Chapter 225
Baek Cheong searched every corridor and room in the guest quarters without exception and found four more platforms that appeared to be teleportation formations.
Including the first one she had discovered, there were five in total.
The teleportation formations each blocked the end of a different corridor.
One was set at the bottom of a dried-up pond.
Another was built against the wall of an empty storeroom.
Similar platforms could also be found in a spacious room that appeared to be a washroom and in a small garden.
They were all the same size and round in shape.
Their structure, with hundreds of glyphs layered over one another, was similar as well.
The bottom layer consisted of heaven-and-earth glyphs that pulled and pushed space, while Heavenly Dao glyphs determining the direction of the flow were laid above them.
Hidden between the heaven-and-earth and Heavenly Dao glyphs were law glyphs that were difficult to keep one's eyes fixed on.
However, the empty sections of the law glyphs differed in each teleportation formation.
‘Are they all broken?’
In the first teleportation formation, nearly half of the right side of the law glyph was missing.
The top of the second was severed, while the middle of the third was completely empty.
The remaining two were missing other parts of their glyphs.
It looked as though someone had deliberately damaged the five teleportation formations one by one.
But upon closer inspection, they did not seem to have been damaged haphazardly.
If they had worn away or broken, even the edges should have been rough, but the empty sections were as neat as if they had been cut out with a knife.
So she crouched before one of the teleportation formations and traced the edges with her finger.
The material was the same blue jade as the floor, but her fingertip caught on a tiny gap.
‘This isn't a crack.’
She moved her hand along the gap, revealing a square jade plate about the size of her palm.
When she infused it with a thin stream of spiritual power, the square jade plate slid sideways instead of rising upward.
The jade plate right beside it also slid away, making room for an empty space.
Click.
With the small sound, part of the law glyph moved along with it.
“Huh?”
Baek Cheong widened her eyes and examined the part that had shifted.
The law glyphs had not been engraved directly into the floor.
Parts of each stroke had been divided among thin jade plates and engraved on them.
Whenever she moved a jade plate, the broken strokes changed position as well.
One part she had thought had disappeared was actually fitted into the wrong place, overlapping another stroke.
‘They weren't broken. They were mixed up.’
She narrowed her divine sense and examined the entire teleportation formation again.
The neatly cut jade plates were interlocked and could move along fixed paths.
When she pushed a plate in the outer ring, the plate inside it left an empty space.
When she moved the inner plate, a gap appeared through which she could turn the center plate.
At first, she had thought the strokes had fallen away with age, but in reality, their positions had merely been scrambled.
The intact strokes were overlapping one another or hidden beneath other jade plates.
She stared down at the teleportation formation in silence for a while.
‘This is kind of like an escape room.’
Moving one piece caused another piece to become blocked.
After moving the empty space to open a path, she had to slide the next suitable piece into it.
The problem was that the patterns engraved on the pieces were law glyphs.
An ordinary cultivator might have been able to move the jade plates, but would not have been able to tell what needed to be arranged.
More than half the pieces felt like empty plates to the eyes and divine sense.
If someone could not perceive law glyphs, it would have been difficult even to notice that there was a puzzle.
Of course, Baek Cheong could not read the meaning of the law glyphs either.
However, since being swept into the silver light in the depths of Yeonha, she had been able to grasp at least the vague shapes of law glyphs related to teleportation.
By examining which way the broken strokes continued and tracing the remaining shapes backward, she could infer where each piece belonged.
‘I don't need to know their meaning. I only need to match their shapes.’
Baek Cheong began sliding the jade plates along the edges one by one.
She moved the plate on the right inward and lowered the upper plate into the space it left empty.
After separating two strokes that had been overlapping, she rotated the center plate halfway around.
At first, she reached dead ends several times and had to return the plates she had moved.
However, the more the overall outline emerged, the faster her hands became.
Click.
Click.
The final jade plate slid into the empty space.
For the first time, the hazy lines that had kept slipping from her perception connected without a break.
Even though she had not infused the teleportation formation with spiritual energy, a faint silver light swept across the law glyphs.
‘Done.’
Once she had restored one teleportation formation, the rest were not difficult.
The pieces all moved in the same way; only the shapes of the law glyphs differed.
When she returned to the first teleportation formation and rearranged the plates, the glyph that had been nearly half missing regained its complete form as well.
It took less than half an hour to fit the law-glyph pieces of all five teleportation formations into place.
However, repairing the formations and knowing where they led were two separate matters.
If she chose incorrectly, she could end up somewhere dangerous instead of deep within the ruins.
‘Which way does this teleportation formation lead?’
She could find no answer in the law glyphs.
She could perceive only their outlines, while the meanings they contained remained distant and obscure.
