Chapter 33

Lin Du had always had bad luck since she was a child. Setting aside the major life events like her parents abandoning her, even in daily life, her food deliveries and packages frequently went wrong—either missing items, delivering to the wrong address, or arriving damaged.

When she was initially sent into this unexplored desert, she complained a bit but quickly got used to it. Encountering a man-eating red willow gave her a feeling of “of course, this would happen.”

“Since I’m here, I might as well make the best of it,” Lin Du actually had a good attitude about it.

When a delivery went wrong, the restaurant would usually compensate her, and if a package was damaged, there was always reimbursement. Sometimes, she’d even get some freebies without having to pay. Even in her bad luck, there was a silver lining.

Take this red willow tree steeped in heavy resentment, for instance. It was a yin-aligned object, making it excellent material for formations.

As Lin Du looked at the increasingly demonic red willow, a smile, almost gentle, appeared on her face.

Since she was already here, she might as well take something with her. With such a large willow tree, she could use it in formations for ages.

Lin Du smiled, but this smile terrified the two people who had been frozen by her. They felt like their souls had left their bodies.

This Lin Du must be crazy! She could even smile at a deadly red willow like that.

Lin Du began dismantling the formation. Even though it was underground, as long as it was within the formation, the energies would influence each other. To break the formation, she just needed to disrupt or reverse the generated energy.

Even without directly accessing the components of the formation, Lin Du only needed to overlay a counter-formation onto the existing one.

Holding her formation compass, she walked further and further away. The two people who could only move their eyes nervously followed her with their gaze, panicking as they saw Lin Du moving further away.

Finally, Lin Du pinpointed the exact location of the formation and skillfully began setting up her counter-formation.

If the formation gathered energy, she would disperse it.

For Lin Du, who was a prodigy in math and science, reversing a formation like this was no big deal.

The only problem was that the formation was too large, making it exhausting for her to do it alone. Additionally, breaking the formation might cause the red willow to go berserk, and the underground city could experience some backlash, so she needed to call for help.

Lin Du unfastened the disciple token hanging from her waist, activated it with her spiritual power, and sent a message to a few of her junior disciples.

Almost simultaneously, the young disciples, who had been wandering around searching for treasures, saw their tokens emit a faint white light and all turned to look in the same direction.

“Shishu (Aunt-Master) is calling us. She might be in some trouble. Let’s leave these bird eggs for now and head over quickly.”

Yuan Ye frowned as he looked in the direction indicated by his token.

Yan Qing put down the knife he was using to chop down a tree and nodded. “It seems quite far. We need to hurry.”

Ni Jin Xuan, who had a natural streak of good luck, had just found several rare spiritual plants. Seeing the disciple token’s signal, she quickly tucked the plants away and rushed towards the desert.

Many of the elders were already feeling overwhelmed.

Wu Shang Sect had sent four disciples in total: a pair of brothers who had wreaked havoc on several high-level spirit beasts’ nests, one who could randomly find rare spiritual plants wherever she went, and the last one… although she hadn’t found anything valuable yet, she was quite a handful.

The desert was far away, and Lin Du was at its center.

She diligently continued setting up the formation. Fortunately, her master, Yan Ye, had provided ample supplies, and she even had a storage ring specifically for different types of formation materials.

Two hours passed, and the formation was just barely complete.

Lin Du looked up at the sky.

The collapsed small world was tethered by the Zhong Zhou cultivators using secret techniques, so there were no sun, moon, or stars in the sky, and naturally, no day or night.

She could only rely on calculations.

Finally, after arranging the last piece of lapis lazuli and the spirit stones within the formation, Lin Du’s intensely focused mind was exhausted to the point of being overdrawn.

She took out a bottle of spiritual liquid, gulped it down, and obediently consumed the pills she hadn’t taken yet today. Then, she infused spiritual energy into the formation’s core.

Like pressing the switch on a carefully wired circuit, the formation slowly activated.

This was the first time Lin Du had ever set up a formation of this magnitude. She stood within it, quietly waiting for the formation to be fully triggered.

Energy continuously flowed from the formation’s core, and the two others within the formation also sensed the force erupting outward.

The power of the formation, extremely yang in nature, emitted a faint golden light. The young man, clad in a blue cloak, appeared almost sacred in the golden glow, her face pale from exhaustion, her robes fluttering despite the stillness of the air, standing alone and unparalleled in the world.

The golden light lasted only a moment before an invisible wave seemed to sever it, causing the expanding golden light to vanish in an instant.

