Chapter 632: This Scheme of Yours Is So Loud, I Can Hear It Even from the Underworld

Beside the muddy pit where the shriveled corpse of the Lightwing Bird had fallen, a dim speck of light almost indistinguishable from the swamp flickered faintly.

It was a gray-black fragment no larger than a fingernail.

Su Ming’s gaze instantly locked onto the fragment. Relying on a Formation Master’s instincts, he immediately determined that it was a fragment of a control node from the Dark Current Sect’s remote control of this baleful formation. The node had been unable to withstand the pressure caused by extracting too much life force and had shattered.

A broken character rune resembling “Devour” was faintly carved into the fragment’s surface. Along the edge of the rune was also a blurred set of directional coordinates.

Su Ming’s toes shifted slightly, and he was just about to move forward.

“Stop! Don’t touch it!” Lin Yu’s shout rang out in Su Ming’s Consciousness Sea.

Su Ming’s footsteps came to a dead stop.

“Your habit of squeezing through every crack to fish for benefits will get you killed sooner or later!” Lin Yu’s Soul Body suddenly shot out of the ring and blocked Su Ming’s view. “This came from the Dark Current Sect’s core formation. There’s an eighty or ninety percent chance that it carries the most vicious kind of tracing mark! The moment you dare touch it with your hand, the mark will firmly lock onto the aura of your human flesh. That would be the same as raising a huge banner right in front of those lunatics and shouting, ‘I’m right here! Come kill me!’”

Su Ming’s expression remained unchanged. He did not feel embarrassed by Lin Yu’s reprimand. Instead, he calmly nodded.

“Your lesson is well taken, Master.” A sly curve formed at the corner of Su Ming’s lips. “But if I leave this coordinate fragment here and simply give up on it, that would be completely inconsistent with the discipline of a Way of Survival Array Cultivator like me.”

“What kind of trouble are you planning to cause now?” Lin Yu’s illusory eyes widened.

Su Ming did not answer. He slowly raised his right hand.

He did not reach directly toward the fragment lying in the mud. Instead, standing three zhang away, he slightly curled his fingers.

“Like Water, Condense.”

A thread of pure, deep-blue water spiritual energy, carrying not the slightest trace of living matter, flowed silently from his fingertips. The stream stretched extremely thin in midair, like a transparent spider thread, and quietly descended above the fragment.

Then the stream transformed into a water membrane as thin as a cicada’s wing, completely wrapping the mud-covered fragment inside and utterly cutting off all exchange of energy aura between it and the outside world.

Su Ming gently flicked his wrist.

The fragment, wrapped in the water membrane, rose into the air. It traced an almost imperceptible arc before dropping directly into a jade box sealed by an isolation formation at the very deepest part of the storage pouch around his waist.

“To use such exquisite water-control techniques just to pick up a piece of trash, your scheme is truly so loud that even the underworld can hear it.” Seeing this, Lin Yu could not help but let out a mocking laugh, though the tension in his voice had already faded.

Su Ming fastened the storage pouch tightly, but his expression gradually turned grim.

“Master, this is not trash.” Su Ming closed his eyes, and his thoughts began racing wildly through his Consciousness Sea. “When I wrapped it in the water membrane just now, I used my divine sense to scan the blurred coordinates on its surface.”

“Oh?” Lin Yu’s smile faded. “Where do they point?”

Su Ming spread the map of the spirit realm from Qingyan’s memories through his mind. Then he gradually overlaid the coordinates with the distribution pattern of the Dark Current Sect’s baleful formations that he had deduced.

“Using the coordinates on this fragment as the starting point and combining them with the coverage of the formation just now, I deduced a terrifying arrangement.” Su Ming opened his eyes, his gaze cold and sharp. “The coordinates on this fragment do not exist in isolation. They point to at least seventeen crucial earth-vein nodes surrounding Greenwood Court.”

Su Ming crouched down and quickly drew a crescent-shaped outline in the soil. Then, around that outline, he placed seventeen dots.

“Three layers.” Su Ming pointed at the dots, his voice terrifyingly low. “The Dark Current Sect has used three entire layers of crescent-shaped baleful formations to form a surrounding blockade, completely severing Greenwood Court’s connection with the outside world. They are using this enormous baleful formation to slowly tighten a noose around Greenwood Court’s neck.”

