Chapter 1277: The High Priest

The Sacred Beast phenomenon hung in the sky, and after a long time, it slowly dissipated.

And the entire mountain peak seemed to have auspicious signs descending; the majesty of the fierce tiger was mixed with a holy aura, echoing in the mountains for a long time.

The descendants of the wilderness named this mountain "Sacred Tiger Mountain," meaning the mountain where the Sacred Tiger descended, worshipping it for generations.

And at this moment, inside the cave, the Big Tiger was eating happily.

It had successfully broken through and was now a Third-Grade Golden Core tiger demon. The formed demonic core was retracted within its body, and the pure white "bloodline" of the Sacred Beast had also completed its "stitching," fusing into its bones and blood, hidden deep within its demonic marrow, no longer exposed.

But the Big Tiger's appearance had also changed quite a bit.

It seemed to have changed into a layer of "new skin," becoming whiter, purer, and looking more holy. The contrast between the black and white patterns had also become increasingly distinct; anyone who saw it would know its bloodline was noble and extraordinary.

At the same time, its physique had grown a size larger, and its aura was even stronger.

When a cultivator condenses a core, the Dao foundation transforms, which is of great significance.

It is the same for a demonic beast condensing a core; once a true demonic core is formed and it becomes a Third-Grade demonic beast, its Dao practice will advance by leaps and bounds, its bloodline foundation will be reborn, and naturally, it will have a different world in the path of cultivation.

Precisely because of this, a demonic beast condensing a core is equally difficult.

This is a major hurdle in cultivation.

For a peak Second-Grade demonic beast to truly succeed in condensing a core, have its Dao foundation transform, and avoid all disasters to survive completely, fewer than one in ten succeeds.

And now, the Big Tiger had successfully crossed this hurdle.

Its bloodline had awakened perfectly, its flesh and blood transformed like copper and iron, and its fur had become tougher and more beautiful.

It had to be said that its fortune was quite deep.

Mo Hua couldn't help but stroke the white fur on the Big Tiger's neck.

The Big Tiger was also in a very good mood.

It had suppressed its realm for too long, waiting for Mo Hua for too long, and had been "eyed covetously" by a bunch of its own kind, with dangers hidden everywhere, so it had been on tenterhooks all along.

Now everything was getting better: the demonic core was condensed, the realm was broken through, the secret of the inheritance had been shown to Mo Hua, and Mo Hua was stroking its fur again.

The Big Tiger was satisfied, wagging its large tail, humming happily, but its mouth hadn't stopped, eating meat with a hum and a huff.

Because it was too hungry.

Mo Hua looked at the Big Tiger eating happily and couldn't help but smile, but afterward, his gaze touched the black and white patterns on the Big Tiger's body, and his smile couldn't help but fade a bit.

Mo Hua's gaze was profound, and he fell into deep thought.

Those two "heterodox" discoveries from before floated in his mind again.

"Formations... can create flesh-and-blood life..."

"Sacred Beast... is a 'synthetic beast' of formations and flesh-and-blood reconstruction..."

Imagining it by analogy...

Even the "Sacred Beast bloodline" that exists in the Great Wilderness demonic beasts could be understood as... some kind of hidden and ancient "life formation pattern" sealed deep within the demonic beast's bloodline.

When a demonic beast breaks through a realm, its flesh and blood transform, and it undergoes "atavism" or "Sacred Beast transformation," these hidden "life formation patterns" emerge from the depths of the bloodline, performing a "compilation"-style transformation and fusion on the demonic beast's flesh and blood.

Once this life formation pattern is successfully compiled, the demonic beast will undergo a certain degree of "atavism" or "sanctification," awakening some kind of bloodline and power of the Great Wilderness Sacred Beast.

The stronger the life formation pattern, the more successful the flesh-and-blood "compilation," the more obvious the degree of sanctification.

The demonic beast can transform into a "Sacred Beast" to a greater extent.

This might be the truth about the Sacred Beasts of the Great Wilderness.

On the surface, it is the bloodline inheritance of a demonic beast, but in essence, it is very likely a "life construction" performed using some kind of formation.

This is not the logic of living flesh and blood, or bloodline inheritance.

In essence, it is the logic of formations!

