Chapter 143 Snares along the Way
From times of old, all murder cases were thorough, in the sense that entire sects were eliminated.

The nature of the devils was such that they would never let their offenses go unavenged.

Among the nineteen sects of Truth Cultivators, the Pavilion of Wind and Thunder and Broken King Gorge were the first targets of attack. The devils would not allow anyone in the sects to escape even if they did well at the start. This was the reason Guan Shuheng and Chen Chenchen were still the targets of the devil cultivators even though they were mere novices in their sects who did not hold any important positions.

Because of Ye Que, Ye Yunhai returned with his tail between his legs, and the dead bodies of Cao Xue and Xie Yi were not intact.

The devils treated this as a humiliating defeat.

It was intolerable!

Very soon, Formless Demon Seeds had arrived near Zen Mountain.

They discovered the dead bodies of the black-robed men in front of Guandi Temple. Together with the state of the temple, the demons concluded that a group of people had escaped the pursuit of the devil cultivators and had murdered these two men who had recently joined the devil cultivators.

Without anyone giving any instructions, the demons began searching along the Mount Cicada under the leadership of a few Formless Demon Seeds.

Setting off from Camel Town, they continued their pursuit all the way to the road close to Qing Prefecture.

“This group of people is heading southwards!” cried out the Formless Demon Seeds. “Aren’t they complacent? They thought they could escape the Northern You with merely a dozen horses and two horse carriages.”

The Demon Seeds were self-assured when they heard this piece of news. With their leg strength, the Demon Seeds were confident that they would be able to catch up with this group of people even if they had taken flight on swords, not to mention that they were traveling on horses. From their observation, they could even tell that someone among this group of people was seriously injured, which meant that they could not travel at a faster speed.

For this reason, they proceeded with the pursuit at a comfortable pace.

Suddenly, the leader of the Demon Seeds lifted his gaze to the sun and said casually, “We have to catch up with this group of idiots before sunset given that we have to accomplish other missions. We can’t waste too much time on these small fries.”

The Northern You after the snowfall was especially chilly and the surface of the road was exceptionally slippery.

Not long after their pursuit, the Devil Seeds spotted the ruts of horse carriages as well some hoofprints along a quieter and less-traveled road. After doing some calculations and estimations, the Devil Seeds concluded that these traces were definitely left by Ye Que and his company.

Without any hesitation, they continued onto the pathway after their leader waved them in that direction of that path.

All of a sudden.

A faint ripple of a wave of Spiritual Force flashed in front of their eyes and they saw that the way in front of them started to change. The path which was straight had become crooked with twists and turns, lined with snow-covered pine trees.

“Could this be an illusion?”

The Demon Seeds at the forefront went into a moment of a daze. It shook its head and abruptly shoot out some Demon Qi towards the side of the road.

There was an explosion on the ground that followed.

The snow on the ground was thrown into the air.

The windy road remained windy. It did not straighten after the explosion.

“It’s a formation!”

“Someone had laid an illusory formation over here!”

“Don’t act impulsively. We have to first find the eye of the formation or the door to life. Watch out also for the attack from the formation. This is definitely not an ordinary formation given that we’ve fallen into an illusion without even realizing it.”

After fifteen minutes, the few Demon Seeds emerged from the formation with an impassionate expression on their faces. No one spoke. Apparently, they felt that they had been deceived. There was no threat of an attack in this formation. It really was just an illusive formation in the form of a maze.

“Don’t you think this insignificant method would be able to trick us.”

“The presence of a formation here only confirmed our guess that this indeed was the path the people had chosen to take while fleeing for their lives.”

Due to this experience, the few Demon Seeds began to perk up. They were no longer just blindly pursuing their targets. They even took the extra care to look around to see if there was an ambush in the trees by the wayside.

Unfortunately, something would still happen despite one being cautious.

Before noon when they had barely continued for a few hours, they cluelessly entered yet another formation. They had obviously taken extra precaution, yet somehow, they had fallen into another formation without any warning because it totally did not stand out from its surroundings.

