Confucian and Taoist Cultivation Starting from the Equipment Slot

Chapter 157 concludes the exploration.

"I've marked the locations of the poisonous fog traps along the way; there are at least three on each level."

Su Ning followed behind him, using crossbow bolts to shoot down one by one the poison mist nozzles hidden in the shadows.

The anti-rune liquid on the arrow neutralized the poisonous mist the moment it came into contact with it, turning it into harmless white smoke.

"The triggering mechanism of these traps is exactly the same as that in the dark room of the cave; their poison fog formula has not changed."

The five worked together seamlessly, advancing with remarkable efficiency.

Chen Zhuo was in charge of the attack, Gu Qing'e used her Heart Source Perception to accurately mark the location of each layer of poisonous fog traps and sentries, and Su Ning used poisoned crossbow bolts and rune-dispelling liquid to clear the traps one by one.

Song Zhiyuan used the Dingbo Wenshu technique to suppress the tower's internal restrictions from sensing intruders, completely isolating the original warning mechanism of the Upside-Down Tower.

The deeper you go, the smaller the space becomes in each tower level, and the higher the cultivation level of the Crimson Serpent Society members.

Every opponent encountered below the fifth level was at the initial stage of the Sequence 8, but with the combined effect of Chen Zhuo's iron-slicing sword breaking through their defenses head-on, Song Zhiyuan's literary suppression from a distance, and Su Ning's crossbow bolts delivering precise kills, no one could last three breaths.

By the time Chen Zhuo reached the fifth floor, his robes were soaked with blood, but his eyes only became sharper.

Gu Qing'e suddenly spoke up: "The entrance to the mezzanine is just ahead. On the north side of the tower wall, three feet above the ground, there is a restriction pattern disguised as a blood sacrifice mark."

Following her guidance, Chen Zhuo found the pattern and infused it with his spiritual energy using his circulating cultivation technique. The restrictive pattern shattered under the impact of his spiritual energy, revealing a narrow entrance that could only allow one person to pass sideways.

The altar at the base of the tower was now in sight.

The five low-ranking literati remained unconscious on the altar, in the shadows behind it.

An elderly man dressed in a deep red robe slowly turned around; he was the "Holy Envoy" of the Crimson Serpent Society.

The restrictive patterns at the entrance to the mezzanine shattered under Chen Zhuo's palm.

The fragments transformed into countless dark red light shards that poured into the base of the tower.

The full view of the altar at the bottom of the tower was finally revealed to everyone.

It was a blood sacrifice altar several times larger than the dark chamber in the cave. The altar surface was densely covered with runes depicting snakes coiled around two daggers. Five low-ranking scholars were bound to a stone pillar in the center of the altar.

The fluctuations in the literary energy were faint but still present. In the shadows behind the altar, an old man dressed in a deep red robe slowly turned around.

His face was withered and emaciated, his eyes were sunken, and two dark red orbs of light burned in his pupils.

"Holy Envoy." Chen Zhuo held his sword horizontally in front of him, the blade pointing directly at the old man. "Your altar ends here."

The envoy did not answer.

He raised his withered right hand, clenched his fist in the air, and the runes on the altar suddenly lit up. Dozens of dark red rune chains shot out from the altar and wrapped around the five people.

Song Zhiyuan reacted even faster.

With a flick of his right hand, the azure ripples of the Fixed Wave Technique spread from his palm, freezing all the dozens of rune chains in mid-air.

In that instant, Su Ning's crossbow bolt pierced the Holy Envoy's right shoulder.

The arrow, quenched with rune-dispelling liquid, exploded into a pale blue mist the moment it touched his protective aura, and the rune chain on the envoy's right arm shattered instantly.

Chen Zhuo had already moved closer.

The frost patterns on the Iron-Cutting Blade flickered in and out of the bloodstains. The tiger pounced, and the blade sliced ​​into the Holy Envoy's left rib. The sharpness of the armor-piercing pattern cut through his protective aura, and the chilling power of the frost pattern immediately poured in.

