Cultivation of immortality begins with an eighty-year-old eunuch.

Chapter 491 Repairing the Seal! The Ancestor Panicked!

Chen Fan was deeply shaken.

He carefully put the jade slip into his mouth.

As his consciousness sank in, a vast amount of information surged forth.

This is not a cultivation technique, but a detailed diagram of the Soul Refining Sect's protective formation and underground sealing network, as well as some methods for controlling and repairing it!

Although it is incomplete and requires extremely high mastery of formations and corresponding core permissions in many places, it is priceless to Chen Fan at this moment!

It should be noted that the powerful figure who sealed the Soul Refining Sect was based on the entire Soul Refining Sect, which sealed the sect's ancestor for ten thousand years!

Now that he has obtained the jade slip, it is undoubtedly a timely help.

"So that's how it is..." Combining his observations from breaking the formation earlier with what he had just learned, Chen Fan suddenly understood.

The reason why the patriarch of the Soul Refining Sect was able to awaken from his slumber of ten thousand years was not because the seal naturally weakened, but because the young master Wang, the eight great families and the six sects, in order to break through the outer seal and enter the core to seize the treasure, constantly eroded and destroyed the outer array nodes!

They thought they were deciphering the ruins to obtain treasure, but in reality they were weakening the shackles that sealed the Soul Refining Sect's ancestor layer by layer!

In particular, this time, the fourteen Nascent Soul cultivators joined forces and launched a powerful attack with the Eight Extremes Breaking Formation Diagram, finally shaking the key node and awakening the sleeping ancestor.

"A bunch of fools, trying to negotiate with a tiger for its skin, they're just asking for their own deaths," Chen Fan sneered.

Meanwhile, a bold plan gradually took shape in his mind.

To escape the ruins of the Soul Refining Sect, or even to completely eliminate this hidden danger, simply hiding and running away is not enough.

It's only a matter of time before the Soul Refining Sect's patriarch escapes. Once he recovers some of his strength and breaks through the ruins, the entire sealed land will face annihilation.

Chen Fan himself possessed the precious Golden Bowl, making him a target that the Ancestor was determined to kill.

Only by stabilizing the seal again, or even... utilizing this place's formidable formation, can we turn the tide of battle.

The key lies in his understanding of the Fixed Character Technique and the incomplete array diagram in his hand.

With these thoughts in mind, Chen Fan stopped rushing to search for treasures and instead focused all his attention on studying formations.

Through his research, he quickly discovered that the art of fixing characters is about fixing rules, about fixing a constant point amidst change.

The sealing array here is layered and interlocked, and its core essence is also stillness!

It requires supreme magical power to freeze the physical body, soul, and cultivation of the Soul Refining Sect's ancestor, and to freeze the passage of time in this space, so that it will be slowly worn away over ten thousand years.

Chen Fan already possessed an extraordinary comprehension of formations due to his ability to determine characters, and now, by comparing the actual objects with the diagrams, his understanding improved even more rapidly.

Those array nodes that seemed complex and obscure to Daoist Qinglian and Young Master Wang, and could only be broken by brute force, gradually revealed clear patterns and laws governing the flow of spiritual energy in his eyes.

Thus, Chen Fan, like a patient student and a seasoned hunter, dodged the increasingly frequent and violent spiritual sweeps and blood slave searches from the outside world while making the most of every second to study and deduce within the bowl.

Several days have passed in the outside world in the blink of an eye!

The patience of the Soul Refining Sect's patriarch seemed to have reached its limit.

Two more blood slaves were gone, completely reduced to withered bones.

Young Master Wang, Daoist Qinglian, and the others grew increasingly haggard, tormented by the soul-binding restrictions that were causing them unbearable pain.

The ancestor's roars became more and more frequent, and the blood-red threads within the ruins increased, almost weaving a giant net that covered the heavens and the earth.

On this day, Chen Fan finally combined the incomplete map with his own observations and deductions, and found several relatively key secondary seal nodes that he could potentially influence with his current abilities.

These nodes are located on the periphery of the core seal, like the main roots of a tree. If they can be reinforced, although they cannot completely suppress the ancestor, they will make it more difficult for him to mobilize his power, exacerbate his backlash, buy more time for oneself, and even... create a sliver of opportunity.

"It's time." A resolute glint flashed in Chen Fan's eyes. Hiding forever was not the way out.

The path of cultivating immortality is inherently a struggle against fate.

The patriarch of the Soul Refining Sect was both a tribulation and a whetstone.

He manipulated the golden bowl of dust, causing it to drift slowly toward a chosen node.

The node was located beneath an abandoned altar, where the original array runes had mostly faded, a result of the destruction caused by the eight major families and others.

Around the altar, several powerful crimson divine senses roamed, along with two blood slaves whose eyes were vacant but whose auras were at the early Nascent Soul stage!

Chen Fan held his breath and used the golden bowl to completely conceal his aura, making him appear as if he were a truly inanimate object.

He waited patiently until the two crimson divine senses swept across each other for a fleeting moment, and until the two blood slave patrols turned their backs.

It's now!

The golden bowl, now reduced to dust, suddenly accelerated and precisely disappeared into an extremely hidden crack beneath the altar.

Inside the bowl, Chen Fan formed hand seals, and his spiritual power circulated slowly according to the route he had deduced over the past few months. Strands of divine consciousness power, which had been integrated with the intent of meditation, were mixed with pure spiritual power and silently injected into the broken node runes through the golden bowl.

The rune glowed slightly before fading back to its original dimness, but upon closer inspection, it seemed that the broken part had been mended by a tiny bit, and the flow of energy had become slightly smoother.

Chen Fan immediately stopped, and the golden bowl returned to silence, as if it had never been moved.

A moment later, a furious crimson divine sense swept across the altar, circling back and forth, but found nothing.

"Who is it?! Who is breaking the seal?"

The Soul Refining Sect's patriarch roared suddenly, and more crimson threads rushed towards the area, conducting a thorough search.

Meanwhile, Chen Fan had already manipulated the golden bowl, quietly disappearing towards the next predetermined node.

Deep within the ruins, in the crimson hall, the patriarch of the Soul Refining Sect sat cross-legged on the altar, a look of surprise and uncertainty appearing on his withered face for the first time.

Just a moment ago, he clearly felt an extremely subtle reinforcement fluctuation coming from a sealing node, which was definitely not a natural recovery.

But the fluctuation was fleeting, and no matter how hard he searched, he couldn't find its source.

"Could it be... that old eunuch? Not only is he hiding, but he's also secretly repairing the seal?"

This thought intensified the patriarch's killing intent, yet also brought a strange chill.

It's one thing for a mid-Nascent Soul stage eunuch to possess a supreme treasure, but to have such mastery of formations is incredibly audacious enough to cause trouble right under his nose.

"Very well! I'd like to see how long you, you little rat, can hide, and how many places you can mend!"

The ancestor's eyes blazed with bloodlust. He was no longer just blindly searching; he began to consciously mobilize his forces to strengthen the monitoring of the various sealed nodes, especially the damaged ones.

At the same time, he intensified the activation of the blood slaves and the restrictions, causing Young Master Wang and the others to scream in agony as they searched even more desperately.

Chen Fan, like a ghost, had already drifted to the next node.

The node was located deep within the ruins of a collapsed palace, originally a place where the earth's veins converged.

The remaining array patterns flickered in and out of view under the crimson light, like the pulse of a dying beast.