Chapter 958: The Blood-Weeping Array Diagram

Han Li remained inwardly vigilant, his gaze following the path of the fire line as it moved, extending over a hundred zhang along the ground before finally stopping at what seemed to be its endpoint.

With a sudden whoosh, blazing crimson flames rose from the ground on both sides, illuminating the entire space where Han Li stood.

Han Li narrowed his eyes slightly, glanced around, and his expression shifted slightly as he marveled inwardly.

This space was about two to three hundred zhang in size, and the surrounding walls were covered with a continuous series of massive stone relief murals, depicting towering mountains, surging rivers, and majestic cities and passes scattered among them.

On the carved mountains, rare beasts galloped freely, and cultivators flew through the air, presenting a scene that seemed like a celestial realm, utterly unrelated to the Scale Abyss.

“How did such murals come to be here? Could it be that exiles of the past, reminiscing about their former lives, carved them here?” Han Li muttered to himself.

As he pondered, he stepped around the stone platform before him and carefully examined all the murals along the wall. He found that while the images were intricate, they were not连贯 and seemed to have no clear connection to one another.

Before long, Han Li reached the depths of the space and saw a three-zhang-long black stone coffin on the ground, carved with a puppet-like male figure resembling a marionette. All his joints were suspended by threads in midair, his expression wooden and limbs stiff, appearing very strange.

Those threads wound across the coffin’s surface, eventually converging above the puppet’s head.

Han Li stepped forward and examined it closely, discovering that at the puppet’s crown, all the threads intertwined to form a circular pattern resembling the Eight Trigrams, with a yin-yang fish diagram at the center, but no trigram symbols around the periphery.

After a moment’s hesitation, he raised his hand and gently touched the trigram pattern, finding that the lines on the trigram positions were not fixed but could be pressed down.

Seeing this, Han Li was delighted. He murmured, “Qian three continuous, Kun six broken, Zhen like a bowl, Gen like a covered bowl…” and then pressed down on the eight trigram positions.

As the eight trigram patterns emerged, the fish-eye positions of the central yin-yang fish diagram suddenly sank, followed by a rumbling sound of stone grinding.

The stone coffin slowly slid open, revealing no corpse inside, but a five-inch-square transparent crystal box.

Inside the box lay a silver hollow sphere, covered with extremely intricate and strange patterns, from which emanated waves of peculiar power, like fluctuations of the soul.

“So this is it…” Han Li’s eyes flickered as he murmured.

He examined the hollow sphere for a moment, then carefully inspected the interior of the coffin. Just as he was about to reach for the box, he frowned, feeling that something was amiss.

With this thought, Han Li looked up and glanced around at the landscape murals. A strange glint flashed in his eyes. He withdrew his hand, stepped back to the front of the coffin, and pushed the lid back on.

He paced back and forth a few times, replaying the contents of the jade slip in his mind, when a phrase suddenly surfaced: “The eight trigram positions reside in form, not in meaning; one must use this diagram.”

Han Li stopped abruptly, his gaze returning to the murals around him, a look of realization dawning in his eyes.

He walked directly to the back of the coffin, raised his hand, and groped along the mural until he found a carved sun, pressing down on it heavily.

“Chi…”

With a soft sound, the sun sank inward.

“Just as I thought…” Han Li rejoiced inwardly and moved to the next mural on the right.

That mural depicted a scene of clouds and storms, so Han Li found a cloud cluster and pressed it down.

Following that, he found a river and a mountain in a mural of a great river flowing and one of a mountain hidden in mist, pressing each down.

Heaven as the sun, clouds following the wind, water formless, mountain forming momentum… the eight trigram positions were all hidden within these relief murals.

As Han Li pressed all the hidden mechanisms representing the eight trigram positions, the entire space began to tremble violently. The stone coffin on the ground started to sink unsteadily, revealing an entrance on the floor.

“A fine example of ‘in form, not in meaning’…” Han Li remarked with a smile as he walked over.

The entrance was not large, consisting of a stone staircase leading downward, barely wide enough for one person.

Without much hesitation, Han Li stepped inside.

After descending a dozen or so steps, the stairs turned left, revealing a doorway about one person tall, glowing with white light.

Han Li cautiously entered to find a space only about ten zhang in size, sparsely furnished and somewhat empty.

However, though the space was not large, the walls were densely inlaid with white star bones, whose radiance illuminated the area brightly.

Looking up, Han Li saw a black stone long table against the wall directly in front of him, on which two exquisite white jade boxes were placed side by side.