The Holy Envoy grunted and reached out with his left hand to grab Chen Zhuo's face, the dark red aura condensed on his five fingers drawing five scorching marks in the air.

Chen Zhuo sidestepped, and with a scissor-like motion, his left arm was caught in the scissors from the side, and the hilt of the knife slammed heavily onto the Holy Envoy's left wrist, knocking the withered hand aside.

The two exchanged seven or eight moves in just a few breaths. Although the Holy Envoy's cultivation was high, his literary energy was mixed and impure.

Each time he clashed with the Iron-Cutting Blade, the chilling power of the Frost Pattern would invade his meridians, making his movements increasingly sluggish.

While Chen Zhuo was entangled with the Holy Envoy, Gu Qing'e and Su Ning rushed onto the altar.

Su Ning used a short knife to cut the ropes binding the offerings, while Gu Qing'e placed her palm on the core runes of the altar.

The Mind Source Perception accurately locates the flow nodes of rune energy and breaks them one by one with the Qi of the runes.

The dark red light on the altar retreated steadily under her fingers.

Upon seeing this, the Holy Envoy turned around abruptly to try to stop him, but as soon as he turned around, Song Zhiyuan's Dingbo Wenju technique was activated again, trapping him in a viscous, sticky Wenqi stagnation domain.

The movements suddenly slowed down.

Chen Zhuo did not let this opportunity pass.

He activated the Quick Word Technique, and his Five-Breath Ghost State allowed him to penetrate the Holy Envoy's protective aura and appear behind him.

The Iron-Cutting Blade slashed horizontally, piercing through the protective aura shield behind him, and the blade carved a deep, bone-revealing wound along his spine.

The holy messenger let out a howl that was not human, staggered forward a few steps, and knelt on one knee at the edge of the altar.

His crimson robe was soaked in blood, and his withered fingers were still digging into the rune grooves on the edge of the altar, trying to inject the last bit of spiritual energy into the core of the altar.

With a blank expression, Gu Qing'e shattered the last rune node with a single palm strike. The dark red light on the altar was completely extinguished.

The battle is over.

Lao Tie remained at the tower gate, his iron hammer constantly repelling the remnants of the Red Serpent Society who came to reinforce from above.

His tiger's mouth was cracked from the impact, and blood was flowing down the hammer handle, but he did not take a step back.

"Keep alive."

Chen Zhuo held the iron-slaying sword to the side of the holy envoy's neck, turned his head and said something to Su Ning.

Su Ning put away the crossbow, took out Shen Du's specially made meridian-sealing medicine from his waist, and injected it into several key acupoints on the back of the Holy Envoy's neck.

The envoy trembled violently a few times, his spiritual energy completely locked up by the meridian-sealing potion, and the two dark red lights in his pupils finally dimmed.

Just as the Holy Envoy's spiritual energy was sealed, the silver-white inscription on the Iron-Cutting Blade suddenly lit up on its own, emitting an extremely clear and melodious hum.

The buzzing sound faintly echoed the pulsating sound of runes heard earlier in the mine tunnel.

Deep within the tower, something seemed to be responding to the knife.

Chen Zhuo looked down at the long sword in his hand. The flowing water patterns and armor-piercing patterns on the blade flickered in and out of the bloodstains, and the silver-white inscription was particularly eye-catching in the light.

In the midst of sustained high-intensity combat, the spiritual essence within the blade finally stabilized completely.

The realm of living beings is no longer just in its nascent stage, but has truly matured.

After saying those words, Gu Qing'e continued what she was doing, but her expression changed.

It wasn't fear, it wasn't anger.

Rather, it's the instinctive shock one feels when someone who has spent countless days and nights immersed in a vast sea of ​​documents suddenly discovers a footnote on a yellowed, fragmented page that perfectly matches the scene before them.

Her fingertips were still rapidly tracing the literary patterns of the Holy Envoy on her sleeve, but she suddenly stopped halfway through and looked up at Chen Zhuo.

