NFBE Chapter 117 Leaving the Illusion
Chapter 117 Leaving the Illusion
"Yi'er..."
"I just had a nightmare and was frightened. I'll be fine after going for a walk. I'll be back soon. Your Majesty doesn't need to accompany me."
Jing Yanzhi wanted to say something more, but Liu Xingxing easily cut him off.
"...Hmm, it's chilly at night, and it's raining now. Put on an outer coat before you go out, so you don't catch a cold."
Jing Yanzhi didn't try to persuade her to stay any longer. Liu Xingxing quickly climbed out of the warm bed, but for some reason, her slightly hurried steps stopped just as she stepped out of the screen partition.
"what happened?"
Seeing that Jing Yanzhi had stopped, he asked her with concern.
It was already late at night, and the lights in the hall had long been blown out, with only a few candles still burning for illumination. It was so dark that even a short distance away, one could hardly see the other person clearly.
Liu Xingxing held onto the edge of the screen with one hand without turning around, but she glanced at him a few times, her lips slightly parted for a long time, but in the end she didn't say anything and walked out of the screen.
The lightning outside continued to flash incessantly, the rain was heavy, and the palace remained dim. Jing Yanzhi still couldn't understand what was hidden in her eyes when she looked at him that night, nor did he know what she had left unsaid.
"Jing Yanzhi, I'm returning Liu Baiyi to you."
……
The sky outside did indeed seem to have a hole, a dark void where no clouds could be seen moving, yet there was still plenty of lightning, thunder, and rain.
Liu Xingxing didn't intend to delve into whether Lu Xihan had awakened or Xu Su had turned evil first, which led to the current situation. In just a short while, she had accumulated a shallow amount of spiritual power in her dantian, and the surrounding spiritual energy was constantly entering her body.
However, the recovery speed is vastly different from before. But there isn't much spiritual energy in the illusion anyway, so being able to absorb it is already quite good, unlike outside where the spiritual energy is so abundant.
Although it was only a little bit of spiritual power, it was enough. Liu Jun's layer of spiritual power was enough to kill a Nascent Soul Grand Perfection stage being.
Standing under the eaves, Liu Xingxing glanced at the endlessly raining night sky, then began to form hand seals and chant incantations. In a moment, she separated her true form from Liu Baiyi in the illusion.
He then opened his eyes and looked at Liu Baiyi, who was motionless with lifeless eyes. She was indeed beautiful, even with a seductive charm, but she did not look like Liu Jun.
Because the illusion aims to make those who enter it more certain of their identity within the illusion, the person "possessed" inside will automatically transform into their original appearance outside. Just like Lu Jiu'er's face is also Lu Xihan's original appearance, the memories of that person within the illusion will also be modified accordingly.
"return!"
As soon as she spoke, the usually dull Liu Baiyi suddenly seemed to come alive. She looked around in confusion, but then walked past Liu Xingxing as if she couldn't see her and went back into the hall.
Liu Xingxing turned around and glanced inside at Liu Baiyi's figure. Then, expressionless, she raised her hand and waved it in front of her. Liu Jun's face instantly transformed into an extremely ordinary face, and his figure disappeared under the eaves.
The rain was really heavy tonight. Lu Xihan had been standing in the rain for almost an hour, but she remained motionless, like a stake.
"Fake, all fake..."
How stupid she must be to only realize all this now.
The lingering fog in his mind was shattered by the medicine bowl that Xu Su, who had suddenly gone berserk an hour earlier, had thrown at him, causing him to hit his head.
Her forehead no longer hurt, and the bleeding had stopped, but her heart ached terribly.
“They are all fake…”
She has lost count of how many times she has repeated this phrase in the rain.
Her mind was clear, but her body wouldn't move an inch, as if it wouldn't obey her commands, and it had been like this for an hour.
"Demons and monsters depart from their forms, their souls returned to the world!"
The incantation suddenly appeared in Lu Xihan's mind, and he silently recited it once.
A bone-chilling cold swept over his entire body, and Lu Xihan suddenly felt as if his consciousness had returned to his body. He moved his aching legs and numb arms, and indeed, he could move them again.
"what on earth is it?"
Why did this mantra suddenly appear in her mind, and why did it happen to solve her predicament?
"Never mind, let's find a way out of this illusion first."
"Huxian County"
"Who?!"
