Immortality Through Array Formations (The Quest for Immortality)

Chapter 1144: Great Wilderness Sect

Along the journey so far, Mo Hua had encountered all manner of sect elites—sect masters, elders, and even that walking corpse-path young master. Each time, his mind would instinctively start scheming, and murderous intent would rise unbidden.

But now, traveling with ordinary boatmen, eating and sleeping alongside them, he felt a rare, simple kindness. In that down-to-earth company, he touched a kind of unvarnished humanity.

The turmoil in his heart faded somewhat, and his understanding of the "common people" grew a bit clearer.

"Humans..."

Mo Hua paused, momentarily lost in thought.

The sandboat continued its voyage, wind and sand blotting out the sky.

Mo Hua, for the first time, forgot about cultivation and status. He worked hard like any other low-tier body cultivator—eating when hungry, sleeping when tired.

By day, he leaned over the side of the boat, staring at the boundless sea of sand. By night, he stood on deck, gazing into the swirling, sand-filled darkness. His heart was calm. The ominous energy and aggression in his fate began to slowly dissipate.

Half a month passed in such fashion. The voyage, all things considered, went smoothly.

There were no major disasters—just occasional minor troubles.

The most common were Sand Fiends.

"Sand Fiend" was a general term for the demon beasts that inhabited the desert.

Cultivators below the Nascent Soul realm couldn't fly, and without a sandboat, there was no way to survive or even travel in the vast desert, much less cross it safely.

But the Sand Fiends were different.

Compared to cultivators, they were born to thrive in the sand sea, adapting to its harsh conditions over generations. They used the desert's cover to breed and flourish.

Their limbs, beaks, feathers, tails—every part of them was mutated specifically to master the environment.

Mo Hua once saw a sandy-yellow Sand Fiend that resembled a pangolin, swimming freely through the dunes, diving and surfacing with ease.

He also saw a hawk-like Sand Fiend with a long brown beak gliding over the dunes, flapping its wings like an aerial predator.

There were many more, with bizarre scales and twisted claws—creatures Mo Hua had never even imagined.

Seeing them with his own eyes, he couldn't help but marvel at the vastness of heaven and earth and the strangeness of creation.

In truth, these Sand Fiends seemed like the true masters of the desert.

And humans? Merely uninvited guests.

Of course, as "demon beasts," Sand Fiends naturally retained their ferocious nature and were deeply hostile to cultivators.

To them, cultivators were just another food source.

Along the way, all sorts of weird and grotesque Grade-One and Grade-Two Sand Fiends would lie in wait beneath the sand, suddenly leaping out to ambush the sandboats—completely unpredictable.

Ordinary cultivators couldn't detect them at all.

Thankfully, the old boat captain and his crew had spent their lives plying the sands. With years of experience under their belts, they often sensed the danger before the beasts even surfaced—like some uncanny foresight—shouting warnings just in time.

Then, either the boat would take evasive maneuvers or the crew would harpoon the beasts. Everything was handled swiftly and orderly.

Mo Hua was secretly impressed.

His divine sense was powerful enough to easily perceive the hidden movements of the Sand Fiends.

But the boatmen weren't highly cultivated. Their divine senses were limited. They relied purely on hardened instincts, honed through years of navigating wind and sand, and a keen, intuitive eye.

Mo Hua sighed inwardly.

Anyone who could survive in the cultivation world on their own—no matter their realm or strength—wasn't someone to be underestimated.

Sure, those with dragon-like bearing and phoenix-like grace might be born with talent…

But among the nameless and unknown, there were often capable individuals as well.

The more he traveled, the more people he met, the stronger Mo Hua felt this truth.

Aside from the Sand Fiends, the desert also occasionally revealed the wreckage of old boats and sand-worn reefs.

If a ship collided with one of these hazards, the hull could suffer damage.

These wind-and-sand "reefs" demanded careful attention.

Lastly, there were the Sand Bandits.

Comparable to mountain bandits, these rogue cultivators made their living by raiding others. Riding skin rafts like desert hyenas or lice, they darted through the sand sea, attacking weaker vessels to kill and plunder.

They were savage and desperate criminals.

In fact, sand bandits were even more brutal than their mountain counterparts.

Mountain bandits, if defeated, could escape into the hills.

But sand bandits? If they lost and fell into the desert, they were as good as dead. So once they made a move, they fought to the death.

Mo Hua saw a few sand bandit groups along the way.

Fortunately, they were small, just a handful of men. They kept their distance, eyeing the boat from afar, but didn't dare to strike. After a while, they scattered.

