Chapter 136: 136, [Character, is Formation]
Chapter 136: [Character, is Formation]
Translator: 549690339
Hidden Mountain, a tomb within a tomb.
The teacher walked ahead, with the mute elder half a step behind.
It wasn’t pitch-dark in the tomb, for there were several luminous pearls embedded in the walls, casting a faint glow.
Also, the lamp full of fireflies in the mute elder’s hand added an extra touch of brightness.
The passage was not very long and slightly narrow. After a short walk, they reached a wider area. It reminded them of a passage from the “Tales of Peach Blossom Spring”, “The passage was very narrow just enough for one person to pass, and after a few dozens of steps, it suddenly opened up to a wide and bright area.”
The wide area looked somewhat like a circular altar, but it was not. There was only a large formation array.
This altar-like round base was connected to forty-nine chains, each leading to the stone walls around, linked with them.
The stone walls were smooth and polished, covered in dense black characters.
The black characters shimmered in the darkness and occasionally switched places!
—These characters were moving!
The energy contained in the characters was being transferred through the forty-nine chains to the circular platform.
The teacher and the mute elder slowly advanced up the stairs to the center of the platform.
A man sat quietly in the center, his eyes closed, without any vital signs.
No breath, no heartbeat, not even the flow of blood.
Even the divine sense couldn’t detect any signs of life with him.
From a certain perspective, this was not a living person but a body that had not decayed over the years.
The man in his thirties, dressed in a black robe, with an upturned sword-like eyebrow added an air of valor to him.
This man was Yan Li.
The teacher stood there, looking at his first disciple.
Yan Li was found by the teacher. He was as skinny as Lin Chan when the teacher picked him up, skin, and bones. After a few years, He digested the strange disease caused by the natural sword embryo and became handsome and tall.
The teacher was strictest with Yan Li, both because he was the eldest disciple and also because he was too handsome.
However, now looking at his appearance, the teacher suddenly found it much more pleasing.
After all, there has to be a contrast in everything. After all, there was a more annoying-looking person back on the mountain now!
And it was not just his face that was annoying, it’s just that he gave off a profound and a profound feeling all over him.
As if his good looks were natural, the will of heaven and earth.
No matter what, Lu Xun was with a charisma of 10. He was indeed a pioneer in “entering the path of Dao by being handsome.”
The teacher took out a folded red paper from his bosom and put it into Yan Li’s pocket. He murmurs to himself, “I’ve put the red envelope in your pocket. They all have one each. You won’t miss your share even if you’re secluded.” The mute elder stood by, a warm smile on his face.
The teacher and the mute elder stayed inside the tomb for a dozen more minutes then left. Yan Li, secluded, is as unresponsive as a corpse all along.
Upon leaving the tomb, the teacher looked up at the night sky.”
It was starting to snow.
Despite the dark night, the red-robed teacher stood out amidst the falling snow.
He took the small lantern from the mute elder and said, “Little Gui, you may go back to the foot of the mountain and rest.’
The mute elder nodded.
The teacher, garbed in red, strolled through the snow with the small lantern in hand.
He muttered to himself, “Even if the Chinese New Year’s Eve is lively every year, it still means getting a year older.”
“However, it’s still better when it’s lively. It’s better when it’s lively.”
Then, as if recalling something, he said,
“After this year, it will be even more lively.”
In the back mountain’s Small Study, Lu Xun opened the window and looked out. It was snowing outside.
“It’s snowing.” Lu Xun extended his hand to catch some, but the snowflakes were too small and melted upon touching his hand.
If it didn’t fall heavier, he guesses that there wouldn’t be accumulated snow on the ground by morning.
Lu Xun, being from the south, was quite fascinated by snow.
Poor Southerners. Some of them have hardly seen snow in their lives. Lu Xun had a friend from a certain province who got excited like a dog when he saw
snow, opening his mouth to catch snowflakes and not caring if someone was
flicking cigarette ash or spitting from the rooftop.
The Chou hour was almost upon them, and the snow outside had started to fall heavily.
“It’s falling so heavy? By morning, I wonder if the little Lolita will have difficulty moving. This snow could very well reach her knees!” Lu Xun jokingly thought about Mao Nanbei in his mind.
Not long after, Chou Hour arrived.
Lu Xun closed the window and sat back on his bed, opening the copybook given by the teacher.
The copybook emitted a black light, and the character “Chou”… was actually glowing!
As Lu Xun looked at the copybook, he found that the [To unlock] marked in basic information had disappeared.
He kept looking, his eyes becoming sore.
“What’s going on? I’ve already reached the Initial Realm. How could I be seeing things?” Lu Xun was astonished.
In front of his eyes, the copybook clearly only had one character. But it seemed like his eyes were playing tricks on him, causing multiple images to overlap.
The multiple images also kept on increasing.
