Chapter 360 Void Energy Conversion Array

The chilling voice carried with remarkable clarity throughout Death Valley amidst the howling winds carrying snowflakes.

Before he finished speaking, Gu Qing took a step forward.

That spotless white robe suddenly tore through a thousand meters of space, appearing instantly at the bottom of the sinkhole as if shrinking the distance to an inch.

Zhao Yi knelt on one knee beside the array control panel, blood gushing from the cut on his thigh. He had been furious with rage due to the violent mental pollution in his mind, but the moment he saw Gu Qing's back, all his agitation and madness seemed to be doused with a bucket of absolute zero ice water, freezing instantly.

Zhao Yi opened his mouth, subconsciously wanting to remind the purple lightning on the cauldron that it could specifically harm the primordial spirit.

But the words were on the tip of his tongue, and he swallowed them back.

To warn someone who transcends the rules to be careful of them? That in itself is an utterly ridiculous act of overstepping one's bounds. Zhao Yi shut his mouth, using only his remaining arm to firmly support himself on the ground, gazing up at the figure's back as if looking up at a mountain.

Gu Qing stood quietly in front of the violently trembling No. 9 cauldron.

On the surface of the cauldron, the dark purple corrosive liquid was frantically trying to seep into the depths of the earth's veins along the array patterns. Like a group of venomous snakes that had smelled blood, they were slithering and crawling on the Star Iron Cauldron, making a teeth-grinding "sizzle" sound.

Gu Qing slowly raised her right hand.

He placed his smooth, jade-like hand directly on the most intense and turbulent dark purple arc of electricity on the cauldron's handle.

"Sizzle!"

The moment they made contact, the corrosive energy seemed to have encountered a great provocation, instantly erupting with an extremely dazzling purple light that surged upwards from Gu Qing's palm. A twisted, violent will, filled with destructive and despairing emotions, pierced straight into Gu Qing's sea of ​​consciousness like a sharp poisonous thorn, attempting to assimilate this arrogant human into a madman who had lost his mind.

However, nothing happened.

Gu Qing's eyes didn't even show the slightest ripple.

The purple lightning that attempted to invade twitched violently a few times in Gu Qing's palm, and then, under the crushing force of some higher-dimensional rule, it shattered inch by inch, turning into a wisp of lifeless gray-white powder that drifted away with the wind through his fingers.

Gu Qing slowly withdrew her hand, her gaze falling as she quietly looked at the ashes remaining in her palm.

Actually, he didn't need to come in person at all.

With his current unfathomable level of understanding, he only needs to sweep his divine sense across the cliff and erase the pollution attached to the array's core with a single thought.

Then why come down in person?

Gu Qing frowned slightly. Even he himself couldn't explain it clearly.

Perhaps he had stayed atop Kunlun Mountain for too long, so long that he had almost forgotten what it felt like to stand on solid ground. It was an utterly absurd yet irresistible impulse—he wanted to step down from that lofty throne, to feel the wind and snow of the mortal world, and to hear the rough yet real sounds of breathing.

This is a weakness that should not belong to the "Way of Heaven". A trace of confusion, which he himself did not notice, flashed in Gu Qing's eyes, but only a fraction of a second later, this confusion was replaced by coldness.

He slid a dark gold star-shaped iron carving knife out from his wide sleeves.

With an extremely casual flick of his wrist.

"Snap!"

Blinding golden sparks exploded on the core array of Cauldron No. 9. Gu Qing didn't even glance at it. With a swift and brutal motion, he severed more than a dozen of the thickest spiritual energy nerve channels inside the cauldron.

Those connectors, which were originally used by high-level cultivators to perform precise micro-management and guide array patterns through their divine sense, instantly lost their luster.

The conduit connected to the futon outside the sinkhole automatically popped open after the spiritual pressure was lost, making a muffled "bang" sound.

Gu Qing casually put the carving knife back into his sleeve and looked up into the distance.

The next moment, his voice transcended Kunlun and rang out directly in the joint control room 700 meters underground in Kyoto.

"Wang Mingyuan."

His voice was extremely calm, without the slightest fluctuation due to the critical situation of the battle, as if he were simply stating a trivial matter.

Seven hundred meters underground in Kyoto, in the joint control room.

Upon hearing this voice that suddenly appeared beside him, Wang Mingyuan, whose eyes were bloodshot from staying up all night and being extremely nervous, abruptly raised his head.

"Dao Lord! I'm here! Why did the Nine Cauldrons suddenly lose all connection?"

Wang Mingyuan's voice was hoarse, as if he had swallowed a handful of sand, and his voice revealed an undisguised anxiety.

