To surround and hunt Tantai Wuji, drive him into the trap laid by Lang Jiuchuan, and then cut him down — Lang Jiuchuan called this driving the dog into a dead-end alley.

And that trap would be a Demon-Slaying Grand Formation.

Feng Ya’s gaze was deep and shadowed. “To drive the dog into a dead-end alley is to risk a counterattack. This is your way of playing without any retreat.”

Lang Jiuchuan said, “In the battle to slay the demon and save the world, I must give everything I have. As for retreat — I leave that to the Heavenly Dao. Let us see whether it can save itself. If it can, even a narrow victory won with nine deaths and one survival, it must still allow me to win. And if it is incapable, then whether there is a retreat or not makes no difference anyway, for by then the Dao will surely have waned and the demonic path will have grown.”

She turned, gazing at the burning city below. “I am willing to exhaust every last measure for the sake of all living beings under heaven, to bear witness to the Dao with my very being. All else, I leave to the will of heaven.”

Feng Ya and the others fell into silence.

What was there to say? Any words would be pale and hollow. And besides — who among them could sway her will in the Dao?

Looking at Lang Jiuchuan’s robes, whipping and snapping in the cold wind, her black hair lifting and streaming — as though she were about to ride the wind and return to the heavens — they all felt a tightening in their throats.

“Your years of cultivation are the longest. I know you must have in your possession some ancient grand formations for slaying wicked demons. Would you be willing to lend me a look at one or two?” Lang Jiuchuan’s gaze burned as she looked at him. “I was taught by Tantai Wuji — one might even say I am gifted with exceptional talent. When it comes to laying formations, I may not be inferior to him. You will be the hunters who surround and drive him into the trap. As for the formation itself — will you leave that to me to lay?”

Feng Ya’s expression was cold and stern. “Even if it means your death and the erasure of your Dao, you will not waver from this?”

Lang Jiuchuan gave no verbal reply. The gaze she turned upon him with those eyes of hers had already answered everything.

“Within the archives of the Tongtian Pavilion, there is a scroll containing the Encircling Heaven Demon-Slaying Grand Formation. If you can comprehend it fully, you may be able to move the star-power of the encircling heavens, cleansing all the demonic energy across the land. However — the price for that must be beyond imagining.” Feng Ya’s tone was cold, as though he were stating something that had nothing to do with him.

Gong Tinglan glanced at him. That restrained fire — perhaps it was worry and concern, after all. Even unwillingly, he would still give her his greatest support.

Only a true friend to whom you could entrust your very life and death could act as such.

“I underwent nirvana and was reborn — I expect that is precisely why I have come to this,” Lang Jiuchuan said with a self-mocking curl of the lips. Then her tone shifted abruptly. “Tantai Wuji and the demonic entity Kong Xu Zi have merged into one. Their demonic tome must have been refined to its utmost extreme, and their methods will be even more cunning and unpredictable. But their goal will certainly still be to create more death and stillness. Feng Ya, this physical body of yours originally belongs to Tantai Wuji. Using your power, you can use the original essence of this flesh to sense and track him, assisting in the hunt. Counter him if you can — and if you cannot, at least weaken his strength. Once my formation is complete, he will stop at nothing to walk into the trap.”

“You have already found a counter?” Gong Tinglan immediately pressed.

“I can only try my best.” Lang Jiuchuan replied vaguely.

Feng Ya let out a heavy cold snort and vanished from the spot in a flash, leaving behind only a cold and forbidding aura.

Gong Tinglan watched the direction of Feng Ya’s departure. “Is Feng Ya angry?”

A slightly awkward expression crossed Lang Jiuchuan’s face. “He has been getting a bit worn out by all the old foxes in the imperial court pestering him. So the sooner the world is at peace, the better.”

That change of subject had come far too quickly.

Though the Eight Trigrams City had become a dead city, before Lang Jiuchuan laid her formation there, she still had Fuqi remain as its guardian, blocking more foreign tribes from crossing through this pass. She herself needed to return to Wu Jing first.

Wu Jing was the heart of the Great Pian Empire and the seat of the imperial court. Its population far exceeded that of the Eight Trigrams City, and it was the place where the national fortune was most densely concentrated. If Tantai Wuji were to plant his demonic seeds there, causing Wu Jing to become another Eight Trigrams Dead City, then that vast and surging national fortune would transform into demonic energy — and that would be a great calamity indeed.

