The copy has 0 error tolerance, and the last words on the ground are all wrong for me.

Chapter 451 Using Earth to Replace Heaven
Wu Chang looked in the direction of the voice and saw that the first speaker was a young man wearing a black robe, with a cold face and holding a judge's pen.

The young man had a pair of dark brown pupils with a sharp gaze that seemed to pierce straight into people's hearts, but there was also an indescribable evil in his eyes, making it impossible to tell whether he was good or evil.

Upon hearing the master of the Heavenly Power Immortal Abode say that he wanted to convert it into a sacrificial site, the young man frowned and said:

"The initial setup of the Earth Worship Ceremony is still incomplete, with some of the seven main array eyes and twelve secondary array eyes of the Earthly Branches not yet ready. Is it too hasty to begin the Earth Worship Ceremony now?"

The master of the Heavenly Authority Immortal Mansion looked at the young man and slowly said:
"Yuheng, things have come to this point, we have no choice but to place our hopes for success in the hands of Heaven and see if fate is on our side."

The young man known as Yuheng shook his head slightly and said:
"Even though the Heavenly Gate has fallen into the hands of the demon race, do you still believe in fate?"

Tianquan said with a smile, "Of course, I've always been very lucky."

Seeing that Tianquan had made up his mind, Yuheng said no more and agreed, "I will arrange for people to prepare in a moment."

Among them, the planning of affairs was always decided by the divine authority, and they trusted the judgment of the divine authority.

Yuheng looked towards the gloomy horizon in the distance and said:

“Tianquan, the appearance of the demon race is strange, and they were able to block the Heavenly Gate so quickly. I suspect they have been hiding in the Heavenly Gate for a long time.”

Tianquan said, "Judging from the results of the boss's investigation, it's most likely true."

Yuheng said, "Since they have been hiding for so long, why have they only suddenly appeared now? Could it be that..."

Yuheng, realizing something, turned around and saw the teacher standing behind him, his expression one of surprise and uncertainty. He said:

"Do you think their appearance is related to the sacrificial site we prepared before?"

Tianquan said casually, "Of course it's relevant."

Yuheng clenched his fists, his brows furrowing even more deeply, and asked in confusion:

"Our operations were extremely covert, and we were never exposed. How did those guys manage to detect us?"

Tianquan turned to look at Yuheng and said, "Because I was the one who revealed it."

"Oh, I see. Hmm?!" Yuheng nodded at first, but quickly realized what was happening and glared angrily at Tianquan.

Tianquan gave an apologetic smile and said, "This was a decision made by the boss and me, without informing you."

"Using the earth as a substitute for heaven, we can't keep it a secret for long. Since we can't hide it anymore, we might as well reveal it in the way we want to, and test the other side's actions."

"Whenever they get anxious, they will make corresponding moves. The more anxious they are, the bigger their moves will be, and the more flaws they will reveal, which will give us an opportunity to win."

Yuheng said with a hint of helplessness, "They all say I'm the most impulsive and too confident in my actions, but in my opinion, the boss and you are actually more impulsive than me at heart."

"You've kept such a big thing from us. Aren't you afraid that Kaiyang will beat you up first if he finds out?"

Tianquan sighed, "I have no choice. We have too few resources. If we want to win against the odds, we can only do so by surprise."

The scene before Wu Chang's eyes began to distort, and his consciousness returned to the Heavenly Authority Immortal Mansion. The contents recorded in the Book of Literary Fortune ended there.

As his consciousness returned to reality, he looked at the wordless book in his hand and couldn't help but click his tongue.

As expected of the Wenqu Star, the information recorded in the Tianquan Immortal Mansion is far more explosive than that in the Kaiyang Immortal Mansion.

The five trials in the Heavenly Authority Immortal Mansion, combined with the information he had just seen, vaguely revealed to him what had happened in the instance dimension.

The core of the incident, and the cause of everything, was the four words mentioned by the master of the Heavenly Authority Immortal Mansion: "using the earth to replace the heaven."

