Beneath the long night, "fireflies" drifted—dense swarms of light particles. They seemed incomparably dazzling, yet they could well be the death omens released by the ten-colored divine mushroom, heralding the imminent arrival of a natural disaster.
Qin Ming's eyes were unfocused, his knuckles clenched white. He could not tell truth from illusion—had he truly returned to Night Province, or was he still trapped in the otherworld?
"This is a catastrophe! Report it to the ancestral masters—hurry! Seal Kunling, and warn the entire world!" The blood splashing from the tunnel was shocking to behold as a great grandmaster struggled to thrust out a pale hand.
Those standing guard outside had all turned ashen. Not a single person had imagined this would trigger a "celestial upheaval"!
"Why has it come to this? Just a nine-colored divine mushroom can drag people into illusory realms, forcing them through death and the cycles of life, killing without a trace—even ancestral masters could fall to it. How has a ten-colored divine mushroom appeared now? That otherworld is like a peculiar hell of motley colors."
*Clang!*
In Kunling, a golden bell tolled, its sound echoing across thousands of li!
This was a damaged bell that had fallen from Yujing. Unless faced with dire urgency and sudden major disasters, striking it was forbidden.
Qin Ming shook his head violently. His consciousness fused with heavenly light, turning into a precious mirror that shone upon his core heart and gazed straight into his true self. Yet he still could not distinguish reality.
At first, he had believed he had broken free from illusion, but the celestial upheaval before him was far too abrupt and terrifying, casting him into self-doubt.
*Pop!*
Of the sixteen people he had rescued, eleven burst apart in an instant. Their flesh and blood glowed as vast quantities of luminous spores erupted from within their bodies, a sight gory and gruesome.
The survivors began dry-heaving in agony, and then, with wretched retches, they spat out dense clusters of alluring spirit mushrooms, their faces deathly pale.
In an instant, several of them shriveled completely. Their dull, weathered skin was torn apart effortlessly like paper violently destroyed, sending spores scattering into the air. Many bloodstained spirit mushrooms also tumbled to the ground and quickly took root.
The final five also met gruesome deaths.
Qin Ming watched this scene, powerless to stop it. In truth, his own condition was terrible; massive numbers of light particles swirled through his blood, coursing across his entire body.
Though he did everything he could to refine and suppress them, as the ten-colored divine mushroom spores revived throughout the world, the points of light inside him resonated in turn, spiraling beyond his control.
When he opened his mouth, he coughed up a huge mouthful of blood, motley and vibrant like lethal poison, hissing and smoking as it corroded the ground.
Qin Ming staggered backward unsteadily, clutching his head in excruciating pain. Even now, he had not escaped the peril.
In the darkness, endless "fireflies" emerged in dense swarms, vibrating in resonance with the light particles within him and surging toward him like a flood.
Qin Ming could not escape even if he wished to. The entire night sky was filled with spores; the territory where the earthen city stood had been utterly overrun by the ten-colored divine mushroom.
He was drowned in them, completely submerged.
"Ah..."
Qin Ming let out a low, agonizing roar. He felt as if his skull was filled with glowing particles, on the verge of sprouting mushrooms. Many brightly colored spirit mushrooms—degenerate varieties of the divine mushroom—were budding anew inside him.
With a pop, his right arm blew apart to nourish the divine mushroom's spores, followed by his shoulder shattering into a vapor of blood as countless spores drank his lifeblood.
Qin Ming knew he was "feeding the demon." The pain felt like plunging into purgatory, watching with his own eyes and feeling in his own flesh as he nourished the terrifying creatures of an alien realm.
Soon, his temples throbbed violently before the skin tore open, splashing out a spray of blood.
Then, an intolerable pain seized his skull as it slowly spiderwebbed with cracks. He could clearly hear the crisp snapping sounds of bone giving way.
For a brief moment, Qin Ming considered ending his own life to escape the torment, but he quickly crushed that thought, gritting his teeth to endure and fight back.
In the end, his head shattered with a bang like a ripe watermelon struck with crushing force, splattering blood and curd-like gore everywhere.
Qin Ming's vision went dark. In his final moment, he saw his skull cap fly past before his eyes, and then he sank into hopeless darkness.
His consciousness froze, his vital signs vanished, and even the dispersing consciousness and heavenly light were swallowed by the ocean of glowing spores, turned into their sustenance.
