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Before Ling Buyan arrived, the illusion had already started operating.
Even though he had known for a long time that the Guanzhi Mountain Secret Realm was the most dangerous place in the cultivation world, Li Fenglan couldn’t help but be surprised when the illusion started operating.
He slowly gripped the hilt of his sword, paying attention to the surrounding scenery. Meanwhile, both Cheng Huang and Duan Wannian also looked forward with a cautious expression.
The darkness returned in the illusion, and there was not even a single sound in Li Fenglan’s ears. However, this kind of quietness did not make him relax his guard, but rather made him more uneasy. Indeed, in less than half a stick of incense, Li Fenglan felt a very strong force attacking his position.
He had been to countless secret realms and encountered various dangerous scenes, but never once like now.
“What is this?”
“Is it spiritual energy?”
Li Fenglan heard the voices of Duan Wannian and Meng Linzhou in his ears. Obviously, they also realized that something was very wrong with the illusion.
Suddenly, a dark red light appeared in the darkness, tightly enveloping them. Surprisingly, the light did not directly attack them, but stopped there and suddenly stopped moving.
No one had ever seen such a situation before. After Li Fenglan said “be careful”, he slowly gripped the hilt of his sword.
And in the next moment, Li Fenglan’s forehead suddenly felt a sting, and then some unfamiliar but familiar emotions appeared in his heart – hatred and anger.
In his past life, Li Fenglan always lived in confusion, even in matters of the heart, he never felt happy. He had never experienced such strong emotions before, so Li Fenglan felt very unfamiliar.
But at the same time, these emotions were emanating from deep within him.
Li Fenglan never knew that the power of emotions could be so strong. However, in just a few breaths, hatred and anger had tightly wrapped him up. Under the influence of these emotions, not only did his heart ache, but he even felt a sense of difficulty breathing.
It wasn’t just Li Fenglan, the other people were also the same.
“Ah!”
Li Fenglan heard a scream in his ear. He saw Duan Wannian, who had just turned into human form, standing there with a sword, suddenly crouching down and holding her head. Her expression was extremely painful. After crouching for a while, she turned back into her original form.
“Cough cough…” Li Fenglan had no time to deal with Duan Wannian.
Hate, extreme hate.
For the first time, Li Fenglan knew that being manipulated by emotions felt like this.
At this point, Li Fenglan had even forgotten where he was, forgotten the danger of this secret realm, and forgotten about finding Mo Shenyu to see what he was up to. In Li Fenglan’s heart, all that remained was strong hatred and unease.
Similarly, this emotion also brought back all the buried memories in Li Fenglan’s heart.
He remembered the Snowy Meizhou from a thousand years ago, where countless familiar and unfamiliar people joined forces to set up the Fushen Array, only to make him suffer a crushing defeat.
He also remembered his junior brother’s final sword strike, which pierced his flesh and shattered his heart… leaving only coldness and pain.
Didn’t Li Fenglan hate them?
Of course, he did.
In the past, he had managed to suppress these emotions deep in his heart. But now, after being catalyzed by this illusion, the hatred has resurfaced once again.
Li Fenglan tightened his grip on his long sword, and for a moment, his consciousness became confused. At this moment, Li Fenglan actually had a dangerous thought—he wanted to take his sword and go in front of everyone in the cultivation world, and personally take revenge for the grudges of a thousand years ago.
Even though he knew that the illusion would affect his mind, and had already prepared himself for it, however, at this moment, Li Fenglan completely disregarded his reason.
He did not know what he looked like now, how terrifying he must have appeared in the eyes of Duan Wannian and Meng Linzhou…
Although Duan Wannian was also affected by negative emotions such as hatred, compared to Li Fenglan, the impact was almost negligible.
When the illusion first affected people’s emotions, Duan Wannian at most thought of her childhood experience of being deceived by her brother, Duan Qianli, and her experience of sneaking into the human world for the first time many years ago, only to be discovered by cultivators and chased all the way back to the demon realm, where she ended up in a miserable state.
Because of this incident, negative emotions arose but they weren’t strong, and soon she recovered. But when Duan Wannian calmed down and looked towards Li Fenglan, all she saw was the white-robed cultivator tightly gritting his teeth and mechanically waving his long sword, trying to slash through the illusory void of the illusion and escape.
“It’s over, it’s over!” Duan Wannian, who had lived for thousands of years, could immediately see the strangeness of the illusion.
The illusion couldn’t be shattered with spiritual power. Li Fenglan’s actions would only consume his own strength, and even worse, the illusion was likely silently devouring his spiritual power, waiting to counterattack.
