Cultivation of immortality begins with an eighty-year-old eunuch.

Chapter 480 Breaking the Formation! This eunuch has this skill?

Chen Fan didn't even lift his eyelids, as if he hadn't heard.

A cold glint flashed in Wang Gongzi's eyes. He walked to Tianxiangzi's side, and once again pressed his short sword against her neck. With a slight force, a trickle of blood slid down her fair skin.

"Old eunuch, I have no patience to waste with you. You break this formation. For each formation you break, I'll ease her suffering. If you refuse, or deliberately delay or make mistakes..." He leaned close to Chen Fan's ear, his voice like a viper's hiss.

"I will slice her to pieces right in front of you."

Tian Xiangzi's body trembled slightly as she looked at Chen Fan, tears silently streaming down her face. She bit her lip and stubbornly shook her head.

Chen Fan slowly raised his head, his gaze calmly looking at Young Master Wang, then sweeping over the bloodstain on Tian Xiangzi's neck, and finally landing on the dense array of light shields.

He took a deep breath, a breath that seemed to carry the chill of an ancient, frozen world.

"Let her go, let us see the formation."

Chen Fan's voice was calm and undisturbed.

Young Master Wang's lips curled into a smug, cold smile as he slightly moved the short sword away. "Wouldn't it have been better if you had known this earlier? Senior Qinglian, release part of his seal so he can use some of his divine sense to perceive the array, but his spiritual power must be completely sealed off."

The Azure Lotus Daoist nodded, stepped forward and tapped Chen Fan several times, releasing some of the restraints on his divine sense.

Chen Fan immediately felt his mind clear. Although he still couldn't mobilize his spiritual power, his divine sense could leave his body and barely probe the surrounding formations.

He didn't look at Tianxiangzi, nor did he pay attention to Young Master Wang and the others. His gaze was fixed on the nearest array light shield.

The divine sense cautiously extended like tentacles, touching and sensing the runes flowing on the pale blue light shield.

Chen Fan's divine sense, like a fine spider web, gently covered the pale blue array light shield.

The light shield, roughly ten feet in diameter, enveloped a half-collapsed stone pavilion. On the stone table inside the pavilion, several jade slips, two magical artifacts with dim spiritual light, and a palm-sized jade bottle were scattered about. The bottle had faint red patterns flowing on its body, and even after ten thousand years, it still exuded an extraordinary spiritual charm.

Young Master Wang, Daoist Qinglian, Zhou Shan, and fourteen other Nascent Soul cultivators formed a semi-circle several feet away, their eyes burning with both greed for the treasure and scrutiny of whether Chen Fan could break the formation.

Two guest elders from the Wang family, one on the left and one on the right, firmly restrained Tian Xiangzi, locking his aura in place, ready to strike swiftly at the slightest disturbance.

Chen Fan seemed oblivious, his entire mind completely absorbed in the array before him.

When divine sense touched the runes flowing on the surface of the light shield, a cold and resilient resistance came from it, which contained a kind of endless and cyclical meaning.

This formation is not simply defensive; it also possesses multiple transformations, including counter-shock, spirit transformation, and ice condensation. The ice cone counterattack triggered by the Qian family patriarch's rash attack was precisely due to the effect of ice condensation.

"The Water Formation borrows the cold, yin energy of the earth's veins and combines the changes of Ren and Gui waters. The core of the formation is hidden three inches below the stone pavilion's base, with the Kan position as the pivot and the Dui position as the transformation point..." Chen Fan silently recited in his heart, his divine sense slowly permeating along the rune veins like flowing water.

The more he investigated, the more astonished he became.

The core rune structure of this formation is remarkably similar to the original runes of his Fixed Character Technique, which he had painstakingly cultivated for many years!

In particular, the core concept of cyclical adherence and the sense of fixation when spiritual energy flows between rune nodes are almost identical.

However, the formation before them was far more complex and sophisticated, incorporating the transformations of water to create a unique defensive and counter-attack system.

