Caomang Mountain Path of White Bones
As Xiao Lengyue’s Heart-Inquiry Formation unfolded, a silver-white mist centered on her rapidly spread in all directions, completely covering the arena. Wu Yan and Xiao Lengyue were instantly isolated by the fog.
“That is the same mist from before!”
As someone who had personally witnessed the Heart-Inquiry Formation, Yu Qingyao could naturally tell what the silver-white mist represented with a single glance.
Since the entire stage was shrouded in fog, no one else could see what was happening inside.
Within the Heart-Inquiry Formation, Moonlight Essence flowed, trapping both Wu Yan and Xiao Lengyue simultaneously.
‘I can’t attack?’
This was the first time Wu Yan had been pulled into the Heart-Inquiry Formation. She tried to raise the sword in her hand to strike Xiao Lengyue, but no matter how she tried, her body would not obey her commands. She was unable to move.
“Fellow Cultivator Wu, do you want to surrender?” Xiao Lengyue stood directly across from Wu Yan. “You should have realized by now that within the Heart-Inquiry Formation, you cannot move freely.”
“This slut is telling the truth.”
Wu Yan appeared by her side, her tone light and playful.
“But it doesn’t apply to me—” She blew a puff of air toward the corner of Wu Yan’s eye before moving to Xiao Lengyue’s side. “How about it, little Wu Yan? Do you want to give this body to me?”
“If I reclaim this body, I could make this little slut from Queyue Palace lose her head in a single thought.”
“You can’t move either, can you?”
Wu Yan ignored the temptation and spoke abruptly.
Hearing Wu Yan’s question, Xiao Lengyue chose to remain silent.
“If you could move freely, you wouldn’t need to ask me anything. You would have eliminated me long ago.”
Seeing Xiao Lengyue’s silence, Wu Yan continued, “Since you haven’t made a move against me yet, it only means it is not that you don’t want to, but that you can’t.”
Wu Yan was exactly right.
Inside the Heart-Inquiry Formation, it was not just Wu Yan who was immobilized; even the one who cast the formation was bound by it, unable to act normally. This was a form of restriction. After all, if the Heart-Inquiry Formation was a technique that only bound the opponent, there would be no need to pull them into an Illusionary Realm; one could simply trap them and attack at will.
“A good guess.”
Seeing that Wu Yan had already deduced the nature of the formation, Xiao Lengyue stopped hiding it and admitted it frankly.
“But even if you guessed correctly, it doesn’t matter, because you cannot escape.”
As soon as Xiao Lengyue finished speaking, the silver mist within the formation thickened instantly, completely hiding her figure.
At the same time, the mist Wu Yan had inhaled began to obstruct the flow of Spiritual Power within her body.
“Let me see what you fear most in the depths of your heart!”
Xiao Lengyue’s voice echoed through the mist, drifting and uncertain.
“Tsk, how boring,” Wu Yan snorted with disdain. “These people from Queyue Palace only know this one trick their entire lives.”
Although the inner Wu Yan was contemptuous of Xiao Lengyue’s attack, the conscious Wu Yan remained extremely cautious.
Utilizing the properties of the Heart-Inquiry Formation, Xiao Lengyue expanded her Divine Sense to its limit and invaded Wu Yan’s Sea of Consciousness, attempting to unearth her deepest fears and trap her within them.
However, the moment her Divine Sense entered Wu Yan’s Sea of Consciousness, her expression of certain victory froze.
‘How is this possible?’
Xiao Lengyue swore she had never seen such a vast Sea of Consciousness before.
If her own Sea of Consciousness was a stream, Wu Yan’s was a literal ocean.
‘How can a normal Golden Core Stage cultivator possess such a massive Sea of Consciousness?’
In disbelief, she traveled through Wu Yan’s Sea of Consciousness, marveling at every stretch she passed.
Everything was so vivid and lifelike. There were islands, flowers, oceans… and even iron-skinned monsters she had never seen before.
After a while, she finally reached the end of Wu Yan’s Sea of Consciousness.
Unlike the birds, flowers, and beautiful weather of the path before, the scene at the end was quite desolate.
Rather than calling it desolate, it was more like it was bleak.
The surroundings looked like houses that had been forcibly repaired after being scorched by a great fire; on the surface, they appeared no different from before, but only upon closer inspection could one see that the interior was still hideously damaged.
And within it, a strange image caught her eye.
It was a seal.
Attached to the seal was a peculiar pattern, resembling both a cage and a pair of wings.
The aura radiating from the pattern was identical to Wu Yan’s.
‘Don’t touch it!!’
Just as her hand was about to touch the seal, her subconscious screamed a warning.
Her hand hung suspended in the air.
The longer she stayed in Wu Yan’s Sea of Consciousness, the greater the damage she sustained. Had it not been for the Heart-Inquiry Formation significantly strengthening her soul, she likely would have been torn to shreds the moment she entered the Sea of Consciousness.
She was currently trapped in a dilemma.
If she left, the Heart-Inquiry Formation would dissolve and backlash against her; at that point, winning against Wu Yan would be a pipe dream.
But if she touched this seal, her instincts were screaming in refusal.
Ultimately, her determination to win triumphed over her instinct.
This seal was the only thing she could find in Wu Yan’s Sea of Consciousness that could be called a weakness—or rather, an anomaly.
Xiao Lengyue decisively pressed her hand down, firmly touching the seal.
***
Suddenly, a piercing noise rang in her ears, and the world before her eyes turned pitch black.
‘What is happening?’
Though she had lost her sight, she still maintained her ability to move. She relied on her intuition to grope her way forward until her foot stepped on something.
Crack.
A crisp snapping sound echoed.
“Heh, this is truly rare—”
A voice whispered in her ear.
If Wu Yan’s voice was as cold as frost and as still as water, then the voice in her ear now was the exact opposite—extremely seductive and full of temptation.
Following that, the pitch-black world was instantly illuminated. The sudden glare of light caused Xiao Lengyue’s eyes to water uncontrollably.
But after clearing her vision to see the scene before her, Xiao Lengyue’s face turned pale in an instant, and cold sweat poured down her skin.
In the sky, a Crimson Moon hung high, filled with viscous blood that overflowed and dripped onto a path paved with white bones and severed limbs. The snapping sound she had just heard was the sound of her crushing a segment of a bone.
The surroundings were filled with small mountains made of piled corpses, and the air was thick with a nauseating stench of blood. Even the villages she had seen slaughtered by Demonic Cultivators were not as cruel as the scene before her.
At the end of this hellish landscape, a woman sat upon a throne composed of the skeletons of giant Monster Beasts.
The woman had a face identical to Wu Yan’s, but she wore a seductive red dress, and a pair of exquisite jade feet were exposed, swinging gently in a rhythmic motion.
She was lazily leaning her chin on her hand, watching the cultivators below fight to the death with great interest as flesh and blood flew everywhere.
Perhaps sensing that someone was watching her, she suddenly turned her head.
A pair of blood-red eyes crashed into Xiao Lengyue’s line of sight.
“Ugh—!”
In the real world, the silver mist that had been shrouding the stage suddenly dissipated.
It revealed Wu Yan standing in place with a calm expression, and Xiao Lengyue collapsed across from her, bleeding from her seven orifices.
The outcome of this battle was already clear.