purgatory artist

Chapter 23 Jiuyou

He took a step forward, and ran towards the entrance of the underground cave according to the direction he remembered.

Can't do it for a moment.

Liu Ping re-entered the underground cave, and followed the path that Hong Tao and Zhao Chanyi had taken him, and walked towards the depths of the cave.

After an unknown amount of time, he finally came to a cool and empty cave.

This place is quite big, and it was the place where all the monks took refuge. It was here that Liu Ping had a conversation with Hong Tao and Zhao Chanyi.

Liu Ping took a look, and soon found several broken magic circles on the ground.

He squatted down on the edge of the magic circle, and murmured: "To design this kind of underground refuge, the old man likes to use the twelve-fold overlapping method to lay out the big circle. It should be three hidden magic circles, three isolation circles, and three defensive circles." array, an attack array, a teleportation array and a photo array..."

He squatted on the ground and counted, but there were only eleven magic circles.

There is no photo array.

Liu Ping pondered for a few breaths, stood up, walked around the cave, and suddenly stood still in front of a rock wall.

"Why do you hide the photo array so far away?"

Talking to himself, he stretched out his hand and scratched hard on the rock wall.

slam-la-

A large piece of soil fell from the rock wall, rolling up layers of ash in the cave.

There is indeed a photo array behind the soil, but it is a bit dilapidated.

Liu Ping thought for a while, took out a few spirit stones, crushed them into powder, and carefully applied them on the incomplete parts of the magic circle.

When all this was done, Liu Ping put his hand on the edge of the magic circle, and softly shouted: "Qi!"

——This method can temporarily activate the incomplete photo array, but then the entire photo array will be completely destroyed and can no longer be used.

This secret method is specially used to detect the damaged photo arrays and find out the last scene they saw before they were destroyed.

Following Liu Ping's voice, the entire magic circle emitted a flash of light.

The spiritual light soared into the sky and condensed into a picture of light and shadow.

All I saw on the screen was the scene of all the monks hiding here, watching the monster on the ground together.

The difference is that there was no Liu Ping in that past moment.

Immediately afterwards, seven or eight people helped a practitioner covered in blood into the cave for refuge.

The holy beast appeared.

It received the practitioner, as well as the practitioner's companion.

The screen turns.

The holy beast turned into a door, joined the holy religion with two practitioners, and left the underground cave.

The rest of the people were still discussing what happened just now in the cave.

Only two low-strength practitioners are no longer among them.

Hong Tao.

Zhao Chanyi.

The two sat still.

After a pause, Hong Tao stood up, clasped his fists at Zhao Chanyi and said, "Fairy Zhao, I know a place that falls from the sky, would you like to go with me and earn some spirit stones?"

"It's what you want." Zhao Chanyi said.

With an inexplicable expression on her face, she glanced at the rock on the wall, then stretched out her hand and pressed lightly on the rock under her feet before standing up.

The two got up and walked outside.

The monk in charge of guarding the door stood up and said, "The situation on the ground is uncertain, and your strength is low. It may be dangerous to go out at this time."

Zhao Chanyi smiled and said, "It's okay, we're going to the Land of the Fallen Sky to pick up things and earn some spirit stones to make ends meet."

The guard stopped talking.

Hong Tao and Zhao Chanyi left the cave one after the other.

Not long after they left, the spiritual light in the cave surged up, and then suddenly completely shattered.

The twelve-layer magic circle was like paper, and it was annihilated in an instant.

A giant black hand stretched out from the cave, grabbed everyone in the cave, then retracted at an extremely fast speed, and disappeared.

Snapped!
The photo array made a soft noise and completely shattered.

All lights and shadows disappear.

The screen is over.

Liu Ping stood there in a daze for a while.

Unexpectedly, this was the last scene of the people taking refuge in the cave.

He walked to the entrance of the cave and looked carefully.