“Tsk, I thought it was something impressive. All that fuss just for the formation to break so easily,” said Li Dong, his voice loud enough for Lin Du to hear from a distance.

Before the water mirror, several elders sighed regretfully. “Did the formation disappear?”

“Did it fail?”

“No, that formation was clearly a counter-formation. What’s she trying to do?”

No words could shake the person within the formation. She lowered her eyes and smiled slightly. “It’s done.”

It was neutralized.

The moment the formation beneath the surface was nullified, the previously gathered and suppressed resentment would inevitably rebound, even the portion absorbed by the red willow.

The resentment began to stir. The red willow, having just received the backlash of this force, struggled and let out a roar.

The roar resembled the screams of many souls, the sharp cries of men, women, and children layered together like the wails of ghosts, crashing against the eardrums of anyone nearby.

Lin Du clenched her fists, bracing herself for the red willow to go berserk.

Sure enough, not only did the blood-red branches start to tremble, but so did the roots beneath her feet. Lin Du could even see the chaotic flow of resentment surging under the bark.

This resentment was even more disturbing than Lin Du’s extreme cold energy, feeling like venomous snakes slithering over her skin as it invaded her body.

The cold was so intense that even Lin Du, with her Ice Spiritual Root, couldn’t help but shiver. For a moment, she seemed to see countless human faces appearing on the massive tree trunk, as if trapped within it, struggling to break free from the thick bark. The gnarled, rough bark bulged with the features of a human face—eyes, nose, and mouth—repeatedly forming and dissipating.

The tree, once normal, now seemed like a hollow drum made of human skin.

A chill ran down Lin Du’s spine, and then she felt the ground trembling, like the heartbeat of the earth itself.

But Lin Du knew it wasn’t that.

It was the backlash of resentment from thousands of spirits, desperate to escape, yearning for release.

It was the heartbeat of the people, the heartbeat of the ancient city.

Lin Du’s entire body tensed up, like a leopard ready to pounce, her calm and elegant attire hiding taut, coiled muscles underneath.

The white fox fur collar trembled slightly in the howling wind as the youth raised a fist, followed by the sickening sound of skin and flesh being smashed.

Branches pierced through Lin Du’s Frost of Life, carrying a murderous, bloodthirsty resentment, attempting to swallow and consume her whole—this person who had disrupted its cultivation of resentment that had spanned thousands of years by merely setting out a few items.

The willow demon was being violently torn apart by the vengeful spirits within, suffering from severe backlash. It needed to replenish its energy with flesh and spiritual energy.

And Lin Du was the most abundant source of spiritual energy present.

Countless branches were smashed by her fists, only to be replaced by more. The youth’s pale, clearly defined fists continued to strike out, step by step moving closer to the tree trunk itself.

The elders watching in front of the water mirror were all somewhat stunned.

The branches that Li Dong couldn’t cut through with a sword, branches sharp enough to pierce through a skull, were being smashed to pieces under Lin Du’s fists like ripe watermelons, exploding into chunks of blood-red flesh. Amidst the shower of blood, the youth strolled calmly, finally arriving in front of the violently thrashing red willow.

She had set up a layered formation.

On top of that, there was also a Ghost Gate Formation.

She had placed the Ghost Gate right where the red willow stood.

The spirits rushed toward the Ghost Gate.

Lin Du lowered her gaze and smiled, feeling the increasing unrest below, and applied the final bit of force.

Bang!

The Ghost Gate flung open, and the spirits surged into the sky.

The force of the spirits rushing into the Ghost Gate shook the red willow so violently that it was uprooted from the sandy ground.

Lin Du swiftly used her spiritual power to lock down the red willow, preventing it from being flung into the sky by the explosive force.

Meanwhile, the three youths who had rushed over after sensing the trembling of the sandy ground, anxious at their Uncle Junior Master’s summons, arrived just in time to witness this scene.

They had imagined their frail and vulnerable Uncle Junior Master to be in grave danger, but instead, they found her robes intact, her cloak’s fur perfectly unruffled, holding up the massive trunk of the willow tree.

The giant willow had been completely uprooted, its root system vast but mostly severed, leaking black and red viscous liquid. The trunk, as thick as dozens of their Uncle Junior Master’s, was being effortlessly held up in one of her hands, as if she had just casually pulled it out.

Yuan Ye’s pupils trembled slightly as he exclaimed in shock, “Uncle Junior Master… Did she just uproot this thousand-year-old willow by herself?”