These risks were left to the boat captain and his men to handle.

Mo Hua, when free, turned his attention to the sandboat's structure.

The sandboat traveled across the dunes, churning the sand beneath it like a ship cutting through waves.

But it was quite different from a normal boat.

A regular boat could float on water with no effort.

Not so the sandboat. It needed the bones of Sand Fiends for its keel and their hides for its sails—only then could it float atop the sand sea and not sink.

At least, that's what Mo Hua had believed.

That's also what Steward Wang from Little Post City had told him before he died.

But after personally riding a sandboat and observing its operation, Mo Hua realized something: the bones and hides of Sand Fiends only allowed the boat to briefly float and resist erosion from the wind and sand.

The real secret was the array formation.

A very unique array formation.

Without this array, the sandboat wouldn't stay afloat for long, nor would it move at all.

Outsiders didn't understand the internal mechanics, so they wrongly assumed that the beast materials were the key.

Local families, of course, weren't eager to expose the sandboat's secrets, and thus never corrected this false belief.

So, what many in the world took as "fact" was often just the ignorant assumptions of outsiders. Insiders knew the truth—and usually found those assumptions laughable.

"There really are many things in this world… that you simply won't understand until you see them for yourself."

Mo Hua sighed.

Then, as per habit, he began dissecting the internal structure of the sandboat in reverse—analyzing the formation's design.

The array was extremely secretive, engraved on the bottom of the boat and covered with multiple layers of wood and iron, shielding it from prying eyes.

Ordinary array masters wouldn't be able to detect anything.

But Mo Hua wasn't ordinary—he had learned the Heavenly Secret Derivative Algorithm.

A mysterious algorithm on par with the Heavenly Secret Deceptive Algorithm used by the Trickster Daoist. Though not widely known or discussed, few realized just how terrifyingly profound this algorithmic method—named after the "Heavenly Secret"—truly was.

Even Mo Hua didn't fully understand it.

He only knew that his master's teachings in the Heavenly Secret Derivative Algorithm were formidable, though he'd only grasped the surface.

The deeper parts remained a mystery to him.

Still, even this shallow understanding had benefited him immensely.

At the very least, it made "reverse-engineering" array formations practically a divine art.

The sandboat moved steadily through the desert winds.

Beneath it, the core formation operated, transforming the sand below into a flowing slurry, which then pushed the boat forward.

Mo Hua, with nothing else to do, lay on the deck staring into the endless sand sea, while his divine sense silently calculated—tracing the spiritual energy patterns emitted by the formation, and deducing its structural categories and rune composition.

"There's Water and Earth runes from the Five Elements…"

"Also Bagua patterns… the Gen trigram…"

"The structure's not overly complex, but the concept is extremely clever—using Earth to generate sand and harmonize with the desert. Then, a bit of Water to solidify the sand's surface, followed by Gen to form a temporary mountain array that supports the hull…"

"And… is that a bit of the Xùn trigram?"

"Using the Xùn Wind to push the sandboat forward?"

…

Mo Hua's deductions only deepened his awe—the more he analyzed, the more exquisite the array appeared, filling him with silent admiration.

The formation used on this sandboat was, at a glance, a hybrid of the Five Elements and Bagua Arrays.

The framework wasn't particularly obscure, but the ratios between the array runes, their sequential operation, mutual interactions, their influence on external factors, and the environmental feedback they triggered… there were many variables, each carefully considered.

With just a glance, Mo Hua could tell—this formation carried with it enormous computational weight, deep thought, and the painstaking efforts of its creator.

Most likely, it was developed over generations by the local array masters of Lì Prefecture—refined, improved, and perfected through immense effort.

Its sole purpose: to create a formation capable of helping ships traverse the sea of sand.

This formation… was like an "answer."

The answer itself wasn't particularly difficult.

But deriving such an answer—one that truly solved the problem—had likely consumed the lifetimes of countless brilliant array masters.

Mo Hua felt a genuine sense of respect in his heart.

Just then, the sound of footsteps interrupted his thoughts. He quickly gathered his focus and turned his head, only to see the old boat captain walking over—his back slightly hunched and face weathered by years of wind and sand.

The old captain nodded upon seeing Mo Hua.

Mo Hua greeted him in return, "Good evening, Captain."

The boat captain seemed to be tired from keeping constant watch over the desert, guarding against Sand Fiends and bandits, and had come up for a bit of air.

Seeing Mo Hua already there, he sat beside him on the deck, staring into the swirling sands and asked casually:

"How are you holding up? Getting used to it?"

