“Another peerless array!”

Mo Hua’s heart trembled slightly, yet he also felt a pang of emotion.

Peerless arrays were peculiar things. Either you searched painstakingly and couldn’t find a single one, or they appeared in clusters, all at once, before your eyes.

No wonder his master said that finding peerless arrays depended on serendipity, on luck, and sometimes, even on fate.

What is fated to be yours will eventually be yours; what is not fated cannot be forced.

However, Mo Hua thought about it from a different perspective and felt that it might not entirely depend on “fate” and “luck.”

Peerless arrays were related to profound laws.

The deeper one’s understanding of these laws, the more sensitive one would be to clues about peerless arrays.

Similarly, the stronger one’s spiritual perception, the deeper one’s mastery of array formations, and the more advanced one’s Tianji calculations, the easier it would be to discern the hidden secrets of the world and find traces of peerless arrays.

At least this Yuan Gu Peerless Array was something he had forcibly pried out of this “turtle shell” like Yuan Gu heavy armor using law derivations, spiritual perception calculations, and various other methods.

It showed that if one’s “fate” was not good, one should continuously cultivate and strengthen oneself to change it.

If one’s “luck” was not favorable, one should constantly gain insight, improve one’s understanding of laws, possess eyes that could see through destiny, and actively seek and seize opportunities.

Mo Hua nodded, feeling that he had gained many more insights into principles that seemed useless but were actually of great importance.

Next, it was time to learn a new peerless array.

Mo Hua felt anticipation in his heart, but his face remained impassive as he said to Tie Shugu and the heavy-armored barbarian soldier:

“Alright, you can stop now.”

Tie Shugu and the heavy-armored barbarian soldier, the two “tools” who had been fighting fiercely, finally stopped their attacks, their eyes red and gasping for breath.

These two had greatly helped Mo Hua.

For the past few days, they had fought relentlessly. When exhausted, they would stop, and once their strength recovered, they would resume their struggle.

The heavy-armored barbarian soldier genuinely wanted to kill Tie Shugu, the “traitor” who had abandoned the barbarian god and his ancestors.

The “traitor” Tie Shugu initially did not want to kill him, but as they fought, anger flared within him, and he developed a desire to kill.

He was a Jindan cultivator, and even with the limitations of the mountain realm, his cultivation was stronger than that of the heavy-armored barbarian soldier.

However, the heavy-armored barbarian soldier, clad in the indestructible Yuan Gu heavy armor, did not fall into a disadvantage even in a real life-and-death struggle.

The two tried to kill each other, and as they fought, it was as if they had developed a “deadly feud,” leading to an incessant death match.

It was precisely because of this that the Yuan Gu heavy armor could endure attacks for a long time, and the internal arrays circulated continuously.

This also provided great convenience for Mo Hua to derive the arrays.

Such array derivation was extremely profound, and Mo Hua performed it with extreme stealth. Few people knew that he possessed such incredible methods.

Mo Hua also did not want to reveal it; otherwise, he would definitely be guarded against everywhere in the future.

It would not be so easy for him to “secretly calculate” arrays then.

Mo Hua glanced at the heavy-armored barbarian soldier, nodded slightly, and said with a serious expression:

“I admit that the Yuan Gu heavy armor of your Shugu tribe’s ancestors is indeed extraordinary. Even the spear blessed by this shaman priest cannot break it…”

“But don’t be happy too soon. I will now seek the oracle of the Divine Lord. There will surely be a way to break your heavy armor, extinguish the might of your barbarian god, shame your ancestors, and let you know what true divine power is…”

Mo Hua provoked him with words to prevent him from committing suicide.

This heavy-armored barbarian soldier was a foolishly loyal barbarian warrior, very superstitious and relatively simple-minded. He was definitely no match for a genius like Mo Hua when it came to schemes.

A hundred of him wouldn’t have as much cunning as Mo Hua alone.