"His literary style is completely consistent with the characteristics of a traitor recorded in the notes of the Transcendentalists."

Her voice was very low, but every word sounded as if it had just been pulled out of an ice cellar.

"According to the seventh chapter of the third volume of the manuscript, during the first war between humans and demons, several disciples within the Liuzhuan Sect conspired to reverse the five-word cycle into a forbidden technique that forcibly extracts external power. After being discovered by the founder, they were expelled from the sect."

The expelled disciples took some rubbings of the Dharma tablet with them and then disappeared without a trace.

The patriarchs left descriptions of their literary characteristics in their notes to prevent later generations from being impersonated.

The most crucial point is that their literary energy retains the foundation of the circulating cultivation method.

However, the cycle is reversed; the energy becomes impure and mixed. Long-term reliance on external replenishment will gradually wither the meridians, causing the person to appear several times older than a normal cultivator.

The old man lying unconscious on the ground had a withered face, sunken eyes, and skin clinging to his cheekbones.

He looked at least eighty years old, but his bones and teeth suggested that he was probably not even fifty.

His literary energy fluctuations were extremely strange; they were neither Sequence 8 nor Sequence 7, but rather a hybrid existence somewhere between the Dao of Literature and forbidden arts.

There was a faint golden glow from the foundation of the circulating cultivation technique, and a dark red turbid current from the forbidden blood sacrifice technique of the Crimson Serpent Society. The two forces tore each other apart within his body.

Each rotation accelerates the decline of the meridians.

This literary style perfectly matches the records in the ancestral master's handwritten notes that Gu Qing'e just mentioned.

"He is a descendant of a traitor to the Transfiguration Movement."

Chen Zhuo planted the iron-slaying sword at his feet, squatted down, and examined the wound on the Holy Envoy's right arm that he had pounced on like a tiger.

The lingering spiritual energy at the wound site was still fighting against the chilling power of the frost patterns, but the fight was not a normal self-healing reaction of the spiritual energy; rather, it was a rhythm closer to the pulsating of the altar runes.

"The altar beneath his feet is the largest blood sacrifice core of the Red Serpent Society within Qingshan County, but the underlying rune structure of the altar was not created by the Red Serpent Society itself."

It is a product of the Five-Character Cycle of the Circulation School being reversed and forcibly grafted onto the forbidden technique of blood sacrifice.

Before the old temple was wiped out, he was already the highest-ranking leader of the Red Serpent Society in Qingshan County. All his subordinates obeyed his orders, including the poison master Shen Du, whom your senior brother Pei Jing had been tracking for three years; he was also framed by him.

Song Zhiyuan stood at the edge of the altar, bending down to examine the runes on the altar surface that had not yet completely extinguished.

A moment later, he straightened up, took out a talisman pen from his sleeve, and drew a simple restriction array around the Holy Envoy, completely locking his meridians so that he could no longer mobilize even a trace of literary energy.

"This person must be handed over to the Observatory while still alive."

He carries not only the bloody crimes committed by the Red Serpent Society in Qingshan County over the past six months, but also the unsolved cases of the Flowing Sect that have existed for hundreds of years.

He is living proof of being a traitor's descendant, and the only clue to finding the whereabouts of the other five inscribed stones.

"Get him out of here first."

Chen Zhuo stood up and put the iron-slaying sword back into its bearskin sheath.

Su Ning took out Shen Du's specially made meridian-sealing medicine from his waist and applied several needles to key acupoints on the back of the Holy Envoy's neck to ensure that he would not suddenly lash out during the transport.

Old Tie strode over from the tower gate and hoisted the Holy Envoy onto his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

He weighed it in his hand, said gruffly, "Much lighter than Sun Kui," and then took the lead and walked towards the tower gate.

After seeing Lao Tie off as the Holy Envoy disappeared through the tower gate, Chen Zhuo turned to Gu Qing'e and Song Zhiyuan and said, "I have memorized all the altar runes at the bottom of the tower."