Lin Yu stared at the crude yet murderous diagram on the ground and drew in a sharp breath. “Those bastards are truly ambitious. Do they intend to slowly kill the entire Neutralist faction, along with that old tree spirit with a Wood Heart, inside?”

“They are waiting for Greenwood Court’s life force to run dry, subduing its people without even having to fight.” Su Ming stood up and flattened the diagram beneath his foot. “Master, we have to move faster. Once this three-layer encirclement fully closes and the formations connect into a single network, getting inside will be as difficult as climbing to the heavens.”

“Right now, I have to find a sufficiently safe gap in this inescapable net.”

Like a ghost, Su Ming swiftly retreated into the shadows deeper within the Light Forest.

He found a relatively flat patch of ground and crouched down. Then he broke off a dead branch from nearby. Although he had already completed a preliminary deduction in his mind, he had always believed in the cautious principle that a poor pen was better than a good memory.

The dead branch moved rapidly across the damp soil, producing a faint rustling sound.

Su Ming’s gaze was utterly focused. At that moment, his mind was like a precision deduction compass operating at full capacity. The locations of the seventeen baleful formations were accurately marked on the earth.

Before long, he drew a large circle representing Greenwood Court. Around that circle, the three crescent-shaped lines of blockade appeared vividly on the soil like three bloodstained sickles.

Su Ming’s brows furrowed slightly as the dead branch moved back and forth among the formation nodes.

“The encirclement is extremely tight.” Su Ming murmured in a low voice, seemingly talking to himself and seemingly discussing the matter with Lin Yu. “The first layer focuses on blockade, the second is responsible for slaughter, and the third cuts off the return flow of the earth veins. This kind of linked formation affects the entire structure once a single part is disturbed.”

Lin Yu’s Soul Body floated nearby, his illusory fingers stroking his chin. “This arrangement is indeed vicious. If you force your way through the formation, even if you understand its structure, the instant you disturb a single anchor point, the other two layers will crush you into minced meat.”

“So we cannot break through the formation. We can only find a flaw.” Su Ming’s gaze, sharp as an eagle’s, searched inch by inch across the diagram of the three crescent-shaped lines of blockade.

Suddenly, his dead branch stopped at an apparently insignificant gap on the northeastern side of the blockade.

Su Ming rubbed his fingertip back and forth over that spot, sensing the vague geographical features contained in Qingyan’s memories.

“Master.” A faint curve finally appeared at the corner of Su Ming’s lips. “There is a mark here indicating an underground river.”

Lin Yu came over and glanced at the location, raising his brows slightly. “This waterway can indeed perfectly avoid the three-layer encirclement of the baleful formations. It can enter the outskirts of Greenwood Court directly without anyone noticing, saving a great deal of time and preventing a head-on clash with the Dark Current Sect.”

Moreover, Su Ming primarily cultivated the Like Water Art. The light beneath the water was dim, and with the assistance of his cultivation method, he was ninety percent confident that he could move forward without alerting any living creature. More importantly, he still had the layer of life essence coat covering his body as his final disguise.

“Taking the waterway is the safest option.” Su Ming threw away the dead branch and completely wiped away the diagram on the ground with the soles of his feet, leaving not the slightest trace behind.

He raised his head and explained to Lin Yu, “The flow of water in the underground river is extremely irregular. This natural chaotic fluctuation will seriously interfere with the stability of spatial anchor points. No matter how skilled the Dark Current Sect’s Formation Masters are, they cannot firmly establish a baleful formation in a turbulent underground river. This is the only gap in their inescapable net.”

“Then let’s go.” Lin Yu spoke indifferently as his Soul Body once again sank into the Xuantian ring.

Su Ming adjusted his breathing and urged the life essence coat covering his body into its optimal state. Then his figure flashed, becoming a faint purple shadow as he stealthily traveled eastward along the Light Forest.

About half an hour later, beneath a Precipitous Cliff at the boundary between the Gloomlight Forest and the fluorescent swamp, Su Ming found the entrance formed by the collapse of the underground river.