Chapter 2518: Ritual

Zu An was taken aback. He had used the Taotie’s Heaven-Devouring Sutra—it was inspired by his fight with the Shadow Monster King in the Sealed Land. The Shadow Monster King had also been shrouded in light, and had warped the space around himself. Back then, Zu An was able to unravel the warped space with the Heaven-Devouring Sutra.

Wei Yueyan’s divine light reminded him of that experience, which was why he'd tried using the Heaven-Devouring Sutra, turning his body into a black hole to absorb the surrounding energy. Much to his surprise, he successfully overcame the divine light.

It wasn't the first time someone recognized the Taotie’s power. Their words also suggested that the Taotie they spoke about was different from the little Taotie monsters he had previously met in the Yinxu secret dungeon.

I wonder if I’ll meet the real Taotie one day.

Wei Yueyan snapped out of her daze and said, “You have tricks, but you can’t escape death.”

Not daring to let her guard down anymore, she went all-out and morphed into a black bolt of lightning. Her sharp wings turned the surroundings into a lethal trap, performing thousands of cuts within the blink of an eye. She didn’t think that anyone could escape unscathed from her concentrated attacks.

However, her smile soon stiffened. To her shock, Zu An and the Saintess had disappeared into thin air.

“A teleportation formation?” Despite being Er Fu’s subordinate, she was still a deity; she could sense a disturbance in the surrounding spatial ki.

With a sneer, she slipped into a spatial crack and soon arrived in a room. However, Zu An and the Saintess were still nowhere to be seen.

“They prepared multiple teleportation formations? You’re too naive if you think you can shake me off like that!”

She slipped into the cracks of space once more and performed ten consecutive teleportations, stopping by forests, cliffs, and quarries along the way. The final teleportation brought her back to the room she'd reached in her first teleportation.

Her face finally darkened. It was now clear to her that the other party had tampered with the spatial ki disturbance to mislead her, leaving behind a fake trail of teleportations to render her effort useless. Chances were that those two had already fled in the meantime.

A terrifying pressure suddenly bore down on Wei Yueyan.

Er Fu’s massive snake body appeared on the room’s ceiling. He lowered his human head and said, “You seem to have lost the targets.”

Wei Yueyan anxiously half-kneeled on the ground and said, “Forgive me, master. The intruders were too cunning. Their grasp of the spatial laws surpasses that of ordinary people.”

“You have disappointed me.” Er Fu’s eyes turned cold.

Wei Yueyan shuddered in fear. Goosebumps rose all over her body as Er Fu slowly approached her with a widened mouth. She trembled in fear, but she didn’t dare to avoid her master.

All of a sudden, Er Fu raised his massive head and looked back at the hall. “How dare you!”

His massive snake body abruptly vanished into thin air. Shortly after, furious roars came from the distance as terrifying ki pulsations rippled from the palace at the mountain peak.

Zu An and the Saintess observed the commotion from a tree outside the palace.

“It’s a huge relief that little sister Ling’er reminded me to set up that trap in our teleportation formations, or else she would have caught up with us,” Zu An remarked in awe. The Saintess’ grasp of spatial formations seemed to be above his.

The Saintess smiled shyly. “I just thought that deities could have the ability to slip through space, so it would be good to prepare countermeasures. I didn’t expect it to be of use either.”

She didn’t want to dwell on this topic, so she naturally diverted the conversation toward the ongoing battle in the palace. “Big brother Zu, those shamans are stronger than I thought.”

“Indeed, they are stronger than I thought,” Zu An said with a frown. His brief encounter with Er Fu had left a deep impression on him, so he was surprised that the Kaiming Six Shamans could fight the latter on equal grounds.

“It doesn’t seem as if there’s anything different about deities other than them being stronger than mortals,” the Saintess said.

Zu An shook his head. “No, that’s not right. I didn’t see Er Fu move when he attacked us earlier. It’s as if he can control the surrounding ki with his will. I'm familiar with that feeling. I could do the same in the Cultivation World when I had the World Law Beacon.”

The Saintess was taken aback. “Does Er Fu have this world’s World’s Law Beacon?”

Looking at her nervous face, Zu An chuckled. “I don’t think so. If he had this world’s World Law Beacon, we would have been long dead, and he wouldn’t have had to murder his little brother out of envy either.

“I think deities have the ability to freely control ki within a set radius. It’s not as powerful as the World Law Beacon, which can control an entire world’s ki and will. However, this world is far stronger than the Cultivation World, so even utilizing a small portion of its ki can make one very powerful.”

“No wonder he exerted such terrifying pressure,” the Saintess murmured contemplatively. “What else did you figure out?”

“Deities also have an ability known as divine halo,” Zu An deduced. “Now that I think about it, there were iridescent lights when the Celestial Court bestowed me with the Sun Slaying Bow the last time I was here. I thought it was just a special effect, but it might have been a divine halo.

“Wei Yueyan isn't a strong deity; that’s why her divine halo is only black and white. I’m not sure if I could have broken free if it had been a stronger deity with an iridescent divine halo.”

The Saintess lowered her gaze in contemplation.

Zu An continued, “Aside from those two factors, I think faith is also very important to deities. It may directly determine their fighting prowess.”

The Saintess looked at him with conflicted eyes.

He’s formidable, to be able to deduce so much despite the brief encounter.

“Let’s go. It looks like the Kaiming Six Shamans have succeeded,” Zu An said. The fighting in the palace had died down, leaving Er Fu to rage alone.

He and the Saintess made their way to the meeting spot with the Kaiming Six Shamans and found them surrounding a stone platform. A human-faced, snake-bodied corpse had been placed on the platform.

The six shamans murmured an obscure chant, and blue lights began glowing from the formation beneath their feet. The blue lights converged on the stone platform, causing the corpse to glow with a faint light. The surroundings were suffused with tremendous life force.

Zu An wanted to walk over and ask about the Brilliant Pinflower, but the Saintess stopped him. “They are conducting an important resurrection ritual. You mustn’t interrupt them now, or else they might blame it on you.”

Zu An looked at the formation and sighed. “They won’t succeed.”

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