Chapter Five: The Tangled Web of Reality and Illusion

After making his decision, Mo Xuan gathered spiritual power into the twin blades and hurled them forward. Their path traced two jagged lines through the air, slicing open streaks of light and knocking the woman back.

He then sat down and focused his spiritual strength, trying to break through the illusion. Spiritual power swirled around him like rolling waves, surging and tumbling at his side. Sweat beaded on his face. Yet whenever his mind grew still, a stream of strange scenes kept surging through his thoughts, each one different from the last, forever showing him people being slain, leaving him utterly unable to calm himself and do anything at all.

Meanwhile, the woman within the illusion freed herself from the blade and immediately lunged toward him. Just as she seemed about to kill him, the blade suddenly froze in midair, only half a meter from his body.

"How can this be? Ah!" Mo Xuan was driven half-mad by the chaotic flood of memories. He became unbearably distressed, his head seeming ready to burst.

At that moment, however, a voice suddenly rang out nearby. "Do not let your thoughts run wild. Find the right direction!"

Mo Xuan jolted awake at the voice. When he opened his eyes, the illusion was still there, and the woman before him was still there too. Only now she hung motionless in the air, staring fixedly at him. The difference was that blood had begun to seep over the blade. He did not understand what was happening, but this was the perfect chance.

Remembering those words, he steadied his mind, set aside everything in his heart, and concentrated only on what was before him. Gradually, the surroundings became astonishingly unreal, and in the end everything in the illusion vanished. A figure then appeared before his eyes. He saw the woman standing in front of him with her back turned, and for a moment he thought he was still trapped in the illusion.

Then the woman tossed the blade aside, speaking furiously all the while. "That thing was my treasure, and you actually swallowed it..."

Mo Xuan nearly wanted to embrace the woman before him. He had barely managed to say the word "thanks" when suddenly his body grew unbearably hot, as if it had been locked inside a furnace and scorched. The heat felt ready to tear him apart. His head spun violently, then throbbed with searing pain, as though countless needles were being driven into it.

The woman, who had originally meant to press him for answers, understood his condition at a glance and realized she had no choice but to help him again. So she sat down across from Mo Xuan, quickly took his hand, and sent the spiritual power within her body into his, trying to guide that energy to circulate through him.

Once the pain eased, Mo Xuan understood what was happening and sank his mind inward, entering his own spiritual space. But the instant he stepped inside, he was startled.

Within Mo Xuan's spiritual space were countless clocks of every shape and form, some twisted, some normal. As he moved deeper in, he arrived at another place.

There he saw his younger self, yet at times he also seemed to be caught within the scene, completely unable to obey his own thoughts. The deeper he sank into this chaotic train of thought, the more he felt himself slipping beyond control, as if he were on the verge of madness.

No, I can't!

Before long, he entered that place once more and saw the scene of his uncle's murder, the destruction by fire, everything he had witnessed that day appearing before his eyes again.

He told himself to stay calm. There had to be a way to overcome all of this. There had to be.

He thought that if he did this, he would surely escape it. But even after forcing himself calm, all that happened was that the surroundings turned black, so black that only the clocks remained, spinning within the darkness. Everything else was still empty.

Why? Could it be that this forbidden art truly cannot be cultivated?

When the spiritual space had turned completely dark, a beam of light appeared before him, taking on a familiar shape that filled him with warmth.

That is...

He could truly feel that face, both familiar and strange at once, though only a faint, blurry memory remained. Even the others in his family seemed to know very little. At this moment, suddenly sensing it all, he truly wanted to stop here and savor this fleeting warmth.

The clock where that light appeared marked the time shortly after Mo Xuan's birth.

Yet the figure bathed in light seemed like nothing more than an illusion, always keeping its back to him, forever beyond his reach.

Then that blurred silhouette transformed into blossoms of white flowers, spreading outward in all directions and releasing a faint radiance. The darkness around him receded and became a forest, while he stood amid a sea of white flowers.

For a moment, he could not understand what was happening. Then a familiar phrase surfaced in his mind.

Absolute Frozen Domain.

Outside, the crimson marks of his deviation from cultivation vanished from Mo Xuan's body, replaced by a pillar of white light that engulfed both him and the woman before him. The beam shot straight into the sky, then faded away in an instant. A vast and majestic power filled the surroundings without end.

When Mo Xuan opened his eyes again, he found that his strength had unexpectedly risen by a full level. This left him puzzled. Hadn't it been said that he should have advanced by at least two realms? Why was it only one now?

"Had enough hugging, or do you not want to get up?" the woman said with a strange smile.

"Ah, sorry, sorry!" Mo Xuan hurriedly stood and apologized at once.

The little brother is rather cute after all. Still, I forgive you, heh heh. Do you want to be my disciple?

For reasons unknown, the woman suddenly began speaking like that.

Mo Xuan would not agree. Who knew what sort of intentions the other party had?

"You little rascal, you stole my thing and now you dare deny it?" The woman was instantly furious and struck Mo Xuan hard on the head.

"I didn't know!" Only then did Mo Xuan realize that the ancient scroll of the Sealed Sleep Curse belonged to this woman before him.

Perhaps because the disturbance had been too great, it alerted the other two people.

"What happened?"

The slightly thin man, who was fairly handsome and looked to be in his thirties, was taken aback. "Huh? Ice Maiden, how did you suddenly advance by four levels? What happened?"

"Cough cough, that was all thanks to him. I don't know what he was cultivating, but he suddenly lost his sanity and nearly went berserk. I almost couldn't suppress it. Then, for some reason, I advanced four levels in succession, and now I'm at the eighth level of Earth Mystic Realm!" The woman stood up, then swayed her waist slightly as she slowly came over to the two of them and explained.

"Then congratulations, hahaha!" The other two congratulated her.

"That wasn't..." Mo Xuan felt that something was wrong with what she had said. Just as he was about to tell the truth, he was met with another beating.