novelapdf Chapter 223 He said, "Don't overthink it."
Chapter 223 He said, "Don't overthink it."
Su Qingying turned her head and continued walking forward.
But her fingers loosened their grip on the sword.
The three continued deeper into the wreckage of the annihilation array.
Mo Chengyue became more cautious, throwing miscellaneous objects to test the waters every ten steps.
But the next fifty zhang were calm and peaceful.
Su Qingying was walking in the middle when she suddenly frowned and stopped.
"etc."
Her gaze fell on the array patterns on the wall.
The direction of the pattern began to change ten steps ago.
The straight lines that originally extended along the direction of the secret passage began to show subtle changes.
It's like some kind of warning signal.
Before she could finish speaking, a dull tremor came from the ground beneath her feet.
All three of them simultaneously felt that their bodies had become heavier.
It was as if an invisible hand was pressing down from the sky, pulling down the true essence and spiritual power within the body at the same time.
Gravitational field.
Mo Chengyue's knees bent slightly, but he quickly regained his balance.
Yu Jianhuan almost fell to the ground, but gritted her teeth and held on.
Su Qingying knelt on one knee, with the Biling Sword supporting her body on the ground.
Then something even more terrible happened.
The scene in the dark passage began to distort.
The straight corridor suddenly turned into three forks.
Each of the three directions—left, center, and right—looks incredibly realistic.
The patterns on the walls, the texture of the floor, and the smell in the air—all three paths are completely identical.
Gravity field superposition illusion array.
Mo Chengyue frowned.
The divine sense was further weakened under the pressure of the gravitational field, and the range of detection shrank from thirty feet to less than ten feet.
Physical pathfinding methods are meaningless against the illusion array—the three paths look exactly the same, and throwing stones will produce an echo on each path.
"Three roads."
Yu Jianhuan struggled to stand upright in the gravitational field, her voice strained.
What happens if you choose the wrong one?
"I don't know," Mo Chengyue said.
"But the person who designed the annihilation array wouldn't place a mere illusion array here to scare people."
Mo Chengyue did not make a blind choice.
He closed his eyes and began to circulate the "Yin Yang Qi Observation Technique".
This Qi-observation technique was originally an auxiliary method used to observe the flow of spiritual energy in heaven and earth and to judge the reality or illusion of the environment.
Within the illusion array, false scenes can deceive the eyes and divine sense, but they cannot deceive the flow of spiritual energy itself.
The branching paths created by the illusion array are fictitious spatial projections, in which there is no real spiritual energy convection.
Mo Chengyue switched his perception to "qi observation" mode.
The three forks in the road presented distinctly different states in his perception of Qi.
The spiritual energy on the left was stagnant, without any flow.
The right flank was also filled with stagnant, lifeless energy.
Only the middle path had an extremely faint but real flow of spiritual energy—the energy that connected the depths of the secret passage to the outside world.
"Middle. Go through the middle."
He opened his eyes.
But the path in the middle appears distant and distorted in the gravitational field, and every step feels like walking on cotton.
Mo Chengyue looked at Yu Jianhuan.
"Senior Sister Yu, can your rose-purple spiritual energy penetrate the ground?"
"Like when we practice formations, we lay a path along the ground."
"Mark the true path with spiritual power."
"Even if the gravitational field distorts our senses, we won't stray if we follow your spiritual energy markers."
Yu Jianhuan took a breath, her smile forced but her eyes sharp.
"Junior brother, you really know how to order people around."
She squatted down and placed her hands on the ground.
Rose-purple spiritual energy seeped from her fingertips, slowly spreading along the central path pointed out by Mo Chengyue.
Under the pressure of the gravitational field, spiritual energy was consumed extremely quickly, and beads of sweat appeared on Yu Jianhuan's forehead.
Su Qingying silently walked to Yu Jianhuan's side, the tip of the Biling Sword touching her shoulder.
He transferred his emerald green spiritual energy to her, helping her to counteract some of the gravitational field's suppression.
Yu Jianhuan was stunned for a moment, then looked up at Su Qingying.
Su Qingying remained expressionless.
"Don't overthink it. If you fall, none of us can leave."