"Without the control of divine sense, the defensive polarity of the great formation is collapsing! We can't stop the infiltration!"

"No need to block it anymore."

Gu Qing raised her eyes, her gaze piercing through the swirling snow, calmly watching the dark purple acid rain churning violently in the sky, like a persistent, insidious ailment.

"Using one's divine sense to resist emotional pollution is an extremely foolish waste of energy."

His voice entered Wang Mingyuan's mind directly.

"I have severed all connections to divine sense and modified the underlying logic of the formation."

"From now on, this formation will be renamed the [Void Energy Conversion Formation]."

In the control room, Lin Feng, who was frantically typing on the keyboard, suddenly froze. He looked up, his face full of astonishment: "Dao Master, you mean... abandon the defense? Reverse the polarity? Wouldn't that turn the barrier into a one-way absorption funnel? Those are all sources of pollution that can drive cultivators insane!"

"Shut up and do it."

The voice seemed to press directly into the depths of everyone's consciousness, calm yet brooking no disobedience.

Inside the control room, all the questions that had yet to be voiced were forcefully suppressed at that moment.

next moment.

Gu Qing's voice disappeared completely.

In the joint control room 700 meters underground in Kyoto, only a suffocating silence remained.

"Gulp."

Lin Feng swallowed hard, cold sweat dripping from his forehead onto the keyboard. He turned to Wang Mingyuan: "Professor Wang... are you really going to remove the Extreme Yang Fire's interception? Once that layer of purple acid rain is no longer blocked, it will directly coat the barrier, causing mental pollution inside..."

"Execute the order!" Wang Mingyuan stared intently at the large screen, then abruptly ripped off his tie and threw it to the ground. Bloodshot veins crept into his eyes, transforming into a ruthless, desperate resolve. "He never makes a mistake. Cut off the output of Extreme Yang Earth Fire from all nodes."

The hesitation in Lin Feng's eyes vanished instantly, replaced by absolute obedience.

He turned around abruptly, his ten fingers pounding on the keyboard like a madman's phantom, the rapid tapping sound pouring down like a torrential rain.

"The consciousness control network has been physically disconnected!"

"The extreme solar flare interception network is closed!"

"The Nine Provinces Barrier is reversing, three seconds left on the countdown!"

"three!"

"two!"

"One! The polarity of the grand formation reversed!"

"Boom—!"

The entire control room, 700 meters underground, shook violently.

At this moment, we are 20,000 meters above the ground.

The bluish-gray Kyushu Barrier, which had been like an iron plate, frantically spewing out extreme yang fire to resist erosion, suddenly froze.

The golden flames that filled the sky were extinguished completely in an instant.

"Sizzle!"

Without the protection of the extreme yang fire, the thick, viscous, dark purple acid rain in the sky, which was filled with the infinite malice and curses of living beings, was like a swarm of sharks that had smelled blood. In an instant, it crashed straight onto the bluish-gray star iron array pattern like a flood that had burst its banks!

On the streets of the new Chang'an City.

Old Zhao, who had been clutching his throbbing head and panting against a pile of scrap metal in the factory, suddenly saw the flames in the sky extinguish and the purple sores plastered directly onto the light screen. His eyes widened in horror, and he instinctively gripped the crowbar in his hand, thinking that the whispers that could drive everyone mad were about to descend.

However, the excruciating pain that I had expected, like my brain exploding, did not occur.

In the sky, the tightly interlocking hexagonal array patterns, upon contact with the purple acid rain, suddenly emitted an extremely muffled, mechanical roar, like the opening of an ancient giant gate.

Immediately afterwards, tens of thousands of array patterns, like inverted dragon scales, flipped in unison in the opposite direction.

The barrier is no longer a rigid wall.

It transformed into a greedy "abyssal maw" that stretched across the entire outer edge of the atmosphere.

"Whoosh—splash!"

When the dark purple acid rain came into contact with the swirling array patterns, an extremely bizarre scene unfolded.

A layer of extremely pure white light shone at the edge of the formation. This white light was the law of heaven and earth that Gu Qing had personally imprinted into the foundation of the formation.

The spiritual impurities such as "despair," "tyranny," and "madness" mixed in with the purple acid rain were silently crushed the moment they touched this layer of white light, just as evil spirits collided with the righteous law of heaven and earth.

"squeak--"

A bloodcurdling scream seemed to echo through the sky, only to be abruptly cut short. Those chaotic mental forces, without even a ripple, were forcibly erased and formatted by the fundamental laws of the formation!

The toxicity was instantly stripped away.

