Chapter Eighty-Nine: The Living Quarters

Adongsa did not know what this thing was, but that did not stop it from sensing the changes in the outside world.

It felt a strange current of energy, very much like Delta Wave, yet with an unmistakable difference.

That energy was faint, gentle, and yet it also carried a sense of vastness without boundary.

Adongsa commanded the flying units outside the Tomb of the Black Death Emperor to rise and observe, but even then it could only glimpse a corner of the whole.

The flow of this power was too immense, too broad, and Adongsa could hardly understand what was happening.

Higher. Higher still.

The sky jellyfish and flying birds climbed relentlessly until they reached an altitude of a thousand meters.

Still not enough!

With powerful wingbeats and jets of force, the split forms kept rising, their height already surpassing eight thousand meters.

By then, Adongsa could see the full extent of the primeval Shamanwater Forest, but even that was still not high enough.

The split forms extended their tendrils and fused together, becoming a colossal chimera-bird, stubbornly ascending on the strength of their collective thrust.

The temperature plunged sharply. Moisture condensed into thick frost upon the chimera, but it was quickly melted away and shed by the intense heat of its own metabolism.

The split forms were burning through every last ounce of energy they possessed, all for the sake of stealing a single glance at the whole of the Heavenly Capital Kingdom from its highest point.

Cutting through lightning among the clouds, a dazzling radiance appeared before its eyes. The blazing sunlight was even more vicious than the frost, compounding the burden on the already frantic metabolism of the chimera.

One layer after another, the split forms peeled away like staged rockets, spending their final strength to keep ascending.

At last, in that long, desperate charge, one split form reached an altitude of twenty kilometers. Before it was utterly exhausted and died, it fixed its gaze deeply on the land of the Divine Realm flickering in and out of view between the clouds, and transmitted crucial information to Adongsa.

Its keen Delta Wave sensing organs saw a gigantic magnetic field surging and churning across the earth, flowing in a fixed direction with the rhythm of some living thing.

Meanwhile, Adongsa kept buying or hacking observation satellites, watching that bizarre current of energy within the Heavenly Capital Kingdom.

That mysterious force, known as the earth veins, was in essence the magnetic field generated by the planet itself.

This magnetic field shared properties similar to Delta Wave, yet it was far more powerful.

And now, this vast and boundless vein current was moving according to some particular law.

By comparing the weather, geography, and cities of the Heavenly Capital Kingdom, Adongsa finally uncovered the secret behind it.

If all these images were made transparent and overlaid, there would appear before the eye a horrifying formation, coiling into what seemed like an endless vortex, evolving into the images of the Eight Trigrams, the Five Elements, yin and yang, and more.

This was a national earth-vein diversion circuit built over nearly a hundred years. With the aid of modernity and under a single unifying will, the whole land of Shenzhou had been treated like a sand table and transformed into a monumental array.

Seen from the sky, this magnificent formation guided the turning of the earth veins, altering the direction and strength of the geomagnetic field, and gathering a terrifying force into one place.

Such changes in geomagnetism naturally brought catastrophic consequences: earthquakes broke out incessantly, rivers flowed backward, birds and beasts were thrown into panic, and even the common people of the Heavenly Capital Kingdom fainted and collapsed in great numbers.

The tremendous reversal of the geomagnetic field even caused the planet’s own rotation to be subtly affected, bringing disasters to other regions as well.

Deep beneath the military-industrial complex of Amesite, the mechanical behemoth opened its giant, searchlight-bright eyes once more and rumbled in a low metallic voice: “A being from the Heaven of Free Transformation. So it was here all along!”

Everyone in the military command center was in complete disarray. The screens were filled with blood-red numbers, all indicating that every reading had already exceeded the safety limit.

General Anxi roared, “Investigate! Find out! Tell me whether this is an accident or a terrorist attack! If this is a weapon, then we must have it!”

A monitor sprang to his feet and shouted, “Report! The source of the quake has been traced to inside the borders of the Heavenly Capital Kingdom!”

A savage gleam appeared on General Anxi’s face. “The Heavenly Capital Kingdom... Only Amesite is fit to possess such a weapon!”

After such long preparation and such enormous sacrifice, all Zhang Liaoyuan needed to do was continue pressuring Heaven’s activity space, drive it out from the faith and dependence of the hundreds of millions in the Heavenly Capital Kingdom, and sever the source of its power.

The reversed geomagnetism followed the rules of the great array, stripping thread after thread of Delta Wave from the hearts of countless millions, severing its source of power.

Centered on Shamanwater, dark clouds gathered thickly, interwoven with lightning and thunder. The immense pressure brought by the reversal of the earth veins gradually forced the demons hidden within human hearts to show their true forms.

Amid the clouds, a surge of Delta Wave, powerful enough to rival lightning, churned and rolled, faintly revealing the sharp snout and thick, long body of a serpent.

It was a colossal cloud-serpent, a full hundred kilometers in length, twisting and struggling above Shamanwater!

At that moment, this fierce giant serpent was seized by a massive hand and brutally dragged down, pressed directly against the mirror-still waters of Shamanwater, where it vanished in a spreading web of ripples.

Within the Tomb of the Black Death Emperor, Adongsa sensed a violent mass of Delta Wave being seized by the will of the entire planet and forced down into Zhang Liaoyuan’s original body.

“From the moment I realized you existed, I began thinking about this Mountains-and-Rivers Earth-Vein Grand Array. I spent a full hundred years on it, and not once did I slacken, even after I was sealed away. I kept perfecting this formation, constantly redirecting the earth veins.”

Zhang Liaoyuan spoke slowly, his tone cold and detached, as though recounting decades of hardship.

“Heart Sovereign helped me build this formation all along. He turned himself completely into a single intent, moving through the hearts of all people. Wherever there were human beings, he could arrive in an instant, subtly influencing the architects and engineers, and together we forged a perfect earth-vein array.”

It was also thanks to Heart Sovereign’s secret warnings that Zhang Liaoyuan had been able to awaken from his seal at precisely the right moment.

The Venom Serpent laughed in rage. “Go on, then. Why don’t you say that you stirred up the civil war and killed so many Vein-Bearers just to weaken my power?”

Zhang Liaoyuan did not evade the accusation and answered frankly, “I do not know when exactly you first appeared, but ever since there have been records of Vein-Bearers, traces of you can already be found. You descended upon this world as Heaven’s Way itself, hiding in the heart of every person. You granted some people a force called vital energy, allowing them to train themselves and grow stronger. Then, once they had cultivated abundant energy-veins, you harvested them without hesitation. The more Vein-Bearers there were, the stronger you became. The more prosperous the Vein-Bearers were, the more vigorous you grew. For the sake of giving the Vein-Bearers a true tomorrow and a future, I had no choice but to take this path.”

“Well said!”

The form of the Venom Serpent was continuously compressed by the giant hand formed from the earth veins, until at last it could only be pitifully forced into Zhang Liaoyuan’s diamond-hard body, like a living man being squeezed into a glass marble.

“But do you really think that, like this, you have even the slightest chance of defeating me?”