One Chou character became two, two became four, four became eight… Very soon, his eyes were filled with a dense array of ugly characters everywhere!
Honestly, if it hadn’t been ugly characters but handsome ones, he would think this sight was spectacular.
But because these were so uncomfortable to look at, it felt as if the entire sky was rebuking him, giving him a feeling of jealous deities thwarting talent.
At this moment, Lu Xun realized that he wasn’t in a room, but had arrived in a place that resembled an illusion.
However, he didn’t understand what this meant yet.
Is this supposed to scare me to death with dense clusters?
He looked up again to see the size of the ugly characters in the sky varied: the small ones were the size of a fingernail cover and the large ones were as big as a grinding wheel. Moreover, he didn’t know if it was his vision playing tricks on him, but he felt some of the characters were moving.
They were swaying as if they were about to fall!
The next moment, there were indeed characters falling from the sky!
Standing under the sky filled with ugly characters, Lu Xun began to dodge.
He now understood what this was.
It’s a Formation!
A grand Formation put to paper by Ink Formation!
And at this moment, he was standing right in this large Formation!
Everything seemed to be without a pattern and everything was still changing.
He couldn’t tell which character in the sky was about to fall, they were even constantly changing positions!
Lu Xun was hit by an ugly character when he was distracted and there was a noticeable pain!
Moreover, he found that the characters were falling faster and the amount falling at once was also increasing.
Then, he realized he made a common mistake.
He thought the characters in the sky were small because they were distant from him. Although they weren’t too far away, they still appeared much smaller due to the distance.
Those larger characters were much bigger than just the size of a grinding wheel!
Some were as large as a small vehicle, some as large as a bus, others as large as a train!
“Does Ink Formation want to crush me to death?” Lu Xun felt bitter in his heart.
But why did this feeling feel so familiar?
He didn’t even feel that much resistance.
Ooh, he remembered. This was just like before when he was criticized by his second elder sister at night!
The only difference was that before it was Enveloped in Sword Intent, but now he was facing a large Formation written in ink!
At a time like this, his somewhat odd thought process could still go off on a tangent. Maybe it was a way to entertain himself in bitterness, he even gave a name to this great Formation.
“It’s all ugly characters trying to crush me to death, it should be called ‘Ugly Death’!” Lu Xun said in his mind.
It has to be said, Lu Xun’s state of mind is quite good, always looking on the bright side of life.
With this mindset, he was like a fierce little cockroach in the grand formation, getting hit constantly, dodging constantly, and then constantly getting hit again.
Finally, the character, almost as large as a football field, fell down, giving him a legendary feeling of the ‘Buddha’s Palm’.
It was shockingly ugly.
With a loud crash, the whole illusion was shattered, and Lu Xun immediately returned to reality.
He stared blankly at the character post in his hand. At this moment, there was nothing unusual about it. It seemed like everything was just a dream.
In front of Lu Xun, a task prompt had quietly appeared, very similar to the task of Enveloped in Sword Intent from his second elder sister that he had accepted earlier.
The task was called “Ink Formation”.
The task required him to experience the Ink Formation for 15 days, not quite as long as the 30 days of Enveloped in Sword Intent.
However, thinking back on the “Sword Intent Envelopment”, Lu Xun couldn’t recall the specifics, only an enigmatic feeling.
But for this task “Ink Formation”, everything was crystal clear. He could remember every detail, even how many times each part of his body was hit.
Especially his face!
How the hell did they hit my face?!
“The rewards for the tasks are surprisingly rich. It’s even ‘Formation Qualification +2’.” Lu Xun exclaimed in his heart.
Ink Formation is Ink Formation after all. He suspected that each character he wrote contained a feeling for his disciples, which was equivalent to giving them an opportunity!
As for Lin Chan, he must have benefited a lot from his high Enlightenment and being a Natural Sword Embryo.
Regarding Lu Xun, he was just a cheater and therefore the task automatically converted the feelings given by Ink Formation into task rewards.
“This is a perfect start. The special attributes that others haven’t been able to get after much struggling is like wild vegetables by the roadside here.” Lu Xun felt considerable satisfaction.
Why was he not completely satisfied?
It was because he was not allowed to rest properly!
Starting from today, for 15 consecutive days, every Chou Hour, which is 1:00 in the morning, he has to enter into the “Ink Formation” and endure a round of character bombardment from the sky!
And each such bombardment lasts a full hour, down to the last minute and second!
“It seems I’ve found the reason why MO Guanji, the workaholic, suddenly died Lu Xun muttered to himself in his mind.
But… why do I always have to work hard at night when I’m so free during the day?
Could it be… so as not to interfere with my cooking?!
“No way, no way.” Lu Xun comforted himself in his mind.
(ps: This is the first update, a word count of 3000+, the second update will also be 3000+)