The bald man and the others wore an anxious expression when they saw the Old Man Ma enveloped the flames. However, they all secretly knew that Old Man Ma had taken out the scroll for a reason.
Sure enough, Old Man Ma was standing safely within the sea of flames. His hands were formed in an incantation gesture and the scroll was rolled out in front of him. Then in pulsing white light and roaring gales, a pillar of white wind emerged from the scroll, surging around an area over thirty meters around him. The sea of flames surrounding him had been mostly swept away with ease. Then with a furious howl from Old Man Ma, a streak of silver light shot out from the pillar of wind, directly striking at Ku Yao without any concern for the flood dragon floating above him.
It seemed that Old Man Ma clearly understood that so long as he could injure Ku Yao, the spirit-connected fire flood dragon would greatly decrease in might.
Curling the corner of his mouth, Ku Yao waved his arm, releasing a translucent flying saber that s.h.i.+ned with brilliant, scarlet light from his palm. The saber instantly moved to block the silver streak and collided with it in midair, resulting in an an equal clash as red and silver light intertwined.
When Ku Yao saw this, a cold glint appeared in his eye. With a flip of his hands, he summoned two red inch-large flags into his grasp before tossing them into the air. In a burst of wind, they instantly grew to three meters tall.
Following a cryptic incantation from Ku Yao, red light suddenly glowed from the flags and two thick columns of flame erupted, converging onto the fire flood dragon’s horn — giving rise to a large cloud of weak flames nearby.
“Go!” Ku Yao ceased his incantation and puffed a mist of red Qi onto the fire flood dragon above him. With roused spirits, the flood dragon roared with delight before charging into the fire cloud, turning it crimson and causing it to roil. But soon, it began to rapidly shrink.
Down below, Han Li narrowed his eyes at the sight of this with pupils glowing blue. Through the Brightsight Spirit Eyes, he was able to astonishedly discover that the fire dragon hiding inside the cloud was breathing in the fire cloud with reckless abandon.
In the blink of an eye, the fire cloud was cleanly devoured and the flood dragon rapidly increased in size, raising to over thirty meters in height. With its head the size of a small building and its bared fangs, it appeared truly malevolent.
At that moment, the surging white pillar of wind had entirely blown away the sea of flames, revealing only Old Man Ma who stood inside it.
As he held the eight trigram scroll in his hands, he coldly watched the tremendous flood dragon for only a moment before wordlessly flinging the scroll into the air. The scroll then shot into the sky in a streak of rainbow light and promptly disappeared into the skies above, as if attempting to reach its farthest reaches.
Ku Yao blinked in astonishment. In his hesitation, he suddenly sensed a series of odd spiritual Qi fluctuations from above him. Slivers of rainbow light then began to s.h.i.+ne down from the sky, revealing a hundred-meter-wide eight trigram formation enveloped entirely in rainbow light. It directly shot down from the sky without any resistance.
Ku Yao’s expression vastly changed and instantly pointed at the fire flood dragon without any further thought. The flood dragon immediately raised its head and spouted a scarlet stream of light from its mouth, directly striking at the bottom portion of the formation. The formation faintly trembled for a moment, but it continued falling as if unaffected.
With a paled complexion, Ku Yao rubbed his hands together before suddenly raising them, shooting a dense barrage of countless fist-sized fireb.a.l.l.s into the sky.
Han Li’s heart stirred at the sight of this. This wasn’t something that was a result of many fireball talismans, but something that had been instantly produced by one’s own cultivation. Spell warrior spirit techniques were vastly beyond what ordinary elemental Daoist techniques were capable, and were far more useful in battle as a result.
As Han Li’s mind wandered, the many fireb.a.l.l.s struck the underside of the huge formation like shower of meteors. However, this strike also proved to be of little effect. The diagram continued falling down with immense speed as it enveloped Ku Yao and his flood dragon.
At that moment, the cultivators and spell warriors watching the battle were no longer able to see Ku Yao; they only saw the huge eight trigram formation slowly revolve as they surrounded it.
Old Man Ma didn’t reveal the slightest delight from having his attack succeed. Rather, he solemnly sat cross-legged with his hands forming an incantation gesture as soft white light twirled around his body. At that same moment, the huge diagram seemed to have merged with the rainbow light and suddenly released rolls of deafening thunder — pulsing with light as it flickered.