Upon hearing this, he indeed looked furious and sneered:

“Good, I, Adagu, will defend the prestige of Lord Barbarian God and the glory of my ancestors. I will let this demon know the power of my Shugu tribe’s heavy armor and the immortality of my Shugu tribe’s ancestral legacy!”

“Adagu… is that the name of this barbarian soldier?”

“The names of this Shugu tribe are truly peculiar…”

Mo Hua muttered inwardly, then sneered, “Overestimating yourself.”

After that, he instructed Tie Shugu to keep an eye on this heavy-armored barbarian soldier named Adagu, then turned and left.

After leaving, Mo Hua found a secret room, sealed it with arrays, and then eagerly took out the Yuan Gu heavy armor array diagram he had just restored, studying it meticulously.

A second-rank, twenty-pattern peerless array.

The rank of this array was lower than Mo Hua’s twenty-three-pattern Daoist spiritual perception, so he was fully capable of learning it.

The array diagram was also personally derived and restored by Mo Hua, so the formal array patterns were not difficult.

The only difficulty lay in the “laws” contained within the peerless array.

The combination of arrays and laws is called array formations.

Any array formation contains certain “laws.”

Peerless arrays and ordinary array formations are essentially composed of “laws.”

But ordinary array formations – that is, array formations within the usual rank limits – contain weak law power, and rely more on the external “form” of the array.

One can learn ordinary array formations without understanding laws. As long as one can draw the array patterns, they will have a certain power and effect.

Of course, if one can comprehend a certain amount of weak laws, it would naturally be an added bonus, and the array formations drawn would be better than others.

But peerless arrays are different.

Peerless arrays contain stronger and more unique “law power.”

This law power transcends the formal array patterns of the array.

To learn a peerless array, one must comprehend the relevant laws and Daoist principles.

Otherwise, merely learning the external array patterns of a peerless array, like drawing a gourd from a dipper, is completely useless.

One cannot master a peerless array if it has its outside but not its inside, its array but not its law, its form but not its spirit.

Therefore, for ordinary array formations, the “array” is the core, and with the array comes the law – although this “law” is very weak.

For peerless arrays, the “law” is the core; only by comprehending the law can there be an array, and without the law, there is no array.

The different emphasis on arrays and laws is the fundamental difference between ordinary array formations and peerless arrays.

Mo Hua had only vaguely known about this point before.

Now that he had entered the Great Wilderness and come into contact with the power of Taotie, comprehending deeper changes in laws, he had a clearer understanding.

The Yuan Gu heavy armor peerless array before him followed the same principle.

The formal “array patterns” were no longer a difficulty for an array master of Mo Hua’s caliber.

The real difficulty still lay in the “laws” contained within the array.

According to Mo Hua’s preliminary deduction, since this Yuan Gu heavy armor peerless array was related to the main Shugu tribe, to the Shugu ancestors, and to the endless abyss.

The laws it contained were most likely some kind of “Taotie” power.

And this Taotie power was very likely related to the twenty-three-pattern Taotie peerless array within the barbarian god head of the secret Shugu tribe, which he had already obtained but still couldn’t comprehend.

Comprehending this twenty-pattern Yuan Gu heavy armor peerless array might allow him to understand certain Taotie laws.

Then, using these Taotie laws as a “stepping stone,” he could then comprehend the twenty-three-pattern Taotie peerless array.

This approach, from simple to profound, step by step, finding certain “correlations” among various complex arrays, even extremely abstruse peerless arrays, and then dissecting them, comprehending them bit by bit, connecting them, and finally integrating them…

Almost only truly enlightened masters of array Dao could achieve this.

But Mo Hua didn’t think that much, nor did he know if he counted as a master. He was simply driven by “curiosity” and “thirst for knowledge,” almost instinctively, using every means to seek the truth of arrays and to understand the “Dao” behind the laws.

Because of his purity, he was powerful.

And Mo Hua’s comprehension, sharpened by prolonged contemplation, had further enhanced.

This twenty-pattern Yuan Gu heavy armor peerless array, in Mo Hua’s eyes, did not seem particularly difficult to understand.

