Chapter 562: Nine Dragons Coronation

I completely relaxed my body, and with that suction I fell down.

In the darkness, I could clearly see the eighteen gleaming golden-body arhats.

I was falling, and they also fell down with me.

The whole process was very fast, only a dozen seconds, and below suddenly lit up.

Sure enough, the formation array of the Sacrificial Pit is connected to the interior of the Underground Palace temple.

Once again entering this temple, I entered from the temple's topmost part.

Above the top there is a barrier; after passing through that barrier, the scene before my eyes differs from what I saw last time when I passed through the dream of the Mysterious Phoenix.

The interior of the temple looks as if it had been finely renovated; aside from the original seated Buddha statues, the walls all the way up to the top are adorned with layer after layer of exquisitely carved paintings, and the overall style is exactly the same as the caisson ceiling on the second floor of that tower behind the Sutra Pavilion of the Great Dharma King Temple I saw before.

The temple's clear height is over thirty meters; at this point I had already fallen to halfway height, I instinctively looked up and indeed saw that around the opening at the temple's top, which was gradually narrowing, the Nine Dragons Coronation Formation Array was carved.

Eight long dragons, each from the eight directions, uniformly converged toward the center; the center is a barrier, a blank white expanse, lacking a ninth dragon head.

The ninth dragon head is also the main dragon head.

But precisely because it is missing, it makes people even more worried.

Because outside this barrier, a White Dragon will relentlessly pursue me.

Liu Junyan……is that the ninth dragon?!

After the eighteen golden-body arhats sent me into the temple, they each returned to their fixed divine seats on the temple's inner walls, and I steadily landed on one of the petals of the six-petaled lotus at the temple's center.

When I looked around the six-petaled lotus, I suddenly discovered that the physical bodies of Hu Sanmei and Bái Sōnglán were present.

And on the spots belonging to Hui Moqiong and Huang Fan, there stood statues with beast heads and human bodies.

Just as I was about to jump down from the petal, the surrounding monks suddenly all 'woke' up, with chanting, the turning of prayer beads, and the knocking of wooden fish sounds incessantly in my ears.

As these sounds rang out, I heard from below a sound like gears turning, circling upward.

This sound inexplicably felt somewhat familiar; for a moment I couldn't recall where I had heard it before.

However, this sound came from beneath my feet, turning continuously until it stopped at the position below the six-petaled lotus.

This indicates that beneath the six-petaled lotus, below the temple where we are, there is another space.

Indeed, it should be there.

Because the Sacrificial Pit is located on the backside of the mountain range behind the ancient temple, I came down from above; that is, the place where I now stand is inside the mountain.

And the Underground Palace is beneath the ancient temple.

Thus, my position is not the bottom of the Underground Palace, but the bottom of the mountain body.

I looked up again toward the upper direction.

Dìshì, or more precisely, the true form of that Sān jiǎo yā, has not appeared from the time I descended until now.

Then he is very likely inside the Underground Palace.

And this temple situated above the Underground Palace……is truly the dharma field!

All the power gathered by this dharma field is bestowed upon the Sān jiǎo yā, helping it ascend.

I, Liu Junyan, and even the Copper Coin Person, have been in the other's calculations from the start.

Now I have entered the formation, Liu Junyan should soon come after me, the formation array begins to activate……what I worry about most is still A Cheng and that egg.

Now only those two remain in the Underground Palace.

Dìshì advances step by step; how could he miss those two?

When the Copper Coin Person left the Underground Palace and appeared at the Sacrificial Pit side, A Cheng might already have been controlled.

The restriction that A Cheng placed on the evil bone skull has long expired; even if A Cheng could find a way to continue suppressing the evil bone skull, we overlooked one point: for Dìshì to locate A Cheng is as easy as turning over one's hand.

After all, A Cheng's head is in Dìshì's hands.

Between A Cheng's head and body, the head is clearly superior to the body.

Through the head, not to mention wanting to find A Cheng, controlling A Cheng to walk into the net himself is not necessarily impossible.

What is the Sān jiǎo yā doing now?

He brought me down, yet he himself never appears; what is his intention?

Bang!

A muffled sound suddenly came from the barrier atop the temple; my heart gave a thump; sure enough, Liu Junyan still came after me.

At this point, even if I had deduced that Dìshì would use me to lure Liu Junyan into the Nine Dragons Coronation Formation Array, I had no way, and also felt no need to send him a warning.

We were already in the game.

In the game, there are too many people we care deeply about and must save.

So, even knowing it's a game, we still must recklessly charge into the formation.

I think this way, and I act this way.

I believe Liu Junyan is the same.

Bang!

Another muffled sound.

This time, I could even clearly see the White Dragon's silhouette imprinted on the barrier's shape.

As the White Dragon continually struck the barrier, the chanting of the monks on the temple's inner walls became increasingly dense.

And only at this moment did I suddenly notice that on the heads of those monks, Buddhist light was continually condensing.

In the Buddhist culture of the Zàng Qū, the skull has held an important position since ancient times.

Because in their view, when a person is about to die, the three hun and seven po instantly gather beneath the skull, seep out through the bone fissures, and re-enter the cycle of rebirth.

Thus, in some dharma implements passed down in the Zàng Qū, there exists the skull.

At this moment, the Buddhist light condensing at those monks' skulls is either the three hun and seven po trapped in their flesh bodies gathering, or the Mana of the relics they have cultivated in this life bursting forth.

Bang!

When the third muffled sound arrived, I watched wide-eyed as those monks' skulls split open.

Golden Buddha light quickly gathered, all pouring into the bodies of the eight long dragons atop the temple.

Those eight long dragons, amidst the flowing Buddha light, seemed to have truly come alive.

My heart pounded wildly.

It turned out that from the very beginning, Kōngjì had been deceiving us.

Whatever it was, drawing the dragon qi from the nine dragon veins into the Zàng Qū……it was all a trick!

His ultimate goal was simply to lure Liu Junyan into the Zàng Qū.

They had finished all the sacrificial preparations, just waiting for that main dragon with a special fate to arrive.

And today, Liu Junyan has arrived!

Bang!

The fourth sound was no longer a muffled one.

That earth-shaking, mountain-moving sound made the entire space tremble.

Amidst the chaos, I heard a dragon's roar.

At the moment the White Dragon broke through the barrier, the eight long dragons, carrying the cultivation and mana of over a hundred eminent monks, poured entirely into the White Dragon's body.

That scene could not be described with just the two words "shocking".

The White Dragon roared, and after a massive influx of cultivation and mana entered its body, its entire white scale armor was instantly enveloped in a golden sheen.

No, it was not being enveloped by gold.

Rather, its white scales transformed into gold!

The White Dragon turned into a golden dragon……Such a transformation is not unfamiliar to us……