Previously, he was somewhat confused about the fifth level of the Heavenly Authority Immortal Mansion test, thinking it was just a way to test comprehensive abilities.

Looking back now, the game of chess in the fifth challenge was actually a depiction of using the earth to represent the heavens.

White starts by using the center point (Tengen) as the focal point to enclose the central area. Tengen actually refers to the Heavenly Gate.

The avatar of the master of the Heavenly Authority Immortal Mansion, who played the white pieces, was a realm higher than the black pieces being tested. According to what Heavenly Authority said, their strength was too weak to defeat the enemy occupying the Heavenly Gate head-on.

In the game, it seems that only by invading the center and breaking through the enemy's territory can Black have a chance of survival. However, according to the analysis of the Omniscient Crystal, unless Wu Chang is playing Black, he can use numerical values ​​to make up for the difference in strength between the two sides by one level.

Otherwise, any attempt to forcefully breach the central area will inevitably result in defeat.

According to the question setter's logic, the only correct solution to win the game is to try to create more territory in the corners and edges.

Using the edges and corners to extend beyond the center represents substituting the earth for the heavens, replacing the original worship of heaven with the worship of the earth.

Simply encircling the corners is not enough to break the deadlock. It is necessary to stimulate White's arrangement in the center, causing White to contract and thus expand Black's space.

At the same time, it is necessary to expose weaknesses, force White to rush into the corner, trigger a chaotic battle, and rely on winning in the chaotic battle to completely consolidate the corner area, so as to turn defeat into victory and make Black win by half a point.

This corresponds to Tianquan deliberately revealing the earth-worshiping ceremony, forcing the demon race to appear and causing them to expand their influence beyond the immortal gate, launching attacks on other areas of the instance plane.

Judging from Yuheng's words, the Seven Stars prepared to replace Heaven with Earth before the appearance of the demon race.

If the time they plan to implement the substitution of earth for heaven is the starting point of the fifth level of the game, then it means that they noticed something amiss with the Heavenly Gate, or the Heavenly Sacrifice ritual, before they even began attempting the earth sacrifice.

To deal with this anomaly, the subsequent earth-worshiping ceremony and the Ziwei exorcising array were established.

Now only two questions remain, and Wu Chang will be able to connect everything and completely understand what happened.

First, what exactly was the anomaly of the sacrificial ceremony to Heaven, and how did the Seven Stars discover the anomaly?

Judging from Yuheng's behavior, they did not expect the appearance of the demon race from the beginning. It is clear that the anomaly they sensed in the Heavenly Gate was not caused by the demon race.

Second, what exactly are the rituals of worshipping Heaven and Earth?

The name "Heavenly Gate" is often associated with ascension and becoming an immortal. In the records of the dungeon world, the Heavenly Gate is also considered to be the gateway to the immortal realm.

The ritual of offering sacrifices to heaven was combined with the concept of the Heavenly Gate, implying that by offering sacrifices to heaven, one could open the Heavenly Gate and become an immortal.

But if that's the case, why can the earth-worshiping ceremony constructed by the seven stars replace the heaven-worshiping ceremony?

He needs more clues, or rather, to enter more immortal abodes, to figure everything out.

He gripped the Book of Chinese Fortune tightly, and a prompt popped up before his eyes.

"Activate the Immortal Bond?"

"Turn on."

"You have obtained the Heavenly Authority Immortal Mansion's affinity, which increases your comprehension of formations and rituals. Your formation and ritual skills will no longer be limited by level and can be continuously improved."

"You have gained a special status - Literary Fortune".

Status Name: Literary Flow

"Status effect: When you use formations and construct rituals, the buff effect on your marked friendly targets is increased by 20%, and the negative effect on demonic and evil targets is increased by 30%."

