Chapter 089: Blood Flying in Formation, the Four Symbols Array Complete

“I wonder why Brother Xiong called for me. What is it?” Lin Le asked evenly.

“Oh, it’s nothing much. I just wanted to invite Mr. Lin to a meal and offer my apologies for what happened before,” Guan Tianxiong said with a laugh in his voice.

Lin Le gave a bitter smile inwardly. What was going on today? Why was everyone suddenly lining up to invite him to dinner?

But he would never believe that someone like Guan Tianxiong would treat him to a meal for no reason at all. More likely, there was something he needed from him.

Guan Tianxiong was a man who moved along the margins of the law; whatever business he had was probably tied to the underworld. Lin Le had no wish to involve himself too deeply in such matters.

Besides, tomorrow was the final day of the deadline he had agreed upon with Guo Zhao. He had no spare time to deal with Guan Tianxiong’s affairs.

“As for that, there’s no need to apologize. Since you’re Guo Zhao’s friend, you’re my friend too. There’s no need to keep what happened before in mind. As for dinner, another day perhaps. I have something very important to attend to over the next two days, and I’m afraid I won’t have time for at least a week,” Lin Le declined politely.

“I see...” Guan Tianxiong’s voice was thick with helplessness and reluctance, but since Lin Le had already spoken so clearly, there was nothing he could do. “All right then... we’ll make it another time.”

After hanging up, Lin Le found himself wondering what sort of trouble even a man like Guan Tianxiong, who could almost do as he pleased in Haizhou, might be unable to settle.

He shook his head and forced the thought away.

After taking a taxi home, Lin Le began turning the Qihuang Guiding Art into a manual of needle technique. Too lazy to think of a more elaborate title, he simply called it the Qihuang Needle Manual.

Because the manual was merely a derivation of the guiding art, it was not especially difficult. He only needed to render into words the sequence in which the acupoints were opened, their positions, and the force required.

That evening, Lin Le drafted the opening portion of the Qihuang Needle Manual, and the next day, during class, he spent the entire day writing as well.

By the time school was nearly over, the rough framework of the manual had basically taken shape. All that remained was to revise and refine the details.

But what concerned Lin Le more now was Guo Zhao’s situation.

Today was the last day of the five-day agreement between them, and Lin Le did not know whether Guo Zhao would return on time as promised.

During these five days, Gu Huaishan had not contacted Lin Le either. He was likely holding himself in check as well, waiting for Guo Zhao to come back.

After school, while Lin Le was riding home, his phone finally rang.

The moment he saw Gu Huaishan’s name on the screen, excitement surged in his chest.

“Hello, Elder Gu.”

“Mr. Lin, Guo Zhao is back. It’s done!” Gu Huaishan’s voice was equally full of exhilaration.

“Good. I’ll be home at once!”

After hanging up, Lin Le was so excited that his heart pounded.

Half an hour later, he hurried home and saw that Gu Huaishan and Gu Ya were already waiting at the gates of the villa. Even Liang Qiuyang was there.

“Where is Uncle Guo?” Lin Le asked.

Gu Huaishan and Gu Ya were present, yet Guo Zhao was nowhere in sight.

“Guo Zhao landed half an hour ago. He should be here very soon,” Gu Huaishan replied.

The items Lin Le needed were too unusual to pass through ordinary civil aviation. Gu Huaishan had no choice but to use the Gu family’s private jet and call in every favor he could to get them through customs smoothly.

Lin Le then invited the two of them into the villa.

About twenty minutes later, the sound of a car came from outside.

“He’s here!” Gu Huaishan’s excitement was impossible to hide.

The group went out to meet him and saw a black off-road vehicle already parked there. Dust-covered and travel-worn, Guo Zhao stood beside it with several burly men, unloading cargo.

His face was bruised, and there was even blood still on him.

Only two hours before boarding, Guo Zhao and his men had finally subdued the black-striped white tiger. It was no ordinary tiger; it was almost on the verge of becoming a spirit. Tranquilizer guns were useless against it, and even real gunfire had only limited effect.