The three of them followed the rose-purple spiritual energy markings laid out by Yu Jianhuan, step by step, through the illusion array area.
The gravitational field beneath their feet grew stronger as they went deeper, but the spiritual energy markings remained clearly visible.
After walking about thirty steps, the gravity suddenly disappeared, and the illusionary array collapsed like a shattered mirror.
The secret passage has returned to its original straight shape.
There is only one road.
The three stood at the end of the illusion array.
Yu Jianhuan's legs went weak and she leaned against the wall.
Su Qingying sheathed her Azure Spirit Sword and leaned against the wall to meditate.
Mo Chengyue, supporting his knees, took a few deep breaths.
Yu Jianhuan spoke weakly.
"Junior brother, did the person who designed this road... have a grudge against you?"
Mo Chengyue wiped away his sweat.
"I have a grudge against all intruders."
After a brief recovery, the three continued on their way.
The end of the secret passage came into view—a huge stone door.
The stone gate is about two zhang high, and its surface is smooth as a mirror without any carvings.
However, within a ten-zhang radius in front of the stone gate, the ground, walls, and dome were all covered with an extremely fine layer of runes.
These runes are unlike any array patterns seen before.
Their color is dark red, with a rotten, unsettling sheen.
Mo Chengyue's skin began to tingle when he got close.
He subconsciously tried to use his divine sense to investigate, but the moment he released his divine sense and touched the dark red runes...
A burning backlash surged into his sea of consciousness along with his divine sense.
"hiss--"
Mo Chengyue groaned, clutched his temple, and took two steps back.
Yu Jianhuan caught him.
"What's wrong?"
Mo Chengyue's face turned somewhat pale.
"A corrosive restriction. Any spiritual energy, including divine sense—that touches it will trigger a backlash."
He looked up at the stone door and the restricted area ten feet in front of it.
"This means we can't use talismans, we can't use spiritual power to investigate, and we can't use magical artifacts to brute force our way through."
"All supernatural means have failed."
Yu Jianhuan frowned.
"Then how do we get through? Fly? But flying also requires spiritual power."
Mo Chengyue did not answer her.
He looked at Su Qingying.
Su Qingying had already reached the edge of the restricted area and squatted down, her gaze fixed on the dark red runes on the ground.
Her expression was extremely focused.
Sheathed the Azure Spirit Sword behind her back, her hands hovered in front of her knees, and her ten fingers made slight gestures, as if tracing the flow of those runes in the air.
Mo Chengyue stood behind her for a while without urging her.
Yu Jianhuan tried to speak, but he stopped her with a look.
Su Qingying observed for a long time.
Then she spoke, her voice soft but firm.
"This is not a complete coverage."
Su Qingying stood up, her gaze still fixed on the ground.
"These corrosive runes appear to be arranged in a dense, airtight pattern, but their underlying structure is not 'surface,' but 'line.'"
She drew a grid-like pattern in the air with her finger.
"Each rune line has a fixed direction and width."
"There are gaps between the lines—gaps less than half a foot wide, almost imperceptible to the naked eye, but they definitely exist."
She turned to look at Mo Chengyue.
"The sword formation course at Biyun Peak taught a basic skill called 'Formation Gap Analysis.'"
"It's used to find gaps in the enemy's sword formation where spiritual energy is not present, and then pierce through those gaps with a single sword strike."
She paused slightly.
"The same principle can be applied here."
"But I need to confirm the exact location of the gap."
"You can't use spiritual power to test it."
"Only one can be used—"
She glanced at the small bag full of odds and ends at Mo Chengyue's waist.
Mo Chengyue understood immediately.
He took out scrap metal fragments and broken copper and iron from the bag.
The pile of things he had confiscated from the demon's storage bag, which he sarcastically referred to as "scraps from the spoils of war."
He handed them to Su Qingying one by one.
Su Qingying took the fragments and gently tossed them one by one onto the ground in the restricted area.
The fragments that hadn't touched the rune lines fell quietly to the ground, and nothing happened.
The fragments that touched the rune lines were instantly corroded into ashes, leaving not even a trace.
Through dozens of throws, Su Qingying marked the safe gaps between the rune lines within the restricted area one by one.