After contemplating it dozens of times, Mo Hua quickly, by intuition, caught a glimpse of a “law.”

But Mo Hua was not very happy.

Because he suddenly realized that the situation was not at all what he had imagined.

He had misjudged the “law.”

The twenty-pattern Yuan Gu Peerless Array and the twenty-three-pattern Taotie Peerless Array contained different “laws.”

In fact, in some sense, these were two completely unrelated arrays.

Mo Hua sighed deeply, his mood extremely complex.

The Taotie power that spawned the famine, and the Taotie array it represented.

The twenty-pattern Yuan Gu heavy armor peerless array.

The twenty-three-pattern Shugu peerless array in the barbarian god’s head.

The twenty-four-pattern Twelve Meridians Taotie Spirit Bone Array.

A total of four peerless arrays, four different laws!

Among them, the famine array, the Shugu peerless array, and the Twelve Meridians Taotie Spirit Bone Array – Mo Hua could tentatively determine that the laws of these three peerless arrays were somewhat related to “Taotie.”

But this Yuan Gu heavy armor peerless array was different again.

On the surface, this Yuan Gu Peerless Array did not seem related to Taotie. The laws it contained were special, and Mo Hua could not determine what the law of this “Yuan Gu” actually was…

Mo Hua lay on the stone chair, couldn’t help but rub his temples, feeling a headache.

“Is this a peerless array…”

“Is this Taotie…”

“Is this the ancient legacy of the Great Wilderness…”

“These things… they are too difficult… who created these arrays anyway?”

“Can these things really be learned and understood by humans?”

Mo Hua closed his eyes, rested for a while, calmed his mind, then sat up straight again and continued to contemplate.

In the Great Dao of the world, one must spend a lifetime studying, thinking deeply, to gain understanding.

Only by expending enough effort can one achieve enlightenment.

“Difficulty” is very normal.

If he found it so difficult, let alone others.

And precisely because it was so difficult, if he could learn and integrate it, he would be stronger than others.

Constantly climbing to higher places, seeking deeper Dao.

This was also the “Dao” of an array master.

A sense of relief arose in Mo Hua’s heart, along with a bit more courage and composure in the face of difficulties.

“It’s also a good thing that it’s different from the Taotie law. If I learn it, it means I can comprehend another law…”

Mo Hua began to focus intently, studying the mysteries within the ancestral Yuan Gu heavy armor of the Shugu tribe.

He no longer bothered about whether Tie Shugu and the barbarian soldier named Adagu were fighting.

The attack of General Lu Gu, he left to Dan Zhu and Chi Feng.

With Wufeng Ridge as a barrier, winning against the Shugu tribe was unlikely, but resisting their attacks and temporarily “holding on” should not be a problem.

Chi Feng, who had rich battle experience, was needless to say.

Dan Zhu, this genius, had gradually become capable of handling things on her own after these battles.

Mo Hua, on the other hand, devoted all his attention to studying array formations.

After all, his identity as a “shaman priest” was fake; “array master” was his true profession.

Mo Hua began to seclude himself, ignoring external affairs, concentrating fully on dissecting and studying the peerless array within the Yuan Gu heavy armor.

As time slowly passed.

Inside the sealed and quiet stone chamber, there were array patterns everywhere that Mo Hua had dissected, analyzed, restored, and derived.

At a glance, they were densely packed, abstruse, and profound. Ordinary cultivators, even array masters with foundational knowledge of arrays, would find it difficult to understand this “dissection” method, which Mo Hua had created and used himself, forming his own lineage.

Array and law are one.

The array is the bridge of the law, the carrier of the law.

When there are no clear clues and it’s impossible to start from “law,” one can only use basic methods to derive, deform, and compare array patterns from positive to negative…

To see if this can make the deeper “law” manifest, for contemplation.

During this process, Mo Hua’s understanding of this Yuan Gu Peerless Array also deepened little by little.

After analyzing for a long time, Mo Hua suddenly felt a doubt.

