The Desolate Era (Web Novel)

High in the air were Celestial Immortals Flamefish, Infatuation, Sunfish, Deadwood, and Goldclock. They stared downwards at the distant youth atop the rubble, each of them filled with rage. This was the headquarters of the Youngflame clan…but now, a region of a hundred thousand kilometers had been completely reduced to rubble.

“The kid is quite brash.” Celestial Immortal Sunfish was so angry, he actually started to laugh.

“Ji Ning…the Netherworld’s gates were barred, but you insisted on barging in!” Celestial Immortal Infatuation’s voice was utterly freezing.

“Kill.”

The five mighty Celestial Immortals were filled with murderous intent. All of them wanted to kill Ning right away! Swoosh! Swoosh! Swoosh! Swoosh! Swoosh! Their five figures joined together, transforming into a five-colored mountain peak that left behind a scar in the skies as they charged straight for Ning.

Ning, seeing this, felt a surge of joy in his heart.

They really had entered!

Actually, this was something of an obvious ploy, one they were forced to ‘fall’ for.. Ning was standing there in the middle of the ruins of Youngflame clan’s headquarters, calling them out. Were the Celestial Immortals of the Youngflame clan just supposed to stand there and watch? They would probably becoming the laughingstocks of the entire Grand Xia Dynasty! In addition…if they wanted to attack Ning, they had to draw closer to him, into the range of their magical artifact attacks. That meant they had to go within ten thousand kilometers.

“Uncle White, activate the grand formation,” Ning sent mentally.

“Alright.” Uncle White had been waiting this entire time. The five Celestial Immortals, in the form of the five-colored mountain peak, were already less than a thousand kilometers away from Ning.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

At the borders of the region within ten thousand kilometers of Ning, three pillars of light suddenly soared into the heavens. Many other formation-bases began to fire off as well, but they were comparatively smaller in terms of the disturbance caused. In the blink of an eye, the entire region around Ning became completely trapped within a series of giant blurry formations.

“What’s going on?”

“I can’t see anything over there.”

The distant Loose Immortals and Earth Immortals hiding within their formations were startled. Old Demon Windraiser, however, said: “No need to worry. Given the abilities of the five Patriarchs, how can they possibly be concerned with these sorts of puny formations?”

……

Within the formation.

The five Celestial Immortals weren’t worried at all. They had expected all along that Ji Ning had most likely set up formations within the area. Despite that, however…they had still charged in! They didn’t have a choice; there was no way they could continue to let Ji Ning act so wantonly within their headquarters. In addition…they felt certain that any formations he was able to set up within such a short period of time couldn’t be too frightening.

It made sense.

Even though Uncle White was a grandmaster in formations, there was no way he would be able to set up the likes of the three great killing formations of Swallow Mountain within a very short period of time. He had to rely on the fact that they had prepared an enormous amount of precious materials in order to set up many formations that were able to threaten Celestial Immortals. They would win through quantity.

“Coresense is unable to investigate this area.” Celestial Immortal Goldclock swept the area with his gaze while trying to use his coresense to investigate, but still was unable to discover anything.

“It seems that Ji NIng has an extremely formidable formations expert as his assistant.” Celestial Immortal Infatuation was quite calm. “However, all formations have their weak spots. I trust that the formations he was able to set up within such a short period of time couldn’t possibly be too profound. No rush; let’s take it slow, step by step. Let’s just ensure that Ji Ning doesn’t have any chance at all.”

“Infatuation speaks truly.”

The area around the five of them had become transformed into an enormous, five-colored mountain peak. The mountain peak forced the fog away from them, allowing their field of vision to expand to many hundreds of meters.

……

“They are within the formation.” Ning, Northson, Uncle White, and Little Qing were all standing together. Ning had a smile on his face.

