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Chapter 798: Chapter 804: Mistake
Logically, even if these cultivators were swallowed by quicksand and fell into the depths of the earth, with their strength, they should have been able to escape and return to the surface.
But the Nine Heavens Profound Ascension Great Array, a sixth-order formation, was designed to deal with a large number of cultivators’ ascension and therefore placed extra emphasis on defense.
When the ground collapsed, it altered the layout of the formation, turning a system that should have been outward-facing inward! As a result, countless cultivators were trapped inside the Great Array.
Without spiritual energy, they exhausted all their pills that could restore mana and still failed to break the formation.
Li Zhirui also saw in the Jade Slip that, after the pills were depleted, high-level cultivators forced low-level cultivators to attack the Great Array with their flesh and blood.
No matter what they did, they couldn’t break the formation, and in the end, all the cultivators died trapped inside, becoming part of the sea of skeletons.
This Jade Slip also contained a fourth-order cultivation technique. Its recorder wanted to use this means to continue the legacy of their family.
Next, Li Zhirui opened the other Jade Boxes one by one, each of which contained a Jade Slip.
After carefully probing to ensure there were no issues, Li Zhirui began to examine the contents.
What was recorded inside was not much different from the first Jade Slip, similarly detailing the cause of death and the inheritance of their cultivation techniques.
At most, it recorded the reason why the Jade Boxes used for preserving spiritual objects had kept their contents for so many years, as well as the integrated unique restrictions, which were said to be discovered inadvertently while deducing the laws of a sixth-order Great Array.
But after reading, Li Zhirui still had many questions, such as why so many cultivators believed in this idea that sounded quite unreliable.
And who had set up those puppets outside the Underground Palace? Judging by the large amount of five-colored crystals, the puppets were set up by cultivators of the same era.
"I wonder if I can find the answer in this burial ground," Li Zhirui murmured softly.
He believed that there were more than just these few people ’keeping diaries’; there must be many more Jade Boxes buried somewhere. Even if they couldn’t solve the questions in his mind, the inheritance of those cultivation techniques alone was a tremendous treasure!
Even though the Li family’s inherited cultivation book, the Wanling Sutra, was high-ranking at the sixth-order and led straight to the Void Refinement Realm, fully satisfying the needs of cultivation, these techniques included not only the routes of conducting mana but also several divine powers, as well as key points of cultivation, their value not inferior to the techniques themselves.
However, given the special circumstances inside the Underground Palace, Li Zhirui had no plans to enter personally. Should any situation arise that he couldn’t handle, it would truly mean no way out, no one to turn to; continuing to search with vines was quite good.
To save mana and speed up the digging, Li Zhirui took out some first-order Spirit Vines from his space, and in no time, an immense number of emerald vines grew out within the large Underground Palace, ceaselessly burrowing and searching.
This massive undertaking lasted for more than half a month. After making doubly certain that nothing was overlooked, Li Zhirui stopped.
By this time, he had accumulated over a hundred specially made Jade Boxes in front of him!
Compared to the hundreds of thousands of cultivators, these few Jade Boxes were still too few, but there was nothing Li Zhirui could do; he had only found so many.
Looking at the eighty-one stone pillars that stood unyielding in the Underground Palace, Li Zhirui really wanted to move them. Although they had lost all spirit light and turned into ordinary pillars, their incredible sturdiness could be very useful at times.
But Li Zhirui had tried and failed to move them, no matter how many vines he used!
He then discovered that the eighty-one stone pillars were actually connected to the ground; in other words, the ground itself was the Array Plate, and the pillars were the Array Flags. To take the pillars, one would have to take the entire Underground Palace!
Unable to achieve this, he could only give up reluctantly.
"Dust to dust, earth to earth, my apologies for the offenses before. Now I’ll see you all off on your final journey!"
As he spoke, Li Zhirui activated the Purification Principle between heaven and earth, sweeping the Underground Palace clean, and then summoned a Purifying Spirit Fire and threw it into the pile of shattered bones.
The pale blue flames swiftly spread, engulfing the entire underground palace in firelight, and after half an hour, a layer of grey-white ash covered the ground.
Having done all this, Li Zhirui turned and left, collapsing the tunnel with controlling vines as he went, By the time he reemerged above ground, the tunnel had been thoroughly sealed, unrecognizable as an entrance to any ruin.
Casually tossing the Spirit Boat into the air, he made his unhurried way toward Wanxian Island.
Li Zhirui sat cross-legged at the prow of the boat, opening each of the hundreds of jade boxes, which all contained jade slips, and aside from these, there were other spiritual objects.
Sadly, most of these spiritual objects had dimmed spirit light, aside from a few Spirit Seeds that could be brought to life by harnessing space, the rest were not much different from trash, regardless of their previous grade.
After all, no matter how powerful the mana-sealing prohibition was, it could not withstand the test of time.
Li Zhirui stored the Spirit Seeds in his space, letting Shen find a place to plant them, before he began examining the jade slips, Despite not having encountered any problems earlier, he remained vigilant and cautious.
Nevertheless, Li Zhirui was caught off guard!
One of the Spirit Jades, which looked no different from the jade slips, actually contained the remnant soul of a Nascent Soul Cultivator!
And he was not just any Nascent Soul Cultivator, but one who had successfully transcended tribulation and should have ascended to the Upper Realm but was dragged down by countless cultivators, trapped in the Nine Heavens Profound Ascension Great Array.
Or more precisely, he should be called a cultivator at the Void Refinement Realm!
In the moment Li Zhirui made contact, it transformed into a speck of spirit light and burrowed into his Sea of Consciousness!
Regrettably, this fragment of a soul was too shattered and had lost all self-awareness, with only the instinct to survive remaining.
Facing Li Zhirui, whose spiritual soul was complete, it found no opportunity to attack!
Instead, because it had been separated from that special Spirit Jade, it quickly weakened further and was eventually devoured by Li Zhirui.
There wasn’t much memory left in the remnant soul, the sole memory was that of the cultivator at the Void Refinement Realm filled with immense regret, a regret that persisted despite countless years passing, never forgotten!
It was his promise to those cultivators to ascend to the Upper Realm with them.
"So that’s it!"
After understanding this, Li Zhirui immediately grasped why those cultivators had put their faith in such an absurd plan as ’one person’s enlightenment leading to the ascension of all’.
It turned out there had been a Nascent Soul Cultivator proficient in Heavenly Calculation Deduction, who inadvertently foresaw that the Profound Origin Realm was about to fall into ruin and sink into the Ruinous Void.
In theory, a prophecy by a single Nascent Soul Cultivator shouldn’t have been highly credible.
Initially, indeed, not many cultivators believed it, but as more and more Nascent Soul Cultivators arrived at similar catastrophic prophecies, it became harder and harder to dismiss. 𝚗ovp𝚞b.𝚌om
Now, everyone had no choice but to believe and to fear not believing.
In a bid for survival, all cultivators desperately sought solutions, ultimately devising the plan of ascending together.
From the perspective of later generations, this divination was completely incorrect!
The Profound Origin Realm not only did not fall into decay and destruction but instead continued to thrive and grow even more prosperous.
