Chapter 65: The Yin Eye and the Yang Eye

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… (The previous chapter was blocked and is still being revised)

A night passed.

Except for the final step, Cao Chengyu had touched everything he should and even what he shouldn’t. The budding relationship between the two was now tending toward stability.

The next day, seated at his desk, Cao Chengyu unfurled the map of the Great Yue Dynasty, located the territory of Chen County under Qing Tian Prefecture in Luozhou, and began marking points.

Just as he had pictured in his mind, these four villages established three hundred years ago, when combined, formed an enlarged version of the Reversal Life Array.

There were also other patterns integrated within, which Cao Chengyu sensed resembled the yin-yang Dao patterns—could it be a Yin-Yang Reversal Life Array? A refined, fused version?

Since he only possessed the most basic understanding of formations, Cao Chengyu’s knowledge was limited to the bare minimum.

He would need to conduct a field investigation and inspect all the array patterns before he could deduce its effect.

In other words, his next step was to visit these four villages in secret and investigate.

With the lesson learned from Master Physician Chen, he would not expose himself so easily again, so as not to startle the serpent into the heavens.

Moreover, at the village level, the minor array nodes were likely guarded in secret by cultivators at the peak of Qi Nourishing or even at the Spirit Refining stage, but he was confident he could evade their notice.

Once he activated the Six Ren Palm Art, he could lock away his fate, and with the Body Locking and Tranquil Qi technique, his aura would be perfectly concealed.

With this plan in mind, Cao Chengyu immediately bid farewell to Ning Wenjun—not that he was unwilling to stay longer, but judging from the extreme yin stone bridge in Longmen Village, the array would likely be activated soon, within the next several months, or at most a year or two.

Time was pressing.

For now, he did not plan to sabotage the array. At least, not until he joined the Five Elements Sect and could enlist the prosperous fortune of Xiao Yan before taking any concrete action.

At present, uncovering the truth was his main objective.

Upon learning of Cao Chengyu’s plan, Ning Wenjun did not object. Her cheeks flushed, she sent him off with a gentle, warm kiss.

The gentleness and tranquility of a scholar were perfectly embodied in Ning Wenjun. Only time would tell if, when she eventually learned the truth, she would be so angry as to draw her sword against him…

Ning Wenjun planned to remain in Chen County and further her studies in governance. She had a premonition—if she could, by popular acclaim, secure the position of magistrate, she would have a ninety percent chance of breaking through to the Purple Mansion stage.

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This was a trial for her Dao heart!

As for her safety, she said she would send a letter to her family’s Golden Core ancestor, clearly laying out the pros and cons—naturally, without mentioning Cao Chengyu, presenting everything as her own conjecture.

This was truly reassuring.

Whether or not the Ning family’s Golden Core elder was aware of such a grand design, Ning Wenjun was, after all, a member of the Ning clan and would certainly be protected. If it had been Cao Chengyu, he might well have been seized and subjected to soul-searching.

Of course, this was also a way of probing those above.

The capital didn’t just have the Skywatch Tower and the royal family wielding Golden Cores; the four great immortal clans did as well. If things were handled well, having a Golden Core powerhouse backing him would make things much easier.

If possible, Cao Chengyu truly did not wish for the Great Yue to perish at the hands of its own people. He was quite fond of this dynasty where immortals and mortals ruled together, even if injustice still lurked in the shadows.

Light and darkness have always existed side by side—without one, the world would become a hell.

“Hoo…”

Cao Chengyu exhaled deeply. Since advancing to the Dao Body, he’d been constantly busy, and his cultivation had made little progress these past ten days. Yet, for his convictions, he was willing to keep forging ahead.

Bidding farewell to Ning Wenjun, Cao Chengyu began his covert visits to the four villages that formed the array’s nodes. Disguised as a mortal with no cultivation, he hired a carriage and guards, traveling like the son of a wealthy landlord on vacation.

To avoid suspicion, he deliberately visited several unrelated villages, eating and drinking along the way, thoroughly enjoying himself.

“This is the carefree, everlasting life I’ve always dreamed of—”

With a sigh, Cao Chengyu returned to his serious work.

He spent about a week and a half on his covert investigation of the four villages, and in the process, a new problem arose.

Of these four villages, two had been abandoned for nearly a decade, completely devoid of people.

The trouble was, cultivators still guarded them in secret. Cao Chengyu could only have his entourage rest overnight in one of the deserted villages before moving on.

Such behavior was actually quite common; it just meant he couldn’t use tourism as an excuse to wander every corner of the place.

As a result, in these two abandoned villages, he was only able to glimpse part of the array’s patterns.

His fieldwork concluded.

After more than a week away, Cao Chengyu returned to Ning Wenjun’s side, taking up residence in her home to conduct his research.

According to the “Hundred Answers on Cultivation—Formations Volume,”

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the Reversal Life Array, as an early formation, carried excessive side effects and harmed the natural order. Only demonic cultivators would use it when refining special zombies.

No one else would bother to learn it.

“Demonic cultivators, then…”

Perhaps this was related to the demonic calamity that once ravaged the Hundred Kingdom Domain and neighboring regions.

Of course, this did not mean that demonic overlords of history survived, but rather that their legacy might have been obtained by some schemer, leading to this three-hundred-year-long plan.

As for the classic scene of body-snatching by old devils in novels, Cao Chengyu dismissed the possibility. In the real world, lifespan was an unchangeable law for all beings.

You couldn’t claim a lifespan of a thousand years, or that a lingering soul could survive ten thousand years—that was just too far-fetched.

Unless one was a being of unimaginable power, or possessed a terrifying soul-protection artifact—yet even then, under the flow of time, true resurrection through possession was impossible.

At best, one might turn into a ghost immortal.

For cultivators, both body and soul were subject to the limits of lifespan. The soul might outlast the body by a little, but not by much.

Take the Dao Body stage as an example: it granted a lifespan of 240 years, so the soul might last 300 years. Within that window, possession was possible.

But if you possessed someone at age 240, you would only have the remaining 60 years to surpass your original level—that is, to break through to the Purple Mansion stage.

Only by achieving a breakthrough in a major realm, nourishing body, mana, and soul in unison, could one enjoy a five-hundred-year lifespan.

Those five hundred years, too, were counted from the soul’s age.

If you spent sixty years breaking through to Purple Mansion, your body might be young, but your soul would have only two hundred years left. When that limit arrived, if you failed to reach Golden Core, your soul would decay and perish, regardless of how many years your body had left—you would still die.

Thus, while possession techniques did exist, they weren’t as terrifying as legends claimed; you couldn’t truly face devils from thousands or tens of thousands of years past.

Cao Chengyu’s suspicions were within reasonable bounds—the likelihood was about five percent at present.

Beyond that, he discovered a crucial issue.

Among the four villages, those not yet abandoned, still vibrant with human life, employed the same technique as Longmen Village: the geomantic yin node created by the extreme yin stone bridge.

Yet in the two deserted villages, though utterly devoid of human activity, the yin energy was exceptionally thick, and the array’s core node was, instead, a geomantic yang node.