46 Stomped to death
Xu Lian Blessed Land
"Ah! Why can't it move?" - Xu Lian called out anxiously.
He started to instill the last of his immortal essence in panic into the Eight Layered Leaf Nest gu house. But no matter what he tried to regain control over the gu house, it was in vain.
"Did the light balls take control of this gu house as it happened to my killer moves?" - He quickly thought to himself.
This situation was getting worse and worse!
Xu Lian turned his attention to the outside. He saw the floating Wood Spirit Charms fixed in place as well.
"What's going on? The tribulation also stopped?"
The Eight Layered Leaf Nest gu house was shaking lightly. It gave out creaking and rustling sounds, a great power was clearly having an effect on it!
Xu Lian forcefully tried to calm himself. He continued to observe. Soon, he noticed a faint gray light enveloping the gu house.
It was not the only change.
A pattern of gray light emerged from the ground throughout the blessed land.
Xu Lian furrowed his brows at this sight. Another inexplicable phenomena!
"What are these lines on the ground? They look like veins..." - He traced them with his eyes.
"...or the roots of a tree!" - His gaze stopped on the tree that Bao Zhi transformed into.
The gray lines of light were the densest around Bao Zhi, this was clearly the center.
"This tree has such an effect? How could this be..."
In the meanwhile, Bao Zhi was concentrating intensely.
The gray lights on the ground were the result of a formation he prepared.
To be more precise, the formation was prepared by Xu Lian unknowingly!
"This aura! Immortal aura?" - Xu Lian was dumbstruck. He did not have a single immortal gu, where was this aura originating from?
This was an immortal formation!
How could this be?
An Immortal formation required immortal gu to function, this was common sense.
The key here was Bao Zhi's great grandmaster wood path and grandmaster formation path attainment. With grandmaster attainment, one could use immortal materials in immortal formations or killer moves. But the resources would be used up in the process.
This was to be expected, Immortal gu were a unique, intact fragments of the great dao, while the immortal materials only contained dao marks.
This formation could exist thanks to Bao Zhi's efforts to influence Xu Lian's deductions in the brain melon plantation. Whenever Xu Lian deduced the optimal location for an immortal material or immortal plant, the location would be determined by Bao Zhi.
Bao Zhi could use his extensive root system to fill in the gaps and create an immortal level formation this way.
"This formation is only designed to activate once. I have no room for error." - Bao Zhi sighed and continued to operate the formation.
The wisps of Wood Spirit Charms were meat on the chopping block in front of Bao Zhi's expert methods.
The green wisps started to move again, but their movement was forced and unnatural.
Bao Zhi controlled them carefully.
The Wood Spirit Charms rushed towards a single point in the sky.
They were compressed tighter and tighter, while new ones were still impacting the clump that formed in the air.
Xu Lian watched with his breath held back. He couldn't even leave the gu house.
The newly formed single Wood Spirit Charm was getting larger and larger. Soon, its size was even larger than the Eight Layered Leaf Nest. It continued to absorb more and more wisps of green light as time passed.
"I need to gather them to a single place and strike decisively. There is no other way to resolve this." - Bao Zhi thought to himself.
Even the final Wood Spirit Charms reached their destination from the furthest points of the aperture. Stripped from vegetation and resources, they all merged into a single entity now.
Bao Zhi controlled the formation, it started to hum loudly and released a gray beam of light.
The ray of light headed straight upwards to hit the huge orb.
But then, the tribulation clouds rumbled and churned violently. A bolt of lightning struck down!
The ray of light and lightning hit the green orb at the same time.
Boom!
"What happened?" - Xu Lian was taken aback at the power of this.
"Oh no! This again?" - Bao Zhi had a bad premonition. A similar thing happened during his revival.
When the dust and smoke dissipated, the green orb was still floating in the air.
Strange ripples appeared on its surface. Some spots started to bulge out while some receded. It was undergoing a transformation now.
After three breaths of time, the green mass took a misshapen and rounded humanoid form. It looked like a crudely made clay figure.
Two black eyes opened on the green creature.
It looked around in confusion at first, but it could barely turn its head. It noticed the resistance that fixed him in the place. It stared to flex its arms and legs outward to break away.
While the creature struggled in the air to free itself, Xu Lian noticed that a trace of control has returned to his gu house.
He once again tried to control it.
Crack!
The gu house forcefully broke free of the formation's restraints, as its power was dissipating by the minute.
"A chance!" - Xu Lian charged with his gu house.
He accelerated to full speed and crashed into the creature before him.
Gu houses had strong defense, it was a common method to use them directly like this. It was faster than activating killer moves.
The damaged Eight Layered Leaf Nest arrived with great momentum and tore through the unprepared creature like a cannonball.
The green giant was ripped in half. Shock was frozen on its face as it tumbled in the air. Its two halves flew in different directions.
"Yes! Take that!" - Xu Lian rejoiced, he held the initiative again.
The upper half of the green giant roared in anger. While the lower part fell to the ground.
The upper half stabilized itself in the air. Its body started to change again, and it was whole soon again. The upper body grew a lower half, and the lower body grew an upper half.
Now there were two of them!
The formerly upper body charged towards Xu Lian in the air, while the other set its sights on the tree that was Bao Zhi.