This Yuan Gu Peerless Array was a very strange, even somewhat deformed, Four Symbols Array.

The composition of the array was filled with ancient and bizarre, even “improper” demonic patterns.

This did not seem like a strictly defined, complete, self-consistent, peerless array with a fixed system and clear conception.

Instead, it was more like…

Mo Hua thought for a long time before finding an apt word:

“Patchwork.”

It was like a peerless array pieced together from various fragmented array patterns.

A scene also emerged in Mo Hua’s mind.

The ancestors of the Shugu tribe wandered at the edge of the endless abyss, picking up scattered, hard beast bones, piecing them together to forge a “heavy armor,” named “Yuan Gu heavy armor.”

But with armor, there must also be an array.

The Shugu ancestors then used fragmented “bone patterns” obtained from who knows where, piecing them together and continuously merging them, eventually forming this “Yuan Gu Peerless Array.”

Upon realizing this, Mo Hua’s expression changed slightly, and a flash of insight in his heart brought forth an inexplicable sense of familiarity.

“Patchwork…”

“Piecing together fragmented demonic patterns… isn’t this…”

“Myriad Demons Transforming into Dragon?!”

Mo Hua’s pupils contracted.

“Collecting various Four Symbols demonic patterns, extracting the essence of myriad demonic patterns, and deriving dragon patterns…”

“This is similar in principle to how the Shugu ancestors found various massive demonic patterns and pieced them together to form the Yuan Gu Peerless Array.”

“Does that mean that the internal laws of these two seemingly unrelated arrays might be the same?”

Mo Hua looked astonished, then his thoughts raced.

“The Yuan Gu heavy armor peerless array and the Four Symbols Azure Dragon Array, their intrinsic compositional ‘rules’… are essentially about ‘piecing together’ demonic patterns, and then deriving them into a single entity?”

“This point is somewhat contrary to common sense…”

“The fundamental reason is that… people are predisposed to accept the concept of ‘dragon,’ so they don’t realize that the Four Symbols Azure ‘Dragon’ is actually a ‘patchwork.’ And the Four Symbols Azure Dragon Array is also a ‘patchwork array.’”

“But the Yuan Gu Peerless Array is very obvious. It itself is a peerless array pieced together by the Shugu ancestors, like ‘picking up trash’ at the edge of the endless abyss, using various demonic patterns…”

“Therefore, the intrinsic laws of these two types of peerless arrays… are they really the same?”

Beyond his shock, Mo Hua felt as if an unknown secret of the Great Wilderness had been partially unveiled by him.

“And if the Yuan Gu Peerless Array and the Four Symbols Azure Dragon Array have essentially the same laws, then that means…”

“I have actually studied the laws of this Shugu tribe’s ancestral Yuan Gu Peerless Array before?”

“Because I once studied ‘Myriad Demons Transforming into Dragon’ and always tried to ‘piece together’ a dragon.”

“But the problem is…”

Mo Hua’s expression became somewhat complex again.

He had not comprehended the law of “transforming into dragon” at all.

His plan to extract the essence of myriad demonic patterns and derive a dragon had also not been achieved.

He had been researching the Myriad Demons Transforming into Dragon Array, but hadn’t truly understood it. Later, when he entered the Great Wilderness, there were too many things, so he temporarily set it aside.

Now, this problem was again before him.

Mo Hua had a vague feeling that the “homework” he hadn’t finished had suddenly come looking for him, asking him to “pay his debt.”

Mo Hua rummaged through his storage bag and pulled out a large stack of research notes and discarded demonic pattern drafts he had made when trying to derive dragon patterns.

Now, the two tasks had merged into one.

Feeling a bit complicated, Mo Hua placed the array patterns of the “Yuan Gu Peerless Array” and “Myriad Demons Transforming into Dragon” together for comparative study.

After studying for a while, Mo Hua’s brows gradually furrowed again.

It was still not that simple…

Seemingly, comparing the two would lead to a deeper understanding, and Mo Hua indeed gained more intuitive insights.

