Chapter 1656: Small Village, Killing-the-Pig Feast
Qin Mu walked toward the first forest of obelisks. Here, there was not only a peculiar smell of blood rust but also an extremely heavy aura of slaughter and killing. Beyond that, what made him most uncomfortable was the suppressive force emanating from these obelisks.
These obelisks were refined by the Eldest Young Master of the Miluo Palace to suppress enemies.
This force suppressed his primordial spirit, preventing his primordial spirit's power from being unleashed. Not only that, but the suppressive force also locked down his divine treasures!
The Eldest Young Master's cultivation was extremely high. The forest of obelisks he left behind gradually acted upon the Great Dao he had cultivated, causing his Dao techniques and divine abilities to scatter and fall silent!
The power of the Great Dao was manifested in divine abilities. If Dao techniques and divine abilities could not operate, then one's strength could not be unleashed!
This was the situation Qin Mu now faced.
"The Eldest Young Master cultivates the Miluo Palace Master's Hongmeng Primordial Qi, and that Hongmeng Primordial Qi is the foundation of all his Dao techniques and divine abilities. If the obelisk forest can also suppress Hongmeng Primordial Qi, then he himself would be suppressed here by the obelisk forest he refined!"
Qin Mu stopped walking. He was still at the periphery of the obelisk forest. At this rate, he probably wouldn't be able to go far before all his cultivation base, strength, and even Dao techniques and divine abilities were completely suppressed.
Even if Taiyi was suppressed here, he would be powerless to rescue him. Therefore, he had to come up with a countermeasure.
"In other words, Hongmeng Primordial Qi can evade the suppressive force of the obelisk forest. However, I need to know the sequence of runes used in the Eldest Young Master's Hongmeng runic seals!"
He stopped to carefully study the obelisk. He already had some understanding of the runes contained within the door panel. Over the past few years, he had been studying the Hongmeng runes and divine abilities contained within the door panel.
But a door panel was a door panel, and a stone tablet was a stone tablet. The Hongmeng divine abilities contained within the two items were definitely not the same.
Just then, Qin Mu suddenly froze, staring at the ground.
Besides his own footprints, there were other people's footprints on the ground!
He examined them closely. There were footprints leading in from outside and footprints leading out from inside. Judging by the size of the footprints, they should belong to the same person.
"This person walked into the world behind the door, stopped here, and then immediately turned around and left this place!"
Qin Mu showed a surprised expression. Judging by the footprints, this person was clearly not the Eldest Young Master of the Miluo Palace. This person had barged into the world behind the door, and his momentum must have been extremely strong. His footprints were deeply imprinted on the ground of that world behind the door!
He had come with an invincible momentum, reaching the first obelisk in just a few steps!
Qin Mu lifted his foot and stomped down heavily, but only left a shallow footprint on the ground. Compared to the footprints left by that person, his own strength was clearly much inferior.
"Stronger than me!"
He stood before the first obelisk. That obelisk was nowhere to be seen, leaving only a large pit. Clearly, this obelisk had been uprooted directly by that person!
"However, his steps stopped abruptly here. After he uprooted this obelisk, it seemed he encountered something that even he found extremely terrifying."
Qin Mu stood on the footprints in front of the obelisk and looked into the forest of obelisks, but couldn't see anything wrong.
Suddenly, his eyes lit up. He saw another door panel, broken in two, scattered within the obelisk forest.
"This door panel?"
Qin Mu was stunned, then immediately understood: "This door has two panels. That person must have barged in from outside and punched one of the door panels flying! That door panel was refined by the Second Young Master, extremely hard. He punched it and broke it; his strength is indeed far above mine. The broken door was sent flying by his punch and landed in the obelisk forest!"
"He charged into the door with his momentum, but after walking here and uprooting the first obelisk, he immediately sensed an incomparable danger and turned back. Therefore, the footprints he left when leaving became very light and faint."
Qin Mu turned his head and looked at the other door panel of the portal. The departing footprints were very light and faint. After reaching the door, to vent his anger, he punched the remaining door panel flying.
"But his momentum had already dissipated, so he couldn't shatter this door panel in two. He only managed to send it flying into the abandoned land."
Qin Mu turned around again, looking suspiciously at the obelisk forest. "So, what was the danger that this great expert sensed? Was it this killing intent?"
He shook his head. Although the killing intent was strong, it wasn't strong enough to scare away an existence of this level.
"Was it the suppressive force of the obelisk forest? That's not right either. He could uproot the first obelisk, showing he wasn't afraid of the Eldest Young Master's arrangements. He had sufficient confidence to come and break the formation. So what scared him away..."
Qin Mu frowned deeply, having a few guesses, but none of them were certain.
"Forget it. As long as I enter and take a look, I'll know what scared away such a great expert!"
He walked toward the next obelisk. The obelisk was like a mirror, its surface extremely smooth, even reflecting his internal organs and his divine treasures.
If one looked closely, they could even see the composition of Qin Mu's Great Dao, see the structure of every particle that made up Qin Mu, and even see his brain, as well as the nerve plexus currents caused by changes in his thoughts!
If one had a very deep understanding of a person's thoughts, then through the mirror surface of this stone tablet, one could see through all of that person's thoughts!
"From the surface of the stone tablet, it's impossible to see any runes. But this is precisely the peculiarity of the Miluo Palace Master's Hongmeng runes!"
Qin Mu stood confidently before the stone tablet.
Because he knew that Hongmeng runes possessed infinite detail!
He had discovered this back when he studied the Miluo Palace Dao patterns.
The Miluo Palace Dao patterns possessed infinite detail, and the root of this infinite detail came from the Hongmeng runes.
Therefore, although this obelisk appeared flawless and could reflect infinite detail, he could still see through its composition!