Guo Zhao and his men had spent three full hours surrounding and bringing it down before they finally succeeded. He had not even had time to change clothes before boarding the flight back.

In truth, Guo Zhao’s instincts had not been wrong.

The characteristics Lin Le had described for the Lesser Four Symbols were in fact chosen according to the traits displayed by pythons, tigers, sparrows, and tortoises that, over many years, had cultivated a measure of spiritual power.

In other words, these four creatures were not far from the human threshold of entering the Way. Among their own kind, they were all high-order beings in cultivation, creatures that could almost be called half-step spirits, only one step away from becoming true monsters.

That was precisely why they were qualified to serve as the foundational points of the Lesser Four Symbols Formation.

“Uncle Guo, you’ve worked hard,” Lin Le said sincerely.

One look at Guo Zhao, and he knew the man must have endured no small number of hardships to secure the materials for the Lesser Four Symbols on his behalf.

“You are too courteous, Mr. Lin. To be of service to you, I, Guo Zhao, do so willingly!” Guo Zhao replied with a smile.

“There’s no need for more polite words. When my work succeeds, I will certainly lend Elder Gu and Uncle Guo a hand!” Lin Le declared with ringing conviction.

Hearing Lin Le repeat his promise, Gu Huaishan and Guo Zhao exchanged a glance, both of them stirred beyond measure.

Guo Zhao felt that the hardship and danger of the past several days had not been in vain.

At the side, Gu Ya was happy for both her grandfather and Uncle Guo.

“All right, carry the things inside. I’m going to begin setting the formation!”

The burly men quickly moved four large iron vats into the courtyard.

The fresh blood of the Lesser Four Symbols had been preserved by special means and was still remarkably fresh.

Gu Huaishan, Guo Zhao, and the others stood silently behind Lin Le, waiting to see how he would arrange the formation.

What followed left them utterly awestruck.

Lin Le stood amid the blood of the Four Symbols, circulated the true essence throughout his body, and slowly raised both arms.

At the same time, the blood in the vats at his feet seemed to come alive. It rose from the containers and floated into the air, and in the blink of an eye formed four crimson spheres suspended around him.

“What...?” Gu Huaishan was so astonished he could scarcely speak.

If Lin Le’s profound martial attainment could still be explained as the genius of a gifted youth, then this vision of blood hanging in the air had utterly surpassed the limits of their imagination.

Guo Zhao and Gu Ya both stared with wide eyes, unable to believe what they were seeing.

Gu Ya especially felt as though she were dreaming as she gazed at the four floating orbs of blood. Lin Le before her seemed more mysterious than ever, like an enigma beyond comprehension.

Gu Huaishan very much wanted to persuade himself that Lin Le was accomplishing this by shaping true qi into form, but he knew that even a grandmaster at the Transformation Realm likely could not manifest qi to such a degree.

“This is a flying-blood formation!” Liang Qiuyang cried out, glimpsing at least part of the mystery as a cultivator himself.

What Lin Le was using was naturally not some martial technique of shaping qi, but the magical power of his own cultivation.

All of this blood had come from creatures only a single step away from becoming spirits; within it remained a certain measure of magical force. It was by controlling that force with his divine sense that Lin Le accomplished what now unfolded before them.

What seemed incomprehensibly mysterious in the eyes of Gu Huaishan and the others was, in the world of cultivation, nothing out of the ordinary.

Under Lin Le’s control, the blood of the Four Symbols moved to the four cardinal directions around the villa: east, south, west, and north.

Then the four blood spheres began to revolve slowly in a circle around Lin Le as their center.

As they turned, the four spheres became like four enormous brushes, leaving red traces upon the ground.

When all the blood in the four spheres had finally been exhausted, the circles on the ground connected perfectly, forming a flawless ring.

Only when Gu Huaishan and the others looked more closely did they realize that the ring was far more than a simple streak of red blood. It was made up of countless dense red talismanic inscriptions, numbering in the millions, all drawn in an instant.

“The Lesser Four Symbols Formation is complete!”