Desolate Era (Book 41 - Book 45)

“A formation!” The dragon turtle grew anxious. It instantly flew forwards at high speed, sending its massive bulk hurtling through the air while it furiously tore at the area around it with its four stubby legs. Alas, the waves of the sea seemed to be completely illusory; no matter how it attacked the waves, it remained unable to see anything beyond them.

“You void dwellers do not understand the Dao. You are foolish! You can overpower weaker creatures, but if you encounter a formation set down by someone of equal power to you then you are completely helpless.” Ning’s voice echoed throughout the illusory realms the two creatures were in. “You will not be able to escape my illusions. I can do with you as I please.”

Ning had long ago reached Hegemony in the Dao of Formations. He had then infused it into his Dao of the Sword, creating the Sword Formation Dao. Now, he was using the power of his mana and his insights into the Dao to transform his countless streams of sword-light into formation-bases, which he then used to construct an enormous formation! Even people like Autarch Titanos or Autarch Mogg, who also had a high level of insight into the Dao, would need to spend some time to solve this type of formation. These Autarch-class void dwellers, however, were completely incapable of doing so.

Their advantages were obvious, but their weaknesses were obvious as well.

“Break! BREAK!” The cyclopean creature was growing desperate. It was now holding a long shuttle in its claws, and it was furiously attacking the world around it. Alas, the world remained a fragrant world of grass and flowers.

Riiiip! A streak of sword-light suddenly appeared right behind the cyclopean creature. It had appeared without any warning, and it instantly tore through the creature’s fur and stabbed into its body. Then… the sword-light began to spin! Slash! An enormous gaping wound instantly appeared, followed by golden blood fountaining outwards. The cyclopean creature frantically pulled back and tried to defend against any new attacks.

“Do you think your speed will be of any use to you within my formations? I can approach you without a sound. A few more attacks and you’ll be as good as dead.” Ning’s voice echoed out within the plains once more: “The other two had tougher bodies to deal with, but you’ll be easy to handle.”

“What should I do? Old bastard? Old bastard!!!” the cyclopean creature screamed frantically.

“Keep screaming. Scream as loud as you want. It won’t hear you.” Ning’s voice rang out once more. The beautiful world of flowers was like a nightmare which had completely enveloped the void dweller.





Book 43, Chapter 21 - Exalt Anitya


“No! This is just a formation. I can break it. I can break it!” The cyclopean creature could sense its doom impending, and the sensation was driving it mad. It brandished the shuttle, furiously striking at all directions with it. Slash! Slash! Space was churned apart into tiny little pieces by his blows, but the overall environment remained that of a fragrant world of grass and flowers. Ji Ning’s formation wouldn’t be so easily defeated!

“Break! Break!!!” the cyclopean creature yelled hoarsely.

In the past, it had never viewed formations as something to be afraid of. This was because it had long ago grown accustomed to bursting through formations with its overwhelming power. Formations which could successfully trap Autarch-class void dwellers were incredibly rare to begin with! This one in particular was ensuring that it was not able to put its speed to good effect at all.

“Poor bastard. He ended up running into you, Darknorth.” Autarch Mogg shook his head as he watched from afar, then sent mentally to Ning, “You can be described as the number one formations expert in all the cultivator civilizations.”

“That’s only because I infused the Dao of Formations into my Sword Dao,” Ning said with a smile. “Just a moment, please. I’m about to capture the creature.”

Swish! A streak of gloomy sword-light appeared in ghostly fashion, instantly piercing through the cyclopean creature’s skinny body. One of the creature’s legs went flying, with blood spewing everywhere. The cyclopean creature frantically retreated, not paying any attention to the heavy wound which was quickly beginning to heal. The severed leg was regrowing as well.

“You won’t be able to last. You Autarch-class creatures have very powerful bodies, but that also makes it extremely hard for you to truly heal.”

Sword-light flashed again. Ning’s attacks were coming from every single direction. This looked like an extremely beautiful prairie, but it was a death trap which could unleash sword-light from any and every part of it! There was no way to dodge, and each time the cyclopean creature would only detect the sword-light once the light was right in front of it. The creature’s tremendous speed was rendered useless here.

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Just three seconds later, a total of over sixty attacks had appeared and then vanished without a trace. Finally, the cyclopean creature’s entire body crumbled apart. Its healing speed simply wasn’t able to keep up with the rate at which Ning was causing damage, and it was now completely incapable of fighting back at all.

Boom! The creature’s body imploded. Ning reached out with his sword-light to tug free a white and glossy pearl from the ‘corpse’, and it quickly flew over to Ning. The pearl held an image of the furry cyclopean creature within it, and it was begging Ning for its life: “Please spare me! Spare me! None of this was of my own free will!”

Ning waved his hand, grabbing the pearl and casting a seal over it.

So long as his seal prevented the pearl from absorbing energy from the outside world, the creature would be unable to revive! It could only reconstitute its body if given access to enough energy, but even without its body it would remain alive so long as its truesoul within its life-core remained unharmed. Only when the life-cores were destroyed would these Autarch-class void dwellers be truly ‘dead’! However, Ning didn’t feel much of an urge to actually kill them. He was going to simply imprison them for now.

And so… two of the three void dwellers had been captured by Ning.

“Congratulations, Darknorth.” Mogg flew over, his scaled face split by an amazed smile. “Thank goodness you came with me. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have been able to deal with them so easily.”

“Autarch-class void dwellers are indeed very tough to deal with, due to their innate gifts. However, their obvious weakness is that they do not train in the Dao. They have a very low level of insight,” Ning said. “I’m only able to attack their weaknesses and defeat them with such ease because I’m fairly well-rounded.”

“Any void dwellers capable of reaching the Autarch level of power have very few weaknesses.” Autarch Mogg sighed. “These three were all very powerful, with that cyclopean creature possessing unparalleled speed. The only way to handle it is to do what you just did – trap it in a formation, an extremely profound formation which it cannot break through with raw power. However, such formations generally require detailed and intricate preparations as well as for formation-bases to be laid down in advance. Given how crafty the creature is, it would never just watch us set down those formations and then just step into them. Only you could’ve done what you did, Darknorth. You created a formation with but a thought, making it impossible for it to escape.”

“That scaled void dweller was even more difficult to deal with. It had virtually no weaknesses at all! Thankfully, your sword-arts were able to breach its armor of scales. I’m truly impressed that you were able to capture both of them! As for this last one… it seems to be completely invulnerable,” Autarch Mogg said.