## AST 1197 – Seven-Seven Divine Nebula Formation, One Step Away

Actually, Rong City was also a part of Yan City. The only thing was that Yan City was too large. Hence, within it, a lot of places were also known as cities. They were small cities, just like Rong City. Despite also being known as a city, it was a part of Yan City.

It would only take them half a day to travel from here to Rong City by riding on a fast demonic beast mount. They set off in the morning and by the evening, Rong City was already within sight.

At the time when Qing Shui first saw Rong City, he was shocked. When seen from afar , it seemed as if Rong City was covered in smog. It felt as if the entire place was in turmoil based on its murky atmosphere.

“Everyone, be careful, that’s the Scarlet Flame Formation set up by people of Scarlet Flame Region. We will take a rest here tonight and gather up again tomorrow. All of you should look for your own area to rest. If there are any emergency situations, send up the signal to call for help. Stay within a 100 li radius from this area, don’t travel beyond that.” said the old man.

After the old man finished his speech, he waved his hand. A lot of people flew down after that to look for places to stay. From here, Rong City was visible. But it would still probably take them an hour to get there. Only the people watching over this area stayed behind. The others all went down to the city to look for locations to lodge.

Qing Shui and the others stayed in a hotel nearby. They booked an entire floor. This way, it would help to prevent anyone from coming in. In any case, there were still other paths they could take to go up and down between the floors.

Qing Shui saw Third Prince here. However, no one else from Yu Clan was spotted. Fourth Prince was here too but he wasn’t with the people from Yan Clan, instead, he was with someone else whom Qing Shui didn’t know.

The people from Mu Clan from before didn’t come here to seek trouble. Qing Shui also didn’t let it bother him. So what if they were from an aristocratic clan? He didn’t need to show deference to them when he was in Great Yu Dynasty now.

Qing Shui stayed in a suite with the girl. In any case, there were a lot of bedrooms in there. He entered the Realm of the Violet Jade Immortal. He felt that the people from Mu Clan would definitely not let go of him. Considering that he embarrassed them in front of Seventh Princess and Yan Jinyu, they would definitely not leave the matter at that.

Qing Shui was thinking about whether he should take another step up, for example, join Heaven Secrets Academy or become a Royal State Master of a strong dynasty. Unfortunately, Qing Shui wasn’t that interested in a Grade Two Dynasty.

The Great Yu Dynasty was one of the top dynasties among the Grade Two Dynasties. But Qing Shui was unclear as to how profound they were, whether their strength just reached the top among the Grade Two Dynasties, whether they were already a Grade Three Dynasty or whether they had fallen all the way to a junior Grade Two Dynasty.

At least Heaven Secrets Academy was on the same level as Grade Four Dynasties. There were only two Grade Four Dynasties in the Western Oxhe Continent. The remaining Grade Two and Three Dynasties all needed to pay tribute to the Grade Four Dynasties.

And the area where Great Yu Dynasty was located at had to pay their tribute to Heaven Secrets Academy. The Western Oxhe Continent was too large. The forces of two Grade Four Dynasties and Heaven Secrets Academy together already covered half of the entire area. Within this area, they were all protected by the fourth grade forces in their area.

At least on the surface, it looked like the Western Oxhe Continent was ruled by Grade Four Dynasties. The Heaven Secrets Academy had the strength of a Grade Four Dynasty as well. It was said that there were also other Grade Four Dynasty forces on the other half of the continent. But Qing Shui didn’t really know much about them.

Qing Shui laid down on the ground in the Realm of the Violet Jade Immortal thinking about his future. He thought about Tian Jiange. He also knew that Heaven’s Academy was a colossus… One of their elite disciples was already a Grade Three State Master.

The reason why the idea of entering Heaven Secrets Academy surfaced in Qing Shui’s mind wasn’t because he wanted to learn new things from them. His techniques consisted of the Ancient Inheritances. He would still have to inherit and break through himself to truly increase his actual strength. Certainly, he would still be able to learn a thing or two while he was there. But the most important reason was he needed it as a stepping stone to gain access to even higher existences.

