Over the next few months, the border between the territories controlled by the Seven Star Palace and the Purple Extremity Dan Sect became increasingly chaotic, and what had once been a tense standoff gradually transformed into a genuine war. Neither side was willing to send its true foundation into the conflict immediately, so the first battles were fought by cultivators from the Qi Refining Realm all the way to the Purple Palace Realm, with countless rogue cultivators and lower-ranking disciples being pushed toward the front lines like expendable pieces on a chessboard.
Every day, news of another battlefield would spread through the Eastern Region, sometimes reporting that a cultivation market had been destroyed, sometimes that an entire mortal kingdom had been caught between two armies of cultivators, and sometimes that hundreds of cultivators had died simply because two powerful experts had clashed above them.
The destruction was immense.
Yet within Dragon Yuan Province, everything remained strangely peaceful.
Apart from a few minor demonic cultivators who occasionally appeared in remote areas before being hunted down by the local forces, the province had experienced no major disturbance.
It was almost too peaceful.
Lin Sheng naturally understood that such tranquillity could not last forever.
The Eastern Region had already begun moving toward a period of great upheaval, and Dragon Yuan Province was not some isolated paradise that could remain untouched while the surrounding territories burned.
Still, there was nothing he could do about the larger conflict for the moment.
His attention was focused on the Heaven Canopy Mountain Guarding Formation.
More than half of the formation had already been completed.
The enormous formation structure now extended throughout Dragon Yuan Mountain, with numerous formation nodes hidden beneath the earth, several buried deep within the mountain's natural earth veins while others connected directly to the spiritual vein beneath the Lin Family's territory.
Lin Sheng had not rushed the process.
A Rank 4 formation of this complexity could not be established carelessly, especially when it incorporated defence, offence, illusion and auxiliary formations into a single interconnected system.
One wrong formation node could cause an imbalance throughout the entire formation.
Therefore, he had spent considerable time personally inspecting every formation line, calculating the flow of spiritual energy and repeatedly adjusting the positions of the formation nodes.
The Grand Elder had also remained involved throughout the process.
Although his understanding of formations was nowhere near Lin Sheng's, he understood Dragon Yuan Mountain far better, particularly the natural terrain, earth veins and spiritual energy distribution.
Together, the two of them had gradually transformed the mountain into the foundation of something far more powerful than the Lin Family had possessed before.
The medium-grade Rank 4 spiritual vein beneath Dragon Yuan Mountain would serve as one of the formation's primary sources of power, while the countless earth nodes would form the foundation upon which the formation itself rested.
According to Lin Sheng's calculations, the spiritual vein had already begun showing signs of naturally advancing toward high-grade Rank 4.
It would probably take another hundred years or so before the transformation was complete, but once that happened, the Heaven Canopy Mountain Guarding Formation would become even more formidable.
Of course, that was only one reason Lin Sheng was willing to spend so much time establishing it.
The greater reason was secrecy.
The complete formation structure was known only to a handful of people, and even those people did not possess the entire inheritance.
Once activated, the formation could transform the entire Dragon Yuan Mountain into an enormous fortress.
An enemy would not merely have to break through a defensive barrier.
They would have to contend with illusions capable of confusing their senses, offensive formations capable of launching attacks from every direction, auxiliary formations capable of strengthening the Lin Family's cultivators and countless hidden formation nodes connected to the spiritual vein beneath the mountain.
For the Lin Family, this formation would become one of their greatest trump cards.
Lin Sheng was naturally satisfied with the progress.
But while he was quietly working on the formation, another matter had caught his attention.
Lou Feng.
After arriving in Dragon Yuan Province, Lin Sheng had deliberately separated from him.
He wanted to see what would happen once Lou Feng was no longer travelling under his protection.
After all, Lou Feng possessed an unusual destiny.
Lin Sheng had always been curious about exactly how far that luck could carry him.
If Lin Sheng remained beside him constantly, protecting him whenever danger appeared, then there was no way to determine whether Lou Feng's luck would truly manifest.
Therefore, after entering the province, Lin Sheng had simply given him enough resources to protect himself and allowed him to leave.
The result left Lin Sheng speechless.
Lou Feng had somehow managed to wander directly into the edge of the war between the Seven Star Palace and the Purple Extremity Dan Sect.
When Lin Sheng first learned of it, he had stared into the distance for several breaths before finally laughing.
"What kind of luck is that?"
Even Lin Sheng found it difficult to understand.
The Eastern Region was enormous.
There were countless cultivation markets, cities, sect territories and remote wilderness regions where Lou Feng could have gone.
