Immortality Through Array Formations (The Quest for Immortality)

Chapter 956: Ten Thousand Corpses Sealing the Coffin

The black-robed elder's cloudy eyes locked onto Lord Hui with the sharpness of a hawk's gaze.

The Demon Sect Commander remained silent, but the aura of the demonic dragon coiling around him was enough to chill the soul.

Elder Xiong's presence was slightly less intense, but he was still a late-stage Golden Core realm demon cultivator, with a burly frame like a bloodthirsty bear demon.

The atmosphere grew suffocating.

Lord Hui felt a tingle on his scalp. He understood the situation—power ruled all, and his life was no longer his to decide. With a sigh, he said,

"This is a most sinister form of tomb formation... known as the Ten Thousand Corpses Sealing Coffin Tomb."

"Ten Thousand Corpses Sealing the Coffin?" the black-robed elder asked, his voice grave.

Lord Hui nodded, cold sweat trickling down his spine.

"As the name suggests, it involves killing ten thousand people, sealing their corpses into one colossal coffin. The coffin then gathers death aura, resentment, and subterranean yin energy to raise corpses within."

"Ten thousand living beings. That's no small number... When their corpses pile together, the resentment becomes horrifying."

"Because of how cruel and inhumane this method is, it's been long banned in the cultivation world."

"I only heard of it during my studies on Mao Mountain, when some elders mentioned it. I'd never seen it myself..."

"Now that the Dao Court has unified the realm and crusades against evil, even great demonic sects would struggle to kill ten thousand for burial..."

"Let alone build such a tomb right under the Dao Court's nose, in a place like Qianxue State, home to powerful sects and ancient clans."

"It's... unfathomable."

His voice trembled.

The black-robed elder frowned.

Though he was a demonic cultivator, burial rites and tomb formations were not his area of expertise—otherwise, he wouldn't have paid a heavy price to hire Lord Hui, a direct descendant of the Mao Mountain lineage, for this very tomb raid.

"And the monstrous blood-flesh corpse puppet we fought... was raised using that coffin?" he asked.

Lord Hui's face paled, and he shook his head.

"No—Sealing is the key word."

The elder's eyes narrowed sharply.

"You mean the copper coffin isn't just a tomb... it's a seal? That monster was merely a guardian protecting it?"

Lord Hui nodded solemnly.

"This was a death trap. That massive coffin—it's a false coffin, used to raise and house the ten thousand corpses."

"With those corpses surrounding it, even if more Golden Core cultivators arrived, they'd be doomed."

"And if there's a false coffin, there must be a true one."

"The false coffin is a seal, concealing the truth and hiding the real tomb."

"It was built to be grand and awe-inspiring—to draw eyes away. Which only means the true coffin is even more terrifying."

"Especially considering we're in Qianxue State—this is a scheme to deceive even the heavens themselves. Only someone with great power and influence could orchestrate such a thing."

"Whatever's buried in the real coffin must be a shocking secret... something monstrous."

The more he thought, the more fear crept into Lord Hui's heart.

The visible part—the false coffin—had already birthed such a terrifying corpse monster.

What sort of nightmare could be entombed in the real one?

This was far beyond anything a mere Golden Core cultivator like him could meddle in.

But before he could say more, the black-robed elder's eyes lit up.

"You're saying there's a real tomb? Take us there—now."

"Senior..." Lord Hui frowned.

"Break the seal on the false coffin. Take us to the real tomb." The elder's tone left no room for refusal.

His gaze turned sharp.

"You're a direct descendant of Mao Mountain. You walk the path of secret tombs. Don't tell me you can't break this."

Lord Hui fell silent.

The elder's eyes grew more and more dangerous.

Lord Hui knew he had no choice. He sighed,

"Alright."

The black-robed elder's expression softened slightly.

"Don't worry, Lord Hui. We honor our word. Once it's done, whatever treasures or inheritances are in the tomb—we split them fifty-fifty."

Lord Hui gave a bitter laugh.

"At this point, what's the point in lying? I only ask to keep my life. I want nothing more."

