Chapter Seventy-Four: I'm Spilling the Beans!
Li Changshou was completely puzzled at the moment.
Why in the world were there suddenly three old Daoists at the top of Little Qiong Peak, all in the Immortal Realm?
Two of them were elders from within the sect, and one he didn't recognize, but he had seen him at the entrance to Linhai Town before, and his aura seemed somewhat familiar...
And why were Ao Yi and Jiu Wu wandering around the outer maze?
With a dragon-horned youth in front and a short Daoist floating behind, the former seemed to be in a hurry while the latter had a sinister smile...
And they were both following the directions of a wooden sign, heading towards the guest room they had set up...
What was the deal with these two getting together?
It must be some kind of special fate that led them all the way here, turning them into a pair of troublemakers...
What the heck was going on?
Was this another one of Jiu Wu's arrangements?
It didn't make sense. Over the years, his relationship with Jiu Wu had grown deeper, and the effect of the Grand Dao Oath was still there...
Hmm?
There were still many Immortal Realm experts heading towards the main hall in the direction of the main peak, gathering in the main hall that was usually closed...
Li Changshou quickly realized what was happening.
He had encountered a group from the Jiujiao Sect in Linhai Town, overhearing their conversation. It seemed they were coming to discuss and exchange views with the Immortal Sects...
Never would he have thought that the group from the Jiujiao Sect was coming to discuss with the Duexian Sect!
Ao Yi had some grudges with the Duexian Sect. After all, he was the Second Prince of the Eastern Sea Dragon Palace, and the relationship between the Eastern Sea Dragon Palace and the various Immortal Sects of the Eastern Divine Continent had been somewhat tense in recent decades...
Could it be that this time, the little dragon wanted to provoke a conflict between the Human and Jiujiao Sects?
It shouldn't be. Ao Yi didn't seem that foolish. If he really did that, the Dragon Clan would be easily defeated by the leader of the Jiujiao Sect in an instant...
Although this little dragon did seem a bit... not very bright...
Drunk too much honey and hurt his dragon brain?
Li Changshou pondered for a moment. At first, he was completely confused by the situation, but soon he realized.
At this moment, he could faintly feel that all the eyes of the Duexian Sect were focused on Little Qiong Peak.
Those strands of Immortal Awareness, Spirit Awareness, were all staring at the surroundings of the alchemy room...
Among the disciples of the Duexian Sect, his performance in cultivation was considered above average, so there shouldn't be any problems in that regard.
Every effect has a cause.
He had encountered Ao Yi before his tribulation, but that was just a chance event...
He was sure Ao Yi hadn't recognized him. At that time, the only ones who had appeared were the same cold-faced old Daoist with the same face, breath, and taste.
That... was probably the matter of exchanging pointers at the Eastern Sea Demon Slaying Conference...
This little dragon didn't intentionally lose to him last time, and he was not happy about it. His mind was clouded, and after so many years, he had come from afar to give him another chance?
Li Changshou sighed softly in the secret chamber...
"I'll never understand the thought process of these two, the dragon and the girl."
Now, what to do...
Li Changshou observed the paper-man incarnation in the alchemy room and saw that the three test sensing stones it carried were only faintly flickering—obviously triggered by his Immortal Awareness.
After a slight hesitation, he turned into a wisp of blue smoke and returned to the alchemy room...
Inside the alchemy room, Li Changshou disappeared in an instant, and then immediately reappeared.
He stepped over to the cushion behind the alchemy furnace and sat down, closing his eyes and contemplating. Following his previous instructions to his junior sister, he pretended to be focused on enlightenment...
Li Changshou thought for a moment. If he broke through the bottleneck while in seclusion, he should have some breakthroughs. So he secretly adjusted the Turtle Breath Calm Qi Technique.
Surface disguise: Fifth Stage of Return to Void Realm;
Inner disguise: Ninth Stage of Return to Void Realm;
Deep disguise: Primordial Immortal Realm;
After doing all this, Li Changshou began to frantically check and introspect himself, finally making sure that there were no details that could reveal his bottom cards around Little Qiong Peak...
At this time, Ling'e was also obediently hiding in her grass house, pretending to be cultivating.