“These five Celestial Immortals are currently using the Five Elements Mountainhold Formation,” Uncle White said. “This is a protective formation that is fairly widespread in the Three Realms; five individuals join together, increasing their defensive power by a tremendous amount. If we only rely on the power of this formation…it will be very difficult to do anything to them.”

Ning laughed. “I have no intentions of relying on the formation to kill them. The formation is just meant to help support us! Now that they are trapped inside, they’ll be unable to use their coresense to investigate, while they can only rely on their eyes to see to a distance of hundreds of meters! I can attack when I please and retreat when I please; everything will be under my control. This has already increased my odds of success by quite a few percentage points.”

“Do you need my help?” Northson couldn’t help but ask. He was unable to disguise his desire to kill, and the murderous look in his eyes. It had been Celestial Immortals Infatuation, Goldclock, Arcanum, and Deadwood who had destroyed the soul of his beloved…and three of those four mighty Celestial Immortals were currently present.

“Hide inside the formations; you are not to draw near us. However, you can release the Seven Ruinous Thunderwinds,” Ning said with a laugh. “No need to worry about hitting me; the Thunderwinds are completely incapable of damaging me. They will, however, pose some degree of danger to those five.”

“Alright.” Northson began to wait eagerly.

Ning laughed, then looked towards the five distant Celestial Immortals. “Celestial Immortals, to the Youngflame clan, are their real foundation and source of power, right? If I were to kill a few…the Youngflame clan would definitely feel heartache and regret!”

Whoosh. Ning instantly transformed into a streak of light, charging forward.

The five Celestial Immortals remained quite calm. They continued to maintain their Five Elements Mountainhold Formation while carefully investigating the nearby formations.

“This formation is quite extraordinary.” Celestial Immortal Infatuation began to frown after doing a cursory inspection of the surrounding area. “To defeat it…it isn’t something that we can do in just a day or two.”

“Then what should we do?” Celestial Immortal Goldclock asked impatiently, “The more we delay, the more powers within the Grand Xia Dynasty will know of this matter. Our Youngflame clan will have truly lost face, then!”

“No time to worry about face right now; if we can kill Ji Ning, it will all have been worth it,” Celestial Immortal Infatuation said.

“Don’t be impatient.” Celestial Immortal Flamefish chortled, stroking his long beard. “Ji Ning set down these formations, then acted so brashly towards us, all because he wanted us to enter this region. After we do so…he’ll naturally come to attack us. If not, we could all simply leave by using Greater Teleportation Dao-seals. All we need to do is wait. Ji Ning will quickly come to attack us. By then, we can use our Shaoyin Fiendtamer Formation to capture him and suppress him. That’s all there is to it.”

“That makes sense.” Celestial Immortal Sunfish laughed coldly. “The moment he attacks is the moment of his capture. After we capture him, we’ll use Greater Teleportation Dao-seals to leave.”

The five mighty Celestial Immortals continued to fly forward, investigating the surrounding area while waiting for Ji Ning’s arrival.

Suddenly…

A golden hand, fingers formed into the shape of a sword, came chopping out through the mist up ahead. It moved as fast as lightning, instantly arriving before the five Celestial Immortals. The golden sword-fingers were at least three hundred meters long, like the fingers of a true divinity. They carried an unstoppably fierce sword-aura, and with a booming sound stabbed straight into the five-colored mountain peak.

The five-colored mountain peak trembled violently, almost at the point of shattering.

“Careful.”

“Such power.”

“Let’s do it!”

The five mighty Celestial Immortals were all shocked. They didn’t expect that Ning’s very first attack would nearly collapse their defensive formation. All of them immediately began to activate their Immortal energy, quickly stabilizing the five-colored mountain peak.

“You WILL break for me!” A youth suddenly appeared, with three heads and six arms. His six arms chopped through the air, his enormous palms all formed into sword-fingers and being used like swords! These sword-fingers were so powerful, they definitely were not any weaker than the Thousandbull Sword and other Immortal swords of its class.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Six powerful sword-fingers struck towards the five Celestial Immortals in a frenzy.

