Chapter 136: Recognizing the Coiling Dragon Formation

Watching the three men gulp down the dog blood without a moment’s hesitation, Ye Dong felt a surge of panic. "Damn it, are we really going to drink this disgusting stuff!?"

"Brothers, stop stalling, hurry up!" Master Wei roared from behind. "If we don't fight back now, we're going to die here!"

Hearing Master Wei’s warning to his men, Ye Dong gritted his teeth. "Damn it, we're at the point of no return. Who cares about hygiene anymore? Drink it is!"

Just as he closed his eyes and was about to pour the blood into his mouth, his mind suddenly jolted. He perked up his ears. "Wait! Why does Master Wei's voice sound like a completely different person!?"

Startled, he looked back and saw that Master Wei and the other two men had blood-red eyes and blackened lips. Red and purple veins snaked from the corners of their eyes all the way down to their necks. The veins on their necks were as thick as pinky fingers, bulging upward toward their temples!

"My god, is this the effect of the specially prepared dog blood? Why does it look like a biochemical weapon!?"

"Awoooo!"

The dog blood had the fastest effect on Li Xing, who had been the physically weakest of them all! In a blink, Li Xing’s eyes glowed, his canine teeth became exposed, and his fingernails grew significantly longer. He panted with his mouth wide open, just like a wild dog!

Gradually, the hair on their bodies began to grow coarse. From afar, they looked like dogs; up close, they looked like wolves!

"Is this dog blood or wolf blood!? This is more than just a stimulant, isn't it? If I drink this, won't I lose control? If I lose control and expose my cultivation, I’ll probably die even faster!"

Ye Dong hardened his heart and shoved the vial of dog blood into his tunic instead!

*Clack, clack, clack!!!*

The sharp blades embedded in the walls were finally about to fire!

"Awoooo, brothers, charge into the swarm of evil spirits!"

Master Wei, leading the charge like an alpha wolf, let out a roar. He kicked aside an evil ghost blocking his path and, with a swift slash of his blade, cut down his enemy.

"Their speed and strength are increasing too rapidly! The greater the contrast from their original selves, the worse the side effects must be!"

Following the gap Master Wei had cleared, Ye Dong immediately charged forward to engage the ghosts!

The sharp blades on both sides of the stone walls erupted, instantly burying themselves into the opposite wall. If they had delayed their surge by even a split second, they would have been turned into skewers!

"Rather than being stabbed to death by random blades, I’d rather fight to my heart's content!" Ye Dong roared, unleashing the full potential of his extraordinary physique!

Amidst the flash of steel, Ye Dong had already slain seven evil spirits. His eyes were bloodshot with the frenzy of battle!

*Bang!*

The living creatures were struck down, but the second wave of blade attacks was already coming. Ye Dong knew that while he could defend against physical objects, there was no other way to survive than to destroy the core of the Coiling Dragon Formation. The key to all of this remained the Taoist rogue, Huang Wuchang, who was currently observing the formation.

"Damn it, old rogue Wuchang, can you hurry up!"

Ye Dong was anxious. "In less than a minute, we’ve already lost two fighters! If this continues, we’re all going to die in these traps!"

Master Wei and his men coordinated seamlessly, and combined with Ye Dong’s formidable combat power, the four held their own against the swarm of ghosts. Even though they were vastly outnumbered, they remained undefeated.

But this was the effect of "drugging" themselves. Setting aside the hidden side effects of the "dog blood," the inescapable reality was that the power of the drug would eventually fade. Meanwhile, the evil spirits showed no signs of lessening the ferocity of their attacks!

*Whoosh!*

Having just dodged the second wave of flying blades, it was now the turn of the Soul-Chasing Rocket Arrows!

"Damn it, these hidden weapons are getting more intense with every wave!"

Le Cheng flipped to avoid a rocket and roared, "Since they’ve brought out rockets, we can’t afford to worry about the risk of an explosion anymore!"

Without a second thought, he pulled out the machine gun from his back and opened fire!

*Rat-tat-tat-tat!*

As the machine guns—stained with human and dog blood—began to fire, the entire stone corridor became even more chaotic. The other henchmen had also brought out their machine guns!

The stone corridor, previously bathed in a red glow, now resembled a circus of death. Rockets, fire rings, stone pillars, and iron plates appeared one after another. Before long, another man died under a hail of arrows.

Even with the sacrifice of their comrade, the heavy firepower of the machine guns significantly lightened the pressure on the group, buying Huang Wuchang a bit more time to break the formation!

"It’s a strange feeling. Why can’t we seem to finish off these fanged evil spirits?" Ye Dong felt deeply frustrated. "Inside the paper walls, it’s pitch black; I can’t see what’s inside. There are too many ghosts; we can’t get close enough to find out!"

Of the dozen or so people here, aside from Huang Wuchang and Ye Dong, everyone else had taken the "drug." To put it bluntly, aside from their capacity for slaughter, they had little of their own consciousness left.

"These drugged 'orc-men' won't last long! In the end, I have to find the formation core myself!"

After the incident with Guang Qi, Ye Dong’s ability to remain calm in a crisis had seemingly improved. Though he was anxious, he did not lose his focus. Instead, he mentally processed everything he saw, hoping to find a way to break the Coiling Dragon Formation—which grew stronger the more they fought—from the traps and phenomena he had witnessed.

