The scholar who arrived with a fresh set of green robes was Su Zimo who had escaped here.

The attention of the hundred Nascent Souls were drawn over immediately.

The old lady could not see what was going on outside and merely hugged the child tightly in her embrace.

“You’re finally willing to show yourself, little beast?”

Many Nascent Souls stood in midair and looked down at the mansion not far away, sneering in mockery.

Su Zimo had an indifferent expression and walked down the stone steps into the courtyard. He gazed silently at the old man beneath the peach blossom tree with a deep sorrow in his eyes.

The old man’s eyes were closed and he had a peaceful expression, as though he was in a deep sleep.

The furnace made of red clay burned and flickered.

There was a bowl of wine remaining above that was still warm.

Su Zimo was oblivious to the encirclement of the hundred Nascent Souls and walked towards the furnace. He lifted the remaining bowl of wine and finished it in a gulp!

“This wine is truly fragrant,”

Su Zimo muttered softly.

Those were Su Hong’s last words.

Every living being lived for worldly desires to chase profits and gains.

Even cultivators could not escape from secular desires and sought power or immortality. How many people could be like Su Hong and leave with acceptance and grace?

“Beast!”

A Nascent Soul hollered, “If you surrender and hand over the divine phoenix bone along with your demonic cultivation technique now, we can leave you with a full corpse!”

“Otherwise, I’m going to burn your brother’s corpse into ashes!”

Su Zimo remained silent as he looked at the hundred Nascent Souls in midair with a hint of mockery.

Another Nascent Soul laughed sinisterly. “Also, after today, nobody here shall be spared!”

His voice spread through the entire Ping Yang Town.

Exclamations sounded one after another in the houses.

In fact, the faint sound of women and children sobbing and yelling could be heard in some of the mansions as a fear slowly grew in the hearts of everyone in Ping Yang Town.

In the dilapidated house, the old lady rubbed the child’s back and consoled him in a hushed voice. However, there were two streams of warm tears running down her face.

In the face of cultivators, the lives of mortals were like grass and they were completely helpless!

This was their lives.

They could do nothing.

An old man clutched his walking stick and wobbled out of his room. He kowtowed towards the mighty figures in midair and said in a tragic voice.

“Exalted Immortals, please take pity on us. I’m an old man who doesn’t have long to live. I can die without regrets no matter how you want to punish me. However, there are more than 3,000 women and children in Ping Yang Town. Please take pity on us and give them a chance to live!”

The old man had a heart-wrenching expression as he sobbed in misery.

However, the hundred Nascent Souls in midair had cold expressions. Some of them ignored him, some of them looked at him with mockery and there were even some that laughed coldly.

“How irritating!”

A Nascent Soul hollered loudly with a look of impatience.

The old man heard a boom in his ears and felt dizzy, falling head first to the ground.

“Hahaha!”

The Nascent Soul roared in laughter. “You guys can only blame this town for giving birth to a monster incarnate, a beast! He’s the one that implicated all of you!”

“Hais.”

Right then, a cold sigh sounded from the courtyard.

“Since you’re all here, don’t leave.”

Su Zimo said indifferently, “Activate!”

Buzz!

Whoosh!

Thud! Thud! Thud!

Instantly, heaven and earth shook!

An evil gust of wind surged above the firmaments and lightning flashed. The shine of the moon and stars was bedazzling as a frightening and sinister energy descended all of a sudden to envelope Ping Yang Town.

“Ah!”

To the horror of the hundred Nascent Souls in midair, they discovered that they could not use their Essence Spirits!

An extremely beguiling energy had restricted their Essence Spirits firmly!

The reason why Nascent Souls were strong was because they could manipulate the energy of the universe after cultivating their Essence Spirits. In other words, that was the legendary Dharmic power.

The crux to using Dharmic weapons and arts was their Essence Spirit!

Once their Essence Spirits were locked, the Nascent Souls had practically lost their strongest means!

“It’s a formation! A formation!”

A Nascent Soul exclaimed loudly in a flustered manner.

“Shut up!”

Someone else berated, “Everyone can tell that it’s a formation! But what formation is it exactly?”

Given their experience, all of them naturally knew that they had fallen into an ambush given the situation.

A Nascent Soul took a deep breath and tried his best to compose himself. “I’ve dabbled a little into formation techniques before. If I’m not wrong, this should be the Ancient Essence Lock Formation of the ancient era. However, this ancient formation has been lost for a long time, how is it…”

All of a sudden!

A mist shrouded the surroundings of the small town.

Those that were standing in Ping Yang Town could no longer see what was going on outside!

The small town had been isolated completely!

“Another formation?”

“This should be a trap formation to prevent us from escaping!”

“What! The gall of him! What is he trying to do?”

“Even with our Essence Spirits locked, we can still make use of spirit energy. Our combined force isn’t something he can deal with singlehandedly!”

Before his words were finished, a bedazzling glow burst forth from Ping Yang Town and a series of light barriers shone with mysterious emblems etched on them.

“Ah!”

“A third formation!”

“This is bad! Even my spirit energy has been locked!”

“It’s the Ancient Spirit Lock Formation!”

The expressions of the Nascent Souls changed and they could no longer control their bodies as they fell from midair one after another.

This time round, everyone truly panicked.

There was an Ancient Spirit Lock Formation and an Ancient Essence Lock Formation.

They were almost entirely crippled!

Coupled with a trap formation, Ping Yang Town was now a cage!

Among the three formations, the trap formation and ancient spirit lock formation were laid down by Su Zimo during his free time while accompanying Su Hong.

Given his cultivation realm, he could not comprehend the Ancient Essence Lock Formation nor could he set it up yet.

The reason why he could activate the ancient formation was because of the 49 formation flags that he had obtained from the old temple at the bottom of the Dragon Burial Valley.

The set of formation flags was from the Great Qian Empire’s palace and was later kept in the old temple after the empire was destroyed.

On the surface, they seemed like unassuming flags.

However, in reality, a lot of work was put into the production of each flag.

The flagpoles were made from the bones of fiend demons and the flag banners were made from the skin of fiend demons with additional reinforcement.

The hair of the fiend demons were used as the thread to secure and tie the flagpole and the banner.

The blood of fiend demons was used as ink to draw the patterns on the flag using a brush made of Dharmic power!

With the 49 flagpoles, all Su Zimo had to do was draft out the radius of the Ancient Essence Lock Formation and calculate where to place the formation eyes. Thereafter, he could activate the formation after plotting the formation flags.

Formations had many requirements, took a long time to set up and were passive. Coupled with the fact that many ancient formations had gone missing, the Dao of formation had been on the decline.

However, there was naturally a reason why the Dao of formations was still passed down from history as one of the four unorthodox groups.

The ancient era when the Dao of formations flourished the most was also the period of time when humans established their foundations!

Humans were innately weak and relied on countless ancient formations in the beginning to defend against the thousands of races.

Because formations required a fixed location and a preplanned set up, it was extremely difficult to use them – the stronger the formation, the longer it required to set them up.

There was no way any party would wait for the other to set up a formation before fighting to the death.

That was the reason why an emperor invented formation flags to make up for the weakness of the Dao of formations!

The emperor was known as the Formation Emperor and he was one of the ancient emperors who was ranked alongside the Weapon Emperor who created the Demon Revealing Mirror!