The rock walls around the entrance of the cave are densely covered with thin cracks. I didn't know what happened before, but now it seems that these cracks were clearly opened when the giant black hand reached in.

Liu Ping stretched out his hand and gently broke off a broken rock.

I saw that the rock was filled with a smell similar to sulfur, but it wasn't exactly that when I smelled it carefully.

Liu Ping walked out of the cave and looked around.

The underground passages are intact, and the rock walls are undamaged everywhere.

Now Liu Ping knew what was going on.

In such a narrow underground passage, it is absolutely impossible to accommodate a body that can match that giant black hand.

Coupled with the obvious traces of the technique on the rock wall.

It should be that someone was hiding outside the cave and attacked everyone inside in one fell swoop.

But why?

Why did Hong Tao and Zhao Chanyi just escape this ambush?
These two people are only at the Qi Refining Realm, and they can't threaten anyone at all——

Feeling puzzled, Liu Ping re-entered the cave.

Just now Zhao Chanyi glanced at the rock wall, and happened to be looking at the place where the photo array was hidden.

So Zhao Chanyi's actions must have some intentions.

and many more.

She reached out and pressed on the rock on the ground!
"Zhao Chanyi, what exactly are you trying to tell me..."

Liu Ping muttered softly, walked to the rock step by step, squatted down, and took a closer look.

There were a few extremely scrawled scratches on the rock, and Liu Ping tried hard to identify them before realizing that they were two words:
"Nine secluded."

Liu Ping's expression froze, and he gently stretched out his hand to smooth out the marks on the ground.

To do so, one is to erase the traces; the other is to tell Zhao Chanyi that if she comes back here again, she will know that someone has obtained her information.

The so-called "Jiuyou" is actually a set of corresponding words with "Taishang", which respectively represent two different paths of practice, and also represent two forces:

Demon heretics and famous families are upright.

What message did Zhao Chanyi want to convey by leaving the words "Jiuyou"?
Liu Ping pondered for a few breaths, and began to recall the scene of walking with Hong Tao and Zhao Chanyi before.

Zhao Chanyi didn't seem to make any moves from the beginning to the end.

There is a saying that once a connoisseur makes a move, he will know if there is one.

As long as she makes a move, Liu Ping is confident that she can judge the Taoism she cultivates.

But Zhao Chanyi didn't make a move at all.

... This is troublesome.

After thinking for a while, Liu Ping suddenly remembered another thing.

correct!

Zhao Chanyi didn't do anything outrageous along the way, but she gave herself a fan.

——Water Yun Spirit Treasure Fan!

Liu Ping patted the storage bag, took out the fan, and looked at it over and over in his hand.

After watching it for a while, he lightly made a formula and shouted softly, "Refine!"

The fan suddenly floated in mid-air, and a black-red flame burst out.

"It turned out to be this kind of refining method, but it is too crude and vulgar. I can easily dismantle this fan—maybe the person who refined this fan made it so rough on purpose?"

Liu Ping frowned.

His ability to refine weapons is the best in the world, and now he can see the clues at a glance.

There are six skills in practice, which are hexagrams, arrays, symbols, utensils, pills, and food.

The Six Arts are the crystallization of skills accumulated in the world of practice for countless years, and represent the height of civilization of the entire world.

Liu Ping studied under the gua sage, and he is proficient in all six arts.

That's why Gua Sheng told him before he died: "We know too many things, not only the monsters want to kill us, but even the various sects in the human race are half in awe and half suspicious of us. "

At this moment, he became suspicious, and immediately typed out the spells again and again, took the fan apart, and examined it carefully.

I saw two lines of small characters written on the fan:

"The 39th floor underground, Xun bit, go."

"Also: There is something in this hole, you can try to get it."

Looking at this line of words, Liu Ping let out a breath slowly.

The 39th floor underground is a place for senior monks to retreat. Only monks in the Nascent Soul realm are allowed to enter, and ordinary practitioners are not allowed to enter.

