Chapter 117: Finding Peace

Feng Ke’er lifted her eyes in disbelief and looked toward the Demon King. “That’s right. It’s them.”

The Demon King’s face was filled with astonishment, his mouth half-open, frozen in place.

“Your Majesty…” Feng Ke’er rubbed her forehead. Unintentionally, she had trapped three Golden Immortals. Anyone would need some time to process such a “pleasant surprise.”

The Demon King gradually recovered, lowering his gaze to the three Golden Immortals reflected in the stone mirror, his face flushed with excitement as he rubbed his hands vigorously. “Hmm, they really are Immortals… all three of them… They’ve been trapped by my formation…” Suddenly, his hand stopped, and he looked up sharply, his face full of panic. “The formation there rotates every three hours. Miss Feng, what shall we do next?”

In other words, the maximum time the three Golden Immortals could be confined was three hours!

Feng Ke’er was startled by this. She had no idea what to do!

In the cultivation world, matters of pride always outweigh everything else. Not to mention the proud Immortals, who are arrogant to the bone, even ordinary cultivators from the lower realms, when defeated by those weaker than themselves, would often go to great lengths to exact revenge multiple times over.

Three mighty Golden Immortals trapped by a seventh-rank demon cultivator from the lower realm’s formation, confined for a full three hours! If this got out, the three Hua brothers would have no chance of surviving in the cultivation world. Even if they wished to spare the Demon King, their family certainly wouldn’t tolerate such humiliation.

In short, the Demon King was undoubtedly doomed. The only question was how the Hua brothers would choose to finish him once they were free.

Seeing her reaction, the Demon King’s face instantly turned pale. He started rubbing his hands anxiously again, this time filled with unease.

While rubbing his hands, he paced around the stone mirror, muttering rapidly to himself, “What to do… what to do…”

“How long have they been trapped inside?” Feng Ke’er furrowed her brow and asked.

The Demon King stopped and turned to look at her, his eyes like a drowning man seeing a lifeline. “Less than half an hour.”

Two and a half hours left… enough time! Her heart pounded wildly as Feng Ke’er solemnly confirmed, “Are you sure they can be trapped for three hours?”

The Demon King raised his right palm in a gesture of oath. “It’s no lie.”

“That’s good.” Feng Ke’er clenched her fist, making a silent resolve. “I’ve thought of a way to trap them for thousands of years. But, Your Majesty, do you trust me?”

His eyes filled with suspicion as the Demon King licked his lips and pointed at the stone mirror, asking quickly, “Thousands of years? You mean…” He shook his head abruptly, swallowing hard, troubled deeply. “My gods, those are three Golden Immortals, not three demon cultivators in a mirror sea! No, no, no, that’s impossible! Miss Feng, that joke isn’t funny at all!”

“Seal!” Feng Ke’er took a firm step forward, locking eyes with him. “I have a way to seal them! However, my cultivation is limited; I can only seal them for about a thousand years.”

“Re-really?” The Demon King’s face turned red enough to bleed. “Miss Feng, you know sealing techniques?”

Sealing techniques are an advanced combination of high-level formation arts and superior talisman scripts. Unfortunately, only a handful of Immortals know them. For the vast majority of cultivators in the lower realms, sealing techniques are but a legend.

The Demon King had long admired sealing techniques. Alas, it was a tale difficult to realize. Now, discovering someone who actually knows it right before his eyes, how could he not be inexplicably excited?

Feng Ke’er clenched her fist and cleared her throat lightly. “A bit… They are already trapped; sealing them… hopefully, I can seal them for about two hundred years.” Asked like that by the Demon King, she felt somewhat uncertain.

Well, she really wasn’t sure herself. That was the legendary sealing technique after all.

Here’s how it happened: The moment Feng Ke’er broke the tenth layer of the formation at the heart of the Barrier Sea, she was suddenly struck by a vision—a scene from the past: at the center of the Ant Forest, in front of the fire ant nest, the incarnation of Li Hentian, a woman with a human head and snake body, flicked large handprints at the base of a tree.

Previously, she hadn’t understood much, so that scene had deeply imprinted itself in her mind.

Now, she understood much more: for instance, why Li Hentian’s power multiplied manifold after transforming into a human-headed snake-woman—that was likely the sorcery of later legends. From rumors heard after leaving the Barrier Sea, Feng Ke’er learned that Li Hentian was essentially the earthly representative of the goddess Nuwa. It was very likely that Nuwa had reached some tacit understanding with him: whenever he requested, she would possess him through some magic to help him accomplish the impossible tasks—what later became known as spirit communication.

Also, the series of large handprints he made were actually techniques to dissipate formations. The heavy formation was laid upon a top-grade void talisman at the cave entrance. At the time, her eyesight was limited and couldn’t detect the presence of such a talisman.

After breaking the tenth layer of the formation, Feng Ke’er realized that formation breaking and formation setting were often opposing processes.

