Chapter 1429: Beautiful Moth

The Immortal’s Abode only lasts for a little over a month, and she couldn't afford to waste much time. Ye Haitang flicked her wrist, and hundreds of hazy green command flags flew out. Among them was a ten-foot-long green banner from which a swirling green hurricane emanated, brimming with spiritual energy. This was a Tier 4 formation. While an individual’s strength was limited, Ye Haitang was a formation master. With the formation deployed, her power significantly increased, making it easy to chop down ironwood.

“Scatter,” Ye Haitang muttered, her fingers forming a spell.

The surfaces of the hundreds of green formation flags instantly brightened, illuminating countless green runes before scattering in all directions to encircle a five-li radius. She then produced a hazy green nine-cornered formation disk and channeled several spells into it. The disk pulsed with countless green runes, and the hundreds of formation flags swelled in size before sinking into the ground and vanishing. Moments later, a fierce gale erupted, swirling up countless fallen leaves. A green tornado, over a hundred zhang high and ten zhang in diameter, materialized out of thin air, quickly followed by a second, then a third. This was the Nine Palace Gale Spirit Formation, a Tier 4 array. In less than ten breaths, hundreds of these massive green tornadoes, each over a hundred zhang high and ten zhang in diameter, appeared nearby. Their powerful air currents swept up vast quantities of fallen leaves and rubble, which were instantly pulverized upon being drawn into the swirling vortexes.

Ye Haitang shifted her spell, and the hundreds of green tornadoes surged towards the thousand-year-old ironwood, which was already enveloped in black thunderfire. A series of deafening roars followed as the hundreds of green tornadoes battered the ironwood. The tree’s surface became pockmarked, and its smaller branches snapped instantly, ground into powder by the powerful currents.

Half an hour later, with a final deafening crash, the thousand-year-old ironwood was severed into two hundred segments by the dense, massive wind blades. This wasn't enough; Ye Haitang continued to control the formation to attack other ironwood trees. For a while, the air was filled with continuous roars and rolling air currents.

The Immortal’s Abode opened only once every millennium, and Ye Haitang wanted to gather as much thousand-year-old ironwood as possible for Wang Changsheng to refine into Tier 4 puppet beasts. Two days quickly passed.

Ye Haitang’s face was pale, and a long string of over a hundred large storage beads hung from her neck. In addition to the string of beads, Wang Changsheng had also given her a storage ring for more valuable spiritual herbs and refining materials. The Wang family had long feared poverty, and since it was a rare opportunity for Ye Haitang and the other four to enter the Immortal’s Abode, they naturally wanted to collect as much as possible. She took out a light blue pill, swallowed it, and her pallid complexion gradually regained its color.

“Who’s hiding there? Come out!” Ye Haitang frowned, her face clouded with anger as she gazed in a certain direction. Several thousand zhang away, a soft white light flickered beneath a towering ancient tree, revealing a rail-thin young man in a green robe and a short, stout young man in a red robe. Both were at the seventh layer of the Core Formation stage, and their features bore a slight resemblance.

“Immortal Ye,” the young man in green began politely, his tone quite sincere, “I am Shen Ruiqiu, and this is my younger brother, Shen Ruiguang. How about we cooperate in our treasure hunt? The Immortal’s Abode is vast, perhaps even larger than a sea region in the South Sea. Reuniting with companions relies purely on luck, so working together would be much better than going it alone.”

“Thank you for your kind offer, but I’m accustomed to working alone. My apologies,” Ye Haitang replied indifferently. She didn't know these Shen family cultivators and certainly wouldn't join forces with them; one could never truly know another's intentions. She wouldn't even agree to cooperate with disciples from the Myriad Swords Sect, let alone the Shen family. She only trusted Wang Qingjing and the other four.

“Immortal Ye, you are incredibly ungrateful! We sincerely invited you to join us, and this is your attitude?” Shen Ruiguang retorted bluntly, his eyes blazing with covetousness. “If you don't want to come with us, then just give us that Tier 4 formation. Keeping it with you is a waste of a good item anyway.” A Tier 4 formation was worth over a million spirit stones. While they carried two Tier 4 formations themselves, Ye Haitang’s wind-attribute array was exceptionally powerful, capable even of handling a Tier 4 demonic beast. In the perilous Immortal’s Abode, an additional Tier 4 formation significantly increased one’s chances of survival.

