43: Lay a net and strike with a club

The Sky Ruins Continent has four major Cultivation Families:

Ye, Chu, Xiao, and Qin.

These four major Cultivation Families are all Central Continent powers, and they control one of the largest behemoth Cultivation powers on the Sky Ruins Continent:

The Central Continent Immortal Mansion!

Even the Nine Heavens Immortal Palace has to bow its head to the Central Continent Immortal Mansion.

The Nine Heavens Immortal Palace is a behemoth Cultivation power in the Western Continent that rivals the Heavenly Pool Empire, but that is only a behemoth Cultivation power of the Western Continent.

The Central Continent is the Cultivation Holy Land of the Sky Ruins Continent.

Only by becoming a behemoth Cultivation power in the Central Continent can one be considered a recognized continent-level, or top-tier, behemoth Cultivation power.

These top-tier behemoth Cultivation powers generally have close ties with the Immortal Realm.

For example, there are Sects in the Immortal Realm founded by their powerful Cultivators who Ascended. As long as they Ascend to the Immortal Realm, they can go to their Sects in the Immortal Realm, so they won't be completely lost and bullied as newcomers in the Immortal Realm.

Although the Ascension Passage of the Sky Ruins Continent has been hidden for hundreds of thousands of years, the powerful Cultivators of these continent-level behemoth Cultivation powers have always longed for the powerful Cultivators of their Sects in the Immortal Realm to return to the Lower Realm to see them and help them solve the problem of being unable to Ascend to the Immortal Realm.

This is their only hope for Ascension to the Immortal Realm!

But hope is always slim.

It has been unknown how many tens or millions of years since the first powerful Cultivator from their Immortal Realm Sect descended to the Lower Realm.

The second time?

There was no second time!

Now that the Ascension Passage has been hidden for hundreds of thousands of years, no one from their Immortal Realm Sect has come down yet.

Could it be that their Sect in the Immortal Realm was destroyed?

Or, with the Ascension Passage hidden, the Sky Ruins Continent and the Immortal Realm might have completely lost some kind of connection, and those powerful Cultivators in the Immortal Realm cannot sense the location of the Sky Ruins Continent, and thus cannot descend?

The most unbearable thing in the world is to be shown hope, only to be left to suffer in endless despair.

Many Cultivators have already become numb.

However, it must be said that almost all of the behemoth Cultivation powers on the Sky Ruins Continent, after their founders Ascended to the Immortal Realm and made a name for themselves, had returned to the Lower Realm. Therefore, a long time ago, the Sky Ruins Continent experienced a great craze of powerful Cultivators from their Immortal Realm Sects returning.

These powerful Cultivators returned, first, to see how the forces they had personally built up were developing after their departure, and to revisit the places they had once stayed.

Second, they wanted to inform the forces they had established in the Lower Realm how to find their forces created in the Immortal Realm after Ascending to the Immortal Realm. This would continuously attract new members to their forces in the Immortal Realm and also provide protection for the Disciples of the forces they had built up after their Ascension to the Immortal Realm.

Third, they would leave behind some Immortal-grade Magic Treasures to protect the safety of the forces they had personally built up, so they wouldn't be destroyed after their departure.

Because of this, those behemoth Cultivation powers, more or less, possess Immortal-grade Magic Treasures that serve as their Sect's, Family's, Mansion's... Palace's foundation, as well as unknown hidden reserves.

For example, the first Palace Master of the Nine Heavens Immortal Palace secretly returned a million years ago, when the Heaven and Earth Rules of the Sky Ruins Continent had not yet been crippled, and left behind some items to enhance the strength and foundation of the Nine Heavens Immortal Palace. The Immortal-grade flying boat was one of them.

It can be said that the first Palace Master of the Nine Heavens Immortal Palace should be the most recent and the last Ascended powerful Cultivator among the behemoth Cultivation powers to return from the Immortal Realm.

Since then, the Sky Ruins Continent entered an era of hidden Ascension Passages, a dark and bleak period.

Of course, Wu Fan and Li Feng's crossing the Void Realm for a hundred years to finally reach the Immortal Realm, and then returning to find Ao Zhan to seize the Nine Treasures Glazed Chaos World Tower, was unknown to the behemoth Cultivation powers, and this matter did not alarm many people.

Not to mention, this incident happened in the isolated Eastern Wilderness. The behemoth Cultivation powers of other continents couldn't even be bothered with the Eastern Wilderness, so how could they care about what happened there?

If the Sky Ruins Continent truly had some connection, sensation, or coordinates with the Immortal Realm, and something went wrong due to the battle involving Ao Zhan and the others, then the only people who would know the coordinates of the Sky Ruins Continent in the Lower Realm would be Li Feng and Wu Fan, who crossed the Void Realm and Ascended to the Immortal Realm after the Sky Ruins Continent had problems.

Currently, Wu Fan has been killed by Ao Zhan, and Li Feng, activating a World Rule Talisman, escaped quickly, but having almost died on the Sky Ruins Continent, he clearly has little desire to return to the Sky Ruins Continent.

Li Feng and Wu Fan undoubtedly harbored selfish motives. After the Sky Ruins Continent encountered problems, they had crossed the Void Realm and entered the Immortal Realm for hundreds of thousands of years, yet they did not inform the Immortal Realm forces of the Sky Ruins Continent's Cultivation behemoth powers about the problems with the Sky Ruins Continent or its coordinates.

