced down at himself before looking back at them.

"Is this your first time seeing such a handsome old man?"

The demonic cultivator’s face twitched.

Lu Canghai stroked his beard again.

"Or would you prefer to suffocate inside my clouds again?"

That finally changed several expressions.

Su Bai looked between his master and the trapped cultivators.

Apparently, there was history here.

He decided he could ask about it later.

The clouds surrounding Lu Canghai continued spreading, forming a pale sea between Radiant Sky Sect and the suppressed battlefield.

His cultivation was no longer at the realm it once had been, but that did not erase his experience.

The Nascent Soul-level talismans had barely inconvenienced him.

More importantly, he had freed Shen Youran from having to divide her attention between controlling the Sect-Scale Formation and protecting the sect from distractions.

The eight demonic cultivators understood that as well.

The seated men increased the flow of blood into the discs resting on their laps.

Spatial patterns began glowing.

Lu Canghai watched for several breaths before his smile faded slightly.

He turned toward Li Xuanzong.

"Old Li."

Li Xuanzong glanced at him.

"Stop holding back so much."

The other righteous experts looked toward Lu Canghai.

He pointed at the discs.

"My disciple took one look and said those things are probably for escaping. They have been throwing artifact after artifact at us, but all they are really doing is buying enough time to finish those formations."

The eight demonic cultivators went still for the briefest moment.

That was confirmation enough.

Lu Canghai smiled again.

"As for whatever else they still have..."

The cloud beneath his feet thickened.

White mist spread outward until several mountains below disappeared beneath it.

"I’ll handle it."

One of the demonic cultivators sneered, though the expression lacked some of its earlier confidence.

"You aren’t even a Void-Shattering cultivator anymore."

Lu Canghai’s smile did not disappear.

"No."

He looked almost nostalgic.

"But I used to make Void-Shattering cultivators suffer for fun."

The air around the suppression field changed.

For the first time since their arrival, the eight demonic cultivators showed something that none of their injuries, Shen Youran’s suppression, or the surrounding righteous experts had managed to force from them.

Their calculations stopped.

Their expressions tightened.

And several of them looked genuinely alarmed.