Chapter 316: Breaking Through the Tower

Every cultivator entering the Hundred-Formations Pagoda would be responsibly informed by the Heavenly Mystery Sect about the dangers within, to prevent these talented individuals from dying prematurely.

But no matter how much the Heavenly Mystery Sect cautioned them, accidents still occurred.

Considering the Blood Sect's tradition of fiercely protecting its own, Bai Qian certainly didn't want Lu Ye to encounter any trouble within the Hundred-Formations Pagoda.

Standing before the stone pagoda, Lu Ye stepped inside. Guided by Bai Qian, he positioned himself on a formation in the center.

Bai Qian began placing spirit stones around the formation, then looked up at Lu Ye. Seeing that he was ready, he activated the formation.

His vision twisted and shifted, similar to the sensation of entering and exiting the Spirit Creek Battlefield via a Heavenly Mystery Pillar. By the time Lu Ye regained his senses, he was in an empty space.

The space wasn't large, roughly the size of a single room.

He looked around and saw a protruding stone brick on the room's wall. Lu Ye walked over, placed his hand on the brick, and pressed lightly. The stone brick immediately receded inwards.

Instantly, spiritual energy surged, and lines rapidly spread across the room, appearing not only on the floor but also on the walls.

A formation had appeared, and Lu Ye understood at a glance that he was meant to break it.

Over the years, array masters from the Heavenly Mystery Sect and throughout the entire Nine Provinces had continuously challenged the Hundred-Formations Pagoda. The specific types of trials within the pagoda had long been understood by cultivators.

Generally, there were three types: array deployment, array breaking, and array mending.

Array deployment involved setting up the required formation according to the pagoda's specifications. For array breaking, the Hundred-Formations Pagoda would generate a formation for the cultivator to dismantle. Array mending was more complex; the pagoda might only generate half a formation, requiring the cultivator to complete it, or it might present a flawed formation, and the cultivator would need to identify and correct the errors.

Each floor had a time limit of three hours. Within this time limit, the more trials completed, the greater the benefits the cultivator would receive.

The Hundred-Formations Pagoda contained far more than a hundred formations; its name came from having one hundred floors.

Breaking formations was what Lu Ye was best at, much simpler than deploying or mending them.

Lu Ye first popped two spirit pills into his mouth, and while chewing, he activated his Insight Spirit Mark.

A spiritual light flashed in his eyes, and Lu Ye instantly identified several operational nodes of the formation. After all, it was only the first floor, and the formations presented were the simplest ones.

Lu Ye wasn't sure what the formation's specific purpose was, but he didn't need to find out.

Too lazy to even take out his array flags, Lu Ye drew the Mountain-Coiling Saber from his waist. Targeting one of the nodes, he thrust his saber. With a surge of spiritual power, the operating formation suddenly froze, then quickly disintegrated.

In just three breaths of time, the formation was broken!

New lines quickly formed, creating another formation. Lu Ye observed it briefly, then thrust his saber again.

After breaking three formations in a row, no new formations appeared this time. A speck of light suddenly appeared out of thin air, floating down before Lu Ye. Lu Ye raised his hand and touched the light, pressing it into his forehead. A message appeared in his mind.

This time, the trial was array deployment, and the formation diagram appeared with the message.

Lu Ye sheathed his Mountain-Coiling Saber, pondered for a moment, then took out five array flags from his storage bag.

Compared to breaking formations, deploying them was undoubtedly more troublesome. Previously, when Lu Ye deployed formations, he would directly activate his own spiritual power, constructing an entire formation in one go, similar to how he formed spirit marks. This method was quick but also consumed a lot of energy. Moreover, formations deployed this way were less stable and easily broken.

However, deploying formations with array flags was different. It consumed far less energy, the formations became more stable, and the fault tolerance was much higher. Most array masters deployed formations this way, as not every array master had such strong control over their spiritual power as he did.

As Lu Ye placed the array flags one by one, positioning them in the four cardinal directions, the framework of the formation quickly took shape. He then activated his spiritual power to complete and fill in the internal structure of the formation.

This was the advantage of deploying formations with array flags. First building the framework with array flags and then perfecting and completing the formation was much simpler than his previous method of directly activating spiritual power to construct formations.

Progress was swift. Approximately fifteen minutes later, the formation was complete. As Lu Ye successfully constructed the final line, the formation began to operate.

After operating for three breaths, the completed formation was erased by an unknown force. Lu Ye retrieved his array flags.

Another speck of light appeared...

Soon, Lu Ye noticed a problem: it seemed he was being targeted.

Because in the subsequent trials, the number of times he was asked to break formations was very low. Typically, only one or two out of ten trials involved breaking formations, while the rest were array deployment.

As for array mending, such trials would not appear on the first ten floors, only after the tenth floor.

He wasn't sure what trials other cultivators experienced here, but for him, the proportion of array-breaking trials was only ten to twenty percent, which was clearly not normal.