Ye Haitang’s delicate eyebrows furrowed, and a cold glint flashed in her eyes.

“Silence!” Shen Ruiqiu snapped, glaring at Shen Ruiguang. “My apologies, Immortal Ye. My brother is foolish. Since you’re unwilling to join us, then let’s forget it.” They transformed into two streaks of light and shot into the sky, quickly vanishing into the distance.

Ye Haitang’s expression softened. She withdrew her spell, and the hundreds of formation flags flew out from the ground, shrinking as they vanished into her sleeve. If Shen Ruiqiu and Shen Ruiguang had genuinely dared to attack, Ye Haitang would not have held back. She released a palm-sized Two-Eyed Rat. After sniffing the air a few times, the rat scurried forward, and Ye Haitang quickly followed.

Shen Ruiqiu and Shen Ruiguang landed on a low dirt mound, Shen Ruiguang’s face contorted in a grimace. “Brother,” Shen Ruiguang grumbled, clearly unconvinced, “she’s just one person, and not well-known. Why are you afraid of her? Give her an inch, and she’ll take a mile! What is she? Our Shen family is one of the Ten Great Cultivation Families of the South Sea; inviting her to join us was an honor, and she was simply ungrateful.” Over two hundred years ago, when the Immortal Suppressing Pagoda appeared in the Golden Toad Sea, three Core Formation cultivators, pivotal to the Shen family’s development, tragically died within it. As a result, Shen Ruiguang, though less distinguished, was chosen to fill the void and became a key cultivation prospect for the family. This time, the Shen family had dispatched ten Core Formation cultivators into the Immortal’s Abode. While they weren’t the strongest among them, the Abode was so vast that encountering Ye Haitang was a rare stroke of luck. They had hoped to join forces with her, only to be directly refused. The Shen family had clearly fallen into decline, a fact evident to any discerning observer. However, some family members remained stubbornly entrenched in the delusion of their past glory as one of the Ten Great Cultivation Families, constantly feeling superior.

“Idiot!” Shen Ruiqiu reprimanded with a cold face. “She’s the niece of the Green Lotus Immortal Couple. Do you really think True Monarch Taihao would allow her into the Immortal’s Abode if she didn’t possess formidable strength? True Monarch Taihao didn’t send her here to die. If you wish to die, do so after we’ve left the Immortal’s Abode, and don’t drag me down with you.” He added, recalling that if it weren’t for the tragic deaths of his three elder cousins in the Immortal Suppressing Pagoda, Shen Ruiguang would never have become a key cultivation prospect for the Shen family.

Shen Ruiguang pouted, about to retort, when a melodious woman’s song suddenly filled the air. It was like a heavenly melody, instantly drawing them in, making it impossible to resist. They felt dizzy, a sensation of floating blissfully. A vast expanse of purple miasma surged from all directions. Wherever it passed, the ground weeds withered instantly. Thousands of colossal black moths emerged from the purple miasma, each bearing a captivating woman’s face on its head and faint golden patterns on its wings.

“Oh no! Those are Beauty Moths!” Shen Ruiqiu’s face blanched. “They’re ranked thirtieth on the List of Heaven and Earth’s Strange Insects!” Beauty Moths fed on cultivators’ essence souls, were incredibly venomous, and adept at illusion. These fierce insects were notoriously difficult to breed; even Myriad Beast Island hadn't managed to cultivate thousands of them. Yet, here were at least ten Tier 3 Beauty Moths. Before either of them could flee, the alluring female chanting intensified, enveloping an area of a hundred li. Their gazes grew dull, and they began to alternate between wild laughter and furious outbursts. Soon after, hundreds of Beauty Moths swarmed over them, obscuring their figures. The ten Tier 3 Beauty Moths exhaled a purple poisonous mist, dissolving their bodies into blood and devouring their essence souls.