1145: Solitary cyan crescent moon 1145: Solitary cyan crescent moon Yang Qing quickly shelved the matter, returning his attention to Xia Fang, who looked ready to continue where she had left off.
“As is the story for many who have been in the sa situation as us, when tragedy struck, it was unexpected—and thunderous,” said Xia Fang softly.
“That rogue cultivator’s son announced his presence to the clan by first shattering our guardian array, a middle-tier blue-grade formation that the clan had spent countless resources and manpower to set up.
Other than our strength at the ti, that formation was another source of pride for the clan,” she added, pausing to take another sip of her tea.
Yang Qing could understand the clan’s attachnt to the middle-tier blue-grade formation.
While having powerful experts was important, having a powerful array for protection was even more so.
Powerful experts had a lifespan limit—no matter how strong they were, there would co a day when they were no longer around.
When that day arrived, what would the organizations they supported rely on?
And that was where things like artifacts and formation arrays ca in.
The limitations of life didn’t bind such things.
As long as they were properly maintained, they could endure indefinitely—unless, of course, they were destroyed by outside interference.
When it ca to safeguarding continuity, large organizations such as sects and clans placed great importance on things like guardian arrays or anchor artifacts—tools designed to preserve the lifeline of their organizations during their most vulnerable tis, especially when there were no powerful experts to hold the fort.
After placing her teacup down, Xia Fang continued.
“It took just four punches for that rogue cultivator’s son to completely shatter tens of thousands of years of the sweat, blood, and tears our clan had spent creating and improving that array…” she said, bitterness seeping into her tone as she tried to rein in her wandering thoughts.
If that array had not been destroyed beyond repair, perhaps the tragedies that unfolded years later could have been avoided.
After all, while the array protected her clan’s territory from external threats, it also had asures in place to guard against the dangers that arose from within.
“The higher-ups didn’t even have enough ti to react to the array being triggered before it shattered altogether—along with the collateral damage it caused.
By the ti they moved, the array was no more, and the bodies of our clan mbers—numbering in the thousands—were scattered across a ruined landscape.
A quarter of our territory had been reduced to rubble in the backlash,” Xia Fang said quietly.
Such a scale of devastation wasn’t a surprise to Yang Qing.
It was a common consequence whenever a permanently placed formation array was destroyed.
Formation arrays derived their stability and strength by leveraging the power of their surroundings.
This was why an extensive geomancy survey—along with other studies—was required before laying down the array.
Even then, it was a gradual process where every step had to be asured, evaluated, and re-evaluated several tis over.
This was especially true for formation arrays at the blue grade tier and above, which needed to achieve spiritual resonance with their surroundings to draw upon the power of the grand dao.
Setting up a permanent array was a delicate affair.
During the process, anything could go wrong—and when it did, the results were often catastrophic.
Just as alchemists ran the risk of a cauldron explosion when handling volatile ingredients or complex recipes, formation masters faced a similar danger.
However, one could argue that their risks were far greater, given the sheer scale of destruction a failed array could unleash.
Careful precision was required at every step.
It was only when the array achieved a smooth resonance and fully blended with its environnt that the danger subsided—at least until… that array was destroyed.
The sa chaos that occurred during an error in installation was the sa chaos that erupted when an array was forcefully shattered.
Except, the destructive force from a shattered array was far greater than one disrupted during installation—and the scale of that destruction only increased with the grade of the array.
The very thing that made arrays powerful was also what made them so dangerous.
Arrays borrowed the force of their surroundings to empower themselves.
Facing an array was no different than facing the montum of the world around it.
This was why sothing like a middle-tier blue grade array, as long as it had enough fuel, could single-handedly withstand the full-blown attacks of about a dozen middle-stage Palace Realm experts without breaking—so long as its energy supply remained constant.
When it ca to hindering late-stage Palace Realm experts, Yang Qing had read records of so arrays successfully restraining four or five of them for several years, with the longest-standing record being sixty-seven years.
This was what made them highly coveted.
But it was also what made them highly dangerous, because when destroyed, all that energy used to resist would implode on itself and the surroundings that gave it that power, bringing devastation upon its destruction.
For the Xia Clan to lose only a quarter of its territory from the destruction of their array, Yang Qing considered that a best-case scenario.
Given what he knew about the destructive potential of a shattered middle-tier blue-grade array, the damage could have been far worse.
So of their experts more than likely intervened at the critical mont to reduce its scale, Yang Qing mused.
“When the array broke and chaos erupted, alerting the entire clan, most assud it had been caused by a group of cultivators.
However, the reality was far graver and completely unexpected.
What they found waiting for them behind that chaos was but a solitary figure with a youthful face, clad in cyan-green robes adorned with green crescent moon symbols, floating in the sky, looking down at them bearing the chilling sharpness of a sword sent to deliver judgnt upon them,” Xia Fang said, painting a vivid and chilling image.
When she first heard the story, she could almost feel herself there—suffocated by the sheer presence of that figure.
How much more unbearable must it have been for those who actually stood beneath him?
“The array being shattered in four strikes was alarming enough, but even more so was the fact that it had been done by a single person,” Xia Fang continued.
“As they gazed up at him, they likely all wondered the sa thing—Who was he, and what had they done to attract his ire?
Not one of them could have imagined it was related to the celestial light hawthorn—the very treasure that had contributed so much to the clan’s strength,” she added, a pitiful smile crossing her lips.
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