Fiend Text
Indeed, there was a stone bridge connecting the waterfall to a dark cave. Qiao Xue flashed past the cave entrance when he entered. Underneath the bridge was a dark pit leading to… not the faintest idea.
“Cliffs and deep pits. Was this heaven designed to play me?!”
Mu Yu used Shadow Splitter for light to cross the bridge, avoiding looking down at all costs and crossing as fast as possible. Judging from the cave’s appearance, it wouldn’t be far-fetched to say it was man made, but it was ridiculous for humans to be living at Second Heaven. Upon running his hands along the moss, he discovered fiend beast carvings on the wall. Strictly speaking, they weren’t beasts. Rather, they inherited some of their traits but had human face, hands and…
“Fiends? Fiends exist here?”
Hearing Mu Yu, Qiao Xue looked to the wall nearby. “What’s so surprising about that? They ruled Second Heaven eras ago. Humans here can’t match fiends.”
“Where did humans living here vanish to, then?”
“Are you stupid or trying to take me for a ride? Fiend Beasts rule this heaven. They evolve into fiends once they develop intelligence. The fiends eradicated human inhabitants during their reign.”
“Serious? That’s ruthless.”
“Do you seriously not know anything?”
Mu Yu’s conjecture was humanity travelled between Second and Third Heaven in ancient times via the teleportation formation. The fiends sabotaged the one at Second Heaven post-extermination
“How come I haven’t seen any fiends here yet, then?”
Qiao Xue paused to contemplate whether or not to explain. “Long-story short, things happened. The fiend race was exterminated, and fiend beasts can no longer develop intelligence?”
“What exactly are these ‘things’?”
“No clue.”
“Have it your way.”
Mu Yu began suspecting if Qiao Xue really was a disciple of Secular World Sect as he didn’t recall seeing her among their ranks.
Mu Yu could hear some hair-raising voices and sounds as they traversed deeper in.
“I think I remember this smell,” Xiaoshuai expressed.
“What smell is it?”
“Honey peas.”
Mu Yu just had to take Xiaoshuai’s word for it. They soon reached a dead end.
“Why? The entrance should be here.” Qiao Xue slid her hand on the wall and tried knocking.
“What entrance? What is your goal?”
Mu Yu shrugged after he received silence for a response. He touched the sealing and stomped on the ground. Noticing an odd rock, he moved it away, revealing a pattern on the ground. Xiaoshuai jumped onto the pattern and sniffed it. Xiaoshuai enthused, “The honey pea smell is coming from here.”
One might mistake the pattern for graffiti, but there was actually intent behind it. Qiao Xue effused, “It’s ancient fiend text!”
“What as in a short way of abbreviating the four character idiom ‘deluging the masses with deceit’? Hahaha.”
Qiao Xue gave Mu Yu a shut-up glare. She dusted off the dirt to reveal the complete text. She switched her position relative to the text and read, “The pills are imprisoned within. Won the fish and guards. Fiend formation is ubiquitous. What?”
Qiao Xue frantically searched rocks around the carving for clues, but there wasn’t anything. Mu Yu decided to take a look. He clarified, “It’s a formation. Know-it-all here doesn’t understand it?”
“You know how to defuse it?”
Mu Yu hesitated to proceed, pondering what Qiao Xue’s background was.
“Let me see. My Shifu did impart some formation knowledge onto me, but it’s not my main field of study.”
Mu Yu couldn’t make sense of the text. Having said that, it didn’t hamper his ability to understand the way it was constructed. He approximated its form after roughly fifteen minutes.
“You done?” pestered Qiao Xue.
“You seem exceptionally interested in this place. You give the impression you know what’s beneath here.”
Mu Yu caught Qiao Xue’s change in temperament. She recollected herself and replied, “How would I know? This is the fiend race’s former territory. I’m surmising it might be one’s den.”
Mu Yu kept his suspicion to himself and returned to checking the formation out. Based on what he could make it, it was an ancient formation. Its positioning was somewhat poor. Thankfully, it wasn’t too beyond his knowledge.
“There’s a specific way of activating this formation. You reckon fiends have spiritual energy as we do? I’m not sure if I can activate it using spiritual energy.”
“Fiends do have spiritual energy. Try it out.”
Mu Yu mulled over the response before resuming. He sent spiritual energy from his hand to a curved entrance he found and then guided it to the pattern. Some of the pattern was extra add-ons to mislead people. Sending spiritual qi down those paths would make it impossible to activate the formation.
A beam of light ascended from the ground. The other patterns emitted golden light up to the ceiling. Each trail of light contained a fiend text character.
“Those are the characters you read out before. I suppose you know what to do next?”
Qiao Xue provided an explanation of the characters; sadly, it wasn’t enough for he didn’t have the vaguest idea how to line up the characters in order to activate the formation. She, too, had no inklings.
“I think I know how to activate the formation. To eat the honey peas below, we need to exchange a small honey pea.” Xiaoshuai had a lick.
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