Yet he had somehow chosen one of the most dangerous areas in the entire Eastern Region.
Worse still, he had arrived precisely when the two major powers had begun mobilising cultivators.
The battlefield had already become a meat grinder.
Qi Refining cultivators were dying in large numbers, martial artists were being sent into dangerous areas, Foundation Establishment cultivators were being forced to participate in battles against formations and beast groups, and even Purple Palace cultivators were no longer guaranteed to survive.
Yet Lou Feng had somehow survived.
Lin Sheng had used his perception to observe him from a distance several times, but he had deliberately refrained from intervening.
The first time Lou Feng narrowly escaped death, Lin Sheng had been amused.
The second time, he had become curious.
By the third time, even Lin Sheng had begun wondering whether Heaven itself was deliberately making things difficult for the young man.
Eventually, Lou Feng had been forcibly recruited by the Purple Extremity Dan Sect.
The major sects had naturally anticipated that rogue cultivators would attempt to flee once the war began.
They had therefore established mandatory recruitment orders throughout their territories.
From the perspective of the major powers, there was nothing unreasonable about this.
Rogue cultivators had enjoyed the protection and resources of the territory for years, had traded within their markets and had benefited from the stability maintained by the sect.
Now that the sect needed manpower, they were expected to contribute.
Naturally, the sects did not simply throw everyone onto the battlefield without distinction.
Cultivators who possessed auxiliary skills such as alchemy, talisman crafting, formation mastery or artifact refinement could be recruited into specialised positions, where their survival rate was considerably higher.
Those with particularly outstanding skills could even receive generous rewards.
Unfortunately, Lou Feng had no such skill.
His understanding of the sword was extremely profound, but that was not particularly useful when the Purple Extremity Dan Sect needed people to support its logistical operations.
Therefore, Lou Feng had been sent to the front lines.
Lin Sheng couldn't help shaking his head when he heard the news.
"You're really unlucky."
He had watched Lou Feng's journey for several days through his perception, and although the young man had already encountered several dangerous situations, he had somehow survived every single one.
At one point, a Purple Palace cultivator had pursued him for several hundred kilometres after mistakenly believing that Lou Feng possessed a valuable treasure.
Lou Feng had been completely helpless.
Yet just when he was about to be caught, the battlefield ahead had suddenly erupted into chaos, forcing the Purple Palace cultivator to retreat.
On another occasion, Lou Feng had been caught in an attack from a formation.
The attack should have killed him.
Instead, the formation node had suddenly malfunctioned.
Lou Feng had survived.
Then, during another battle, a powerful spell had been aimed directly at him, only for another cultivator to suddenly collide with the attacker and alter the trajectory of the spell by a tiny margin.
The attack had missed Lou Feng by less than three metres.
Lin Sheng watched all of this from afar and eventually fell silent.
"This is getting ridiculous."
Yet there was another reason Lin Sheng wasn't particularly worried.
Lou Feng's combat ability was not ordinary.
His sword cultivation was already extremely profound, and although his realm was not particularly high compared with the true experts on the battlefield, his ability to fight above his cultivation realm was considerable.
As long as he wasn't directly targeted by a Golden Core expert or caught in a large-scale battlefield technique, he should be able to survive.
And if his luck continued behaving as it had been, Lin Sheng suspected that even those situations might not necessarily kill him.
Lin Sheng withdrew his divine sense.
His attention returned to the formation before him.
The countless formation lines beneath Dragon Yuan Mountain shimmered faintly as spiritual energy flowed through them, connecting one node after another.
He raised his hand and gently pressed two fingers against the air.
A strand of formation power immediately spread outward.
The surrounding spiritual energy trembled, and several formation lines that had previously been slightly misaligned shifted into their proper positions.
The Grand Elder, who was standing several metres away, watched the process carefully.
"Another section completed?"
Lin Sheng nodded.
"The foundation is stable, but the offensive section still requires adjustment."
The Grand Elder looked toward the distant mountains.
"The war outside is becoming increasingly intense. Perhaps completing this formation sooner would be better."
Lin Sheng's expression remained calm.
"I agree, but rushing a Rank 4 formation would only create problems later."
He withdrew his hand.
"The Lin Family doesn't need this formation to fight today. It needs it to protect the family for hundreds of years."
The Grand Elder nodded slowly.
He understood the meaning behind those words.
The current conflict might last several years. It might last decades.
Nobody knew.
But once the Heaven Canopy Mountain Guarding Formation was completed, the Lin Family would possess a foundation capable of surviving many dangers that ordinary Rank 4 forces could not withstand.