Then he stepped forward and gestured.

"This way, everyone."

And so the group returned to the deepest part of the underground palace.

Before them lay the familiar deep pit.

At the bottom sat the massive, luxurious bright yellow copper coffin.

Corpses and blood were scattered everywhere.

For Shen Qingsheng, it was his first time witnessing such gore. He immediately clutched his mouth and began retching uncontrollably.

No one paid him any mind.

The black-robed elder scanned the area and asked,

"The real tomb lies beneath this coffin?"

"Yes," Lord Hui nodded.

"This coffin is the seal that holds it closed."

"How do we break it?"

"With certain secret arts of the Mao Mountain Path."

"Then I'll leave it to you." The elder nodded.

Lord Hui wore a grave expression and approached the giant copper coffin.

He retrieved a coin sword, three candle stands, blood ink, Daoist inscription scrolls, ancient jade talismans, and other ritual tools—an entire arsenal of Mao Mountain talismans and implements.

Clearly, he was bringing out everything he had.

And in front of the black-robed elder, he dared not cut corners.

Mo Hua watched silently from the shadows.

He was quite intrigued by this "Mao Mountain Daoism."

From his observations, the Mao Mountain legacy seemed to be a comprehensive system for dealing with ghosts and corpses—complete with unique techniques, Dao spells, talismans, formation methods, artifacts, and secret rituals...

Mo Hua burned it all into his memory.

Even if he didn't understand it now, expanding his horizons never hurt.

Cultivation wasn't just about fighting—it was also about experience and vision, and these were a kind of strength too.

So Mo Hua kept his eyes glued to Lord Hui as he began the ritual, stepping with trigram footwork, activating inscription arrays and talismans.

Some of the ritual might be real.

But Mo Hua guessed part of it was a smokescreen—to obscure the true technique and prevent others from stealing it.

Like, well... Mo Hua himself.

And to be fair, Mao Mountain's safeguards were pretty good.

Aside from the formation techniques, the rest of it left Mo Hua thoroughly confused.

Still—it worked.

As Lord Hui performed his ritual, the coffin began to react.

Something stirred in response.

The surrounding death aura and yin energy slowly faded away.

Karmic threads shifted, unraveled, and began to dissolve.

Mo Hua could almost see it with the naked eye—a thin mist dispersing, dark karmic blood vapors swirling ominously.

It was as if someone had opened a gate to hell.

The ground trembled. Stones cracked.

The giant copper coffin began to melt. Golden liquid flowed across the floor, etching out a glowing glyph.

Then the glyph shattered—the ground caved in.

Beneath the molten coffin, a vast, pitch-black pit was revealed.

The copper coffin had truly been a lock.

Now, with the lock dissolved, the gate to the deeper tomb had opened.

Staring at the awe-inspiring Mao Mountain ritual and the chilling darkness of the yawning pit—as cold as the Nine Netherworlds—Mo Hua couldn't help but suck in a cold breath.

"The gate to the true tomb is open," Lord Hui wiped the sweat from his brow, exhaling deeply. He cupped his hands.

"Senior, it is done."

"Well done," the black-robed elder replied, his eyes gleaming as he gazed into the abyss.

But at that very moment—

Lord Hui suddenly pulled out a jade talisman and slapped it to his forehead!

The talisman shattered in a flash of light—

And his entire figure vanished.

The elder's eyes widened, but he reacted instantly, flicking his sleeve and launching a blood-colored bone needle at a patch of empty space several zhang away.

The needle pierced through the air and struck a faint silhouette, sending it crashing to the ground.

But the elder frowned.

"Mao Mountain Substitution Escape Talisman?"

Just as he spoke, the fallen figure's illusion faded—

It was a puppet, carved from Yimu wood.

"A decoy... a wooden clone?"

"A fake? A puppet?"

Mo Hua froze for a moment. Then, suddenly sensing danger, he looked up—only to see a large hand, wrapped in earthy energy, reaching toward him.

"Lord Hui? He's trying to grab me?"

Mo Hua stood still, acting as if he hadn't reacted in time to dodge.

