Playing with fantasy beasts in the martial arts world

Chapter 110 Formation Battle! (Wuxia Version)
Standing outside the bamboo forest, Cha Nan was considering whether to release the Cloud Sea Deer, ride it high into the air, and look down at the bamboo forest from above. However, Huang Yaoshi's voice came from the Paluk ball in his arms in a secret way and reached his ears.

"Be careful, this is an illusion array. Follow your eyes, or you'll be in danger. Enter through the View Gate, then ignore everything else. Whatever blocks your way, move through mountains and build bridges over rivers, and just keep going!"

"The biggest difficulty of the illusion array lies in the word 'illusion.' If you ignore everything else and try to break it by brute force, no matter how many tricks it has, it will be useless." Huang Yaoshi tried to give the simplest solution. It wasn't that he didn't have better, more detailed, and more specific ways to break the array, but that these were not suitable for Cha Nan. They would expose that someone was secretly guiding him. Also, being in the array, a slight difference could lead to a huge error. If Cha Nan didn't handle it properly... it would be easier to just rush in.

"Um! Um! Where is Jingmen?" Cha Nan asked the crucial question.

Let alone a sports student like him, most college students, apart from those studying or working in related fields, can't tell the difference.

“Jingmen is the due south position, which is also the Qian position.” Huang Yaoshi could only start from the most basic level.

"You need to be careful. Most formations are actually laid out according to the Five Elements, Eight Trigrams, and Nine Palaces. Essentially, these positions cannot be easily changed because altering the formation plate itself is a kind of alteration of the laws of heaven and earth, which is extremely difficult. Ordinary people do not have this ability. However, the person who sets up the formation will use many tricks to make you make the wrong judgment, such as mistaking the Death Gate for the Life Gate, or the Shock Gate for the Open Gate." Huang Yaoshi tried to explain in detail and in simple terms. He understood that it was useless to talk to Cha Nan about those mysterious and literary things. He definitely wouldn't understand.

Cha Nan found the location due south of the small bamboo forest. It looked like a bad spot. Not only was the fog thick, but all the bamboo leaves had fallen off, leaving only a large number of bamboo branches covered in ice, their sharp forks intertwined like layers of tangled barbed wire.

Cha Nan drew the steel sword from his waist and chopped hard, splitting the bamboo blocking his way, then stepped inside.

The moment I stepped inside, the surrounding scenery seemed to have been transformed by some supernatural power. Life emerged from the desolation. Although it was still cold and biting, the bamboo stalks were no longer sharp and exposed, but rather had some space between them.

The road ahead leads to two paths: one leading to prosperity and lush greenery, and the other continuing to be desolate and eerie.

Cha Nan kept Huang Yaoshi's instructions in mind. He didn't choose any path, but directly drew his sword and moved forward. When he encountered anything blocking his way, he would slash it out and cut it in half.

A cold wind swept across the bamboo tips, and the thousands of frosty green bamboo stalks exuded a chilling aura, like iron armor clashing.

A thin mist clung to the bamboo joints, which looked as if they had been cleaved by a knife and axe, and withered leaves fell softly onto the frozen ground, resembling the feathers of a dying owl that had slipped away.

Cha Nan's barbaric behavior seemed to have enraged the bamboo forest.

In the dim light, the swaying bamboo shadows resembled the claws and fangs of ghosts.

The broken branch, hanging halfway in the air, swayed in the cold wind, just like a white silk ribbon hanging from a withered branch by a hangman.

In a daze, the entire bamboo forest was immersed in the dark blue twilight, even the icicles on the branches were stained with rust, and the mottled moss where the bamboo shadows swept was like dried bloodstains, and the frost cut the face, the coldness penetrating to the bone.

Cha Nan felt the chill spreading from her body to her soul, so she sang loudly: "We soldiers, what's so different about us..."

Singing other songs wouldn't be energetic enough at this time, so Cha Nan could only sing military songs, which were full of masculine energy and could counteract the chill of the moment.

Just as Huang Yaoshi said, the key to an illusion array lies in the word "illusion".

As long as it is not disturbed, this bamboo forest, which has been specially adjusted and modified, has very limited inherent destructive power.

In the martial arts world... at least in the martial arts world before the era of high-level martial arts, most of the dead formations built by people in the martial arts world using natural objects or buildings only have the effect of trapping and blocking people. Their destructive power actually depends on the people hidden in the formation, or traps and mechanisms.

The formation itself can kill automatically; that's the path of cultivators. Moving forward, sure enough, it was the same scene, the same routine, the same repetitive moves—the threat was almost zero; it was all about creating psychological pressure.

Chanan simply summoned Monarch Melupa, then sat on Monarch Melupa's back, letting it carry him forward.

Monarch Melpa is Chanan's main attacker and tank, and there's no need to hide it when facing a frontal Phantom Beast.

It seems like we've traveled a long way, but this 'little bamboo grove' doesn't look 'small' at all.

With Monarch Melupana's tank-like figure crushing through the bamboo forest, the so-called small bamboo forest remained tightly packed with bamboo branches, seemingly unaffected.

"Stop! You're going in circles!"

"Impressive! You anticipated my judgment. Not only did you set up an illusion array at the Jing Gate, but you also slightly misaligned the Qian Palace and Dui Palace, using the difference in terrain to influence my judgment... or rather, guide my judgment," Huang Yaoshi said, stopping Cha Nan.

"Differences in terrain?" Cha Nan asked, puzzled.

Huang Yaoshi answered: "Although the positions of the Nine Palaces and the Eight Trigrams cannot be changed at will, the places where the formation is set up are not all flat roads. The terrain is high and low, with slopes and valleys. The opponent has placed some of the formation nodes in places where the terrain changes, which creates a misaligned space and affects the judgment."

"The reason I didn't see it at first glance was not only because I was in this spherical space and didn't actually feel it, but also because the thick layer of fallen leaves in the bamboo forest affected my specific judgment of the terrain differences."

"So what should we do?" Cha Nan didn't quite understand, nor did he need to; he just wanted the result.

Huang Yaoshi said, "It's too late for us to study the terrain now. Since you have such a strange beast, make good use of it. Let's set up a small formation on the back of this beast, and then continue to rotate within this large formation, making them interfere with each other."

"This... is it possible?" Cha Nan didn't understand, but he was deeply shocked.

After all, what Huang Yaoshi said earlier was still within his comprehension. As long as he regarded these so-called formations and illusions as a combination of mazes and landscape magic, he could understand most of it.

However, setting up an array on the back of Monarch Melupa, and then having the large and small arrays interfere with each other... that's where things start to get a bit mysterious.

"It's possible! The other party is skilled in calculation, so they accurately calculated all the changes after the wind, ground, light, bamboo forest, and people entering the bamboo forest interfered with each other. Because of their meticulous observation and calculation, they were able to trap you in the small bamboo forest, making it impossible for you to find the real path."

"But as long as I take advantage of the enormous changes brought about by your strange beast, and alter some of the wind, light, and terrain, the values ​​he collected before will no longer be accurate, and the calculations will have large deviations, making it difficult to continue with precise operations," Huang Yaoshi explained.

At the same time, he was rapidly collecting all the data and began performing calculations in his mind.

Breaking the formation alone is not enough for Huang Yaoshi; he wants to use the opponent's formation to launch a counterattack!

　Oh dear, this is really bad; the initial subscription probably didn't even reach 500...

　　
　
(End of this chapter)