Because the infinite detail reflected by the obelisk's mirror surface was actually the Hongmeng runes reflecting the person or object before the mirror surface, using the structure of that person or object to display the infinite detail of the Hongmeng runes!
The Hongmeng runes encompassed all phenomena, could transform into all Dao techniques and divine abilities, and could evolve into all people or objects.
Qin Mu stood before the obelisk's mirror surface. It seemed like he was looking in a mirror, but in reality, the Hongmeng runes within the obelisk were reconstructing another him in the mirror.
"The simplest way to make the Hongmeng runic array hidden by the Eldest Young Master in the obelisk reveal itself is to make it so it can't reflect anything!"
Qin Mu released the remaining Hongmeng Primordial Qi within him, transforming it into four mirror surfaces, standing them around the obelisk!
His Hongmeng Primordial Qi transformed into a runic state, each rune extremely fine, preventing this obelisk from reflecting anything else.
With no object to reflect, the runes hidden within the obelisk appeared one by one.
The main body of the obelisk was made of Chaos Stone. The Hongmeng runes that the Eldest Young Master had imprinted on the Chaos Stone presented an extremely dense and exquisite structure, like art, or like a complex and ingenious mechanical structure, constantly changing.
Qin Mu was enraptured, studying these runic imprints. The changes in the obelisk's runic imprints presented a kind of mathematical structure. Each change contained profound mathematical principles.
Although they came from different cosmic epochs, with different languages and scripts, the Hongmeng runes were the same, and the Dao language was also universal. More importantly, mathematics was also a language that could be communicated!
Qin Mu's attainments in these three languages were very high, making his understanding of the Eldest Young Master's Hongmeng sealing divine ability much simpler than he had imagined.
Even so, it took Qin Mu two or three months to thoroughly understand the Hongmeng seal on the obelisk.
What he needed to do was not to violently break the seal formed by the obelisk forest, but to allow himself to enter the forest without being suppressed by the seal.
The most crucial step was that he needed to make his own primordial qi imitate the Hongmeng runic sequence of the obelisks, making the seal in the forest think that he was the missing obelisk!
Qin Mu stayed outside the obelisk forest for a long time, repeatedly deducing and checking for any flaws in his plan.
Only when he could no longer find any errors did he step into the obelisk forest. At this point, the suppressive force emanating from the forest could no longer threaten him. Instead, he moved through it like a fish in water.
The mirror surfaces of the obelisks reflected his figure, but what they reflected was not him, but a walking obelisk!
This was the most peculiar aspect of the Hongmeng runes.
Qin Mu traveled all the way, gradually penetrating deeper into the forest. However, the killing intent and bloody aura emanating from the forest also became increasingly intense.
"This killing intent is extraordinary. It's stronger than the Heavenly Calamity aura formed when the Heavenly Lord died, and much more powerful than the two divine blades on the Execution Platform! What kind of person possesses such terrifying killing intent?"
The obelisk forest was like a maze. The mirror surfaces of the obelisks reflected other obelisks, making people dizzy and easy to get lost.
Qin Mu wandered for a long time, using the sun in the sky to determine his direction, and gradually walked into the center of the forest.
The last layer of the obelisk forest was arranged in a circle. Passing through this forest, the scene ahead suddenly became picturesque, with green mountains and clear waters, like a paradise. What surprised Qin Mu the most was that there was actually a small village inside. Smoke was curling up from the village chimneys, and a farmhouse was cooking!
At the village entrance, a young man had a pig hanging upside down from a tree, slaughtering it and letting the blood drain. Below was a basin filled with pig blood.
Beside the young man, a little girl with two goat-horn braids was running wildly around the tree, giggling, her voice very crisp.
An old man sat on a stone pier at the village entrance, smoking a water pipe with a *pata pata* sound, squinting his eyes and puffing out clouds of smoke.
Behind the stone pier was another old tree, with several cocooned caterpillars hanging from its branches.
Qin Mu's gaze passed over this old man. He saw, by the old well under an old tree in the village, a woman sitting there, pounding clothes with a wooden club. As she pounded, she cursed, though it was unclear who she was cursing at.
An old woman sat under the eaves, basking in the sun, her hands resting on her lower belly, squinting and dozing off. Occasionally, she would sneak a look with her blurry old eyes at the cursing woman.
This small village was peaceful, as if only a family of five lived here.
Qin Mu blinked, took a look, but didn't enter the village. Instead, he tilted his head, thought for a moment, then took out the geographical map Taiyi had left for him and unfurled it with a *shua* sound.
Taiyi's geographical map was drawn with Taiyi's staff. The map was extremely complex. Wei Suifeng had copied it and given it to Qin Mu.
Qin Mu unfolded the map, looked at it, and then scratched his head. He hadn't followed the route marked on this geographical map at all when he entered the obelisk forest!
Wei Suifeng had given him many geographical maps, but he basically never followed the routes, always barging in randomly.
"It seems I took the wrong path."
Qin Mu rolled up Taiyi's geographical map, turned around, and planned to leave this obelisk forest and start over. He said ruefully, "If Senior Brother finds out, he'll definitely blow his beard and glare..."
Suddenly, the old man on the stone pier at the village entrance put down his water pipe and said with a beaming smile, "A distinguished guest has come from afar. Won't you stay and have a Killing-the-Pig Feast before leaving? Xiao Shang has already slaughtered the pig."
--- Ten years sharpening a single sword, its frosty edge never tried! From kindergarten to high school, it's more than ten years of sharpening the sword! Fellow students taking the college entrance exam, after eating this Killing-the-Pig Feast, draw the frosty sword in your hearts, cut through the thorns and brambles, and cleave open the Southern Heavenly Gate!