Killing or controlling a demon can provide a group-wide spiritual energy effect to nearby cultivators, causing friendly targets to enter a formation state. When a target within the formation takes damage, if the damage received in a single instance is less than 20% of the target's maximum health, the damage will be shared equally among all cultivators within the formation. Each target can only trigger this effect once every five seconds.

If a friendly target within the formation attacks the same enemy target, there is a chance to trigger a combo attack, increasing the total damage of the combo attack by up to 15%.

Compared to martial prowess, which emphasizes individual martial skill, literary fortune is more akin to that of a strategist, skilled in the application of formations and rituals.

With the boost to his literary fortune, Wu Chang felt a change in his mastery of mysticism.

Through his research on the Midnight Graveyard plane, he reached the Lord level in his mastery of the occult. The process was not difficult, but he had no clue how to go further, as if he had fallen into an invisible bottleneck.

With the blessing of literary fortune, he can now vaguely see a new path in the midst of a chaotic future.

The effect of Wen Yun is not only to address bottlenecks; the spatial and mystical domains he uses, although not strictly speaking formations or rituals, actually align with the amplification of Wen Yun.

With the blessing of literary fortune, the domain he uses becomes more solid and has a higher priority. When facing a weaker domain, he can even forcefully squeeze out the rules within that domain.

In addition to boosting its own skills, Wen Yun's group effects are also quite remarkable.

Just like the final test of the Heavenly Authority Immortal Mansion, the chess player uses heaven and earth as the board and all living beings as pieces. In the eyes of the Wenqu Star, teammates are also his chess pieces, a link in his array.

As long as he, as the player of the pieces, kills any demon, he can cause the surrounding cultivators to enter a formation state. The formation can advance, allowing the pieces—no, it can advance, allowing allies to launch a combined attack, increasing the damage dealt; or it can retreat, forming a formation to share the damage received by each other.

You don't need many people; just a team of twenty is enough. Unless there is widespread group damage, injuries that would normally cause serious harm to an individual may just be minor scratches after being shared among the injured.

Moreover, the damage sharing mechanism is very user-friendly; it will not be triggered if the attacked ally suffers too much damage.

What appears to be a restriction, preventing allies within the formation from sharing fatal wounds, is actually a protection for everyone.

Without this safety measure, if a squishy character were to sneak into the formation and then, without thinking, take the BOSS's ultimate attack, with the damage being spread out indefinitely, the entire team could be wiped out instantly.

In terms of collective effect, literary fortune is more practical than military fortune.

"You have received the Celestial Fate Quest: Complete the full version of the Ziwei Exorcising Array and break through the Birth Demon Pool."

"Completing the Immortal Destiny quest will unlock further Immortal Destinies."

Wu Chang frowned as he looked at the Immortal Fate Quest.

Perhaps because he was the mastermind behind everything, he needed to be responsible for the entire plan of replacing heaven with earth. To inherit the immortal destiny of the Heavenly Authority Immortal Mansion, the immortal destiny tasks he needed to complete were much more difficult than those of the Kaiyang Immortal Mansion.

He had previously thought that if the Immortal Destiny missions were the same, he could complete only one mission and obtain double the Immortal Destiny. Now it seems that the master of the Heavenly Immortal Mansion is very shrewd and did not let him gain any advantage.

After reviewing the Immortal Fate Quest, Wu Chang turned his attention back to the Heavenly Power Immortal Abode.

The Book of Literary Fortune and the Sword of Martial Fortune are the same; both are keys to controlling the Immortal Abode. He channeled his consciousness into the Book of Literary Fortune and saw the entire Tianquan Immortal Abode.

The Heavenly Authority Immortal Abode is divided into six levels, and each level has a Heavenly Authority Lake.

When he completed the trials, he thought that the five trials were connected, but in fact, each time he passed the seasonal boundary, he had already entered the next level of the immortal palace.

The first four layers of the immortal abode represent the four seasons of Tianquan Lake. The four layers of immortal abode are stacked together and reflected in Tianquan Lake, thus forming the seasonal reflections that are often talked about by scholars of the Great Xuan Dynasty.