"The Coiling Dragon Formation is difficult to handle, but not impossible to break. You have to distinguish, based on the environment, whether it's the Coiling Snake Formation, the Coiling Dragon Formation, or another variation derived from the Dragon-in-Flight Formation. They look similar on the surface, but their inner workings are distinct. One wrong step and you're trapped in an inescapable encirclement."

The memories of Chen Yao’s lessons played over in Ye Dong’s mind, and he quickly found the passage explaining the Eight Trigrams Formation.

"According to Master, the concept of the Eight Trigrams Formation is inseparable from the I Ching. The arrangement of the eight formations is essentially a 'Later Heaven Bagua Chart.' Each of the eight formations consists of six smaller formations, borrowing the meaning of the six lines (yao) in the I Ching."

Ye Dong desperately tried to recall everything Chen Yao had said. "The meaning of the six lines is largely inseparable from the concepts of Yin and Yang, and the 'extraordinary' (qi) and the 'orthodox' (zheng). The extraordinary is the orthodox of the orthodox, and the orthodox is the extraordinary of the extraordinary; they exhaust each other and circulate infinitely."

"Got it!"

A sudden insight surged in Ye Dong’s heart. "'The extraordinary is the orthodox of the orthodox, and the orthodox is the extraordinary of the extraordinary'—in the context of this Coiling Dragon Formation, doesn't that mean 'the most dangerous place is actually the safest place'!?"

"Isn't the most dangerous place inside those paper walls? That’s where the fanged evil spirits are emerging from! But could it really be that simple? What if jumping into the cracks is just a bigger trap, like throwing oneself into the tiger's den?"

A flash of thought crossed his mind. "They exhaust each other and circulate infinitely. Looking at it from another angle, the head of the dragon in this formation is the tail, and the tail is the head!"

"Exactly! That's it!"

"But?!"

At this realization, he felt a chill. "If that’s the case, doesn't this Coiling Dragon Formation create an internal cycle!? An internal cycle that grows stronger the more we fight!? An evil dragon fattened by our own essence and spirit, turning its head to bite us back? That is disastrous!"

The *Panlong* (Coiling Dragon) is a dragon in Chinese folklore that lies dormant on the ground, having not yet ascended to heaven, its body coiled in circles. In ancient Chinese architecture, dragons coiled around pillars or decorating beams and ceilings are commonly called *Panlong*.

Once the Coiling Dragon gains the Tao and ascends, it becomes a *Feilong* (Flying Dragon), known as "Dragon-in-Flight." The Coiling Snake Formation had absorbed the essence and spirit of its enemies to evolve into the Coiling Dragon Formation. If the Coiling Dragon Formation evolved again, it would become the "Dragon-in-Flight Formation," one of the ultimate Eight Trigrams Formations!

"If the Dragon-in-Flight Formation takes shape, no one here, including Huang Wuchang, will survive!"

"Awoooo!"

Before Ye Dong could think further, the evil spirits lunged again with bared fangs!

He narrowed his eyes at the attacking ghosts, his heart filled with shock. "Wasn't this ghost just killed by me? Why is it back?"

"Oh, so that's it!! So that's what 'circulate infinitely' means!"

Ye Dong’s realization filled him with dread. "No wonder these ghosts never end—they are being resurrected through those paper walls!"

Ye Dong finally understood: what was terrifying about tomb raiding wasn't the ghosts or the monsters, but the god-tier Taoist formations that contained the very laws of the universe. Even with heaven-defying skills, if one dared to闯 (intrude) into a dragon's lair and got trapped by such a formation, it was a dead end!

"The source of all their energy is those paper walls!"

Just as Ye Dong shouted, a yellow and black figure flashed past him, heading straight for the paper wall that had been torn open!

"Is that Huang Wuchang!?"

Ye Dong was stunned. "How is this old man so fast? Is he finally going to make his move?"

He saw Huang Wuchang shout loudly, "Under the command of the Heavenly Peak, the Demon-Subduing Immortal, destroy the demons and punish the wicked, with the hawks and hounds in the lead! Connecting to the heavens above and the earth below, let no demon hide!"

Hearing this incantation, Ye Dong froze. "That’s the Maoshan Sect's 'Mount Tai Pressing Down' technique!?"

As he finished the incantation, Huang Wuchang pulled out a golden talisman that Ye Dong had never seen him use before. He smeared his own essence blood onto it and struck it toward the crack in the paper wall!

"A golden talisman!?"

Seeing this, Ye Dong could not help but tremble. "He’s actually using the most powerful golden talisman!? I remember Master never even used a golden talisman when dealing with the 'Human-Snake'!"

Talismans are categorized by material: gold, silver, purple, blue, and yellow. Golden talismans have the greatest power, requiring the highest level of cultivation from the user and consuming the most energy. Silver is secondary, followed by purple and blue. Yellow is the most common, and because most Taoists have limited insight, they spend their entire lives limited to using yellow talismans.

Huang Wuchang’s use of a golden talisman showed he was finally using his true power.

"Thanks to you for buying me time," Huang Wuchang bellowed. "The core of this Coiling Dragon Formation is not inside the paper walls—it *is* the paper walls themselves!"

*Rumble!*

A sound that shook the heavens and the earth erupted instantly!

Strangely, even though it was hard to stand on the ground, there was no actual vibration to be felt!

"Is this the Maoshan 'Mount Tai Pressing Down'?"

Ye Dong felt a surge of joy. "Huang Wuchang is using the weight of Mount Tai to suppress the vitals of the Coiling Dragon Formation. This way, he can force the dragon's head out!"