He has been reincarnated through countless worlds, adorned with billions of mythological terms!

But I didn't think much of it.

Yun Yi glanced at everyone's positions, then looked away and continued waiting.

As the sun sets behind the plains west of Yanhui Mountain, the sky changes from dark red to deep blue, and then from deep blue to inky black.

One by one, the stars lit up, and the stream at the bottom of the valley reflected the starlight, like a broken silver thread.

The wind rushed in from the valley entrance, whistling through the rocks like many people talking in hushed tones in the distance.

Xu Youlan arrived at 11:45 AM.

She was dressed in a moon-white dress, exactly the same one she wore at the Spring Breeze Pavilion that day, and carrying a zither in her arms as she walked along the official road.

She walked at a moderate pace, her skirt trailing on the ground, covered in grass clippings and dust, but she didn't seem to care.

The moonlight shone on her, bathing her in a light silvery-white glow, making her look like a fairy who had stepped out of the moon palace.

She paused at the valley entrance and saw Helian Rong standing on a large rock.

"Just you?"

She asked in a flat tone, as if asking for directions.

Helian Rong did not answer.

He jumped off the rock, stretched his shoulders, and his joints cracked and popped like a string of firecrackers exploding inside his flesh.

With the three major systems of Land Immortal God, Martial King Realm, and Beast Taming Fusion, his physical body is comparable to that of a God Transformation Realm cultivator.

He didn't use any weapons, because his body was a weapon.

Xu Youlan glanced at him, then looked away and continued walking into the valley with her zither in her arms.

The moment she stepped into the valley, Xiao Yanzhi activated the formation.

The anti-air formation lit up first—thirty-six pale golden beams of light rose simultaneously from both sides of the mountain ridge, converging at a height of a hundred feet above the valley top, weaving a huge net of light that enveloped the entire Goose Return Valley, separating the inside and outside of the valley into two worlds.

The maze followed closely behind, and the jumbled rocks at the bottom of the valley suddenly "came to life": those large stones that had been lying in the same place for thousands of years began to move—not actually move, but space itself moved.

The stones' positions remained unchanged, but their relative positions changed—a distance that could be crossed in one step became ten steps, the straight path suddenly turned into a bend, and the unobstructed view was suddenly blocked by a stone wall that appeared out of nowhere.

The third activation of the Trapped Formation.

Nine beams of earth-yellow light rose from the depths of the earth, climbing up the mountain wall like nine giant pythons coiling around the entire Goose Return Valley.

Countless fine filaments stretched out between the beams of light, weaving a dense, impenetrable net.

The spiritual energy of heaven and earth within the net began to solidify—from flowing water to viscous slurry, and from slurry to hard ice.

Xu Youlan stood at the intersection of the maze and the trapping array, holding her zither in her arms. She looked up at the net of light above her head, then down at the threads of light beneath her feet, and said:

"I thought you guys were going to give me some kind of surprise. You've really disappointed me."

Her fingers touched the strings and plucked a note.

It was just one sound, exactly the same as that one in the Spring Breeze Pavilion that day.

The sound of the zither spread out and collided with the light threads of the trapping array—the light threads trembled violently, as if the strings of a zither were being plucked by the same hand. The tremor was transmitted from one light thread to another, from the trapping array to the maze array, and from the maze array to the anti-air array.

The three formations simultaneously emitted sharp ringing sounds; they were not shattering, but rather "resonating."

Xu Youlan's zither music found the weakest frequency in each layer of the formation, and then she used her own voice to imitate that frequency, making the formation fight itself.

Xiao Yanzhi's expression changed.

He stood up from his hiding place, formed a hand seal, and switched the control of the four-layered array from "automatic" to "manual".

The three formations stabilized simultaneously—the light filaments stopped vibrating, the rocks stopped moving, and the light net became dense again.

But Xu Youlan's second note on the zither had already sounded.

Her fingertips danced across the seven strings at such a speed that the movement was invisible, leaving only a blurry silhouette.

The music surged forth like a tide, not in one direction, but in all directions.

Each note precisely struck a node of the formation—all thirty-six nodes of the anti-air formation were hit simultaneously, all seventy-two nodes of the maze formation were hit simultaneously, and all nine leyline nodes of the trapping formation were hit simultaneously.

Nodes are not the weakness of a formation; nodes are its foundation.

Attacking a node is like attacking the foundation of a building; ordinary cultivators simply cannot do it because the node is protected by layers of formations and cannot be touched from the outside.

However, Xu Youlan's zither music did not attack from the outside—her music resonated directly inside the formation.

She found the frequency at which the formation operated, and then used her own music to "join" that frequency, making her voice a part of the formation.

Once her voice becomes part of the formation, she can control it from within.

The anti-air array was the first to collapse.

The thirty-six beams of light dimmed simultaneously, and the net of light at the top of the valley began to dissolve from the center, like a spider web burned through by fire—the opening rapidly expanded, and the broken edges curled and burned, turning into golden specks of light that drifted away.

The maze collapses for the second time.

With all seventy-two nodes failing simultaneously, the "alive" rocks reverted to inanimate objects, the spatial distortion returned to normal, the elongated distances shrank back to their original size, and the folded view unfolded anew.

They are trapped and struggling to hold on.

The light from the nine pillars of earth veins had dimmed considerably, and many of the light threads had broken, but the foundation of the earth veins remained—Xiao Yanzhi had planted the foundation of the trapping formation too deep, deep into the earth veins of Yan Hui Mountain.

Xu Youlan's zither music can shake the part above the earth's veins, but it cannot shake the earth's veins themselves.

Then the killing formation was activated.

The design logic of the four-layered array is: the first three arrays weaken the target layer by layer, and when the target breaks through to the center of the killing array, the remaining power of the first three arrays will collapse towards the center along with the killing array itself.

Xu Youlan broke through two and a half layers of formations in one go—the remaining power of the anti-air formation and the maze formation, the part of the trapping formation that had not yet collapsed, and the killing formation that had never been truly activated, all of which were triggered at the same time.

The four formations and four forces were all mixed together at this moment.

Xiao Yanzhi's body jolted violently, and he spat out a mouthful of blood, which dissipated into a dark red mist under the moonlight.

The Four-Layered Array was his natal array. When the array was broken, his sea of ​​consciousness and dantian suffered backlash at the same time.

But he didn't fall; instead, he smiled—blood dripped from the corner of his mouth, but his eyes shone with a frightening light.

He knew from the beginning that conventional formations could not trap Xu Youlan.

Therefore, the final layer of the four-layered formation was not placed in the Goose Return Valley, but inside his own body.

He used himself as the core of the formation, refining the essence of the killing formation into his dantian.

This was the moment he had been waiting for—for Xu Youlan to break through the first three layers of the formation, to mix all the power together, to turn the entire Yan Hui Valley into a chaotic energy vortex, and then he would set himself on fire.