The remaining purple liquid, within a fraction of a second of passing through the light barrier, shed all its evil hue and transformed into the purest and most transparent primordial spiritual energy, which was then violently absorbed into the earth's vein channels by the formation!

"This...this is consuming the monster's energy?" The apprentice next to him wiped the blood from his nose in a daze, watching as the originally menacing purple mist in the sky was being filtered and absorbed by the array patterns at a visible speed.

"Damn it..." Old Zhao grinned, his lips chapped from dehydration, revealing an extremely fanatical smile. "That's our family's grand formation, eating alien junk for supper!"

……

Gu Qing stood amidst the wind and snow, his deep gaze seemingly piercing through the void, anticipating the variables that might arise in the future.

The laws of heaven and earth that were just imprinted into the foundation of the great formation changed far more than just the polarity of the outer layer of the barrier. On a dimensional level unnoticed by anyone, the spiritual energy circulation of the Nine Provinces Great Formation had, like countless invisible capillaries, completely permeated the entire atmospheric circulation system of the Earth.

The light curtain in the sky is merely the first filter.

This world has quietly transformed into a second furnace. As long as they die within this barrier, their corpses, scattered energy, and even every drop of blood they shed will be forcibly decomposed and drained by the omnipresent array the moment they hit the ground, transforming into pure spiritual energy that nourishes this planet.

The entire Earth, including every inch of its interior, has become a never-ending predatory trap. Poison dropped by the enemy is filtered into spiritual energy; if an assassin who sneaks in dies, even his bones are absorbed cleanly by the Earth as fertilizer.

"Buzz—!"

The moment the new operating logic of the great formation was completely closed.

Deep within the earth's strata around the world, extremely muffled thunderous sounds echoed simultaneously. These were the saturation roars of the Kyushu earth veins as they absorbed massive amounts of energy in a short period.

Kunlun, Death Valley sinkhole.

The wind was still howling, but the nauseating stench of blood and oppressive atmosphere in the air had completely disappeared.

The purple arcs of electricity that had been flickering on the surface of the ninth cauldron had long since been drained by the grand formation. The cauldron emitted a deafening, clear dragon's roar. The spiritual pressure within the cauldron, which had been thoroughly purified and compressed to its limit, could no longer be suppressed.

The next second, what spewed from the cauldron was no longer the extremely yang earth fire of slaughter and defense. Instead, it was a pure white column of spiritual energy, over ten meters in diameter, so dense it appeared almost liquid!

"Boom—!" The massive waterfall of spiritual energy shot into the sky, soaring straight into the dark clouds. It did not destroy anything; the immense spiritual power gently exploded in mid-air, scattering into an extremely dense white spiritual rain that fell gently upon the entire Valley of Death.

On the icy plains, the plants that were nearly dead sprouted tender green buds and grew lush branches and leaves at a speed visible to the naked eye the moment they came into contact with the spiritual rain.

Senior Brother Xu, who was tightly strapped to the mech's tracks, inhaled the spiritual rain without warning. His originally ashen and lifeless face suddenly flushed with a vibrant red.

"Ugh—" He let out a muffled groan of extreme pleasure. His depleted and nearly shattered dantian was forcibly stretched open by this extremely pure and impurity-free spiritual energy. The broken meridians in his body were reconnecting and healing at an terrifying speed, becoming wider and stronger than before he was injured.

Zhao Yi knelt on one knee beside the control panel, blankly stretching out his calloused hand.

A drop of cool, white spiritual rain fell into his palm, instantly seeping into his body through his pores. The wound on his thigh immediately stopped bleeding, and the granulation tissue at the edges began to wriggle and grow extremely actively. In just a dozen breaths, a thick scab formed on the horrifying wound.

"This...this is a miracle..." Zhao Yi looked up at the torrential rain and murmured to himself.

It wasn't just Kunlun. Changbai Mountain, Taishan Mountain, Huashan Mountain... all nine major spiritual energy points around the world simultaneously spewed forth pure white pillars of spiritual energy that shot straight into the sky. A pure spiritual rain that swept across the globe nourished this long-parched planet.

Gu Qing slowly raised his head. He looked at the once dense purple patches in the sky, which had been completely wiped away by the great formation, and the Nine Provinces Barrier once again revealed its reassuring, extremely clean bluish-gray metallic luster.

Reflected in his deep eyes was the falling spiritual rain. Gu Qing turned away, no longer looking at the large cauldron that was spewing spiritual energy.

He took a step forward, his figure transforming into a smooth, undisturbed stream of light, disappearing once more into the depths of the Heavenly Palace on the Cloud Top.