Mo Hua felt secretly shocked in his heart, like a raging sea, unable to calm down for a long time.

At this moment, he truly understood a little bit of what "the Dao gives birth to all things" meant.

Why it is said that formations are the essence of this world.

All appearances are illusions.

All appearances are not appearances; the essence is the Dao, and the Dao uses formations as a medium and formations as a use...

Mo Hua's brows knit tight, and following that, he realized another, even more terrifying problem.

Formations create life, Sacred Beasts are "synthetic beasts"...

Then who exactly has this ability to use formations to create flesh-and-blood life?

And who has the ability to synthesize the "Sacred Beasts" of the Great Wilderness?

Mo Hua slowly took a deep breath of cold air.

From the surface, there were no clues or traces at all, but a name that was almost never mentioned gradually floated into his mind:

"The Great High Priest!"

These three words had already been buried in the history of the Great Wilderness.

To date, Mo Hua had gone deep into the wilderness, personally participated in tribal wars, unified the entire Vermilion Bird Mountain Realm in the name of the High Priest, and read countless barbarian historical classics.

But these three words, "Great High Priest," were rarely mentioned.

Only on some very, very old pieces of broken skin paper, or some bone slips and bone steles where the words were worn down to the point of being almost illegible, could the traces of these three words be vaguely seen.

But they were all just mentioned in passing.

It was only known that in the history of the Great Wilderness, there had been such a "Great High Priest."

But what his specific identity was, what his background was, what his cultivation realm was, what he had done, whether he had any achievements, whether he had left any words, what position he occupied in the history of the Great Wilderness, how his merits and faults were evaluated... and so on.

All of this was not mentioned at all.

It was as if everyone had forgotten, and everyone didn't care.

The few "legends" that existed were mostly inferences imagined based on the three words "Great High Priest," with no empirical evidence.

But Mo Hua was not an ordinary "person"; he walked the path of divine sense verification, was a half-step deity, and at the same time, was an extremely brilliant formation master.

Many things, he saw much deeper than ordinary cultivators.

He could perceive that many things in the Great Wilderness had the shadow of the Great High Priest.

First of all, according to the Second Elder of the Demon Sect, the Second-Grade Twenty-Four Tattoo Twelve Meridian Taotie Spirit Skeleton Array came from the hands of the Great High Priest.

And the Taotie law is a closely related law chain.

The Taotie Spirit Skeleton Array was all related to the Great High Priest.

Then the Four Symbols Azure Dragon Array in Master Tu's hands, the Taotie Swallowing Transformation Array in the Bone-Art Department's statue, and even the Abyss Bone Heavy Armor Absolute Array of the Bone-Art ancestors, were very likely inseparable from the Great High Priest...

Even, by extension, the entire Great Wilderness, every tribe, every ancestor, as long as they used laws like "swallowing and transforming into a dragon," artificially pieced together "Four Symbols Absolute Arrays," and used them to cast ancestral barbarian armor, might all have the handiwork of the Great High Priest behind them...

And the Four Symbols Sacred Beast Array, besides the Azure Dragon Array, probably also had the Four Symbols White Tiger Array, the Four Symbols Vermilion Bird Array, and the Four Symbols Black Tortoise Array.

The Great High Priest could use demonic patterns to "derive and piece together" the Azure Dragon Array, so the other three didn't seem to be a problem either.

Put this way, the Great High Priest had created almost the entire Great Wilderness's Four Symbols Sacred Beast formation system...

Even the so-called "Four Sacred Beasts" of the Great Wilderness might have been "synthesized" by the Great High Priest himself, using the "flesh and blood" of demonic beasts plus the "bloodline" of divine beasts.

And what was involved here was a higher-level, ancient "life creation formation."

So high-level that with Mo Hua's current formation master thinking, he couldn't understand it at all.

Even if Mo Hua hadn't seen it with his own eyes thanks to the Big Tiger, he wouldn't have dared to think in that direction at all...

All sorts of things were closely related to this "Great High Priest."

Almost the entire formation inheritance of the Great Wilderness had a thousand threads and ten thousand strands of connection with this Great High Priest...

Yet the Great High Priest's name had not remained in the history of the Great Wilderness...