Instead, she could read most of the heaven-and-earth and Heavenly Dao glyphs surrounding the law glyphs.
“Hmm?”
Baek Cheong went back and forth between the five teleportation formations, comparing their outer glyphs.
The sections that twisted space were the same, but the glyphs that fixed the destination differed.
In the first teleportation formation, the flows of water and earth overlapped like a tortoise's shell.
It depicted something carrying a heavy burden on its back while supporting the flow of the heavens.
The second cleaved through the currents like a swimming fish, layering qi in the shape of scales.
The third depicted a long body curled into a circle, while the fourth contained a flow burrowing into an earthen vessel.
In the final teleportation formation, Heavenly Dao glyphs reminiscent of horns and claws interlocked above heaven-and-earth glyphs that summoned water and wind.
‘They're all dragons.’
When she connected the forms and flows contained in the glyphs one by one, the destinations gradually became clear.
The first led to the dwelling of a Tortoise Dragon.
The next three led to the dwellings of a Fish Dragon, a Crouching Dragon, and an Earth Dragon.
The final one appeared to lead to the dwelling of a Flood Dragon.
A Flood Dragon controlled wind, rain, and water, and its appearance was also closer to that of an ordinary dragon.
Its position was also the innermost in the guest quarters.
By anyone's reckoning, it led closer to the deepest part of the ruins than the others.
‘Should I go to the Flood Dragon's side?’
There was a high chance that the most valuable things would be in the deepest part.
If Profound Void Perfected Person was somewhere in the ruins, the Flood Dragon's dwelling seemed the most likely place to find the cultivator.
But it was also the place most likely to harbor something dangerous.
The fact that she had not found a single living creature in the guest quarters continued to trouble her.
‘What should I do...’
Baek Cheong looked back and forth between the Flood Dragon's teleportation formation and the Tortoise Dragon's.
As she pondered, the turtle demonic beast that had led her all the way here came to mind.
And the belly shell had allowed her to enter the ruins in the depths of Yeonha.
If so, it seemed better for her first destination to be somewhere connected to the turtle as well.
‘The turtle is definitely connected to my merit!’
She turned around and returned to the Tortoise Dragon's teleportation formation.
There were five sockets along the edge for inserting spirit stones, but the channels supplying energy all converged into one.
The spiritual energy flowing through the hall was dense, but not concentrated enough to awaken the formation.
With no other choice, she opened her spatial treasure and took out a high-grade spirit stone.
‘Surely it won't eat fifty of them.’
With a hint of doubt, she inserted the high-grade spirit stone into the central socket.
Clear spiritual energy immediately flowed out and awakened the heaven-and-earth glyphs along the edge.
A blue light circled the round platform once, and the Heavenly Dao glyphs that followed were dyed gold.
Finally, the law glyphs revealed a silver light.
As the three lights overlapped, the wall blocking her view rippled like a wave.
‘Just in case.’
Baek Cheong unfolded the Five Elements Shield, drew the One-Star Sword, and hung it at her waist.
Before long, the sensation beneath her feet disappeared.
Silver light surged up from below and swallowed her body.
***
As soon as Baek Cheong felt her feet touch the ground, she spread her divine sense first.
However, nothing moving was caught by the divine sense sweeping over her surroundings.
Instead of blue jade, a corridor built of dark bluish-black stone stretched out before her.
The ceiling and walls were lower than those of the guest quarters, and there was almost no decoration.
Only hexagonal patterns modeled after tortoise shells filled the stone walls without a gap.
‘Is this really the Tortoise Dragon's dwelling?’
When she turned around, the teleportation formation she had just crossed sat on the floor.
She examined the structure of the platform, intending to secure a way back first.
The law glyphs continued faintly, and there did not appear to be any damaged sections.
Relieved, she turned toward the corridor.
‘Shall I go?’
When she proceeded forward, the path split into three.
However, the passage straight ahead and the one to the right were blocked.
With no other choice, she moved down the path to the left.
‘Huh?’
At the end of the corridor was a square stone chamber.
A black stone pillar that appeared to serve as a formation eye stood in the center of the floor, while dozens of round sockets remained in the walls.
Every socket bore traces of having once held a formation flag or some other artifact.
However, the stone pillar had broken off halfway, and not a single artifact remained in the sockets.
Even when she sent a little spiritual power into the glyphs on the floor, nothing happened.
‘This looks like a place where a formation was once deployed.’
Passing through the door on the opposite side of the stone chamber, she came to another corridor.
There was another stone chamber at the end of it, and inside, eight stone slabs of different heights formed a circle.
A single line of heaven-and-earth glyphs was engraved on each slab, and a small dried-up pond had been hollowed out in the center.
‘What was this used for?’