But now, he needed someone who could recommend him to the Heaven Secrets Academy. That person would be the eldest princess from Great Yu Dynasty. She was the youngest teacher in Heaven Secrets Academy. She had the right to bring in a student. It was said that they were only allowed to bring one person per year.

The reason why the royal family was this strong might have had a lot to do with her. There was Yan Jinyu as well, who was also a student from Heaven Secrets Academy. If Qing Shui wasn’t mistaken, her teacher might have run into her by chance and taken her into Heaven Secrets Academy.

Now, he had two roads, the first one was that he could join in through Yan Jinyu’s master, whereas the other one was through the eldest princess. He didn’t know whether the eldest princess had used her quota this year. But he felt that the chance of her having already used it was really high.

Heaven Secrets Academy was an existence above all dynasties in this area. It was an ancient sect. Every year, one third of Heaven Secrets Academy’s entrance quota would be given to the dynasties below them. The stronger a dynasty was, the more entries they would have. The remaining ones would be recruited through other means.

Of course, at one point, there had been quite a lot of Peak Grade Three Dynasties that attempted to replace Heaven Secrets Academy. But the result was them suffering a crushing defeat and getting annihilated.

A Grade Three Dynasty and a Grade Four Dynasty, there was a huge difference in their strengths. It could even be said that their strength difference was like a chasm. Since then, this very ancient sect continued to pass down its name. No one was clear about just how strong it actually was.

Qing Shui thought he should first wait for Yan Yangchi’s wedding. By then, he might have a chance to get in touch with the eldest princess. He would see by then if he fulfilled the conditions to enter Heaven Secrets Academy and slowly advance his way up when he arrived there. With Heaven Secrets Academy as his backer, as long as he could build his accomplishments there, he would be free to advance or retreat. Furthermore, he would be free to do his own things.

Even though that’s what he thought, he knew that all of this might take him some time. The only thing he needed to do now would be to enter Heaven Secrets Academy.

After deciding what he wanted to do next, Qing Shui started cultivating like usual. Both his spirit energy and strength were also slowly increasing. What he was cultivating right now was the Divine Nebula Formation.

The nebula within his sea of consciousness was surrounding the golden star in a way that seemed like they were doing heavenly motions. Those enigmatic rhythms really shocked Qing Shui.

Qing Shui already looked through the cultivation method and the way to use the Divine Nebula Formation one more time. He wanted to try it now.

The Divine Nebula Formation was a spiritual seal formation. Unlike the other formations, it didn’t need to be set up. Instead, it set up its formation within the sea of consciousness. After that, it would appear alongside Qing Shui’s spirit energy attacks.

Qing Shui was trying to control the Divine Nebula Formation in the Realm of the Violet Jade Immortal. He was attempting to control the motion of the stars to make his spirit energy reach a peak level. That was a very mystical arrangement. It could help make his spirit energy reach a power spike.

Now, Qing Shui wanted to set up the Seven-seven Stars Formation. This was the easiest one. The main thing which the Divine Nebula Formation did was increase the offensive and defensive strength of spirit energy. And also, increase the capacity of spirit energy stored in one’s body.

Even though he only had one night to do so, for Qing Shui, this one night was equivalent to three months. This was just the introduction phase, he felt that he could master it quite quickly. The cultivation of his Divine Nebula Formation was also progressing little by little.

As usual, the Golden Star was still in the most middle part of the stars. Now, what Qing Shui wanted to do was to sort out the arrangement of the other spiritual stars. This might seem really easy but it was a cultivation which consumed a lot of spirit energy.

Qing Shui tirelessly tried to arrange the combination of the stars into positions for the Seven-seven Stars Divine Nebula Formation. He didn’t know how much of the offensive strength of his spirit energy would increase once he succeeded with the Divine Nebula Formation.