Mo Hua nodded. "I'm managing."

The boat captain gave a slight approving nod. "You're not bad, kid."

Just then, a gust of wind and sand blew through. The captain coughed several times, spitting out a mouthful of grit.

Mo Hua thought for a moment, then asked, "Captain, there's an array on this boat, right?"

The captain replied, "Of course. What sandboat doesn't have one? Without it, the boat wouldn't even move."

Mo Hua continued, "Who engraved these arrays?"

The captain gave him a curious look. "Why are you asking about that?"

Mo Hua answered honestly, "Just curious. Thought I'd ask."

The captain glanced over at him—this bronze-skinned, slim young man with a gentle face and clear eyes. He didn't seem dangerous or cunning, so the captain let down his guard and nodded.

"These arrays are drawn by the formation masters working for the boat company."

Mo Hua asked, "Do you know what kind of arrays they are?"

The old captain shook his head. "How would I know? The company doesn't let us ask, and we're not allowed to make any changes ourselves. Whatever they give us, we use."

He sighed. "To be honest, these arrays are basically money pits."

"Money pits?" Mo Hua echoed.

The old captain nodded. "Just maintaining the formations on these boats every year takes a hefty amount of spirit stones. And if something goes wrong and we have to redraw it from scratch? It's like bleeding dry—we might as well have worked the whole year for free."

"So harsh?" Mo Hua asked, surprised.

The captain nodded gravely. "And you're not allowed to complain. If you do, the company won't engrave arrays on your boat, and if you don't have those, you're not allowed to operate. No array, no trade. No trade, no food."

Mo Hua frowned.

If his guess was correct, these formations were the product of generations of local array masters in Lì Prefecture—painstakingly refined for one purpose: to help cultivators safely traverse the desert and make a living here.

But now, this hard-earned knowledge, once meant to benefit fellow cultivators, had been monopolized by family-run companies and used as a tool to exploit the lower ranks—turning it into a business of profit and oppression.

Mo Hua's expression darkened slightly.

He had always thought about studying and developing formations to comprehend the Dao and help the masses.

But now, it seemed that simply developing formations wasn't enough—it mattered who wielded them.

The more advanced the formations became, the higher the barriers they created—and the more those at the bottom were squeezed by them.

And these barriers… were nearly impossible for grassroots cultivators to break through.

Mo Hua furrowed his brow.

The more one personally experienced the world, the more one realized how complex things truly were. Solving a problem was never as simple as it first seemed.

Just then, a voice spoke, "Young man…"

Mo Hua blinked and turned his head. The boat captain was watching him.

"What are you thinking about?"

Mo Hua came back to himself and chuckled. "Nothing much. Just a little sleepy…"

The captain's voice grew serious. He warned:

"These days have been rough, but that's how it is out in the wild. You've got to stay sharp—never let your guard down. One careless moment, and you might lose your life…"

Mo Hua knew he meant well and smiled. "Thank you, Captain. I'll keep that in mind."

The old man nodded.

Mo Hua hesitated a moment, then suddenly asked, "By the way, Captain… I heard that in the Great Wilderness, there's… some kind of war going on?"

The captain paused, then sighed. "Yeah… it's started. And this time, it's worse than before…"

Mo Hua was surprised. "There were fights before too?"

The old man nodded. "The Great Wilderness has always been wild and backward—chaotic for centuries. Big wars are rare, but skirmishes have never stopped. But now…"

His expression grew grim. "Now it looks like they mean business."

Mo Hua frowned. "So what's the situation now?"

The captain shook his head. "How would I know? I'm just an old man ferrying boats through the desert, trying to make a living. Stuff like that's far above my pay grade. But…"

He paused, then slowly continued:

"I did overhear some passengers talking. They said this uprising in the Great Wilderness is bigger than anything before—there are even demon troops riding royal tigers. And they're shouting things like 'The Azure Heaven is dead—Yellow Heaven shall rise…'"

Mo Hua's heart suddenly chilled. His hand reflexively brushed over his Storage Ring.

Inside that ring… was the dragon banner bearing the words: "The Azure Heaven is dead—Wilderness Heaven shall rise."

The captain, completely unaware, went on, "...These people are insane. But I heard that the barbarian army is massive and fearsome, already breaching several fortified checkpoints. The Dao Court was caught off guard and suffered a crushing defeat…"

"Of course, that's just what I heard. Who knows if it's true or not…"

"These days, people's words are cheap—rumors fly with the wind. It's hard to tell truth from lies anymore."