Thinking about it carefully, Mo Hua couldn't help but feel a bit inexplicably cold.

Afterward, he couldn't help but feel a bit suspicious.

Could this Great High Priest... really be powerful to such an extent?

If he could really do this, wouldn't that mean he had comprehended the complete Taotie law chain;

Created many Taotie absolute array systems, including the Twenty-Four Tattoo Twelve Meridian Taotie Spirit Skeleton Absolute Array;

At the same time, "artificially synthesized" the Great Wilderness Azure Dragon, White Tiger, Vermilion Bird, and Black Tortoise "Four Sacred Beasts," and created a whole set of Great Wilderness Four Symbols Sacred Beast formation systems...

Even perhaps, he had compiled the bloodlines of the Four Sacred Beasts into ancient "life formation patterns," hiding them in the bodies of different demonic beasts in the Great Wilderness, passing them down generation after generation...

Could these things really be done by a "person"?

What realm must a person who could do these things be in, and what kind of heaven-shaking fortune must they have?

I'm afraid the Heavenly Dao opened a "cheat" for him, right?

Mo Hua frowned.

He had previously felt that in terms of formations, he was already "perverted" enough.

But he hadn't expected that he would now encounter a figure who made even him feel "terrifying."

No wonder people always say, there is always someone better, and there is always a heaven beyond heaven...

Mo Hua sighed deeply, and afterward, he put away the somewhat desperate "sense of frustration" in his heart and readjusted his mindset.

In this world, there are no enemies, only the strong.

When you encounter the strong, you must learn well.

Perceiving that others are strong means knowing that you are "weak."

And only by knowing that you are "weak" can you learn from others' strengths.

Transform your own "weakness" into "strength."

Only in this way can weakness and strength transform into each other, existence and non-existence give birth to each other, and one can continue to grow stronger without end, seeking the ultimate "Dao."

This is the self-strengthening of a gentleman.

This is also the principle he realized through personal experience while studying in the "Ganxue" prefecture.

But... that's what is said, but Mo Hua still felt as if a great mountain was pressing on his heart, heavy, with a mass of invisible shadows covering his head.

And...

Mo Hua at this moment couldn't help but think a little more...

Was this Twelve Meridian Taotie Spirit Skeleton Absolute Array really an opportunity he obtained "unintentionally"?

Was the transaction where the Second Elder of the Demon Sect told him about the barbarian absolute arrays and the Great High Priest really "the words of a dying man are good"?

Also, why did Master Tu launch the Desolate Heaven Blood Sacrifice Array precisely when he was studying in Gan Prefecture?

Why was there a secret Taotie absolute array hidden in the human-faced, sheep-horned white bone evil god statue he worshipped, which even he himself didn't know about?

Who put this Taotie absolute array into the evil god statue?

Was it really a coincidence that he fished this Taotie absolute array out of the evil god statue's head?

And when he was fighting in the Dao Court's front lines, he was brought to the wilderness by the Big Tiger, which had the "Sacred Beast" bloodline.

The place where he entered the wilderness was the Jin Wutu Mountain Realm.

Jin Wutu, in the east of the Great Wilderness, implies the fire seed...

These small details were terrifying to think about.

Mo Hua's back also felt cold.

Could it be that... someone else had always been playing this game of the Great Wilderness? Always laying out plans and placing pieces around him?

It started from when he was first studying in the Ganxue prefecture.

No...

It was even... from when he was a child and encountered the Big Tiger that was only the size of a kitten, the pieces in this game had already begun to fall around him...

Thinking of this, Mo Hua's heart trembled, and he looked vigilantly at the Big Tiger lying on the ground.

The Big Tiger, which was eating meat, sensed the chill, shuddered violently, and raised its head to look at Mo Hua.

It was still gnawing on meat in its mouth, its large eyes clear and bewildered, looking innocent, seemingly not knowing why Mo Hua was a bit angry.

Mo Hua looked blankly at the Big Tiger's clear eyes, and a moment later, sighed helplessly, his expression also softening.

"This big idiot, only knows how to eat, clearly really doesn't know anything..."

Mo Hua knew he might be overthinking it.

Leaving aside the Great Wilderness—the things that happened here, without a doubt, certainly contained many people's "calculations," with complex and intricate causes and effects, containing a lot of "deliberation."

