Chapter 161: The Suspended Island (Part 1)

At the sound, everyone quickly gathered around Lei Xiang. Lei Xiang and three others joined forces to cast an oversized protective shield, guarding the four cardinal directions and shielding Qimenzi in the center. Lei Xiang turned to Qimenzi and asked, "Taoist Master, do you have any quick-setup formations? I'm afraid our shield won't hold out for long."

Qimenzi did not hold back. He tossed a pile of formation flags to Lei Xiang, transmitted the setup method directly into his mind, and finally threw a circular formation disc before falling silent. Sitting cross-legged with his eyes closed, a small circle with a radius of ten meters formed around the five of them. He began to chant incantations and perform hand seals to survey and calculate the "Fang-Kai-Wu-Meng" formation.

Without wasting words, Lei Xiang flickered into motion. Dozens of colorful formation flags were already driven into the ground around the formation disc. With a hum, the disc flared with brilliant light, and a faint layer of watery ripples materialized just outside the ten-meter circle. This granted them a double layer of defense: the outer layer was the jointly cast shield, while the inner layer was this nameless defensive formation resembling ripples of water.

No sooner had they finished than the white-robed figures wearing "diving goggles" swarmed over, blocked by the outermost shield. Just as they summoned their respective magical artifacts to launch a fierce assault, Lei Xiang gave the order, and the four of them whipped out their proudest treasures to strike first. Dugu Yixiao’s Golden Snake Sword circled overhead before plunging straight toward the white-robed man nearest to him; Tian Rui opened her mouth and spewed a stream of Dan fire—while other people's Dan fire was primarily used for refining pills, hers was capable of refining living beings; Lei Xiang channeled the third tier of his Cyan-Yellow Art, causing a startling alternation of cyan and yellow hues on his right arm as he swung a pitch-black Nine-Treasure Lotus Staff, an offensive momentum that easily rivaled the external martial arts masters of the continent; most bizarre of all was Yang Jian, who hoisted a monstrous hammer in both hands. The hammer handle curved like a new moon, and its head featured a curved, ram-horn-like sharp hook that shot out streams of dark red light blades, cutting through the air in erratic, winding arcs.

Among the four, Yang Jian's "Ram-Horn Hammer" possessed the greatest destructive power. The dark red light blades pierced through the two layers of defensive arrays and struck a white-robed man from an unexpected angle. Just as the miserable scream began to echo, another light blade reached a second white-robed man's chest. To save themselves, this mob of attackers hastily raised their own defenses to block the ghost-like, untraceable light blades. Yet the stream of fire, the Nine-Treasure Lotus Staff, and the Golden Snake Sword surged forward in succession, plunging both sides into a fierce, tangled battle.

Yet, outnumbered and isolated as they were, Lei Xiang and his companions found themselves under immense strain once the reinforcements from "Tooth-Opening" arrived. With over two hundred white-clad foes splitting their forces—half maintaining defense and the other half relentlessly battering the shield—Lei Xiang's group grew hard-pressed. They had to continuously channel spiritual energy into the shield while directing their own treasures to counterattack. The surface of the large protective shield grew dim, filling the enemy with elation as magical artifacts and spells rained down like a tempest.

Barely a quarter of an hour later, the jointly cast shield shattered with a series of cracking noises. Yang Jian and Dugu Yixiao, possessing the shallowest cultivation, each spat a mouthful of blood and sustained minor injuries. Fortunately, the inner protective layer laid down by the grand formation master Qimenzi was still intact; otherwise, they would have long been exposed to the full firepower of the white-robed assailants. Even so, they could not hold out much longer, for the calm voice echoed from afar once more. The little old man, Wisdom Tooth, chanted softly, "Tooth-Opening, Fog-Veiled, Heavenly Spirit Cannon!"

The surrounding dense fog churned violently once again, causing Qimenzi's grand array to creak under the immense pressure. This time, the mist did not transform into primordial beasts; instead, it converged and contracted toward a single point, forming a vacuum within the fog. The surrounding mist rushed in like a madman, slowly compressing this vacuum into a black hole the size of a sesame cake, its depths bottomless.

"Fire!"