All at once, Qin Ming jolted awake amidst sharp pain. He panted heavily, soaked in blood. The world indeed teemed with glowing spores, yet his body had not shattered.
*After succumbing, have I been trapped in an illusion all along without truly breaking free?* His face was pale, and he noticed specks of blood seeping from his pores.
Clearly, something was wrong inside him, but his silk book method was incomparably domineering; circulating it with full force, he had slain a great deal of the divine mushroom's "offspring" within his bloodstream.
Around him, the people he had rescued were indeed dead.
"You consumed a degenerate variety of the Great Dream Divine Mushroom—a mutated five-colored spirit mushroom. You must pass through at least five layers of illusory realms, drawing closer to reality from the distant depths of illusion. Remember, by no means should you commit suicide in the process!"
In front of him, a great grandmaster shouted sternly, offering both a warning and assistance.
"Am I back in Night Province?" Qin Ming realized that some experiences had not been illusory, but had genuinely happened.
"Each time you endure an illusory realm, you will witness a brief moment of reality, but it will also be mingled with a few falsehoods. Do not believe it entirely!" the great grandmaster guarding the entrance to Purple Dawn Cave said with utmost gravity.
"How can I judge? Senior, please tell me—when I returned, did I rescue sixteen people?"
The great grandmaster replied, "You did rescue people and bring them back, but there were only eight. Just now, they failed to endure and perished in the second illusory realm."
Qin Ming had experienced a brief "awakening," but what he had undergone was half true and half false.
He could not even be certain whether what he was experiencing at this moment was real or illusory. Everything was so vivid; even if it were false, there were no flaws to be found.
*Dong!*
Across the night sky, solemn and magnificent chimes resonated through heaven and earth. It was the golden bell of Kunling, sounding the alarm; only when Night Province was in imminent danger would it toll incessantly.
Over there, golden mist rose straight into the clouds, soaring toward the firmament.
Across the entire region of Kunling, every bank of clouds was illuminated!
"Everyone, the golden bell roars, cleansing your minds and briefly restoring your clarity. Please remember this feeling of reality now! You must endure layer upon layer of illusory realms before you can return to truth. Learn to save yourselves..."
An ancestral master transmitted his voice in person, echoing between heaven and earth.
Qin Ming's expression turned grave. He chose to believe these words, for he looked inward to his heart, and his instincts told him that he had briefly returned to reality, his mind unclouded.
He looked across the world, where spores fell like glowing raindrops, pervasive and vast in number, resembling the countless stars recorded in ancient texts blown down from the sky, endless as they drowned the Kunling region beneath the night.
At the same time, he saw the great grandmaster who had splattered blood in the tunnel being carried out. Growing upon the man's body was an enormous eight-colored spirit mushroom.
To be precise, it was an offspring of the ten-colored divine mushroom!
Was this a bloody scene of reality? Even a great grandmaster had succumbed, unable to withstand it!
Qin Ming did not know whether he should feel fortunate that he had only encountered the five-colored spirit mushroom rather than an even higher-tier mutated spirit mushroom.
His pupils shrank as he saw ancestral masters and "primal ancestors" of the earthen city stumbling out of Purple Dawn Cave, their hair disheveled and their eyes bloodshot.
Qin Ming sensed disaster looming. Could some of the ancestral masters have fallen into illusory realms as well?
After all, a ten-colored divine mushroom suspected of having awakened its own will had emerged into the world.
Next, he saw Jiang Ran, Cui Chonghe, Little Rulai, and others staggering out in terrible condition.
*Is this real or an illusion? Did they all enter the otherworld and meet with disaster?* Qin Ming's heart sank.
"Roar!" An ancestral master growled, on the brink of madness. His back was drenched in blood, where the terrifying embryonic form of a nine-colored divine mushroom was manifesting.
Someone roared, "Not good! Everyone, join forces to suppress him! And use pure yang light to shield the seeds of each path!"
Hearing this, Qin Ming turned and left immediately. Whether this was real or fake, he could not stay near Purple Dawn Cave; he had to distance himself from the afflicted ancestral masters.
Otherwise, if they went mad, no one could stop them, and he would inevitably be caught in the crossfire and die a gruesome death.
Qin Ming bolted into the darkness. In fact, even the blackest reaches lacking Fire Springs were no longer completely devoid of light like an abyss, for luminous spores drifted everywhere across the night sky.