It can be said that as long as Long Aotian Ascends to the Immortal Realm and kills Li Feng, he will be the only one who knows this secret.

Furthermore, regarding the Shi Family possibly accumulating power in secret to overthrow the Imperial Family and become the new masters of the Eastern Wilderness.

Long Aotian does not believe the Shi Family can succeed.

The Nine Heavens Immortal Palace has an Immortal boat that can cross the Haiyun Dream Marsh, and the Central Continent Immortal Mansion also has one, not to mention the Ye Family, one of the four major Cultivation Families of the Sky Ruins Continent.

If the Shi Family truly pushes the Imperial Family of the Eternal Leaf Dynasty too far, the Imperial Family will definitely send out a plea for help to the Ye Family of the Central Continent.

In addition, because of this relationship between the Eternal Leaf Dynasty and the Ye Family of the Central Continent, Long Aotian speculates that the Eastern Wilderness is not, in fact, truly isolated from the continent.

At least, the two major behemoth powers of the Eastern Wilderness could potentially maintain contact with the continent, but such contact is very rare and unknown to outsiders, thus creating the illusion that the Eastern Wilderness is isolated from the world.

In this kind of communication, the external Cultivation behemoth powers are clearly the dominant party, because only with Immortal-grade Magic Treasures for defense can one safely cross the Yunmeng Marsh.

In Ao Zhan's memory, Long Aotian did not find any information about the Imperial Family of the Eternal Leaf Dynasty possessing Immortal-grade Magic Treasures.

Therefore, the way the Ye Family of the Central Continent maintains contact with the Imperial Family of the Eternal Leaf Dynasty is likely:

The Ye Family of the Central Continent comes and goes as they please, or visits periodically.

As long as the Ye Family of the Central Continent maintains contact with the Imperial Family branch of the Eternal Leaf Dynasty, the Shi Family cannot overthrow the Imperial Family and become the new masters of the Eastern Wilderness.

Even if they truly succeed, the Shi Family will not sit in that position for too long... Shi Jing and the others finally opened the defensive Formation and entered. Long Aotian did not follow them in.

Firstly, he didn't have time to follow them in.

Secondly, he was afraid the other party would notice something amiss.

Thirdly, he couldn't decipher this Rank 8 defensive Formation, and didn't know if there were any Spirit Division Realm or even Mahayana Realm powerful Cultivators of the Shi Family inside.

However, not following them in did not mean that Long Aotian had no way to deal with the other party or couldn't kill them.

After Shi Jing and the others entered, Long Aotian hid inside the Treasure Pagoda, using the power of the wind. His Divine Sense controlled the Treasure Pagoda, which had transformed into a tiny speck of dust, to drift over. At the same time, he released his Divine Sense and began to frantically engrave Void Formations.

To prevent Shi Jing from potentially harming Long Aoxue inside, he only engraved more than a dozen smaller Level 6 Void Maelstrom Arrays and one Void Annihilation Array targeting the Rank 8 defensive Formation at the entrance. In about half a quarter of an hour, he began his plan to lure the enemy.

First, he activated the Void Annihilation Array to attack the Rank 8 defensive Formation, but only attacked for less than two breaths before shutting it down.

At this time, when a regular Rank 8 defensive Formation is attacked, Shi Jing and the others inside would definitely know.

What would they do about it?

First, ignore it.

Second, come out and see.

If they ignore it, then he would continue to activate the Formation to attack the Rank 8 defensive Formation.

If they come out to see, then he would activate the Void Annihilation Array to kill the people who came out.

And during this process, Long Aotian was still frantically engraving Level 6 Void Maelstrom Arrays and Level 6 Void Annihilation Arrays targeting the regular Rank 8 defensive Formation.

It is said that enough ants can bite an elephant to death.

One Level 6 Void Annihilation Array poses no threat to a regular Rank 8 defensive Formation, but what about two, three... a dozen, twenty?

Moreover, Void Formations have another characteristic: they utilize the power of heaven and earth, with endless attacks and endless energy to sustain the Formation's operation.

Especially, a Level 6 Void Formation is comparable to a regular Level 7 Formation, and its power is only one Rank lower than a regular Rank 8 defensive Formation.

If Long Aotian were to truly exert himself, he might indeed be able to break the defensive Formation by deploying multiple Level 6 Void Annihilation Arrays to wear down the regular Rank 8 defensive Formation.

After the Void Annihilation Array stopped under Long Aotian's Divine Sense control, within a minute, a Nascent Soul Realm powerful Cultivator indeed appeared at the entrance.

That Nascent Soul Realm powerful Cultivator's face was filled with anger. Someone dared to attack their Shi Family's Rank 8 defensive Formation? Wasn't this courting death?

But what bewildered that Nascent Soul Realm powerful Cultivator was that when he released his Divine Sense, he didn't find any lawbreakers attacking the defensive Formation within a radius of several thousand miles.

He couldn't help but fly around in the air, carefully inspecting the surroundings.

Indeed, no one was found attacking the defensive Formation!

This is eerie!

He was bewildered!

However, it was best that no one was attacking the defensive Formation.

There were no problems outside, and Cultivating inside was a rare and comfortable opportunity, so he didn't want to stay outside for long.

Therefore, he turned to go back.

However, just as he was about to turn back, an unexpected event occurred...