Mo Hua frowned. "Then doesn't that mean Desert City isn't safe?"

The old captain, however, replied confidently: "That won't happen."

Mo Hua looked puzzled.

The old captain continued, "Sure, the situation is chaotic—but it's not like everything is in chaos. At the very least, Desert City won't fall."

"This place is the only Grade-Four Immortal City within thousands of miles, standing firm in the sea of sand, positioned right at the border between Lì Prefecture and the Great Wilderness. Its location is incredibly strategic."

"You could say it's a checkpoint established by the Dao Court."

"What's more, Desert City is under the control of the Great Wilderness Sect. That's a top-tier Grade-Four sect."

Mo Hua was surprised. "Desert City belongs to the Great Wilderness Sect?"

Tongxian City was in northern Lì Prefecture, near Kan Prefecture.

Mo Hua had lived in Tongxian City for many years, so he didn't know much about the sects and power structures of southern Lì Prefecture and the regions bordering the Great Wilderness.

The old boatman didn't blame him for his ignorance.

A young man wandering the world—it was normal to lack some knowledge.

So the captain explained, "The lands south of Lì Prefecture are called the Great Wilderness. And the Great Wilderness Sect, well, just from the name, you can guess—it's a big deal."

Mo Hua asked, "What's the origin of the Great Wilderness Sect?"

The captain, who had spent a lifetime sailing and collecting a bellyful of random trivia, loved nothing more than chatting during downtime. Now that Mo Hua asked, he pulled out a flask of cheap liquor, took a sip to wet his throat, and began his tale:

"Originally, the Great Wilderness had no such sect."

"Thousands of years ago—I forget exactly how long—the Great Wilderness rebelled. Declared itself a sovereign royal court and openly defied the Dao Court."

"The Dao Court sent troops to suppress the rebellion."

"That war dragged on for a long time—probably centuries—before it was finally quelled."

"After that, the royal authority of the Great Wilderness was destroyed, and the rebel forces were crushed."

"To tighten control over the region, the Dao Court forcibly established a sect under its direct supervision, right in the Great Wilderness. And to drive the point home, they named it the Great Wilderness Sect—specifically to suppress the remnants of the old royal families and the various lords of the Great Wilderness."

"There's another theory, too—that the sect was meant to suppress the fortune and destiny of the Great Wilderness."

"Think about it: your ancestral land, where your royal bloodline lived for generations, is now just the site of a Dao Court-run sect."

"With that in place, how could you possibly call yourself 'emperor' again?"

"And so, over the years, the Great Wilderness Sect has stationed itself across all provinces and tribal regions of the Great Wilderness."

"In many places, it's set up branch sects."

"Among them, Grade-Four Desert City is the largest territory outside of the main sect headquarters in Great Wilderness City."

Mo Hua asked, "With all that… the Great Wilderness Sect is just a Grade-Four?"

The captain gave him a side glance.

"Just a Grade-Four? Kid, what's with that tone? Talking like a Grade-Four is beneath you… You think you're from some glorious Grade-Five sect or something?"

Mo Hua stayed silent.

The captain went on to explain:

"You're still young—you don't get it yet. The sect ranking system in the cultivation world isn't like counting on your fingers. It's not 'One, Two, Three, Four, Five'—just climb up like that and call it a day."

"The higher you go, the colder it gets."

"Especially for sects—once you reach Grade-Five, the implications change completely. The authority becomes massive. The Dao Court would never grant Grade-Five status to the Great Wilderness Sect."

"These days, if the Dao Court doesn't lower your rank, you're already lucky. Forget about climbing up."

"Besides, there are only so many 'pits' for carrots. No matter how big the carrot, if there's no pit left, it's useless."

"And you've got to understand—the Grade-Five sects near Dao Prefecture and other major regions aren't even in the same league as a theoretical Grade-Five here in the remote Great Wilderness."

"If they did make the Great Wilderness Sect a Grade-Five… it'd be like letting a monster run free down here. The Dao Court wouldn't be able to control it."

"So after all these years, the Great Wilderness Sect is still a Grade-Four."

"But make no mistake—this is a powerful Grade-Four, the strongest on the frontier. It holds vast territory and wields serious strength."

The old captain spoke freely, full of stories and insight.

Mo Hua's heart stirred.

"The Great Wilderness Sect…"

He suddenly remembered—his childhood friends, Da Hu and the other two, had joined this very sect.

Until now, he hadn't realized how formidable the Great Wilderness Sect actually was.

Now that he was heading to Desert City… would he meet Da Hu and the others again?

(End of this Chapter)