Chapter Ninety: The Sect-Guarding Grand Formation

A sudden voice rang out in the hall, startling everyone so badly that they stared around in disbelief, terror flashing across their faces. Xue Ren, too, was taken aback.

At the same time, Chu Han walked in from outside with a smile. The coldness in his eyes was unmistakable, sending an involuntary shiver through the crowd. Few of them knew him by sight, but once they connected that remark with the man who had just entered, they immediately guessed his identity.

“You are Chu Han?” Xue Ren asked as he rose from his seat. His spear was beside him. After so many years on the battlefield, he had long since made it a habit to keep his weapon within reach. Now he took it up and faced Chu Han as though confronting a great enemy.

“That’s right. As the saying goes, one should return a courtesy received. Since you presented me with such a generous gift, I naturally couldn’t be stingy in return, so I came myself.”

Chu Han smiled. Blue lightning coiled around his body, making him all the more eerie in the night. Everyone else stood as well, weapons in hand, while the Xue family guards had already rushed out and surrounded the hall on all sides.

They could not understand how Chu Han had gotten into the Xue estate, a place guarded with terrifying rigor, without anyone noticing a thing. Merely possessing such a skill was enough to make their blood run cold.

If Chu Han had not spoken just now, but had instead struck one of the people in the room directly, then aside from Xue Ren, no one else would likely have been able to withstand it. Thinking of this, they all felt a chill of lingering fear.

“Chu Han, you have a great deal of nerve to dare force your way into our Xue estate. Don’t you know that not even a single sect from the Eastern Wasteland would dare to barge in here? Since you’ve come, today will be your death day.”

Xue Ren roared and charged at once, his spear sweeping through the air in several swift motions, aimed straight at Chu Han’s heart. The power of ice turned the air around them into beads of water, and the bone-deep cold made everyone nearby shudder.

Chu Han could not see through his true cultivation, but he knew the other man was certainly much stronger than he was, having already broken through the Dao Palace realm and entered the Shadow realm, his true energy transformed into the powerful qi of that stage.

However, from the look of it, Xue Ren had only just broken through to the Shadow realm. He was not invincible.

Chu Han flicked his right hand, and a lightning blade appeared in his grasp, blocking the spear’s attack. Then his body spun, and he darted straight out of the hall into the open air.

The Xue family guards also closed in around him. The hall was far too cramped; fighting there would leave him constrained, so it was better to battle in a wider space.

“Thunder Step Palm.”

Chu Han bellowed, and the lightning blade in his right hand transformed into a bolt of lightning that gathered in his palm. A sphere of crackling lightning formed in his hand, and he slammed it outward with all his might.

The lightning sphere carried more than a dozen guards directly back into the hall, where it erupted in a tremendous explosion. The entire hall was destroyed, bricks and tiles collapsing everywhere. Fortunately, everyone inside was an expert, and an attack of this level could not yet injure them.

The men who had been meeting in the hall had all rushed out before the lightning sphere exploded, narrowly escaping disaster. Those guards, however, had not been so lucky. They were buried beneath the wreckage and would never come out again.

“Someone come! Activate the sect-protecting grand formation. I’ll serve as the array’s core.”

Xue Ren fixed Chu Han with a cold stare and shouted. In an instant, his figure flashed and took up an extremely strange position far from Chu Han, while all the guards and experts stood in the places assigned to them.

At once, Chu Han sensed the entire Xue estate beginning to move as one. Powerful energy converged at its center. He smiled faintly. This Xue family did indeed have something to it.

No wonder Xue Ren had said that not even someone from a sect in the Eastern Wasteland would dare invade the Xue estate. With this sect-protecting grand formation, its defenses were indeed formidable. Xue Ren had not been boasting after all.

“Chu Han, today is the day you die. The Xue family’s grand formation has not been used for more than ten years. Using it today just to kill you means you can die without regret. Formation rise—Six Yin Formation of Frozen Silence.”

As Xue Ren’s voice fell, a layer of silvery-white film appeared around Chu Han. He tested it and found that it had no offensive power; it was merely there to prevent him from breaking out of the formation.

With the film in place, countless ice spikes suddenly appeared in midair, shooting toward him. Meanwhile, the surrounding temperature plunged to an extreme, frost covering his body and slowing him by more than one degree of magnitude.

Suddenly, he understood the formation’s principle: trap the enemy at the center, use the dropping temperature to restrict their speed, then unleash the formation’s attacks. It was indeed an exquisitely designed array, difficult to guard against.

Chu Han evaded the ice spikes. Though his speed had dropped somewhat, the attacks were not yet enough to leave him in utter disarray. Still, his brow furrowed tightly, for the formation gave him a profoundly familiar feeling.

This familiarity reached deep into his bones. He had definitely seen this formation before, or something very similar to it. But at the moment he had no time to dwell on it, because the formation’s next wave of attacks had already arrived.

A gigantic ice giant appeared, moving with astonishing speed. Its massive fist crashed down. Chu Han gave a cold snort and raised his own right fist, smashing it directly into the ice giant’s.

Dust and debris billowed skyward. Just as everyone thought Chu Han had been crushed to death, cracks began to spread from the ice giant’s fist. They multiplied rapidly, soon covering its entire body, growing larger and larger until, at last, the giant shattered apart.

With one punch, Chu Han had shattered such a colossal giant. The sheer force behind it was plain for all to see, and the Xue family experts maintaining the formation all drew sharp breaths.

Yet even though the giant had been destroyed, the formation’s attacks were far from over. If he could not find a way to break it, he would only continue to be trapped within it.

If this had been the Chu Han of the past, he might truly have had no solution. But then he remembered a person from his previous life. Back then, he had known nothing at all of formations and had suffered greatly because of it.

That person, however, had forced him to learn. He had crammed for years on formation theory. Thinking of this, Chu Han finally understood why he felt so familiar with this grand formation: when he had studied formations with that person, he had learned this very array—the Six Yin Formation of Frozen Silence.

“Ha ha, Xue’er, thank you for your painstaking guidance back then. Good thing I studied formations with you, or today I really would have been at a loss.”

Chu Han burst out laughing, all while evading the formation’s attacks, silently thanking that person. Then his gaze turned resolute. Now came the time to strike back.

The Six Yin Formation of Frozen Silence was a highly sophisticated array, using its power to imprison his body before launching its freezing assaults. If Chu Han had not been so powerful, he would already have died within it.

To break the Six Yin Formation of Frozen Silence, he needed to breach the film blocking his way. Originally, he would have used true energy to search for a flaw in it, but Chu Han now found that too troublesome. Since the film could be broken, then he knew exactly what to do.

He lifted his fist and smashed it down hard against the film. With his full strength of one hundred and fifty thousand jin driven to its utmost, and under the dumbfounded stares of all present, he punched through the barrier in a single strike.