This time, his junior sister's performance was quite good.
A little praise was in order.
Li Changshou knew that now he could only pretend to be in seclusion and wait for the high-level experts in the sect to wake him up, or be alarmed by the movement in the formation...
As for what to do next, he could only retreat in order to advance, finding a chance to divert the other side's attention!
In the main formation.
Following the directions of the wooden sign, they finally arrived at the "open-air tea room", and Ao Yi and Jiu Wu couldn't help but exchange a glance.
At this moment, Ao Yi was still a young boy of about twelve or thirteen years old, with a height of about six feet with his horns, taller than Jiu Wu by a head.
After reading what was written on the wooden sign, he turned to look around, his expression full of confusion.
Jiu Wu chuckled, "Prince Ao Yi, it's obvious there's another fork in the road here."
Ao Yi frowned, "I've already found my way through all these basic formations. Why can't I get out of here?"
"This is a linked formation created by Long Shou," Jiu Wu said. "After one path, there's another formation. To crack this formation, you must have a profound understanding of formation techniques. Prince Ao Yi, don't force it."
"Hmph!" Ao Yi snorted softly, indifferently saying, "I don't believe I'll be trapped here today!"
With that, he took out a pale blue treasure from his chest. This treasure shimmered faintly, instantly interrupting the flow of spiritual energy within the large formation.
Ao Yi smiled faintly and turned back the way he came, quickly finding a new path.
Jiu Wu hurriedly followed behind, but the smile on this short Daoist's lips became even more pronounced...
Back then, when he and Jiu Shi teamed up, they were confused by this large formation; today, this formation was obviously more perfect and refined than the one they encountered back then...
Essentially, this linked formation was just a combination of basic formations, but under the careful design of Long Shou, it could be described as a stroke of genius.
Half an hour later...
Ao Yi looked at the wooden sign in front of him, his mouth twitching.
"Lost again?"
He came back again!
"Damn it!" Ao Yi's delicate face twitched a bit from clenching his teeth too hard, then he turned and walked towards another path.
In the alchemy room;
Li Changshou slowly opened his left eye.
The young dragon seemed to possess a talisman capable of breaking formations, but it kept circling around the periphery, showing only superficial knowledge of formation techniques.
After some consideration, Li Changshou secretly dismantled several layers of formations within a hundred paces of the alchemy room. This would allow the celestial immortals to see him meditating in seclusion here as long as they paid attention to the location of the alchemy room.
This made more sense.
...
Half an hour later.
In the sky above Little Qiongfeng Peak, three celestial immortals had varying expressions. The elder from the Immortal Gate naturally smiled, but not excessively so; Yuanze, the old Daoist, also smiled, though his brows furrowed occasionally.
They could roughly see the situation within the formation, witnessing Ao Yi spinning around like a headless fly. Yuanze, the old Daoist, felt somewhat anxious.
Within the formation.
Ao Yi's eyes were bloodshot, his mental state quite unstable. He carried a sword and held a pearl as he paced quickly within the grand formation.
Jiu Wu floated behind him at a steady pace, wary of Ao Yi using the Spirit Treasure Long Sword to break the formation...
Later, Jiu Wu would directly ask his master to take action, pulling the two out and making the Dragon Palace crown prince admit defeat.
His nephew Changshou didn't even need to leave seclusion; everything had been handled by him!
Gradually, Ao Yi's breathing became rapid...
But even though Ao Yi was anxious, he remained composed, without any unusual actions.
Breaking the formation was his promise; if he could break through, he would win!
The formations here were all basic formations that could be set up by Refining Qi cultivators in the Void Returning Realm, but he just couldn't break out...
He couldn't even find the formation's core!
He had learned so many formation principles during his time with Master Egg... Were the dragons really so inept in the art of formations?
No, the dragon race could still rise again!
Jiu Wu whispered softly, "Prince Ao Yi, why don't we reconsider..."
"I'm breaking the formation!"
Ao Yi turned his head and growled softly.
"Ah, please, please."
Jiu Wu immediately grinned, following closely behind, afraid of losing track of Ao Yi.
Outside the formation, on the clouds.