This was another deceitful formation without any power of attack, but it subtly led them onto a forked road. They were able to identify that this formation had been laid by the same person who laid the first formation.

“Did they think that they are going to deceive us twice with the same trick?”

The name of the person speaking was Situ Yan. He was the leader of the group of pursuers. He had reached the initial stage of Formless Realm, who was a Demon Seed who had actually cultivated himself within the grounds of the Mountain Valley of Pure Blackness. He had attained a high level of cultivation and was addicted to killing. His was known for his horrid temper and he alone killed nine Broken King Gorge cultivators when he destroyed Broken King Gorge. He even tore apart a female cultivator’s body with his bare hands.

Cao Xue and Xie Yi were two devil cultivators who were allocated as his understudies.

These two devil cultivators died before Situ Yan even managed to register their names in his mind, and no one actually managed to pass a message to him regarding them.

Just this morning, Situ Yan was thinking, “Are the cultivators outside the Mountain Valley of Pure Blackness idiots? How did the two of them, who had achieved half-way through the Formless Realm, fail in their pursuit for this group of kids who were in their initial stage of Psychic Realm? Is it because their brains were damaged, having entered the demonic path from the Orthodox Path?”

While they remained in the second formation, Situ Yan could not help feeling frustrated. “Just by one look, I can tell that these two formations were laid by the same person. Let use the knowledge we gather from breaking the first formation to quickly break this one too. There was totally no threat of attack from the formation, so we need not worry. The key is our speed. Let’s not waste any more time here,” he said.

Given that there were innumerable mystical words within the Divine Book, the formations contained therein would undoubtedly be extremely complicated. It was unlikely that any two formations would exactly the same. Even if they were similar, why would Ye Que use them consecutively along the same road?

For this reason, the more Situ Yan tried to grope around, the more he was lost. The more he tried to break the formation, the more irritated he became.

“Captain, this formation seemed different from the first one,” said an elementary devil cultivator of Starburst Realm, who was perspiring profusely by now. Fifteen minutes had past but Situ Yan was totally unable to resolve this illusory formation using the same method used on the first occasion.

“Dumbass!”

“Get out of the way!”

Situ Yan shoved this devil cultivator aside and focusing his attention, he started studying the formation around them carefully. It was only after another fifteen minutes that he finally had an inkling. “On the surface, it looks like these two formations were both illusory formations that confuse people, but they were definitely two very different things, likened to a pair of cyclone and anticyclone. One was likely to cause a storm while the other created miles of clear sky and warm weather.

After some time, a group of embarrassed-looking Demon Seeds, led by Situ Yan, exited from the illusory formation.

“We have to be on our guard because it appeared that there is a cultivator among them who was specialized in laying formation, and he is likely to be a master from a reputable sect who is on a trip,” said Situ Yan in a serious tone.

“Perk up, everyone. I don’t want the same thing to happen a third time.”

With such a mentality, they continued in their pursuit.

However, the more they wished to avoid the formations, the more these awkward situations befell them.

With Situ Yan leading the way, the group of Demon Seeds entered yet another two formations unawares before the sunset.

Right at the beginning before they even set out to pursue the cultivators, Situ Yan had made a boastful comment that they would catch up with them before sunset and annihilate every one of them. After which they would rush back to Northern You to continue with their next mission. However, the sun had set by this time and the Demon Seeds had not glimpsed the party of fleeing cultivators.

Not only did they not see the fleeing party, but Situ Yan had also led the entire group of Demon Seeds into every formation laid by Ye Que. They totally did not escape a single one. Moreover, Situ Yan was taking progressively longer time to break free from each new formation. Situ Yan managed to break the first illusory formation in less than fifteen minutes, but by the time he fell into the forth formation, he took a total of forty-five minutes to break through it.

“Captain, it’s getting dark. Do we still continue in our pursuit?” the same novice devil cultivator in the Starburst Realm, whose face was covered with a black mask, asked softly with his head bowed.

Taking in two deep breaths, Situ Yan suppressed the burning fury in his chest.

“Pursue!”

“Why should we stop our pursuit?”

“Do you suppose that we being demons are afraid of the dark?”