He fled to a dim region far away, panting heavily, and slowly ground to a halt—for he saw his... grandfather!
Qin Ming knew he had entered an illusion once more, plunging into a terrifying illusory realm.
*Only by enduring a mortal tribulation does one survive an illusory realm. But I cannot commit suicide, nor can I deliberately seek out someone to kill me. If a real person happens to be nearby and attacks me...*
Within the illusion, Qin Ming felt an overwhelming headache; the cruelty of this environment was chilling.
Agony racked his entire body. He felt the spores corroding his bones, their luminous particles penetrating even his marrow, and then he felt as if he were being torn apart as mushrooms sprouted within him.
At the same time, that kindly old man... attacked him.
Qin Ming defended himself passively. This was double torture of the mind and the flesh.
He "died" once more, reviving from the pain to find himself lying on the cold ground, drenched in sweat and blood.
He was exhausted in both body and spirit. If this continued, he feared he would deplete his vitality, essence, and spirit; each passage through an illusory realm drained an enormous amount of strength.
Qin Ming felt considerably weakened. His body was dim and his skin lacked luster; those spores had truly harmed his vitality.
Having survived, he enjoyed a brief moment of clarity.
*I have endured three mortal tribulations and am about to enter the fourth illusory realm. If there are only five layers, I truly am drawing closer to reality.*
Just then, Qin Ming felt heaven and earth tremble as the ground shook violently.
He bolted upright and saw colossal pillars, wound with vast numbers of immortal dao runes, descending from the depths of the pitch-black night sky and slamming into the earth.
Every pillar stood taller than mountain peaks, resembling pillars that propped up the sky, each radiating brilliance like a dazzling sun.
Qin Ming could not keep his footing and was shaken off the ground.
His expression turned grim, his heart sinking further, for he knew what they were!
"The Thirty-Six Heaven-Anchoring Divine Stakes!"
Qin Ming's eyes deepened as he watched quietly. These were supreme treasures of Night Province; deploying them meant something supremely terrifying had occurred—an event tied to the fate of their race!
The ancestral masters of each path had sacrificed these great lethal treasures to seal off this region where spores danced across the sky, isolating the entire territory from the outside world.
"I wonder if Kunling City has also been sealed inside."
Qin Ming sighed. Venturing into another world had summoned such a natural disaster; the situation was truly dire.
By now, he could already see an enormous mushroom blotting out heaven and earth in the distance. It seemed even more gargantuan than the earthen city, its cap vanishing into the clouds.
Moreover, that was not all. Around it, other giant mushrooms were sprouting from the earth.
In fact, not far from Qin Ming stood a giant mushroom radiating eight-colored light. At first it resembled a towering tree, but then grew rapidly into the size of a small hill.
Qin Ming started to draw a breath of night mist, but quickly clamped his mouth shut, afraid of succumbing. He deployed his heavenly light force to purify the air currents around him before daring to breathe.
He swiftly moved away, fleeing deeper into the darkness. He had a premonition that this territory was likely plunging into an apocalypse!
Before long, he underwent his fourth mortal tribulation. Struggling through the illusory realm, he was thoroughly prostrated, every pore oozing blood.
Qin Ming lay silently on the ground. In the distance, spores swirled, and giant mushrooms stood one after another like mountain peaks rising from the earth—a sight beyond terrifying.
Moreover, he heard battle cries; the earthen city had descended into total chaos, rife with blood and fire.
*Could the ancestral masters have turned against one another?*
Suddenly, he caught sight of a figure stumbling unsteadily toward him.
"Tang Xumi!" Having crossed four illusory realms, Qin Ming was very close to reality, and in his brief moment of clarity, he recognized the figure at a glance.
"Who are you? I can't go on... I won't make it this time." Tang Xumi staggered up to him, his face bloodless, and collapsed to the ground.
He was emaciated to the bone, the essence, energy, and spirit of his entire body seemingly drained dry.
With the calamity descending, they were not merely enduring illusions; they were facing true death as the "offspring" of the ten-colored divine mushroom fed on everyone's foundation.
Tang Xumi panted heavily, growing weaker by the moment. Clearly, he had just survived an illusory realm and had used his fleeting moment of lucidity to flee here.