But things outside the Great Wilderness might not be so; not everything was necessarily in other people's calculations.

Especially the things from his childhood, and the things about the Big Tiger, many causes and effects, he estimated, were really just "coincidences."

Rather than saying they were calculated by others, it felt more like...

Mo Hua frowned and thought about it, feeling it was more like... being attracted and pulled by the powerful gravitational force of some kind of "existence," which then linked the causes and effects together.

Within this, it contained both some inevitability and also a great deal of contingency.

It was closely related to his own cultivation, Dao path, and various life choices, filled with too many variables.

It wasn't something that could be simply explained by "destiny" or "causality."

Thinking of this, Mo Hua felt a bit embarrassed, and he gently touched the Big Tiger's head with a gentle expression, saying:

"Eat more."

The Big Tiger didn't quite understand, but it didn't pay much attention either. It was bewildered for a moment, then buried its head again, humming and huffing as it ate the meat in large mouthfuls.

Mo Hua watched the Big Tiger eat silently.

The Big Tiger could be carefree, but he couldn't.

He knew that some things might be coincidences, but these coincidences indeed contained an invisible "causality" that was secretly manipulating the development of events...

In this game of the Great Wilderness, not only were living people playing, perhaps... there was also a "dead person" playing...

The Big Tiger was full and satisfied, its blood energy was repaired, and its realm was stabilized.

Mo Hua also outlined the changes in the Sacred Beast bloodline he had seen on the Big Tiger in the form of formation patterns, recording them in a jade slip to be studied later.

This kind of thing related to the Sacred Beast bloodline was something he couldn't understand yet, but it contained very "terrifying" formation laws, even terrifying to the point of being "unspeakable."

Mo Hua put it away carefully in his storage ring.

Afterward, he organized his thoughts again, recording some key points of causality, and feeling there were no omissions, he walked out of the cave with the Big Tiger.

Outside the cave, Lu Gu and the others had been guarding.

At this moment, when they saw Mo Hua come out, followed by a Third-Grade Golden Core Big Tiger that was snow-white with black patterns, like a "Sacred Beast," they all looked solemn.

Although they knew what had happened, seeing with their own eyes a living, unrestrained Golden Core "Sacred Tiger" guarding the High Priest wholeheartedly and without leaving his side still made their hearts feel a sense of incredulity.

And that Third-Grade Mysterious Tiger with hanging eyes also looked at Mo Hua with awe.

However, within this gaze, there was not only fear, but also hidden jealousy and resentment that could not be concealed.

Mo Hua sensed this hatred in the tiger demon's eyes and looked at it indifferently.

A moment later, Mo Hua's heart moved slightly, and he asked:

"Do you want to become Sacred?"

The fierce eyes of the Mysterious Tiger with hanging eyes trembled slightly.

Mo Hua pondered for a moment, his gaze condensing:

"Although you are a demon, you have some affinity. Work for me, serve the God Lord. One day, if your merits are complete, I can bestow upon you a 'fortune,' allowing you to transform from mortal to 'Sacred,' and be honored with the position of 'Sacred Beast'..."

Hearing this, the Mysterious Tiger with hanging eyes was stunned, and afterward, the ferocity in its eyes gradually faded.

It was subdued by the majesty like a deity on Mo Hua's body, and seemingly sensing some kind of opportunity, it slowly bowed down, expressing its submission to Mo Hua.

And with the Mysterious Tiger with hanging eyes submitting, the other tiger demons also let out a low growl, kneeling before Mo Hua on all fours.

Seeing the fierce tiger submit, Lu Gu's pupils shrank, and he was instantly moved, kneeling on one knee, loyal:

"High Priest is holy and wise."

The others also knelt on the ground, praising:

"High Priest, heroic and divine, holy majesty vast, protect our Great Wilderness."

Amidst the praises of the crowd, Mo Hua's gaze was calm, and his expression, without him knowing, deepened with a few more points of the solemnity and indifference of a deity.

Afterward, Mo Hua personally brought the Big Tiger back to the Danque Department.

And now that everything was ready, the next thing he had to deal with was the ancient divine throne in the Vermilion Bird Mountain.

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 1278 =====