After a brief discussion, two young girls suggested, "Master, you've taught us a lot about formations. Why don't Sister Rourou and I go down and give it a try? It has nothing to do with sparring with Uncle Ao Yi; we're just interested."
Yuanze, the old Daoist, looked at the two elders from the Immortal Gate beside him, both of whom nodded in agreement.
They also wanted to see how profound the nested basic formations outside Little Qiongfeng Peak were...
Unexpectedly, they found a talent in the art of formations!
Later, they instructed the Bai Fan Palace to focus on nurturing talents in this area.
"Go ahead, go ahead," Yuanze, the old Daoist, waved his hand. The two girls, hand in hand, floated down and entered the formation.
Moments later...
The two girls in the Nascent Immortal realm looked at the wooden plaque ahead, their foreheads covered in black lines.
["Lost?"]
Hanzhi whispered, "The person who set up this formation is really arrogant!"
"There's another wooden plaque ahead."
"Let's see what tricks he has up his sleeve. Let's go check it out!"
Today's guests at the 'Open-air Tea House' were more numerous than in the past ten years...
...
Inside the alchemy room, Li Changshou, who was observing everything with his divine sense, sighed silently and continued to pretend to be in seclusion for a breakthrough.
Fortunately, he had already revealed the key secrets of the nested formation to the disciples inside the sect through Jiu Wu, and he had even received a reward of an alchemy furnace from the sect.
This was the last hidden danger, and he had already dealt with it in advance.
However, after today, the formations around his alchemy room would probably become a major attraction within the sect...
The true Little Qiongfeng's reserved project - the Maze Formation Adventure!
Moreover, with this incident, combined with previous events, his identity as an "outstanding disciple" had attracted too much attention.
This really gave Li Changshou a headache...
The character of an outstanding disciple was too thin to sustain anymore!
This time, he would take the opportunity to reveal the strength of a "mediocre immortal seedling." Otherwise, the various anomalies would be even harder to explain.
Li Changshou pondered rapidly in his heart.
Disguise lies in balance in all aspects, requiring a "degree" to make people feel like they've seen through one's true nature at a glance. This is actually the higher realm of disguise.
The strategy used to deal with Jiu Wu back then was to expose a little to him, making him think he knew everything about himself...
This time, dealing with the various high-level experts within the sect, he could only continue with this strategy. Perhaps he could gain some benefits from it...
Now, he could only reveal the level of his cultivation close to the "probationary immortal seedling" stage and divert some attention to his cultivation level, thereby covering up other anomalies.
He had to make them feel like, "So he does have decent qualifications. No wonder he can cause so much trouble." That would be enough...
Then, Li Changshou just needed to stay stable for a few years, intentionally hit a bottleneck, and let his cultivation level return to that of an "outstanding" disciple. Then, the sect wouldn't pay much attention to him as a disciple of Little Qiongfeng.
If some aspects of his cultivation level were revealed now, he could make up for them later; but if other aspects were exposed, it would be quite troublesome...
He would have to be extra careful in the future.
The hidden cards he had painstakingly concealed were for dealing with various dangers and for better survival; exposing even a small part of them in this situation would be a loss.
Speaking of which, back then in the underwater... he should have given Ao Yi a bit of confusion potion!
Just ensure it's only a tiny dose!
Half an hour passed again...
The sunset filled the sky to the west, illuminating the faces of the elders from the Immortal Gate, their smiles as radiant as chrysanthemums despite their somewhat wrinkled faces; two Refining Qi cultivators from Golden Tortoise Island and three elders from the Immortal Gate arrived at the scene.
In their hearts, each of the elders praised Li Changshou and Jiu Jiu for their cleverness in coming up with this method to deal with Ao Yi.
Really cunning.
An elder from the Immortal Gate took the lead to offer an explanation, saying, "The formations here were meticulously designed by our Immortal Gate disciple Li Changshou, who has been studying the nested formation method for many years. Though they are all basic formations, they are essentially formations that can only be set up by those in the True Immortal realm. Prince Ao Yi and the two fairies couldn't break through, which is quite normal."
"Enough!"
Old Dao Yuez sighed and said, "I'll go get the three of them out. This time, Junior Brother Ao Yi has lost again."