But just then, a streak of blood-red sword light slashed in.

That "Young Lord Xuan," who had been quietly standing just two zhang away, clearly keeping an eye on Mo Hua the whole time, struck immediately—drawing his sword and slashing at Lord Hui's hand.

Lord Hui had no choice but to pull back.

He made another attempt to seize Mo Hua, but Young Lord Xuan stepped forward, directly blocking Mo Hua's front.

Lord Hui cursed in his heart.

He had hoped, just in case, to abduct Mo Hua as well.

He'd already fooled the black-robed elder with the Mao Mountain substitution escape technique, but hadn't expected this black-clothed youth—Young Lord Xuan—to interfere and ruin his plan.

The window for escape was only a few breaths long. Since he couldn't grab Mo Hua, he had no choice but to flee alone.

He had absolutely no intention of going down into that dark tomb.

With his experience, the chances of survival down there were slim to none.

That's why, after using Mao Mountain techniques to melt the coffin and open the gate to the tomb, Lord Hui immediately made plans to flee.

After all, the door was open, and he was now of no more use.

As long as he shed his skin and escaped the underground palace, these powerful demonic cultivators likely wouldn't bother chasing him.

They still had to go deeper into the tomb, and wouldn't waste time hunting him down.

Before leaving, Lord Hui had hoped to drag Mo Hua along.

After all, talent was the real treasure.

Tomb loot is a one-time gain—but if you groom a formation master, you could loot tombs endlessly.

Unfortunately, Young Lord Xuan ruined it.

Lord Hui was decisive. Seeing his plan fall apart, he gave up on Mo Hua, formed a hand seal, stomped the ground—and his entire body sank into the earth, vanishing.

Likely another earth escape technique from the Mao Mountain school.

The black-robed elder gave a cold snort, eyes narrowing as he fully released his divine sense.

His spiritual pressure was immense—even Mo Hua felt as if he had plunged into a sea of blood, his chest tightening with suffocation.

Within moments, the elder seemed to lock onto Lord Hui's position.

He reached into thin air—threads of blood coalesced into a spear and shot into a patch of ground in the distance.

When the blood spear was pulled back, it dragged along a shadowy figure—

It was the escaping Lord Hui.

The spear had pierced deep into his upper arm. Gritting his teeth, Lord Hui drew a blade to try and cut off his own limb to escape.

But before he could sever it, a bear-like demon cultivator appeared behind him and grabbed his shoulder with a paw-like hand.

Crack— bones snapped audibly.

The blade fell to the ground. Lord Hui went pale instantly, unable to move.

"Senior, spare me!" he begged.

The black-robed elder withdrew his hand and warned coldly,

"This is your last warning."

"Y-yes..." Lord Hui's voice trembled.

The elder gave a look, and the bear demon finally let go.

Lord Hui broke into a cold sweat, drenched as if he'd been in a storm.

"Let's go," the black-robed elder ordered.

Clutching his arm, Lord Hui resigned himself to fate and headed toward the dark tomb pit beneath the now-melted golden coffin.

Standing before the abyss, he still hesitated.

The black-robed elder glanced at him meaningfully.

"Fortune favors the bold," he said slowly. "You said that yourself."

Lord Hui sighed, clenched his teeth, and leapt into the pit.

The others followed one by one.

When it was Shen Qingsheng's turn, he suddenly screamed like a madman:

"I'm not going in! It's pitch dark down there! You want me dead!"

No one responded.

The bear demon delivered a swift karate chop, knocking Shen Qingsheng out cold—then casually tossed him in.

Now it was Mo Hua's turn.

Truth be told, Mo Hua wanted to go in.

But he was worried that showing too much interest would draw suspicion, or make it seem like he wasn't part of the group.

So, to blend in with Lord Hui and Shen Qingsheng, he put on a conflicted expression and stammered,

"I don't want to go down there..."

The black-robed elder smiled kindly at him.

Mo Hua sighed, closed his eyes—and jumped into the tomb, a bottomless pit like the mouth of an abyss.

