"How... how could this happen..."
I looked at the devastation before me, my eyes sore and unable to hold back the moisture.
Even though I had not spent a single day at the Lin Family, nor received a day's grace from them.
Yet my heart was bleeding, as if pierced by a sharp awl.
No matter what, the blood of the Lin Family flowed in my veins, and the surging anger, hatred, and sorrow in my heart were no less intense than those of Lin Hang.
"Sect Master Lin... what kind of monster did he actually... actually shelter in the Lin Family!" Lin Hang cried out to the sky, tears streaming down his face.
Lin Xinmei, seeing her kin dead, also knelt on the ground, covering her face and weeping.
At that moment, "Lin Qianshan" returned.
"Lin Qianshan" said to us, "I've dealt with all the traps, I'll take you to the Alchemy Room."
"No rush," Yu Longting pointed to the corpses on the ground and asked, "Do you have any memory of the Thousand Corpses Formation in your mind?"
"Lin Qianshan" furrowed his brows deeply, as if trying hard to remember something, "Thousand Corpses Formation? What is that? This guy's brain doesn't contain such a thing."
"That settles it then."
Yu Longting lowered his head and said to me, "The Thousand Corpses Formation might have been conjured by that woman in the attic."
"What is this formation used for?" I had an ominous feeling.
A formation brewed from so many lives must have terrifying power and effects.
Yu Longting pressed his brow, the world actually had issues troubling him, "Once inside the Thousand Corpses Formation, don't think about getting out. If you try to break through, the formation will immediately drain your blood. If you wait passively, by Midnight, the blood of everyone within the range of the formation... will be drained to nourish the formation."
"My father's notes mentioned a similar formation, it's a forbidden technique from the Life and Death Embroidery." I thought of a "Thousand Floating Garment," nourished by the blood of previous beings to sustain a woman's complexion, generally, the Nine-tailed Spirit Fox is used, "In this forbidden technique, a live Nine-tailed Spirit Fox is needed as the core of the formation, by killing the Nine-tailed Fox, the effect of retaining beauty from the Life and Death Embroidery will be invalidated."
"You're right in your analysis, these two formations are of the same origin. To break the Thousand Corpses Formation, we need to find the spirit snake being sacrificed in the core," Yu Longting agreed, "Kill the Spirit Snake, and the formation will be broken."
I narrowed my eyes.
The core wasn't using a human, but a Spirit Snake!
It's good that it's a snake, so taking action won't harm human lives...
But I subtly felt something was off, that woman in the attic with such sinister and cunning plots, Yu Longting and I have been walking into her calculations all along, would she truly let us break the Thousand Corpses Formation that easily?
Lin Hang checked his watch, "There's only half an hour until Midnight, we can't go to the Alchemy Chamber, we must break the core first."
"Hurry up and break the core, finish the job, and go to sleep, Master Hong is tired," "Lin Qianshan" said yawning.
I comforted Xiao Honghong, "You've worked hard, Xiao Honghong, we only have half an hour, we'll definitely race against time. Just hold on a little longer, and you can sleep soon."
Right now.
If we don't break the core, our entire party,
Including everyone in the Alchemy Chamber, will all be refined.
The woman in the attic is certainly a ruthless character of the highest order.
She had long designed everything to capture us all at once, Lin Qianshan might just be an ordinary sacrifice, a pawn...
But is her real purpose truly just for the position of Lin Family heir?
Her use of the Forbidden Woman's Technique was incredibly powerful, embarrassing to behold, capable of founding a sect and crushing the entire Mystic Arts Circle within minutes.
I kept a stern face, my mind utterly baffled.
Yu Longting had already conjured two guiding charms, leading us towards the location of the core.
"Eh? Isn't this the way to the Lin Family Ancestral Hall?" Lin Hang walked and realized something was off, "I come here to this ancestral hall every year during Qingming to pay respects... could it be... the core is also inside the ancestral hall? How could that be possible?"
Yu Longting countered, "Why not...?"