Once we return to the Academy of Arts, and together with the records of traitors in my notes, we'll have a complete account of the truth behind the Circulation Faction back then.

When Lao Tie carried the last rescued scholar out of the tower gate, Suning had already set up a makeshift treatment table at the mine entrance.

She took out the last few bottles of antidote prepared by Shen Du from her medicine bag and fed them one by one to the five low-ranking scholars who had been tied up.

These people had their spiritual energy forcibly extracted by the forbidden blood sacrifice technique on the altar for several days, resulting in varying degrees of damage to their meridians.

Fortunately, the Holy Envoy had not yet completed the final blood sacrifice, and the source of the literary energy had not dissipated.

After taking the medicine, they gradually regained their senses. One of them recognized Chen Zhuo and his lips moved as if he wanted to say something, but Su Ning gently pressed his shoulder, indicating that he should rest first.

Pei Jing and Shen Du were already waiting at the entrance of the mine.

Pei Jing took the list of wounded from Su Ning and helped the five rescued people onto stretchers one by one. He then grouped them with the wounded members of the Demon Hunting Gang who had been evacuated earlier, preparing to escort them back to the Righteous Great Wall.

Shen Du squatted down beside the Holy Envoy, dipped his fingertip in a little of the dark red blood seeping from the Holy Envoy's wound, brought it close to his nose to smell it, and then looked at himself in the bronze mirror for a moment.

With a somber expression, he wrote a few lines in his notebook. He said to Chen Zhuo, "The poison in his body is exactly the same as the poison my master used back then."

The real culprit in that cold case from three years ago now has living evidence. I'll keep one copy of this blood sample, and hand the other over to the prison authorities.

Song Zhiyuan was the last to walk out of the inverted tower.

He stood before the altar at the bottom of the tower, dipped his talisman brush into the inkstone that glowed with a very faint blue light, and began to outline a sealing array pattern of the landscape school in the very center of the tower.

His brushstrokes were steady and precise, each stroke landing on a key point of the altar runes, and the pale blue array patterns spread out along the base of the tower.

The entire inverted tower, along with the remaining Red Serpent Society altar, was sealed away.

As the seal took shape, the serpent-entwined double-dagger emblem on the entire tower dimmed for a moment, as if an invisible hand had wiped away a layer of eerie light from the tower.

"This seal can last for three months."

Song Zhiyuan put the talisman brush back into his sleeve, examined his array patterns, and nodded slightly.

"Within three months, the remaining altar energy inside the tower will not spread, and no outsider will be able to open it."

"Enough for the Observatory to send array masters to completely eliminate it."

As everyone evacuated from the mine tunnel, the sky was already beginning to lighten.

The pale blue morning light spread from the direction of the Great Wall of Righteousness, gilding the rock walls and withered vines along the way with a thin layer of silvery luster.

Chen Zhuo walked at the back of the group, his iron-slaying sword already sheathed in its bear-skin scabbard, a faint wisp of frost-blue light still emanating from the scabbard's opening.

The spiritual energy within the blade was completely stabilized after the battle at the Inverted Tower.

The realm of living beings is no longer just in its nascent stage, but has truly matured.

He walked in the morning light, the rubble at the mine entrance behind him swirling and rolling as the last gust of air surged from the depths of the tunnel.

Like the last sigh of the inverted tower within its seal, it then fell silent.

After returning from the mine, Chen Zhuo slept soundly for a day and a night at the Demon Hunter Gang's stronghold.

When I woke up, it was noon on the third day. The late autumn sunlight squeezed in through the cracks in the window and shone on the bearskin scabbard on the bedside table.

The iron-chopping sword rested quietly against the pillow, the frost patterns on its blade gleaming with a faint silver-blue halo in the midday light. The silver-white inscription occasionally circled on its own, as if it were also resting.

He got up, went to the well, filled a bucket with cold water, and poured it over his head.

The icy well water flowed down my neck and into my collar, washing away the last trace of drowsiness.

Then he moved a bench to the yard and sat down, going over all the gains and losses of this trip to the ruins from beginning to end.