Zhu Huairen stubbornly insisted that everything happening before his eyes was an illusion conjured by the Goddess. Yet he had nearly worn out the ancient texts in his hands and still couldn’t find a single record of an illusion capable of manifesting a colossal creature like a kun, much less a way to break it.
“How… how can this be? Could this really not be an illusion at all, but some kind of divine magic?”
He raised his head in a daze and gazed up at the Goddess standing atop the great fish’s back, his eyes filled with fear.
Just as he was about to kneel and beg for mercy, it was already too late.
Yun Shu had grown tired of wasting words on Zhu Huairen. She opened the system wardrobe and changed into the crown from the Celestial Balance Insignia set.
Earlier, in order to make her entrance as impressive as possible, she had worn the Pure Void Crown, the headpiece from the Swordmaster’s Ride Across the Nine Heavens set.
In simple terms, the Pure Void Crown’s ability was to condense water into ice over a wide area. It was extremely useful.
But it would serve no purpose in the performance that followed.
She gave the blue whale a glance.
The blue whale had received training as well. The moment it caught Yun Shu’s signal, it knew that it was time for its own performance.
Its enormous, starlight-covered tail swayed gently, sending a wave surging across the sea.
As the waters roiled, one of the sea beasts frozen into an ice sculpture at the shore was swept into the air by the wave.
The massive ice sculpture, carrying the force of a thousand jun, flew straight toward Zhu Huairen and crashed down over his head.
Zhu Huairen stood frozen in place.
The shadow of the ice grew larger and larger in his eyes. At last, fear completely overwhelmed his unwillingness and confusion.
In the end, he didn’t even have time to scream.
The ice sculpture slammed down and crushed him into the sand. Shattered ice and grit flew in all directions, raising a vast cloud of white mist.
The ancient book slipped from his hands and landed on a reef several yards away, its pages flipping noisily in the sea wind.
[Zhu Jingzhe’s Shock Value +100]
[Zhu Huairen’s Shock Value +100]
[Chen Chao’s Shock Value +100]
[…]
[Current Shock Value: 73,380,000]
Seeing that she had taken another huge step toward one hundred million Shock Value, Yun Shu felt considerably more at ease. No one ever complained about having too much money, just as she would never complain about having too much Shock Value.
Standing atop the blue whale’s back, she activated the Eye of Good and Evil. Everyone’s good and evil on the beach appeared clearly before her eyes.
“Lil’ Sys, lock onto those who have committed countless evils. Later, let them try out the new move I’ve been working on. I never ran into this many villains before, so I haven’t had a chance to use it.”
“Host, give me five minutes!” Little Fox said before beginning to hammer away at the keyboard.
Meanwhile, Zhu Jingzhe finally came to his senses.
He didn’t care in the slightest whether Zhu Huairen was truly dead. His eyes were fixed on the ancient book lying on the reef.
The wind was too strong. The book’s pages kept lifting and falling, and it was clearly about to slide off the edge of the reef and drop into the sea.
Without the slightest hesitation, he took off running.
A cold wave crashed over his head.
The seawater instantly rose to his waist, soaking half his body. His teeth chattered from the cold, but he still snatched the ancient book from the reef.
This illusion-art manual was the Zhu family’s inheritance.
Before his father died, his greatest regret had been failing to fulfill his grandfather’s dying wish: reclaiming the illusion-art manual from his second uncle, Zhu Huairen, that unfaithful and unfilial disgrace to the clan.
Before he could think any further, a sudden chill swept over him.
The seawater must have become especially cold because of the ice sculptures along the shore. His face grew paler and paler.
Knowing that he needed to get ashore as quickly as possible, he was nevertheless startled when the corner of his eye caught sight of cracks appearing in the ice sculptures.
The cracks gradually spread across the icy shells. Large chunks of ice peeled away and crashed onto the sand with dull thuds.
Zhu Jingzhe instinctively ran toward shore.
He held the secret-art manual tightly against his chest, shielding it with his body. Only after reaching land did he turn to look at the ice sculptures.
As the ice shattered completely, the terrifying sea beasts—with their claws bared and tentacles as thick as giant tree trunks—began to shrink as though someone had drained the water from them.
In the blink of an eye, the sea beasts had shriveled into palm-sized lumps. They lay wet and limp at the edges of the sand pits, their eight thin, soft tentacles curled feebly beneath them, their bodies a dull purplish gray.
Zhu Jingzhe recognized one immediately.
“So Zhu Huairen’s illusions use an octopus as their medium?”
At the same time, the beach fell utterly silent.
A soldier from the Northern Pacification Army widened his eyes and gently prodded the tiny octopus at the bottom of the pit with the tip of his spear. The limp creature rolled onto its belly, its tentacles drooping weakly.
“We were fighting for our lives against this thing just now? No wonder our injuries didn’t hurt!”
His words shattered the silence.
“Exactly! That tentacle sent me flying earlier. I thought I was going to die, but it didn’t even hurt that much.”
Another soldier spoke up.
“Wait, that’s not right.”
“Why do my hands and feet feel a little numb?”
“Mine too!”
“The Divine Lady is standing on the back of that enormous fish, so she’s too far away. Otherwise, we could ask her.”
“It’s just a minor matter. How could we trouble the Divine Lady over something like this?”
Everyone began talking at once.
Pei Du listened to the soldiers around him, a thoughtful glimmer passing through his eyes.
This illusion was more insidious than he had imagined.
On a battlefield, it could easily disrupt an army’s morale. It seemed they would have to hurry and study this art. At the very least, they couldn’t afford to be so helpless the next time they encountered an illusionist.
Just then, a white tiger came walking over from nearby. Before everyone’s eyes, it transformed into a human being.
It was the unkempt man.
He glanced at Zhu Huairen, who had been crushed to death in the sand pit, then turned to Pei Du and the other soldiers of the Northern Pacification Army. He explained the secret behind the illusion.
“Although illusion arts are wondrous, every illusion leaves traces. When an illusionist performs an illusion, they generally need a medium. It can be themselves, another person, or even some kind of mechanism or object.”
“As for your numb hands and feet, that should be because this man applied a drug to the octopus. When you came into contact with it, you were poisoned. The poison made you believe that you had been injured by the sea beast, causing you to lose the will to fight and give up resisting.”
As he spoke, he couldn’t help sighing inwardly.
These soldiers of the Northern Pacification Army had the strongest willpower he had ever seen. They were not illusionists and knew nothing about illusion arts, yet when faced with the sea beast conjured by Zhu Huairen, they had chosen to fight to the death rather than retreat, all to protect the ordinary civilians in the camp.
People like that were absolutely worthy of trust.
“This medicine should be able to neutralize the poison in your bodies.” He took a medicine bottle from his robes and handed it over.
Pei Du accepted the bottle and showed it to Military Physician Liu. Only after she nodded did he have the soldiers take the medicine.
Then he stepped forward and cupped his hands toward the man.
“The situation was urgent just now, and I haven’t yet had the chance to ask for your name, sir.”
The man fell silent for a moment.
“You can call me Yao Sanyi.”
Just as Pei Du was about to ask him something else, a soldier shouted, “Oh no! He’s trying to escape!”