After a quick inspection and finding nothing unusual, he flipped open the lid of one jade box with a click.

When the lid opened, no precious light spilled out, nor did any unusual phenomenon occur. Only a fist-sized sphere lay quietly inside.

The sphere was entirely black, very similar in appearance to the one seen in the stone coffin earlier—multi-layered and hollow, densely covered with strange runes.

However, this sphere emitted no power fluctuations and seemed unremarkable except for its exquisite craftsmanship. In comparison, the previous one seemed more authentic.

Han Li picked up the hollow sphere and examined it closely in his palm. He could faintly see strands of golden lightning, as thin as hair, swimming within its core, silent yet swift as thunder.

His heart stirred, sensing that this object was certainly not ordinary, so he carefully stored it in his bosom.

After calming himself, Han Li’s gaze fell on the other jade box.

This jade box was different; its surface was inlaid with a circular plate engraved with intricate patterns, surrounded by two rings of hollow holes, each with a grain-sized golden rune beneath it.

Frowning slightly, Han Li reached for the jade box to examine it more closely, but found it seemed fused with the table, firmly embedded and immovable.

Seeing this, he activated the acupoints on his arm, greatly increasing his strength, and grabbed the box, pulling upward with force.

The jade box shook violently, causing the table beneath to tremble as well, but that was all. Neither was dislodged by Han Li’s pull, remaining as steady as a mountain.

Raising an eyebrow, Han Li suddenly punched the jade box hard.

A white light flashed on the box’s surface, and a layer of starlight burst forth, rebounding with immense force.

Han Li quickly stepped back to dissipate the force.

When he looked back at the jade box, his expression grew more puzzled. Regarding the metal sphere, the Crab Daoist’s jade slip had clearly recorded it as a necessary item.

As for what the other jade box contained, he had not mentioned it.

Frowning deeply, Han Li activated his acupoints, channeling even greater power, and punched the jade box again.

“Boom!”

Unsurprisingly, the rebounding force was even stronger, sending Han Li stumbling back several steps until his back hit a wall.

Snorting coldly, Han Li was not about to give up. Just as he prepared to strike with even greater force, he noticed a crack spreading beneath him, extending to the base of the jade box on the stone table.

His brow furrowed as realization dawned. He knew he could not break it open with brute force, or it would destroy the entire space, and he had no time to waste here.

Just as Han Li was about to return to the front hall to check the situation there, his peripheral vision caught a star pattern on the ground, illuminated by the light from the star bones on the walls.

However, compared to the star map on the dome earlier, this one was much smaller and had many gaps.

Han Li stared at the star pattern for a long time, then a look of surprise flashed in his eyes. Suddenly, he clapped his hand and exclaimed in realization, “So that’s it, so that’s it…”

Then, he pulled out the Star Ripple Brush from his sleeve and began to fill in the gaps on the star pattern.

After a long while, Han Li finished the last stroke, withdrew the brush, and straightened up.

With that stroke, the star pattern on the ground began to shine brightly. A faint sound of gears turning came from the jade box, and the circular plate on it slowly rotated before opening with a click.

Delighted, Han Li stepped forward and saw a piece of light gray leather, from some unknown scale beast, neatly folded into a small square inside the box.

“This is…”

Han Li picked up the leather, gently unfolded it, and his brow furrowed again.

On the leather was depicted a five-cornered altar deeply embedded in the ground, with a strange winged beast at each of the five corners—exactly the same as the blood sacrifice array being activated by the five City Lords of Xuan City.

At the top of the leather were four ancient seal-script characters: “Blood-Weeping Array Diagram,” which was clearly different from the blood sacrifice array that E Kuai had told everyone about.

Filled with suspicion, Han Li began to examine the entire array diagram carefully.

He soon discovered that the upper part of the Blood-Weeping Array was identical to the blood sacrifice array in the front hall, confirming they were the same. E Kuai’s deliberate concealment must have ulterior motives.

Moreover, from the diagram, he could see that the blood pool of the array was extremely spacious, and the walls inside were carved with incredibly intricate and hidden array patterns, beyond belief.

Outside the array diagram, there were short annotations around, explaining the key points and specific functions of setting up this array.

The more Han Li read, the deeper his frown became, until he finally understood what E Kuai intended to do.

After scanning through, his gaze finally fell on an annotation at the lower right corner. His brow suddenly lifted, and the corners of his mouth turned up slightly in a faint smile.