Volume One, Chapter 102: The Myriad Phenomena Formation.

Carried through the air, Lin Mo landed at the place Jiang Chen had specified.

Li Changsheng said, “It should be here. I just wonder what that kid is trying to do. Can he really hold them off alone?”

Li Changsheng began to worry. On his own, he could only take on one divine beast, and even then only if he fought with everything he had. Jiang Chen was trying to hold back two by himself, which was no different from courting death.

But since Jiang Chen had said it, the two of them could only do as told. At the very least, they had to move faster and not let Jiang Chen’s sacrifice be in vain.

Lin Mo found the spot Jiang Chen had told him to look for.

“It should be here.”

The plan was simple enough: they only needed to place the eight talismans Jiang Chen had given them at the eight points of the compass, including the diagonals.

So Li Changsheng left Lin Mo where he was and hurried off in the other directions.

On the way, Lin Mo switched on his improvised self-driving mode. He grabbed a car at random, and by luck there was a key inside. It was hardly honorable, but for the sake of the lives of everyone in Prosperity City, he had no choice.

If it was wrong, so be it. As long as it could save lives.

Setting up the formation was proving difficult. Jiang Chen had insisted that the eight points had to be placed all the way at the outer edge; otherwise, the talismans would not work.

The two of them were already hurrying as fast as they could, yet from Jiang Chen’s position several violent explosions had already sounded, though no smoke had risen.

By then Jiang Chen had flung the wolf head to the ground, and the nine-headed bird had been stomped into a mangled ruin beneath his feet.

Fine beads of sweat had appeared on his face as well.

He had already killed those two things no fewer than five times, yet each time they came back to life, and every time they revived, they grew stronger. Even Jiang Chen was beginning to feel the strain.

“What is it? Can’t hold up anymore? Weren’t you very impressive? Come on, then, let me see how impressive you can be in the end. Is it you who stops me, or is it me who turns everyone in Prosperity City into fools?”

The Cloud-Dream Marsh appeared in Wang Chang’s hand.

Jiang Chen narrowed his eyes. “So that’s what you’re relying on?”

Seeing Jiang Chen already half-kneeling on the ground from exhaustion, Wang Chang said, “At this point, you have no way of stopping me. So I might as well tell you. The thing in my hand is Sealed Artifact 010, Cloud-Dream Marsh. It can manifest whatever I imagine within the range of my mist. The greater my imagination, the stronger its power. What do you have to fight me with?”

Jiang Chen stood up. “So that’s how it is... In other words, if I snatch the sealed artifact from your hands now, I win, right?”

“Snatch it? With what? At your current strength, can you even stand? And even if you can, can you beat the beasts at my side?” Wang Chang laughed wildly in the wind, his smile growing ever brighter.

Jiang Chen sighed and rose to his feet. The sweat on his face vanished, and his complexion turned healthy and ruddy, showing no sign of exhaustion at all, as though everything before had been nothing but an act.

“Sigh. Being a Daoist priest is exhausting enough already, and now I have to save Prosperity City too. Still, that’s only natural, I suppose. Who told me to run into people like you? But what irritates me most is having to play the actor.”

His words sent Wang Chang, who had already been convinced, into an instant rage.

“You were deceiving me all along? Acting?”

Jiang Chen shrugged. “If I hadn’t acted, would you have told me anything? To deal with someone like you, I had to start by showing weakness. Otherwise, you really are the sort who refuses to cry until you see the coffin.”

Wang Chang’s mind spun. Then he burst into laughter.

“Fine, fine. Let’s see whether I’m the one seeing the coffin, or you.”

He poured his thoughts into the sealed artifact Cloud-Dream Marsh. In the next instant, the surrounding mist began to shift, and qilin, phoenixes, black turtles, vermilions birds, black bears, and even things that should never have existed in this world began to take shape one after another.

They were all manifested, one by one.

Looking around, Jiang Chen found himself completely surrounded by those towering creatures.

“Come on then. Let’s see if you can escape my net of heaven and earth,” Wang Chang said.

Jiang Chen calculated the time. It should almost be ready. He no longer needed to hide his strength.

“Then I’ll show you the power of the current Celestial Master of Dragon-Tiger Mountain,” Jiang Chen said softly.

Before Wang Chang could even react, a bolt of lightning had somehow appeared in Jiang Chen’s hand, and it kept growing without pause, with no intention of stopping at all.

The lightning made every hair on Wang Chang’s body stand on end. He hurriedly ordered, “Quick! Stop him!”

Jiang Chen leaped backward, dodging the attack, while the lightning in his hand became enormous beyond belief, as thick as a tree encircled by three people.

“Strike.”

The instant Jiang Chen spoke, the lightning did not shoot forth like an arrow. Instead, it plunged straight into the sky.

Crack—

Thunder fell in a flash.

Wang Chang trembled all over. Even in Cloud-Dream Marsh, where he was invincible, he had a terrible feeling that if this bolt struck him, he would die without even a complete corpse left behind.

“No! No, I can’t die. I can’t die!”

With a desperate cry, the beasts formed of mist all rushed toward it at breakneck speed.

They hurled themselves at the bolt of lightning one after another, utterly disregarding their own lives. Yet every beast that collided with that savage thunder was only shattered back into mist. Their only fate was to be dispersed.

Still, their purpose seemed merely to consume the power of the gathering lightning. After nearly five beasts had crashed into it, the lightning was visibly reduced.

“Yes! Yes! That’s it! Hahaha! You want to kill me? Who do you think you are!”

Terrified, Wang Chang fell to the ground, but even so he remained outrageously arrogant, though the cowardly, abject weakness buried in his bones could not be concealed in the slightest.

Indeed, the artifact in his hands was terrifyingly powerful, but in the grasp of someone so timid and base, it could never unleash its true strength.

Thinking of that, Jiang Chen suddenly had an idea, and the more he considered it, the more feasible it seemed.

For the moment, though, he could only bury that thought. Wang Chang still had to be dealt with first. Only after that could he put the idea into practice.

Lightning alone would not kill him, but Jiang Chen knew more than just lightning.

The lightning arts of Dragon-Tiger Mountain were formidable, but the rest were no weaker.

He had sent Li Changsheng and Lin Mo to set up the formation earlier, and by now the timing should be about right.

The wind-and-cloud artifact in Wang Chang’s hands was indeed powerful, but placed in his hands, it seemed grotesquely out of place.

A formation would be more than enough to deal with him, even if it would cost Jiang Chen some energy.

“Boundless heaven and earth, all laws return to the source. Array in the eight directions, the art at the center!”