At this moment, Cheng Huang, who was not affected by the illusion, suddenly jumped up and bit Li Fenglan’s sleeve, trying to interrupt his actions and make him calm down. But Li Fenglan, deeply influenced by the secret realm, was not something a shrunken fierce beast could stop.
Cheng Huang’s actions not only didn’t affect Li Fenglan, but he was even flung out by the inertia of his sleeve.
“Whimper~” Although Cheng Huang wasn’t hurt, he still whimpered on the ground because of worry about his master’s loss of sanity.
“Master!” The heavily injured Meng Linzhou kept calling Li Fenglan’s name, “Master, please stop!”
But Li Fenglan had no intention of stopping. He was carried away by his overwhelming hatred and couldn’t stop anymore.
Everyone and the fierce beasts here could feel that the environment was now full of Li Fenglan’s aura. Spiritual energy and sword energy overflowed, condensed into sharp blades and wandering through the illusion again and again.
There was no way to wake up Li Fenglan, let alone avoid the sword energy turned into sharp blades.
Duan Wannian was about to cry when she saw this scene.
And Meng Linzhou, who was heavily injured, was blocking the sword energy with his long sword while lamenting, “Ah… I never thought I would die by my master’s sword in the end.”
After a pause, he added, “If I knew this would happen, I wouldn’t have come.”
This time, neither Cheng Huang nor Duan Wannian ridiculed Meng Linzhou’s words.
After all, they were in the illusion just like Meng Linzhou, and there was no difference in their experiences. They even saw that Li Fenglan himself was covered in wounds all over his body.
His forearm had been bleeding, but his movements did not falter at all because of the injury.
This time, it seemed that a great disaster was really imminent.
The secret realm of the Xuanchu Immortal Ancestor was indeed not something that ordinary people could handle.
And just when everyone was in despair, the illusion that was just dark suddenly brightened up.
A dark sword light flashed by and knocked the long sword in Li Fenglan’s hand down.
“Oh my god!” Seeing this, Meng Linzhou, who was still preparing his last words, couldn’t help but be surprised, “Someone can actually knock down Master’s sword?”
This time, he was really stunned.
Li Fenglan was the number one master in the cultivation world. In Meng Linzhou’s eyes, he was naturally the most powerful person in the world. Meng Linzhou’s swordsmanship was taught by Li Fenglan, and he knew better than anyone else how powerful Li Fenglan was.
As a sword cultivator, the sword was a part of Li Fenglan.
But now… his sword was actually knocked down by someone?
Who on earth is this?! Meng Linzhou instinctively looked in the direction of the sword light. As the illusion gradually brightened up, the figure of the person also became clearer and clearer.
It was Ling Buyan!
At this time, Ling Buyan was still wearing a black Daoist robe as usual. But he, who always had a smile on his face, now had no expression at all. The golden runes on his black robe seemed to come alive, hanging around Ling Buyan and emitting a dark light.
In Meng Linzhou’s view… the golden runes were like a golden chain, tightly wrapping around Ling Buyan.
Normally, when he smiled, Ling Buyan exuded a sense of self-control and power. But now, he was like a walking statue, out of place with everything around him.
Ling Buyan was walking towards Li Fenglan, and the next moment, the thing that had knocked Li Fenglan’s sword down earlier slowly flew back into Ling Buyan’s hand.
Meng Linzhou finally saw clearly that it was just a scabbard.
With no sword in his hand, Li Fenglan, whose mind was already unclear, couldn’t help but stare blankly at his own hands. Then he suddenly furrowed his brows and murmured, “Finished Karma…”
Subconsciously, Li Fenglan still thought of his sword as “Finished Karma.”
…
Suddenly losing his long sword, even his hatred was temporarily suppressed.
Li Fenglan instinctively bent down to pick up the sword. But before his fingertips could touch the ordinary spirit sword that had fallen, Ling Buyan, who had just arrived, picked up the long sword first.
At the same time, Ling Buyan gently hugged Li Fenglan.
He patted Li Fenglan’s back very gently, then whispered in his ear, “It’s not Finished Karma… don’t worry, Finished Karma will definitely come back.”
As he finished speaking, the black scabbard flew back up and slowly rubbed against Li Fenglan’s arm.
At this moment, the illusion finally began to dissipate, and the stone forest appeared in front of them.
Li Fenglan’s eyes slowly focused, he was stunned for a moment, and looked at Ling Buyan, “Master?”
“Mm.” Ling Buyan held Li Fenglan and said, “Sorry… I wasn’t with you just now.”
Li Fenglan didn’t say anything, he just buried his face in Ling Buyan’s shoulder. He held the man tightly in front of him, and after who knows how long, he finally said softly, “I was so full of hate just now…”
“I know,” Ling Buyan said softly while stroking Li Fenglan’s back, “I know.”