Baek Cheong pressed one of the stone slabs with her hand.
Creak.
The axle, which had not moved for countless years, let out a shriek.
The stone slab could not turn even by the width of a finger joint and instead tilted at an angle.
The gears inside and the spiritual-energy channels had all rotted away.
In the third stone chamber, dozens of broken formation discs hung on the walls.
Lines and dots densely covered the large and small discs, but they had either split in half or lost pieces along the edges.
Even the formation discs that appeared intact had broken spiritual-energy channels inside when she sent in her divine sense.
‘The guest quarters were perfectly intact. Why is this place like this?’
Since this was supposedly the Tortoise Dragon's dwelling, she had expected at least a living Tortoise Dragon to appear.
Yet all she saw in each stone chamber were broken formations and empty places where artifacts had once been.
There was no ancient dust, but the facilities had decayed so badly that they were difficult to touch.
‘Didn't I pass through here earlier?’
It was only after looking around the fourth stone chamber that Baek Cheong realized something was strange.
The six lines of patterns engraved on the wall looked familiar.
They were the upside-down version of the patterns she had seen at the first fork in the road.
She broadened her divine sense and pictured the path she had traveled in her mind.
The corridors that she had thought ran straight had turned several times, connecting to different stone chambers.
Three stone chambers stood in a row, and there was another row beside it with the same number of chambers.
Including the central space she had not yet entered, there were nine in total.
Each of the eight outer stone chambers bore a symbol composed of three overlapping lines, some broken and some continuous.
The symbols were Qian, Dui, Li, and Zhen.
The remaining four were Xun, Kan, Gen, and Kun.
Once she matched their directions and arrangement, the entire structure came into view at a glance.
It was a nine-palace formation laid out like a Go board, with the eight trigrams surrounding the central palace.
‘It's the Nine Palaces and Eight Trigrams.’
She also reconsidered the position of the teleportation formation where she had first arrived.
The teleportation formation was attached outside the northern Kan Palace.
Her guess that she had entered a place symbolizing water and the tortoise became certain.
With no reason left to lose her way, she examined the remaining palaces in turn.
The Qian Palace contained formation eyes that drew down the qi of the heavens, but they were all broken.
The eight stone bells of the Dui Palace had lost their sound, while the fire formation gate of the Li Palace could not produce even a spark when infused with spiritual power.
In the Zhen Palace, glyphs that guided lightning were engraved across the entire wall.
“Ah...”
Baek Cheong approached with a little anticipation, but their quality was lower than the lightning-qi glyphs she had comprehended during the Heavenly Tribulation.
They were merely heaven-and-earth glyphs that imitated lightning by clashing fire and metal together.
The Xun, Gen, and Kun Palaces also contained various formations.
They were structures for gathering wind, drawing in the weight of mountains, and binding the qi of the earth.
Not a single one functioned properly.
The formation eyes were broken, the flags had decayed, and the spiritual-energy channels were severed at intervals.
Repairing them would likely require spending several days on each formation.
‘They're all glyphs from the Formation Diagram Codex.’
There were so many glyphs engraved throughout the area that it was difficult to count them all.
Besides heaven-and-earth glyphs, glyphs containing the meaning of the Heavenly Dao were also interspersed here and there.
But there was not a single one she had never seen before.
They were glyphs she had learned by poring over the Formation Diagram Codex again and again.
‘I thought there would be law glyphs here.’
Despite the name Tortoise Dragon's dwelling and its complex structure, all that remained were familiar glyphs and broken formations.
It was disappointing for what she had paid to enter with a single high-grade spirit stone.
‘I wonder if that place is different.’
Baek Cheong looked toward the central palace she had saved for last.
The passage leading to the central palace was not visible from outside, as though it could only be entered after visiting all eight palaces.
She narrowed her divine sense and meticulously searched the walls and floor, detecting a hidden path between the Zhen and Kun Palaces.
When she pressed the Eight Trigrams symbols engraved on both walls in order, the stone walls moved and opened a passage.
A low, dark corridor stretched straight to the central palace.
Just in case, she used the Baekju magical treasure to thicken the Five Elements Shield before entering the corridor.
‘Huh?’
The central palace was smaller than the eight outer palaces.
There was not a single glyph on the walls, nor were there any formation eyes or flags.
A single large stone statue stood in the center of the empty stone chamber.
The statue had both a tortoise's shell and a dragon's head.
A Tortoise Dragon pressing its four thick legs against the floor supported a round black jade plate.
When Baek Cheong directed her divine sense at the Tortoise Dragon, the glyphs that had been dormant faintly revealed themselves.
Beneath the formation disc was a short phrase formed from connected glyphs.
She deciphered the meanings of the strokes in order.
“Heavenly Armor Formation Disc?”