Perhaps Zhao Chanyi's and Hong Tao's cultivation was not limited to Qi Refining Realm.

What are these two people trying to do?
Liu Ping became more interested.

Then... try to get that thing first.

Liu Ping put down his fan and looked back and forth in the cave.

—Is this a test?
Is it to examine my strength?
Or test whether I am qualified enough to know some secrets?
Liu Ping's eyes suddenly stopped in one place.

Several piles of the ground where the bonfires were originally placed were all smoked into black gray. Only the bonfire where I, Hong Tao, and Zhao Chanyi sat around at that time, the black gray was much lighter, and it even looked like there was only a light layer of ash.

Someone has moved here.

Liu Ping stepped forward, pressed his hand on the light gray ground, and lightly probed with his spiritual power.

Click!

It seems that something has been activated.

The ground suddenly cracked.

A vertical coffin emerged from the ground, and the lid of the coffin fell to the ground.

Liu Ping took a closer look, and couldn't help but lose his voice: "Friend Hong Dao——no, this is the method of refining corpses!"

I saw a person standing in the coffin, with his eyes closed, his expression was peaceful, as if he was still in a deep sleep.

It was Hong Tao!

Liu Ping took a few steps forward, made a tactic, and put a little force between Hong Tao's eyebrows with his fingers.

Hong Tao immediately opened his eyes and looked at Liu Ping.

"Liu Daoyou, we meet again." Hong Tao clasped his fists and said.

"Fellow Daoist Hong, who imprisoned your soul here with the method of refining corpses? Do you want me to help you out of this predicament?" Liu Ping asked, clasping his fists.

Hong Tao smiled and said: "Friend Liu, the formula you used just now is a first-class method for refining corpses."

"Yes." Liu Ping admitted.

"Corpse refining is an evil method, and you seem to be proficient in this method. It seems that you are on the same path as us." Hong Tao said.

"So you're waiting here, it's actually a test, to see if I'm a demon heretic or not?" Liu Ping asked.

"That's exactly the case. If you are a righteous person, you will only destroy this corpse in the first place, so as to prevent the evil law from wreaking havoc on the world." Hong Tao said.

"Why do you want to test me like this?" Liu Ping asked.

"I can't tell you yet. After all, this matter is too involved. I can only tell you that you have passed the test. The secret is the earthquake position on the 39th floor underground, not the Xun position."

"What will happen if you go to the Xun throne?" Liu Ping asked.

"Death." Hong Tao said.

Liu Ping sighed, shook his head and said, "You guys are too careful."

"No way, we have to be careful. After all, too many monks have fallen into the hands of monsters, and we are also afraid that you are a monk controlled by monsters." Hong Tao said.

"But I only have the cultivation level of Qi refining, so you come to test it? Are you afraid that I am a newcomer who has just entered the Dao?" Liu Ping couldn't help but said.

"When you wake up, there will be monsters chasing you. This kind of treatment will only appear when those great monks are reincarnated." Hong Tao said.

"I see." Liu Ping said.

Hong Tao went on to say: "To enter the 39th floor underground, at least Nascent Soul cultivation is required. Fellow Daoist Liu, you have to hurry up and practice."

"That's right." Liu Ping said.

Hong Tao nodded to Liu Ping and said, "This matter is over, we will meet later."

A flame rose from him and began to burn blazingly.

Liu Ping took a few steps back and looked at the corpse in the fire indifferently.

Once the corpse was destroyed, Hong Tao's soul left.

His soul will return to the person who made the corpse.

From this, that person will know what happened here.

lean less.

Everything burns out.

The fire is extinguished, and the corpse is destroyed.

"Friend Daoist Hong..."

Liu Ping sighed, and said in a low voice: "It's unwise for you to judge that I'm with you guys just based on your skills."

"Actually... I'm just proficient in all the spells in the world."

(End of this chapter)