With that, Old Dao Yuez floated down toward the large array below, hands behind his back.
With the power of a celestial, he could easily break the array with his divine energy, but doing so would be too humiliating.
Having observed from outside for a while, Old Dao Yuez was confident he had figured out how to break the array. He was determined to restore the honor of the Golden Tortoise Island cultivators. Two juniors and a junior apprentice brother, they had indeed made fools of themselves this time. There was no way around it.
However...
After a while...
"Lost your way?"
The celestial old Dao couldn't help but sigh deeply. This array was indeed hiding something mysterious.
Turning around, the old Dao frowned and continued to break the array. The other celestial beings on the clouds looked at each other, unsure of what to say at this point...
After Li Changshou returned from his tribulation, he did indeed adjust the outer array, but only changed a few array bases.
It would be very easy for this celestial to forcibly break the array, but at this moment, Old Dao Yuez was a bit stubborn. He insisted on breaking this array from within, which was actually a closed-loop array...
In theory, the only way to break this array was to forcefully break it and destroy one of the basic arrays.
But could this old Dao use brute force?
This was related to his level of proficiency in array formations as a cultivator of Golden Tortoise Island!
And it was also related to Old Dao Yuez's pride!
So, after who knows how many times...
Half an hour later...
Ao Yi and Jiu Wu watched as the celestial old Dao walked back and forth in front of them, bewildered.
"Elder Yue!"
Ao Yi shouted and took a step forward. Suddenly, the scenery around him changed;
Old Dao Yuez heard the shout and covered his face with his sleeve, but as the array changed, his figure disappeared from Ao Yi's eyes.
"This..." Ao Yi stared wide-eyed, trembling all over.
Jiu Wu hurriedly caught up, smiling, "Your Highness, it's getting late. What do you say?"
"I will break this array! I will definitely break this array!"
Ao Yi shouted tremblingly, sword in hand, continuing to move forward, shaking all over.
...
In the alchemy room, the ground was covered in starlight.
Li Changshou's divine sense focused on the group of celestial cultivators who seemed eager to enter the array...
Should I pack up and leave tonight with Master and Junior Sister?
Well, maybe it's time to escape.
This Golden Tortoise Island... can't stay much longer!
Of course, this was a joke. After all these years of hard work managing Xiaoqiong Peak, this was the relatively safe place.
ust then, a thread of divine sense fell from the sky, locking onto Li Changshou's body, gently disturbing his spirit.
The disturbance was very slight;
Li Changshou understood that this was a high-ranking member of the sect awakening him, afraid of affecting his state of mind...
It showed that they cared about a disciple like him.
Li Changshou opened his bewildered eyes, feeling like he was being disturbed while meditating, just like before...
The voice of Forget Love sounded in Li Changshou's ears, "Stop cultivating and let the people in the array out. When Ao Yi came to spar with you earlier, he had already reached the level of a Celestial. He might suppress his realm and challenge you later. You don't need to strive for victory, but you also can't lose too quickly in your own sect."
Li Changshou quickly got up, made a gesture of respect toward the empty air, "As you command." Suppressing his realm and challenging me?
He quickly walked to the door of the alchemy room, pretending to look around, making up his mind and clenching his fists!
Let's reveal the cards!
As the jade card turned lightly, a breeze blew through the forest;
And Li Changshou flew up in front of the alchemy room, his cultivation level at the seventh stage of the Reversion Realm revealed without a doubt!
It seemed that this realm had just been broken through recently, and there was still some instability...
In the air and in the forest, all the elders, immortals, Jiu Wu, Ao Yi, the two celestial sisters, and even the old celestial, all looked over...
In various parts of the sect, it seemed that there were also countless gazes, all falling on Li Changshou.
This made Li Changshou feel a bit uncomfortable, but he could only endure this wave as best as he could.
Then, Jiu Wu quickly reminded him, "You didn't hide your cultivation level!"
Li Changshou was taken aback, made a gesture of respect to Jiu Wu, and said, "Li Changshou, a disciple of Xiaoqiong Peak, pays respect to all the elders, senior brothers, and senior sisters."