“Formation!” The scale-faced Celestial Immortal Flamefish let out a loud roar. A black set of chains instantly appeared within his hands. The black chains rapidly grew longer, stretching out to more than three thousand meters. Moments later, the other Celestial Immortals also manifested sets of black chains within their hands as well. There were a total of five black chains, each of which looked absolutely identical…but in truth, the aura of each was completely different.

“FIENDTAMER!” Celestial Immortal Flamefish roared angrily.

Clang clang clang…

The five enormous black chains were like five tentacles that stretched out from some abomination. They covered the skies as they flew forward to entangle Ning. In fact, the five chains even had circles of water that swirled around them.

“What’s this?” Ning was startled. He didn’t dare to be rash, and so he immediately swept out with a palm. The palm rapidly expanded in size to become more than three hundred meters long as it smashed against the thick black chains.

Rumble…

The golden palm collided head-on with the black chains. The powerful collision caused even Ning to be forced three steps back, and each step he took caused the earth beneath him to break apart.

“Capture him!” Celestial Immortals Infatuation, Flamefish, Goldclock, Deadwood, and Sunfish’s eyes were filled with eagerness. The other chains came sweeping towards Ning as well. The chains themselves were magic treasures, and when joined together their power would become even more formidable. In addition, they could twist and turn on themselves, changing their appearance and form. Once one was captured by them, it would be extremely difficult to break free.

During the Fiendgod Era, the Youngflame clan would often use this Shaoyin Fiendtamer Formation to capture some particularly powerful Void-level Fiendgods.

Void-level Fiendgods varied in power; some had very high levels of comprehension and were completely comparable to the likes of Celestial Immortal Goldclock or Celestial Immortal Deadwood in power. To capture them, one would have to use an extremely powerful method…and it was this very method that the Youngflame clan was now bringing out once more. This time, to capture Ji Ning! To suppress Ji Ning!

Rumble…

Ning swung his palms, hurriedly knocking back the black chains in succession. His face changed. “What queer chains. When I strike them, they sometimes actually attempt to slip past my hands to try and entangle me. They are magic treasures…but they are quite fast when dodging. If I’m not careful, I’ll end up bound by them.”

“It seems I’ll still have to rely on the power of my magic treasures.”

The Thousandbull Sword suddenly appeared above Ning’s head. Ning let out a loud shout. “NIGHTRIVER, COME FORTH!”

Under Ning’s control, the ten thousand kilometer Nightriver shrank to a size of merely ten kilometers. This ten kilometer Nightriver was like an enormous snake that swirled around him, entangling all things in the surrounding area. Those five black chains naturally were completely entangled by the Nightriver’s waters as well. As the saying goes, when a blade cuts through water, the water will continue to flow; something like the Nightriver was extremely troublesome to deal with.

When Bloodcloud Hall had used the Ba-Serpent Formation in their assassination attempt, they had found the Nightriver’s entanglement to be quite irritating. Although these five chains were somewhat more powerful, they were still entangled and affected, causing their agility and speed to lessen dramatically.

“Ahahaha!” Ning, however, was as unencumbered as a fish in water. The five chains, with their lessened agility, were no match for him at all.

His palms would strike out!

His sword-fingers would blast forth!

The five chains were knocked all over the place, and even the five-colored mountain peak began to tremble. The faces of all of the Celestial Immortals inside began to change.

“Hold.” The five mighty Celestial Immortals instantly began to release an even-greater torrent of their Immortal energy. They began to spend more of their efforts on defense, and a large number of runes began to appear on the surface of the five-colored mountain.

“Why is this Ji Ning so much more powerful than you originally described?” Celestial Immortal Flamefish said with surprise and anger. “How is it that he’s able to so easily resist the Shaoyin Fiendtamer Formation? Infatuation, didn’t you say that he was a bit weaker than Goldclock and Deadwood?!”