Nie Tian was surprised after casting a short-range Stars.h.i.+ft.
He saw Dong Baijie sitting by the foot of a huge tree, holding a bottle of alcohol and gulping it down by himself.
Seeing Nie Tian appearing out of nowhere, Dong Baijie was startled, and blurted, “What are you doing?”
instead of answering him, Nie Tian asked with a confused expression, “Didn’t you leave?”
Just now, he had let his guard down and hadn’t monitored everything happening in the vicinity with his Heaven Eyes, and when Dong Baijie left earlier, he didn’t pay much attention as to where he had gone.
He hadn’t expected that Dong Baijie hadn’t gone very far.
Dong Baijie laughed out loud and said somewhat embarra.s.sedly, “Well, I don’t want to give up yet. I’ve stuck around to see if something will happen.”
“Have you seen anything noteworthy?” Nie Tian asked with a smile.
Dong Baijie sighed in frustration. “I’m one hundred percent certain that some sorts of secrets are hiding in this continent, but I just can’t figure them out. Meanwhile, our seniors whose souls have transformed and thus acquired soul power can’t come in here due to the restrictive spell. As Greater Heaven stage cultivators, we can only use our psychic power to scan this continent, which means our perception will be far inferior...”
Upon hearing his words, an idea struck Nie Tian.
Dong Baijie’s words enlightened him.
Early on, he had been consumed with the battle against the Poison Sect disciples, and thus he hadn’t had the chance to examine this mysterious continent closely.
Even though he hadn’t entered the Worldly realm yet, he actually had soul power at his disposal, which was from the nine fragmentary stars in his soul.
Furthermore, the perception of his Heaven Eyes would also be far superior to the psychic awareness of normal Greater Heaven stage cultivators. With these thoughts in mind, he sent his nine Heaven Eyes, which were scattered in the vicinity, on different missions.
He sent three of them into three of the surrounding huge trees, while sending the other six into the depths of the earth.
While doing this, he sat down with his back against an ancient tree, and said to Dong Baijie, “I’ll see if I can find anything.”
With these words, he slowly closed his eyes and focused on controlling his Heaven Eyes with his soul.
Dong Baijie nodded and didn’t say anything. He kept drinking and occasionally glancing around, trying not to disturb Nie Tian.
Soon, Nie Tian discovered that extremely rich wood power was flowing within each of the three ancient trees he had examined with his Heaven Eyes.
Meanwhile, he also discovered that all of the trees’ roots were actually connected, forming an enormous web underground, yet he wasn’t able to find anything noteworthy in the depths of the earth.
An hour later, he failed to find anything else with the help of his nine Heaven Eyes.
In the meantime, the green aura, which carried the profound truths of life, was still dormant, coiled up in his heart. It didn’t seem to be reacting to this special place in any way.
At that moment, Dong Baijie asked, his cheeks flushed from the alcohol, “Found anything, Nie Tian?”
Nie Tian shook his head. “Not yet.”
“Hahaha!” Dong Baijie laughed wildly. “I was hoping you could uncover the secrets of this place. Who would have guessed that you can’t find any clues either.”
Before Nie Tian could say anything, he rose to his feet, wobbling slightly, and said, “Alright, I’m out of here. If no one can find anything here, we’re probably gonna leave after a couple of days.”
With these words, he sped away towards the edge of the floating continent.
After he left, Nie Tian sat in place, wracking his mind for ways to uncover the secrets of this place.
Time pa.s.sed quickly.
In the blink of an eye, two days pa.s.sed. After roaming around for so long, Dong Kang and the members of the Water Moon Chamber of Commerce had still failed to discover any anomalies or clues.
One after another, they left the floating continent.
Over the past two days, Nie Tian no longer stayed in one location, but rather walked around, examining every single ancient tree with his wood power and Heaven Eyes as he walked past the foot of the sky-reaching trees.
He counted a total of seventy-two of them, though nothing noteworthy was found as he examined them.
He gradually lost his patience.
In contrast, as he observed Pei Qiqi, Dong Li, and Qin Yan with his Heaven Eyes, he discovered that the three of them didn’t have the slightest intention of leaving, as if they were all waiting for something to happen.
“The seventy-two ancient trees cover a very large area, but their roots are all connected underground. And they all have rich wood power flowing within them.” Nie Tian pondered in silence.
With the help of his nine Heaven Eyes, he had long since grasped the way the seventy-two enormous trees were distributed.
All of a sudden, an idea hit him.
He glanced around and picked a random tree, from which he snapped a bunch of fresh, green branches.
Then, he planted them in the ground according to the arrangement of the seventy-two ancient trees.
The distances between the seventy-two branches were to scale with the distances between the seventy-two ancient trees.
Afterwards, one stream of wood aura after another flew out of his fingertips into the seventy-two branches that had been planted in the ground.
As his spiritual power was infused into the branches, they extended out of the bottoms and connected in the same way the ancient trees’ roots were connected.
As the root-like green auras intertwined with each other underground, a misty, green aura rose from the top of the branches.
At that moment, Nie Tian suddenly sensed the birth of a mysterious magnetic field among the seventy-two branches.
In the next moment, the rich wood power lingering in the air started converging on the formation of tree branches Nie Tian had just created from all directions.
The misty green aura, which was like a dome above the branches, gradually grew clear, and became increasingly similar to the ward around the floating continent.
Nie Tian’s eyes suddenly lit up.
Staring closely at the branches, he realized that the ancient trees that had taken root on this continent might just be, as he had expected, a special spell formation!
His spirit was instantly aroused. s.h.i.+ning with the light of excitement, his eyes didn’t for a second leave the miniature spell formation of the seventy-two branches.
Instead of summoning more of his wood power, he created a fireball with a fire incantation and bombarded the mini spell formation with it.
BANG!
As he had expected, the fireball flew into an invisible ward and exploded, fiery sparks splas.h.i.+ng from the contact point.
A shudder ran through him as he jerked his head up to look at the ancient trees that reached into the heavens. “Can this be the secret of this place?”
The fact that he was able to figure out the special distribution of the ancient trees was to a great deal thanks to what he had learned from Wu Ji.
Wu Ji had once told him that, at the very beginning, the ancient Qi warriors had derived enlightenment from the profound powers of heaven and earth, and by combining their enlightenment with the special traits of humans, they had come to discover these truths and created all sorts of exquisite incantations.
Many of the spell formations equipment forgers engraved in spiritual tools were similar to the terrain of the earth, the arrangement of the stars, and the flow of human meridians.
Even though the things Wu Ji had taught him didn’t concern any specific incantations or techniques, they covered all of the fundamental truths of cultivation.
The fact that he was able to think of snapping branches and putting them in the same arrangement as the ancient trees was also a flash of insight based on the knowledge he had acquired from Wu Ji.
He sat down on the ground, blocked all outside distractions, and focused solely on the tree branches before him.
His mind gradually drifted away as he used his heart to sense the changes in the magnetic field among the tree branches, the ward forming over it, and the wood power quietly converging on it from the surroundings.
An unknown period of time pa.s.sed.
Dong Li and Qin Yan finally grew bored and roamed over to this area, where they simultaneously noticed Nie Tian’s abnormal behavior.