My Whole Class Isekai'd to a Xianxia? Good Thing I Can Do Mind-reading

A few hours later, Feng Fan began sorting through the items he had taken from the assassins. Anything he didn't recognize or couldn't immediately use, he tossed into his space ring for later. He set aside a few spiritual qi stones for future use and placed all cultivation-related items inside the Suppression Relic to refine their spiritual qi.

Based on the current energy stored within and what he needed for each breakthrough, he estimated it would be enough to support his cultivation up to the Immortal Ascension and Immortal Body Ascension realms. He couldn't say for certain, though.

Just as Feng Fan was about to resume his cultivation, an alarm rang out across the camp.

"Enemy attack! Enemy attack!"

He was caught off guard. He hadn't expected another attempt so soon, especially after the earlier one had failed. But this time, Red Pole's camp had detected the enemy's movements in advance. The attackers weren't trying to be stealthy anymore. They had come for a direct confrontation.

Given the Obsidian Court's capabilities, the only reason their approach had been noticed was likely because they simply didn't care to hide it.

Feng Fan activated his array to scan the area beyond his barrier. What he saw surprised him. There weren't any cultivators from the Obsidian Court in sight. Instead, a massive cloud of purple smoke was advancing on the camp from every direction.

A few unfortunate cultivators had already been caught in it and were instantly reduced to nothing but dry bones.

'Is that poison?' Feng Fan wondered, watching as the smoke corroded everything it touched. Even the sand was transforming upon contact. Feng Fan had never seen anything like this.

Unable to identify it from within the barrier, he stepped beyond its perimeter and activated his spiritual qi vision.

"What the hell is that?" he muttered.

To his shock, the purple smoke wasn't corroding matter; it was corrupting the spiritual qi.

Everything in the universe contains some amount of spiritual qi. Cultivators absorbed more to grow stronger, but no object could exist without it. Stripping something of its spiritual qi was the same as destroying it. That's why, when a spiritual qi stone was drained, it crumbled to dust.

But this wasn't like the Suppression Relic, which absorbed energy. The purple smoke didn't absorb spiritual qi, it corrupted it. Through his spiritual qi vision, Feng Fan watched thoughtfully as once-brilliant spiritual energy darkened and twisted under the smoke's influence.

The auxiliary and trap arrays surrounding Feng Fan's barrier were slowly being corrupted and dismantled as the purple smoke enveloped them. Arrays weren't sustained by spiritual qi alone; they were formed through a combination of spiritual qi and intricate inscriptions that altered the heavenly laws, making their existence possible.

The purple smoke targeted and corrupted the spiritual qi responsible for binding and shaping those laws. Once corrupted, the arrays would destabilize. Most became useless. However, in some cases, the altered spiritual qi caused unpredictable results. The energy remained, but its structure had been twisted beyond recognition.

Then realization struck Feng Fan. Although the purple smoke was lethal to both people and objects, its true purpose was clearly aimed at arrays.

A wry smile tugged at his lips. 'I just killed a small group of people… was that really enough to justify unleashing a weapon designed specifically for me?'

Given what the Obsidian Court had demonstrated so far, Feng Fan knew most of Red Pole's arrays would be useless against them. Only his formations stood a chance at slowing their advance. When it came to the Dao of Arrays, the gap between the two civilizations was so vast it couldn't even be mentioned in the same breath.

After analyzing the purple smoke, Feng Fan returned to the core of the barrier array. He didn't believe for a second that Red Pole stood a chance in a direct confrontation without the support of arrays. The Obsidian Court simply had too many Transcending Tribulation experts, far more than Red Pole. This was anything but a fair fight.

Just as the purple smoke was about to reach his barrier, its advance abruptly halted. From within the haze, a pair—a man and a woman—emerged. They were clad entirely in black, masks fused to their faces, making their expressions unreadable.

Clearly, that attire was necessary to survive within the toxic cloud. Whatever weapon they had unleashed, it made no distinction between ally and enemy.

If that protective attire could be mass-produced, the situation would become even more dire. They could directly launch a full-scale attack from within the purple smoke.

"I'm Hou Zemin, from the Obsidian Court," the man announced. "Surrender now and hand over the Array Master responsible for this barrier. Do that, and the rest of you will live."

His words caught Red Pole's camp off guard. Surrender wasn't on the table, of course. They hadn't come here expecting a fair fight to begin with. But what truly puzzled them was why someone like Hou Zemin would be interested in their Array Master. Didn't the Obsidian Court have its own?

'Damn! These bastards actually came for me? Do they want that dagger back or something?' Feng Fan thought, a grin slowly tugging at his lips. 'Unfortunately for them, anything I take will never be returned!'

Fan Ying, accompanied by Dong Tian, flew closer to the edge of the barrier. "Why do you want our Array Master?" she asked. Though surrender had never crossed her mind, she was genuinely curious. Why would the Obsidian Court single out their Array Master?

"The Array Master controlling this barrier killed someone he shouldn't have," Hou Zemin replied, his voice cold and emotionless. "I need to send his head to my superiors."

Fan Ying blinked, stunned by the answer, and she wasn't the only one. Murmurs rippled through the nearby cultivators. Everyone knew the one maintaining the defensive array was Feng Fan, and he was only at the Spirit Severing realm. How could someone at that level leave the defensive formation and kill someone important enough to provoke the Obsidian Court?