So, recalling memories, she first painstakingly reconstructed Li Hentian’s method step by step, then gradually reversed it, and finally, with the help of a concealment talisman, managed to forge a spell.

Before leaving the Barrier Sea’s heart, Feng Ke’er tried applying the spell to the Demon King’s lair door. Upon completion, the door vanished into thin air, and the spiritual energy around ceased flowing there, as if the door never existed.

How could this be? This phenomenon far exceeded Feng Ke’er’s understanding of formations. After pondering outside the lair for a long time without understanding, she decided to name this formation technique “Sealing Art.”

“I’ll try more experiments when I get the chance,” she told herself then.

Unfortunately, after leaving the Barrier Sea’s heart, she was too busy adapting to the new era and hadn’t had the opportunity to test it.

Later, in the bathing chamber, Feng Ke’er had the fortune to witness formations inside the Mustard Seed Space. Though most were inscrutable, a few formations felt strikingly familiar, bearing a resemblance to the formations in her sealing art. Of course, the former were more exquisite and profound, inspiring her to further refine and fuse them. Two days later, after over a thousand trials involving three hundred and thirty golden cores, the sealing art was successfully upgraded.

“When I get out, I must find a chance to try it!” she vowed ambitiously. Well, fate seemed to be treating her like a favored child. By sheer luck, she had stumbled into a small Mustard Seed Space, and through diligent study, deepened her understanding of spatial and sealing arts!

Now, the chance had come—but to seal Golden Immortals, three of them simultaneously! Such an extreme challenge made her heart pound wildly.

Of course, Feng Ke’er would never let the Demon King know all this.

A golden core shielded her thoughts, making his mind-reading less effective. Hearing her words, he clapped his hands in delight. “Excellent! Two hundred years is more than enough!” In 110 years, the passage would reopen. If nothing unexpected happened, he would ascend then. And after two hundred years, when the three Immortals emerged, the passage would already be closed. Haha! What are Immortals after all? They’d only be able to stay obediently in the lower realm, waiting for the next opening. With Mustard Seed Spaces, one day counts as sixty days. Four hundred years equates to 24,000 years to cultivate new spiritual techniques and improve his strength. Besides, who could predict the great opportunities he might encounter during those four hundred years in the spiritual realm?

“No time to hesitate, Miss Feng, please!” The Demon King gestured toward the west side of the courtyard.

Both had their own plans, perfectly aligned. If not for concerns about his bonded spirit beast and maintaining appearances, the Demon King would have jumped onto his cloud ship and flown straight over the forbidden area.

Feng Ke’er lowered her head and slowly traced the stone mirror to determine the exact location of the forbidden area, then looked up and smiled softly. “Your Majesty, you needn’t trouble yourself!”

Heh, the Demon King either didn’t understand or was pretending not to. In the cultivation world, others must know to consciously avoid causing trouble—like when she sealed three Golden Immortals.

The Demon King saw her figure flicker and heard a crisp “Shift!” before she vanished!

Teleportation! In the bathing chamber, this girl had fully mastered teleportation. Indeed, no wonder she was the one Hu San chose! He gazed longingly toward the forbidden area, his narrow fox-like eyes nearly squinting to slits, his slender white hands clenched and reddened.

Feng Ke’er appeared directly above the formation, looking down at the three below, relishing their awkwardness and panic, her mood instantly lifted. “Hey, three Immortals!”

The three, back-to-back, struggling to forcibly break the formation, looked up. Seeing her, their eyes nearly burned with fury.

Hua Third was the first to roar, “You filthy girl! Dare to come down and fight me? Sneaking around like this, what kind of skill is that?”

“Of course it counts as sneaky,” Feng Ke’er grinned, recalling how Hua Eldest had blasted her away with a light orb technique in the modern era. She smiled like a blooming flower. This was karma—for the Hua brothers, she had sealed them three brothers at the dawn of the primordial era tens of thousands of years ago, which led to the scene of the cat-and-mouse game in front of the old headmaster’s tomb in the modern era. Which was cause, which was effect? Cause and effect intertwined, like the chicken and the egg—who could say for sure?

Haha, whatever! At this moment, Feng Ke’er finally felt at peace—if not for Hua Eldest’s light orb technique, how could she have traveled through time? Without time travel, how could she have been forced into cultivation?

Wait, was it really forced?

At this moment, she suddenly turned and realized she could never go back—not because of the time formation set by Pangu, but because her heart could never return.

What she truly cherished and yearned for was this life of cultivation! Compared to the twenty-two years of aimless drifting in the modern world, her cultivation life was about seeking, discovering, and perfecting herself.

Pointing to her face, her gaze swept over her chest, then she raised her eyes and smiled from the depths of her heart. “Hua Eldest, you better remember this face! Millions of years from now, we won’t part! You three brothers must come find me!” (To be continued)

Heaven-Connecting Codex 117_Chapter 117: Letting Go – Update Complete!