The shriveled spell warrior wore a worried expression on his face. He turned to the black-robed figure and politely asked, “Sir Heavenweep, will Sage Ku Yao be fine in there? If it’s dangerous, we don’t need to respect the agreement for a one on one; we can just go in and rescue him. It is truly beyond belief that this Nascent Soul cultivator could possess such an odd ancient treasure!”
The black-robed figure softly laughed. “Don’t worry about him,” he said with a careless tone, “While that Supreme Eight Trigram Diagram is a truly formidable ancient treasure, this cultivator still hasn’t grasped the true method to use it. He is barely able to use it by forcing his spiritual power into the treasure. This won’t be able to hold Fellow Daoist Ku for much longer. This brutish method of using the formation diagram will surely consume a great amount of magic power. How foolis.h.!.+ But still, it is no surprise that few know the true method to use such a rare ancient treasure in this remote area.” His words seemed to carry a tone of disdain towards the cultivators of the Heavenly South.
The shriveled spell warrior relaxed when he heard this and decided to temporarily hold on his plan to organize a party of spell warriors to rescue Ku Yao.
As for the bald man and the others, their expressions possessed both worry and joy. They had been excited when they saw the spell warrior trapped by the eight trigrams formation. But when they saw Old Man Ma still maintaining the formation with a solemn expression with strange sounds occasionally sounded out from within the formation, they knew that the battle was far from over.
For a time, the old man had actually been cursing without end! This treasure was something that he had only recently acquired, and he had only previously used it against Core Formation cultivators. Those cultivators had been entirely powerless before this treasure and were each killed with ease.
However, this spell warrior was able to temporarily obstruct the diagram through use of his own attacks along with the unceasing, ferocious attacks of his flame dragon. Stabilizing the interruptions caused by these attacks had drained much spiritual power from the formation diagram.
The battle in the air grew calm for the moment. Apart from faint explosions sounding out from within the formation diagram, there was only silence.
Worry became more apparent on the faces of Heavenly South cultivators. Han Li was the only one who still maintained a calm expression as he watched the battle unfold.
Silvermoon clicked her tongue from the back of Han Li’s mind in disappointment. ‘That Fellow Daoist Ma is truly overexerting that treasure by using the Supreme Eight Trigram Diagram in this manner. That ancient treasure is no weaker than the Purple Cloudlace.’
With a still expression, Han Li inwardly asked, ‘Supreme Eight Trigram Diagram? You know of this ancient treasure?’
‘Of course,’ Silvermoon quickly answered, ‘It was a renown ancient treasure in the past. However, it seems this particular treasure is of poor quality. Otherwise, that spell warrior should’ve already perished, despite the old man’s ignorance usage of the treasure. If it were a high quality Eight Trigram Diagram, the magic power consumption wouldn’t be so great.’
After some hesitation Han Li asked, ‘If a poor quality diagram can display this much power, then what would a good quality diagram be capable of? When you say that the Purple Cloudlace is no weaker than this treasure, could it be that there is a secret method that must be used to draw out its full power?’
Silvermoon smiled and replied, ‘The Purple Cloudlace isn’t that troublesome to use! You simply need to pour spiritual power into it and use it. Furthermore, the Jadesun True Fire only takes a few tries before it is properly grasped.’
When Han Li heard this, he grew silent. He gaze then turned towards the sky once more and he frowned, thinking, ‘Not good.’
A huge explosion rippled through the air, and the Eight Trigram Diagram suddenly distorted. Countless beams of red light shot out from the diagram, tearing away at the formation.
As this shocking scene occurred, another series of explosions sounded out from the corner of the formation. A ball raging flames emerged and shot thirty meters straight up before fading away, revealing Ku Yao with a blood-red complexion as he stood on top of the fire flood dragon. The flood dragon had returned to the size of three meters from an unknown time, and appeared vastly weakened.
To the side, Old Man Ma didn’t appear much better. His face was pale and his eyes listless. However, the old man gritted his teeth and waved his arm at the shredded formation diagram. In a flash of rainbow light, it flew back into the sky and dropped back down into the old man’s hand as a scroll.