The area where he obtained his immortal destiny was the fifth level of the Immortal Abode.

The books in the attic all came from the annual earth-worshiping ceremonies.

The reason why the knowledge involved in the Tianquan Immortal Mansion's trials can be constantly updated is because the Earth Book made by Tianquan states that each Earth Sacrifice Ceremony requires burning books to worship the Earth.

These burned books are actually transmitted directly to the Heavenly Authority Immortal Mansion through the Earth-worshiping ceremony, where they are read and absorbed by the avatar left behind by the master of the Heavenly Authority Immortal Mansion and made into test questions.

Wu Chang glanced around the attic and found that although there were many books, they all covered general knowledge and did not contain any cultivation techniques.

That makes sense, though. In the eyes of the master of the Heavenly Power Immortal Mansion, a cultivator who can complete the five trials would naturally not lack cultivation techniques.

Unlike Kaiyang, Tianquan was busy studying formations and making plans, and had no time to refine pills or forge weapons.

In the end, he could only take all the books about the spiritual energy system with him and hand them over to He Yun after completing the world instance.

Whether it's one or two, it's still an addition. He Yun's extraordinary technology system has already incorporated mysticism, the condensation of divinity within humanity, and extraordinary industrialization. Let's see if we can also incorporate the spiritual energy system into it.

If we're talking about how a mortal can cultivate divinity on their own without the spark of divine fire, there's nothing more suitable than the spiritual energy system.

If they can thoroughly understand the Reiki system and combine it with Schultz's research, they might actually be able to create something extraordinary.

After leaving the attic, Wu Chang arrived at the sixth floor of the Tianquan Immortal Mansion.

The layout of Tianquan Immortal Mansion is similar to that of Kaiyang Immortal Mansion, both highlighting the starry sky above.

However, in the starry sky above the Tianquan Immortal Mansion, three of the Big Dipper stars in the center position are bright, while four are dim.

Among them, the three brightest stars, besides Tianquan and Kaiyang, are also Yuheng, the fifth star of the Big Dipper.

The three stars, Tianquan, Yuheng, and Kaiyang, are arranged in a perfect sequence.

Before entering the Tianquan Immortal Mansion, he was wondering if the Yuheng Immortal Mansion, which was separated by two stars, also had an immortal destiny, since both Tianquan and Kaiyang Immortal Mansions had immortal destiny.

After all, An Rong had told him that among the three immortal abodes—Tian Shu Cave, Tian Quan Lake, and Yu Heng Valley—at least one of them possessed immortal opportunities, but he hadn't said it couldn't be two.

Furthermore, the presence of Yuheng in the scenes recorded in the Book of Literary Fortune led Wu Chang to suspect that there was also a destiny for immortality within Yuheng's Immortal Abode.

Just as Tianquan and Kaiyang are also known as Wenquxing and Wuquxing respectively, Yuheng also has another name, Lianzhenxing.

In folk legends, Lian Zhen star is a killing star and a prison star, possessing the quality of clear rewards and punishments, but its existence is not entirely positive.

Because Lian Zhen star also carries a kind of evil aura, it is very easy to go to extremes. It has absolute self-confidence, and once it has made up its mind, it will not care about anything, including good and evil and morality.

Wu Chang looked up at Lian Zhen, which was located between Wen Qu and Wu Qu above his head, and said, "Good and evil are intertwined, and it is difficult to distinguish between right and wrong. Isn't this tailor-made for me?"

Once the array core of the Heavenly Power Immortal Mansion is activated, he will go to the Jade Balance Cave to see if there is any true destiny for immortality there.

He opened the Book of Literary Fortune and turned his consciousness to the fourth level of the Immortal Abode.

He noticed that Yuan Yan, who was waiting for him at the fifth test, was looking anxiously in the direction he had left, as if something urgent had happened.