After him went the bear demon and Young Lord Xuan.

Finally, only the black-robed elder and the Demon Sect Commander remained.

The black-robed elder, eyes dim and heavy with death aura, glanced at the silent commander and murmured,

"Third Prince... The fate of our Great Wilderness race rests on this."

The commander's fierce eyes flickered slightly. Then, without a word, he stepped forward and entered the dark tomb.

Meanwhile, in the passageway—

The Shen family group, along with Xun Ziyou, Fan Jin, and Master Gu, were slowly making their way forward.

Xun Ziyou held a jade life-lock talisman in hand.

From time to time, corpse spirits emerged nearby. The ground would tremble, and waves of spiritual and demonic energy rolled past them.

On the jade lock, Mo Hua's life force alternated between white and red.

Though no death omen had appeared yet, Xun Ziyou was still deeply anxious.

After a while, he glanced around and sensed something odd in the tunnel.

He turned to Shen Shouxing,

"Elder Shen... is this a Shen family tomb?"

"More or less," Shen Shouxing replied.

"Who's buried here?"

"No one." Shen Shouxing replied blandly.

"No one?" Xun Ziyou frowned.

"Such a massive tomb, yet no one's buried?"

"The Shen family is wealthy and has many descendants. It was built as a precaution," Shen Shouxing said, giving him a look.

"Surely we don't need the Great Void Sect's permission to build a family tomb?"

Xun Ziyou didn't respond directly, only narrowed his eyes.

"If no one's buried here..."

He flicked a finger—a sword light shot forth, slicing a charging corpse spirit into dust.

"Then where are all these undead coming from?"

Shen Shouxing's eyelid twitched. He replied coldly,

"Just some yin creatures that took over an empty tomb."

Xun Ziyou sneered.

The group pressed on in silence, weaving through the winding passage until they reached the rightmost path—leading toward the underground palace.

Mo Hua's group had left behind plenty of traces.

Following the trail, Xun Ziyou soon arrived at the massive golden coffin deep in the underground palace.

What they saw there was utter carnage.

The ground was riddled with craters, the stone shattered and broken.

Bits of corpse monsters lay scattered everywhere—mangled flesh, twisted limbs, the stench unbearable.

Just one glance told the group everything—they could imagine the intensity of the battle, the brutality of the clash.

Only a group of late-stage Golden Core cultivators, using every technique they had, could have caused such devastation.

And judging by the lingering demonic blood aura, those cultivators had likely been powerful demon cultivators...

Xun Ziyou's heart pounded violently. He looked down at the jade life-lock again, unable to believe what he was seeing.

So many powerful demon cultivators...

Such a bloody scene. Such fierce slaughter.

The level of destruction was so intense that even Xun Ziyou—a late-stage Golden Core sword cultivator elder—felt a lingering chill in his heart...

Could that kid Mo Hua really have survived amidst all this chaos?

Xun Ziyou furrowed his brows tighter and tighter, the more he thought about it, the more absurd it seemed.

Then he turned and looked silently at Shen Shouxing, his tone cold:

"Elder Shen, this… probably isn't just some ordinary 'yin creatures,' right?"

At this point, everyone could tell—

There was something seriously wrong with this Shen family tomb.

And those tomb raiders were definitely not ordinary people either.

Shen Shouxing's face was extremely ugly—especially when he saw the crushed corpse spirits, the melted bronze coffin, and that gaping tomb pit now exposed.

A bone-deep chill surged in his heart.

Xun Ziyou followed his gaze to the shadowy tomb pit in the ground and muttered thoughtfully:

"These tomb raiders killed a corpse creature here, broke some kind of seal, melted the coffin… and then entered the pit?"

That would mean... Mo Hua went in too?

It was obvious.

Xun Ziyou didn't even need to think about it.

Anything dangerous, chaotic, and noisy like this—Mo Hua would definitely be involved.

Xun Ziyou's heart grew heavier by the second.

Meanwhile, on the other side, Shen Shouxing was also thinking grimly:

"We didn't find Qing'er's corpse along the way, nor any shattered protective talismans. That means… he was probably taken into the tomb as well..."