What made Qing Shui happy was that if he managed to succeed in setting up the stars, as long as Qing Shui activated his consciousness, all of the stars would go back to their positions. For example, once Qing Shui had set up forty stars, even if he was to rest for half a day, when he went back to training, as soon as he activated his consciousness, those forty stars would instantly go back to the positions where Qing Shui put them, saving him from cultivating them from the beginning again. If that was not the case, Qing Shui didn’t know when he would be able to finish off the cultivation.

Now, as he progressed deeper into it, the more stars involved, the slower he became. For now, even if he was to cultivate for a day, he was still unable to adjust even one of them. At the beginning, he was able to at least arrange four in a day. Then, it decreased to three and to two. Now, he had to spend three days to adjust one. It slowly became such that he even needed five days to arrange one.

For now, the only thing Qing Shui knew was that he could only set up the easiest and simplest Seven-seven Divine Nebula Formation. However, he was still unsuccessful in completing the setup. Afterwards, there were still the Eight-eight and Nine-nine Divine Nebula Formations.

With Qing Shui’s current strength, he was unclear about what lay even further along for the formation. Not only that, he didn’t even know about its current effect. Eighty days have passed in the realm. He only needed one more star to gather all forty nine of them. In other words, the Seven-seven Divine Nebula Formation was almost going to succeed.

But it seemed like the last star wasn’t that easy to arrange. Even if Qing Shui had twenty days time, he wasn’t really confident that he would succeed. Even though he was impatient, he kept his cool. He would just have to delay it for at most two days.

It was just that he was about to enter Rong City to fight the people from Scarlet Flame Region. On top of that, he also had a “tagalong” by his side. Naturally, he would hope for it to succeed earlier. This way, he might be able to increase his strength by a significant amount.

Even with the last bit of time, Qing Shui still didn’t manage to succeed. He couldn’t arrange even one star with twenty days. Originally, Qing Shui thought that it wouldn’t be long until he was able to set up the Eight-eight or perhaps even Nine-nine Divine Nebula Formation. Now, he was aware that his thought back then was too naive.

Even if it didn’t succeed, Qing Shui felt that the spirit energy in his sea of consciousness was a lot more abundant than before. At the time when he used spirit energy attacks, there wasn’t much change in its strength.

After all, he didn’t succeed in the most crucial step. Just like casting swords, if the last step didn’t succeed, it would be a crippled sword no matter what. Hence, so long as the final step succeeded, a change in its quality would occur.

Early in the morning, Qing Shui woke up. He only came back after bringing the girl out to practice Taichi Fist. The hotel had already served them food. Everyone finished the food together in the dining hall before heading off to the gathering point.

When they arrived there, there were already a lot of people. There were also quite a few people rushing their way here. Finally, at the time when the old men did a headcount, they realized that there were more than ten warriors absent. This made them frown.

“Upon entering Rong City this time, everyone must look after each other and try to kill more enemies. This is a really good practice. Every warrior needs to go through this kind of blood ritual. It is still not too late for people who wants to run back home and be cowards. If no one intends on doing so, we will now rush our way to Rong City” The old man’s voice resounded in the sky.

The people in the surroundings were already rushing their way towards Rong City. Qing Shui looked at them and realized that there were as many as a thousand people. All of these people were recognized as the elites from their clan. If one of them was to be sacrificed in this war, it would mean a huge loss to their clan. But this was a kind of ritual which every strong warrior would have to go through. If they didn’t they would never be worthy to be called a strong warrior.

Qing Shui and the group made their move. They followed the crowd and flew towards Rong City that was covered up with smog.

Qing Shui used Divine Force to protect the girl. If he didn’t do so, she wouldn’t be able to stand this kind of high speed. A lot of people had actually also started noticing the girl. No one knew why Qing Shui brought along an ordinary person who knew nothing about cultivation. Furthermore, this girl was someone who tended to make people around her uncomfortable. Maybe because of this, no one really talked about Qing Shui and the girl in front of him.

The smog was getting closer and closer, Qing Shui spread out his spiritual sense.