At Wisdom Tooth's thunderous roar, the black hole erupted with a blinding flash of white light. With a deafening boom, dozens of white light spheres blasted directly into the grand array, shattering and leaving it pitted and scarred. Blue light flickered in Lei Xiang’s eyes as he gasped sharply. While others might not know, he saw it clearly: those were no mere light spheres, but projectiles forged entirely from top-tier spirit stones. Only an organization as obscenely wealthy as Tooth-Opening could afford to squander spirit stones as cannonballs.

Lei Xiang did not move, concentrating intently on devising a countermeasure, when Qimenzi's voice echoed in his mind. His expression shifted slightly, prompting him to retrieve the formation disc. Pouring his spiritual energy into it, he hurled it fiercely onto the ground. The disc smashed into fine powder, the fragments fluttering in an orderly fashion toward the formation flags, finally stabilizing the array. However, panic gripped Lei Xiang’s heart even tighter; Qimenzi had just explicitly warned him that this was a desperate, harvest-all measure with no room for recovery should they fail to repel the enemy's assault. Furthermore, Qimenzi stated that breaking the Fang-Kai-Wu-Meng formation would still take at least another hour.

Forget an hour—if another attack like that Heavenly Spirit Cannon came just three more times, they would undoubtedly fall. Strangely, after firing a single shot, the Heavenly Spirit Cannon went completely silent, while the surrounding white-robed men swarmed forward like ants, launching another wave of fierce assaults. The previously pitted array was growing thinner by the second. Could their ammunition be limited, or did the Heavenly Spirit Cannon have some restriction? At this thought, Lei Xiang hardened his heart, pulled out the Four-Seven Immortal-Shooting Gun, leveled it with his right hand, and clamped four black crystal bullets between the fingers of his left hand, roaring at the top of his lungs:

"Perish!"

With that cry, a rapid-fire sequence of twenty snaps echoed continuously as twenty surrounding white-robed attackers flipped backward and crashed to the ground. In a fraction of a second, his left hand smoothly loaded those four black crystal bullets while four more magically appeared between his fingers, snapping them into place. Repeating this process five times, twenty black crystal bullets were fully loaded into the Four-Seven Immortal-Shooting Gun. Yet a silent sigh escaped Lei Xiang's heart; only he knew that while this twenty-round continuous volley of the Immortal-Shooting Gun was overwhelmingly formidable, it drained the vast majority of his spiritual energy. Even with spirit stones clutched in his hands for replenishment, it would take half a day to fully recharge.

Nevertheless, this barrage stunned the entire Tooth-Opening faction. Even Wisdom Tooth in the distance felt a prickle of doubt: what kind of fortuitous encounter had this Lei Xiang stumbled upon this time? That Immortal-Shooting Gun was formidable indeed during their last encounter, but it had only been capable of two-round bursts. How had he suddenly fired twenty rounds? Could he have refined ten Immortal-Shooting Guns instead? Waiting in vain for a follow-up attack, Wisdom Tooth pondered for a moment and came to an understanding. "Lei Xiang, I know that Immortal-Shooting Gun of yours drains immense spiritual energy. You aren't capable of another display of might right now. Hehe, time to witness our Heavenly Spirit Cannon once more."

At Wisdom Tooth’s prompt, the Tooth-Opening faction gathered again. The compressed black hole within the Fang-Kai-Wu-Meng formation shrank by another two centimeters before erupting violently. A one-meter-wide depression cratered the surface of the protective array, bearing witness to the devastating blow. Acting on cue, every single attack from the Tooth-Opening members converged on that one-meter indentation. With a mournful wail, the grand array shattered, the cratered point completely blown apart. The formation was broken.

Hundreds of unhindered attacks pressed down like a collapsing sky. Tian Rui pushed outward with a double-handed seal, thrusting a half-meter-thick wall of fire to meet them, while Lei Xiang summoned the Blue Lotus Dish, which expanded against the wind to intercept half of the incoming assault. In the distance, Wisdom Tooth chuckled coldly. He truly hadn't expected Lei Xiang and his crew to be so stubbornly resilient. It seemed he could no longer hold anything back.

"Little Moth, strike. Leave not a single soul alive."