But the essence of the problem remained the same.

Mo Hua simply didn’t know how this “law” operated, or how it activated the peerless array to take effect.

The Dao that can be told is not the eternal Dao.

The name that can be named is not the eternal name.

Laws, like Dao, can have man-made names, but these names are just man-made, not the names of the laws themselves.

The law of “transforming into dragon” was the same.

Mo Hua could only roughly speculate about its form of existence and its mode of operation.

The so-called “transforming into dragon” probably involved using some fragmented demonic patterns to reassemble a brand new and more powerful “demonic pattern.”

But Mo Hua only knew what it was, not why it was.

How does one actually “transform into dragon”? How are the “materials” for transformation chosen? Where do they come from? How does the process evolve? How are all the demonic patterns integrated? Why can demonic patterns merge into “dragon patterns”?

These were all very specific and thorny problems.

Mo Hua found himself unwittingly entering a dead end again.

Moreover, by comparing it with the Yuan Gu Peerless Array, Mo Hua also realized that his previous understanding of “Myriad Demons Transforming into Dragon” had also been problematic.

“Myriad Demons Transforming into Dragon” might not essentially be a simple “derivation” of dragon patterns.

“Derivation” was the array formation thinking of the Dao court, of the Jiuzhou lineage.

But “Myriad Demons Transforming into Dragon” was from Teacher Tu, a lineage of inheritance from the Great Wilderness.

The intrinsic driving “laws” were different.

Perhaps it was precisely because of this that he had researched for a long time, tried many times, but had never truly derived a “dragon.”

He wondered how true transformation into dragon actually “transformed”?

Mo Hua frowned tightly.

“Is it that I haven’t encountered some phenomena and manifestations within these laws, so I can’t understand them?”

“Or rather… I have actually seen them, but haven’t gained insight?”

Mo Hua calmed himself down, recalled every single detail of his experiences after arriving in the Great Wilderness, and couldn’t help but ponder:

“Myriad Demons Transforming into Dragon and the Yuan Gu Peerless Array are of the same type of law. This type of law is different from Taotie…”

This was his previous judgment.

But… was it truly different?

The existence of “Taotie” was closely related to the Great Wilderness, and the depth of Taotie-related laws permeating the Great Wilderness was something Mo Hua found incredible.

If Myriad Demons Transforming into Dragon was indeed some kind of supreme inheritance of the Great Wilderness, then could it still be somewhat related to “Taotie”?

Transforming into dragon… and Taotie?

Mo Hua thought for a long time but couldn’t find any connection, so he changed his approach, starting from the perspective of the Shugu tribe.

The Yuan Gu Peerless Array was an array on heavy armor.

The Yuan Gu Peerless Array likely contained the law of “transforming into dragon.”

And within the Shugu tribe, another Taotie array was hidden… that is, the twenty-three-pattern Taotie array in the head of the barbarian god statue.

Mo Hua hadn’t comprehended this Taotie array either; he didn’t even know what it was used for.

But this Taotie array could not possibly be unrelated.

A sudden image flashed in Mo Hua’s mind, of scenes he had witnessed in the Shugu Divine Temple.

The Shugu barbarian god statue, the Taotie array in the head of the statue, the barbarian armor around the statue, and on the armor, all were incomplete demonic patterns.

None of these demonic patterns were complete; they looked like…

The remains of an array?

Remains?!

In a flash of lightning, Mo Hua’s scalp tingled, and he suddenly realized.

Taotie was a ferocious law beast; it would “eat” array formations!

The remaining array formations were “residual patterns,” and these residual patterns were then pieced together to form… brand new array patterns!

So, the Taotie law was the prerequisite law for “transforming into dragon.”

First, “Taotie devours demons,” dismembering demonic patterns, and then… “Myriad Demons Transforming into Dragon”?!

These laws of the Great Wilderness, like ferocious beasts born of heaven and earth, were inherently interconnected and integrated!

(End of chapter)