She needed to lay a city-protection grand formation in Wu Jing as a precaution.

Far away, at a small town along the Xiang River, Tantai Wuji — his entire figure shrouded in a black robe — drained the last drop of spiritual essence from a man whose constitution was of pure yin, then casually tossed the body aside. He raised his head and looked in the direction of the Eight Trigrams City. The blood-red corners of his lips split into a grin.

A gust of wind blew, sending the black robe hood draping over his head sliding back, exposing his entire face. Blood-red pupils. The right half of his face seemed to have been reformed from countless surging masses of blood energy, constantly shifting and changing, as though countless other faces were churning beneath the surface. And the other half — the left — bore the face that Lang Jiuchuan knew well. The face that was truly Tantai Wuji’s own.

The dense demonic energy surrounding him was so thick and viscous it wrapped him in heavy layers, emanating an ominous suffocation. Beneath the black robe, that blackish-red skeleton had innumerable pure death energies and twisted faces adhered to it, coalesced into a body of demon flesh and blood. At his core energy center, there was a pure, blackish, and rather insubstantial demonic core — as though lacking only the slightest measure of power before it would condense into something solid.

“I told you to go to Wu Jing. That is where we could obtain the most powerful source of energy — why did you not listen?” Tantai Wuji’s mouth was moving.

“The imperial city is sheltered by dragon energy, and that little wolf cub will certainly not sit and wait for death. If we go, we will walk straight into the tiger’s jaws. By then, the demonic core would not yet have formed, and we would already be cut down by Daoists from across the land.” His voice shifted into a different cadence.

These were two people sharing one body in conversation — the other was Kong Xu Zi, who had merged with him.

Kong Xu Zi laughed coldly. “Do you know where your failing lies? It is in being over-prepared, always looking forward and behind. Not every scheme follows your plan. The longer you take to prepare, the more variables arise. Even a single small misstep can bring about utter defeat.”

“Silence!” Tantai Wuji was provoked to anger, his voice turning ice-cold. “You are a defeated foe — I do not need you to tell me what to do.”

Kong Xu Zi cackled. “So what if I am a defeated foe? Back then, you and those self-proclaimed righteous cultivators besieged and suppressed me — so-called wicked demonic heretics. And what was the result? When you suppressed me, you already laid a hidden contingency, and even forcibly bonded my life-bound spiritual soul lamp to yourself as its master. Now, you — one who walks the righteous Dao — are also using my life-bound spiritual soul lamp to escape. And have you not also fallen into demonhood, and merged with me in this disgraceful entanglement? Admit it. You and I are the same kind. There is no question of who is more noble than the other.”

“You are nothing but a remnant soul condensed from a thread of lingering will. What gives you the right to clamor at me?” Tantai Wuji said coldly. “I raised that little wolf cub myself. I understand her temperament better than you do. She will certainly have fortified Wu Jing into an iron fortress, waiting for me to walk into her snare. I am not yet able to fully condense the demonic core. What do I have to contend with her? Right now, the priority is to create more killing grounds, drawing upon death energy and other sources of power — that is the path to success. And in so doing, it will also wear down their strength. As their power diminishes while ours grows, the moment their strength has been sufficiently eroded will be the moment we counterattack.”

“Without my remnant soul, could you have truly merged with the demonic tome?” Kong Xu Zi jeered once more. “You are a person who habitually calculates everything down to the last detail — but those cunning righteous cultivators are not fools. They will not give you the time to grow.”

This person was arrogant, far too idealistic. Infuriating, that he was now bound to him and could not be free of him.

Hmph — if only he had known, back when that white tiger spiritual consciousness had stolen away the jade seal artifact, he should have used the opportunity to possess another body and escape. Instead, he had feared Tantai Wuji discovering him, and had even used the original body’s aura to help that white tiger conceal the theft — enduring these wretched months of dependence.

One wrong step, and every step after went wrong.

Tantai Wuji was about to say something more when he suddenly sensed a threat approaching his divine soul. Without a second thought, he fled, his features twisted even as he disappeared.

It was that thief who had stolen his original body. He was in pursuit.