It had only been a stick of incense's time since he obtained the immortal destiny, so what urgent matter could have made him so impatient?

Wu Chang teleported to Yuan Yan's side and said:
"Young Master Yuan, I have taken over the Tianquan Immortal Mansion. We can begin activating the array core."

Yuan Yan looked at the Book of Literary Fortune in Wu Chang's hand. The Book of Literary Fortune was of special quality, and even though it was blank, its special nature was still evident.

In the immortal abode, the things left behind by the cave dwelling master are mostly ordinary blessings. If one can leave behind one or two strands of true meaning, it is already considered generous.

Even if Yuan Yan couldn't understand the Book of Literary Fortune, he could still tell that it was far beyond the true meaning of the book.

He swallowed hard and couldn't help but ask, "What you hold in your hand, could it be a divine destiny?"

Wu Chang, who was planning to use his connection to the immortals to elevate his status within the Human Alliance, did not hide anything and said, "It is indeed a connection to the immortals."

Yuan Yan painstakingly explored the Tianquan Immortal Mansion, hoping to obtain a wisp of the Wenqu Star's true meaning, but unexpectedly, it contained a celestial destiny.

When he heard Wu Chang confirm it himself, he felt like the sky had fallen. He never thought that his literary fortune and destiny had been so close to him, but because he hadn't worked hard enough, he was taken away by the suddenly appearing Wu Chang.

This missed opportunity is worse than if he had never come at all.

Fortunately, his failure in the fifth test helped him grow stronger; otherwise, he probably would have completely broken down.

Looking at Yuan Yan, who had closed his eyes and was breathing heavily to calm himself, Wu Chang asked:
"When I arrived just now, I saw that Yuan Shaoqing looked anxious. Has something happened?"

Hearing Wu Chang's question, Yuan Yan quickly pulled himself out of his grief. He opened his hand, revealing a red paper crane, and said:
"I just received news that the Jade Balance Immortal Mansion has been breached by a Celestial Being just like you, and the Court of Imperial Sacrifices has ordered me to go and activate the array's core."

Wu Chang squinted, as if he couldn't believe his ears, and asked, "Young Master Yuan, which immortal abode did you just mention?"

Yuan Yan repeated, "The Jade Balance Immortal Mansion located in the Jade Balance Cave, together with Tianquan here, connects the three places of Tianquan, Jade Balance, and Kaiyang, making a good start for breaking through the Demon Realm."

Wu Chang hissed; now it was his turn to calm himself down.

He never intended to hog all the benefits from the beginning. He only wanted to explore three of the seven immortal abodes himself. Why would anyone else want to take them from him?
So he's a Celestial Being, huh? Once he returns to the Human Alliance, he'll see who's so quick and efficient.

After waiting for a whole year without any movement from the seven immortal abodes, three of them were successfully explored in an instant as soon as the celestial beings appeared.

Yuan Yan shook his head, wondering if the time was right or if the Great Xuan cultivators were too weak.

Just as Yuan Yan was about to head to the first level of the Immortal Abode to connect the Tianquan Immortal Abode with the surrounding mountains and rivers, he suddenly saw a woman dressed in men's clothing with a heroic air about her, arriving at the island where the fifth trial was held in a small boat.

The woman held a strangely shaped square mirror in her hand, looking around as she muttered to herself:
"Strange, why did the ship stop halfway through its journey and the fifth trial not trigger?"

The woman looked up at Yuan Yan and Wu Chang, about to ask what was going on, but the moment she saw Wu Chang, she froze on the spot.

"Oops."

When Wu Chang saw the woman, although he appeared calm, he was actually no less surprised than the woman in front of him.

The real self is not familiar with women, but the woman in front of him is an old acquaintance of his true self.

The person standing in front of him at this moment was Meng Yawen, the director of the Security Management Department of Wanghai City Branch, who had been on sick leave and disappeared since the underground shelter, and who had abducted Fang Hui.

(End of this chapter)