"The Fixed Word Technique... originated from Eunuch Wei, who is said to have obtained it in the mountains, its origin unknown. Could its source be related to the Soul Refining Sect from ten thousand years ago, or the powerful figure who sealed the Soul Refining Sect?" Chen Fan's thoughts raced, but his face remained expressionless.

His cultivation is currently sealed, and he cannot mobilize his spiritual power. With only his partially liberated divine consciousness, it is absolutely impossible for him to break the formation by force.

The only way is to find the rules governing the operation of the formation and use its own nodes to cleverly break through its force.

His mastery of the art of pinyin became his greatest reliance at this moment.

Time passes little by little.

The Nascent Soul elders around them began to grow impatient, whispering among themselves and glancing at the treasures in the stone pavilion from time to time.

Young Master Wang toyed with the short sword in his hand, the blade intentionally or unintentionally brushing against Tian Xiangzi's cheek, bringing a chill. Tian Xiangzi kept her eyes tightly closed, her body trembling slightly, whether from fear or the flare-up of her injuries, it was unclear.

Chen Fan ignored all of this.

His divine sense had quietly infiltrated the core area of ​​the formation, avoiding several obvious trap runes, and finally saw the main formation eye hidden deep beneath the stone pavilion's base!

It was a fist-sized, deep blue crystal with naturally formed water ripple patterns on its surface.

Around the spirit crystal, eight hair-thin chains of runes extended out, connecting to the eight key nodes of the light shield.

The flow of spiritual energy in three of the chains was slightly sluggish, clearly a minor deviation caused by the slight shift of the earth's veins over tens of thousands of years.

"This is it," Chen Fan thought with certainty.

He slowly opened his eyes and looked at Young Master Wang: "This formation can be broken. We need to use the sharp energy of metal to strike the three inches below the positions of Li, Kun, and Xun in the light shield at the same time. The force must be even and there should be no sequence. At that time, the spiritual energy of the formation will briefly gather at the main eye of the formation in the Kan position, creating a gap for a moment."

Young Master Wang narrowed his eyes: "Are you sure? What if a mistake triggers a backlash from the formation..."

"The backlash will hit our family first," Chen Fan said calmly. "Our cultivation is currently sealed. If the formation goes berserk, we will be the first to die."

Qinglian Daoist and Zhou Shan exchanged a glance and nodded slightly.

What Chen Fan said was in accordance with the common sense of the formation, and since he himself was under control, he really dared not give directions randomly.

"Who will make a move?" Young Master Wang looked at the crowd behind him.

"I'll do it." Zhou Shan stepped forward. He cultivated earth-element techniques but also practiced metal-element secret arts, giving him the most precise control over his strength.

He pointed his fingers like a sword, a dark golden light emanating from his fingertips, and three sharp, needle-like beams of golden energy shot out, hitting the three locations Chen Fan had mentioned simultaneously without any mishap.

"Ding! Ding! Ding!"

The three soft sounds almost merged into one.

The pale blue light shield fluctuated violently, the runes on its surface flashed wildly, and all the flowing spiritual energy converged rapidly towards the "Kan" position under the stone pavilion's base, like rivers flowing into the sea.

At that very instant, a tiny, illusory gap, barely a foot wide and just big enough for an arm to pass through, appeared on the side of the light barrier closest to Chen Fan!

"Now!" Chen Fan shouted. Although he had no spiritual power, his divine sense was already ready to be unleashed. It transformed into an invisible thread that precisely passed through the gap and gently "plucked" a slightly off-center rune chain next to the Gui Water Spirit Crystal.

"Click."

A barely perceptible soft sound came from underground.

The runic chain was slightly adjusted, and its spiritual energy flow instantly returned to balance with the other seven chains.

The light barrier, which had been fluctuating violently and was about to erupt in a counterattack due to the disorder of spiritual energy, suddenly calmed down.

Immediately afterwards, the entire pale blue light shield vanished without a trace, like a bubble, with a soft "pop".

The scenery inside the stone pavilion was completely exposed to everyone's eyes, and the rich fragrance of spiritual herbs and the spiritual light of magical artifacts rushed towards them.