"This Wood Spirit Charm gained intelligence. What should I do?" - Bao Zhi fell into a predicament. He already spent his trump card. He was only a mortal gu master, how could he take on this calamity?
The transformed Wood Spirit Charm arrived before Bao Zhi in a flash. It grabbed the branches of the tree and broke them off before stuffing them in his mouth!
Intense pain assaulted Bao Zhi's mind, this tree was currently his body.
The branches disappeared into the giant's bottomless stomach. Next, the creature started to gnaw on the trunk, taking out huge bites each time.
"It won't have time to transform back, I need to escape through the roots!" - Bao Zhi began to transfer his body through his root network. He would leave a common tree behind for the creature to consume while he hid away at a corner of the blessed land.
The creature noticed something and suddenly stopped its ravenous actions. It spit out the piece he bit off and roared in anger as it grabbed the tree with both arms. The tree was forcefully torn and uprooted from the ground.
Bao Zhi's mind went blank for a moment as the jolt of pain hit him. When he regained his senses, all he saw was the gaping maw of the Wood Spirit Charm.
The giant opened its mouth, like a snake eating its prey, and swallowed Bao Zhi whole.
Darkness.
Bao Zhi noticed his situation was dire.
The Wood Spirit Charm was still the Wood Spirit Charm in the end, it started to assimilate Bao Zhi's wood path dao marks!
"This can't go on like this." - Bao Zhi made a cold decision.
He concentrated on his remaining immortal essence in his wood path aperture and determined himself.
There was one bead of immortal essence, it was mostly spent from activating the formation previously.
The leftover was all turned to rank five primeval essence at once!
Boom!
Bao Zhi's wood path aperture bulged for a split moment, then shattered like a broken bowl.
This power was beyond mortal means. The amount of primeval essence released was greater than what a rank five gu master would produce in his whole life.
The explosion's force was so violent it ripped the Wood Spirit Charm to many pieces. Chunks of dirt and wood flew in every direction. A huge cloud of dust obscured the crater that was left behind.
Xu Lian noticed the commotion from up in the air.
"My aperture core!" - Xu Lian called out in fright.
If the aperture origin core was damaged, his blessed land would be ruined for good.
At the same time, the flying Wood Spirit Charm stopped its attacks and looked towards the explosion as well.
The dust slowly settled and revealed a broken figure lying on the ground.
It was Bao Zhi's human form.
His limbs were missing, while his abdomen had a gaping hole. His ribs were broken and exposed, and his lungs punctured. It was a miserable sight.
The scattered Wood Spirit Charm returned to its original form and started to engulf the nearby trees and plants mindlessly again. Some of them landed on Bao Zhi's body and absorbed the remains of his wood path dao marks. Bao Zhi was still alive, but he couldn't lift a finger to defend himself.
"Heh, so I die again." - He resigned himself to death. He already died once, the second time only seemed natural to him.
Bao Zhi wanted to laugh in the face of the heavens with his dying breath, but all that came out was a gurgling of blood.
The other Wood Spirit Charm's eyes twitched as it noticed Bao Zhi. It left Xu Lian stunned in the air for a moment, and dove below to finish what the other Wood Spirit Charm couldn't.
"Get back here, I'm not finished with you!" - Xu Lian hurried after it. He didn't have any more immortal essence, when the gu house runs out, it would be easily broken apart. He had to settle this as quickly as possible.
Bao Zhi's vision was blurry. What he saw was a green mass approaching, it was already above him.
The two-story-tall giant arrived foot first and stomped directly on Bao Zhi's skull.
Splat!
Like a watermelon, it was crushed underfoot.
Bao Zhi was dead.
His life force was extinguished.
The giant looked up at the remaining tribulation clouds with satisfaction.
Xu Lian only now noticed the remains of a human body on the ground, his attention was on the aperture origin core before. Who would have guessed, the tribulation didn't target that?
"A spy got into my aperture? How can that be? No matter, he's already dead." - He thought to himself.
Xu Lian didn't have the time to ponder on this further, as the green giant turned its attention back to him and lunged at him again.
Their battle was about to continue again, when a change occurred!
The ground started to quake violently.
The Wood Spirit Charm sensed the danger and looked behind worriedly. It stammered in fright before it flew up in the air to escape.
* * * * *
Lingering Mountains Grotto, Ascension Peak
Wen Bo was paying close attention to Xu Lian's tribulation. He had to control the formation to ensure everything went smoothly.
"It's been already more than a day. A common tribulation can be passed in this time so he should be ready at any moment now." - Wen Bo calculated. Earthly calamities were among the weakest tribulations. They shouldn't pose a threat to a well prepared immortal in his opinion.
Xu Lian Blessed Land's entrance was already closed, Wen Bo couldn't spy on the events inside so he could only guess.
Suddenly a tear appeared in space in the middle of the formation!
Illusory holes started to manifest one after another.
"Oh no, the blessed land is destabilizing! I can't let it be destroyed!"
Wen Bo triggered the formation's method and chains shot out from the eight corners of the platform. The chains wrapped around the blessed land and tried to hold it together.
"It's absorbing earth qi one more time?"
"Why is this happening, what tribulation could he encounter?"
* * * * *