His expression became terrifyingly serious.

"Elder Shen," Xun Ziyou asked,

"What is this tomb pit exactly?"

Shen Shouxing shook his head.

"I don't know either."

Xun Ziyou's eyes narrowed slightly.

"Then how about we go down and take a look?"

Shen Shouxing frowned.

"This is the Shen family's tomb. The deeper areas may hold family secrets. Since you're all outsiders, I'm afraid it might not be appropriate for you to enter."

"But a direct disciple of my Great Void Sect is likely down there," Xun Ziyou replied firmly.

"I've been ordered by the Grand Elder himself—I must bring him back safely."

He even brought up the Grand Elder. He wasn't here to negotiate.

Shen Shouxing's face was like still water—no emotion—but his eyes flickered with deep thoughts. In the end, he sighed.

"In that case… I'll go down with Elder Xun."

Xun Ziyou was a little surprised, but nodded.

"Alright."

"Please, after you, Elder Xun," Shen Shouxing said with a cupped-fist salute.

Xun Ziyou hesitated.

This Shen Shouxing was too shrewd—he couldn't read him at all.

And this tomb pit… was far too sinister. Surely it hid great danger.

If this were any other time, he would've avoided it completely.

But Mo Hua was inside—so no matter how dangerous, he had to go in.

Xun Ziyou nodded, his eyes gleaming with sword intent, then stepped into the pitch-black tomb pit.

Master Gu followed behind.

Fan Jin didn't want to go in at all, but after glancing at Shen Shouxing—with clear fear in his eyes—he had no choice but to grit his teeth and follow behind Xun Ziyou.

Xun Ziyou was, after all, an elder of the Great Void Sect.

If something really happened, clinging to the Great Void Sect was still better than getting involved with the Shen family.

Besides… the Shen family…

Fan Jin shuddered quietly.

After the three entered the darkness, Shen Shouxing's gaze turned icy. He let out a cold snort and whispered to himself:

"Hell has no door, yet you insist on walking in…"

Then he turned and ordered:

"Two of you follow me down. The rest stay here and guard the tomb pit."

"Send word immediately—bring more people. Completely seal off this tomb."

"Yes, Elder," a Shen family Golden Core cultivator bowed.

"Qing'er… please don't die…" Shen Shouxing silently prayed, then stepped into the tomb pit, eyes cold and resolute.

Two powerful Golden Core cultivators from the Shen family followed him in.

The remaining cultivators spread out to guard the area around the pit.

One Shen clan member, following Shen Shouxing's orders, turned and left to summon reinforcements.

But after just a few steps—

He suddenly heard a strange "creak creak" noise behind him.

Something felt wrong.

He turned around—and his expression instantly became one of horror.

Among the Shen family's Golden Core cultivators, one man suddenly began peeling off his skin like removing clothing—revealing a pale, monstrous, half-human, half-demon body underneath.

His eyes were blood-red, and he wielded a bone blade, decapitating the other Shen family cultivators one by one.

The rest stood motionless, as if bewitched—letting themselves be slaughtered.

"You…" the messenger cultivator was frozen in terror and turned to flee—

But in that moment, a blood-red haze filled his vision.

He saw a refined-looking, yet terrifying face, twisted in a grotesque smile.

Just being stared at by that face, his spiritual awareness was sucked away.

A sharp pain pierced his throat—

A piece of white bone stabbed through his neck.

His consciousness faded. His body crumpled to the ground.

He was dead.

After killing him, the pale demon methodically executed the remaining puppet-like Shen family Golden Cores.

Then, dipping his fingers in their blood, he drew a blood-red evil array on the ground.

The sinister formation enveloped the tomb pit beneath the melted bronze coffin.

Once finished, the pale demon stood before the tomb pit.

Its facial features twisted and contorted. Its voice was harsh and inhuman:

"Everyone's here now… so let them all die inside."

It gave a gruesome smile— And then leapt into the pitch-black tomb pit.

(End of this Chapter)