Suddenly, another place name popped into Lu Xihan's mind. He looked around warily. If the first time might have been an accident, this recurring occurrence was definitely deliberate.
Now that her memories have returned, she can no longer be so naive as to believe that some kind of "miracle has occurred." There must be other people around, who are likely cultivators just like her.
However, being able to transmit messages in someone's mind without any prior contact is definitely not something she can currently achieve.
No further information appeared in her mind, as if she were truly hallucinating.
Is this mysterious person... helping her?
But someone with that ability could easily break free of the illusion on their own, so why make her come?
Or is this mysterious person actually a figure from the illusion?
"Huxian County..."
That's where she lived when she had amnesia...
Lu Xihan glanced in the direction of the house she had run out of, where Xu Su was already asleep, and then left without looking back, getting soaked in the rain.
Not long after Lu Xihan left, a figure appeared under the eaves. After looking in the direction she left for a while, the figure disappeared again.
……
This county is truly a wonderful place; it is not only Lu Xihan's "birthplace" but also the location of the core of the entire illusionary realm.
Liu Xingxing used half an incense stick's worth of spiritual energy from her dantian to find out the truth, and she also discovered that this illusion seemed to be a remnant from ancient times.
She didn't recognize the incantations, meridians, or designs on the array's core, but she inexplicably felt that they were somewhat similar to the tattoos on the snake demon she had encountered on Snowbound Mountain, so she made that assumption.
The novel doesn't describe the illusion in detail; it focuses more on Lu Xihan's experiences within it and how he later took it for himself.
Liu Xingxing found it strange at the time. How could a mere illusionary realm evolve into a secret realm? She thought it was due to some kind of protagonist's halo.
It's absurd that an illusion could evolve into a secret realm. One is merely a remnant of a past image, essentially nonexistent, so how could it have a physical form?
Since it's something left over from ancient times, it's hard to say. In the end, it might even be related to Lu Xihan's god-like parents. The novel didn't mention it, but the small world will naturally fill in the gaps on its own.
That scroll, too, with its mysterious name, might be some kind of "good stuff." It might even have a purpose in becoming a secret realm.
"Boom, boom, boom!"
As if sensing something, the illusion continued to rain and thunder for several days in a row, making the already fictional world increasingly bizarre and unreal.
And the "people" here have become increasingly irritable, no, to be precise, they have become distorted, like a reflection in water that is distorted by waves (literal meaning, imagine a painting of Van Gogh).
Those twisted "people" began to go in droves, determined to find that anomaly, as if they would only be able to return to normal if they found and eliminated that anomaly.
After several days of rest, even though Liu Xingxing's dantian was constantly absorbing spiritual energy, there was still only a thin layer of spiritual power, which was only slightly more than when she first gained the ability to sense spiritual energy.
But at least she could still save her life with that little bit of spiritual power. Lu Xihan was in a terrible situation. Although he had reached the mid-stage of the Golden Core realm, the amount of spiritual power that even a big shot like Liu Xingxing could obtain was negligible.
Even with her cheat codes, she still ended up in a miserable state, constantly being chased by those "people" and having to figure out how to break through the illusion's array.
Why didn't Liu Xingxing try to solve it herself?
Of course, Lu Xihan herself has to complete this final tremor. She has to break and recover the illusion so that this trial can have a beginning and an end.
Moreover, Liu Xingxing doesn't really understand these ancient formations. If she tries to break them, she'll have to dismantle them by force, which would basically ruin the illusion. What would be the point of the scroll realm later? It would be better to wait for Lu Xihan to break them and then hitch a ride with him.
Lu Xihan was quick to find a solution and even learned some of the formation techniques at the key points of the formation while breaking it.
The whole process went surprisingly smoothly, at least for Liu Xingxing.
With the key point of the formation broken, the world within the illusion was collapsing at a visible speed.
The sky was shattered, and only endless darkness could be seen beyond the firmament. People were also rapidly disappearing into ashes. Houses, mountains, the earth, and everything around were breaking into pieces and slowly dissipating. The whole world was fragmented, much like a shattered crystal ball.
Liu Xingxing fled the moment the rift in the illusion opened, without seeing what happened next.
But it's easy to imagine that Lu Xihan will still use the blank scroll to hold up this broken world, and will still win third place in the competition, while she has always just been a passerby.