He said, "I'm going to die. Without an ancestral master's help, even a seed-level blazing sun cannot survive five or six illusory realms; they will be sucked dry by the ocean of spores. This time, the Great Dream Divine Mushroom is reviving. I expect everyone will end up feeding the demon; there's simply no resisting it."
"Who on earth are you?" he asked again.
Qin Ming revealed his true appearance, shocking the young man.
"Brother Qin, you... what a pity." Tang Xumi explained that the ancestral masters had led the seeds of each path into the earthen city, and the city gates had been completely sealed.
"How are you holding up?" Qin Ming asked him.
Tang Xumi laughed bitterly. "I consumed a five-colored spirit mushroom, so I must survive at least five illusory realms to pull through. It must have developed from the spores of the degraded Great Dream Divine Mushroom. If it fully awakens, there's no telling how many layers of illusion there will be."
Qin Ming asked, "Why didn't you enter the earthen city with the ancestral masters?"
"By the time I escaped Purple Dawn Cave by the skin of my teeth, it was already too late. A chaotic battle was underway, and the gates would never open again for just a few people," he said despondently.
At present, the land outside the earthen city was entirely occupied by the Great Dream Divine Mushroom.
He lowered his head and murmured softly, "I didn't listen to warnings and insisted on going to the otherworld. Never did I imagine I would end up in such a state."
Tang Xumi looked thoroughly dejected. He had possessed no backing and had relied entirely on himself, fighting time and again with relentless effort to finally become one of the contemporary immortal seeds of the outer pure land.
His path had been deeply inspiring. Without having apprenticed under an ancestral master in his early years, rising to this height from an ordinary background had been extraordinarily difficult.
Qin Ming knew of his past: back when Li Qingxu had drunk "dragon blood" to become an immortal seed, Tang Xumi had still been struggling on his own, only later attaining his wish through sheer strength.
This time, Tang Xumi had not received an invitation to the Immortal Peach Gathering either; he had wanted to enter the otherworld to gather spiritual items to advance himself, only to encounter this celestial upheaval.
Qin Ming felt a pang of sorrow, lamenting the young man's fate.
Tang Xumi felt the same, sighing softly, "Brother Qin, you mastered the silk book method through your own efforts, right? That's probably unprecedented. Unrivaled in your domain, it's such a shame to die here..."
Qin Ming said, "Save your breath. Do your best to survive the illusory realms."
"It's too hard. With the ten-colored divine mushroom appearing, all the spirit mushrooms left behind from its degenerate state will revive alongside it." Tang Xumi shook his head weakly.
Then, he snapped upright, his eyes widening in horror. "It's... coming again!"
Qin Ming saw the blood boiling within the youth before him, packed with dense particles of light, even within his skull.
That scalding, five-colored hot blood roared and tore through his limbs and bones with shocking destructive force.
If it were merely an illusion, many people could survive it. But within that illusion, one also had to endure the corrosion of the divine mushroom's spores—something even an immortal seed could not withstand.
Qin Ming stepped forward, wanting to help him.
Yet even as he circulated his most domineering Hunyuan force, it was already futile; that motley blood had long entered the boy's brain and seeped into his marrow.
In his final moments, Tang Xumi murmured, "I became an immortal seed, the greatest youth our small city had seen in a hundred years... but it was all useless. I'm going to die, so small and insignificant after all."
With a pop, parts of his body burst open one after another, unleashing splashes of blood. Even his skull cap cracked apart as vast numbers of spores poured out, his flesh rapidly withering.
As the night wind blew, he crumbled away, his dried flesh and skin dissolving into sparks of fire.
Tang Xumi made not another sound, meeting an agonizing end.
Watching this tragedy, Qin Ming had wished to help, yet had been powerless to change anything.
Back then, when he had seen the Overlord's Posthumous Writings in Luofu City, Tang Xumi had helped him bargain. Later, when he visited the outer pure land, the youth had gifted him the Upright Ape Fiend Scripture.
All those memories seemed like yesterday, yet an immortal seed had met his end just like this.
Qin Ming's moment of lucidity was also reaching its limit. Having traversed four illusory realms, he was now very close to reality, and what he saw was half real and half false.
His blood boiled, his body temperature burning terribly high, his marrow glowing with multiple colors, and points of light swarming every corner of his body.
*Could the Great Dream Divine Mushroom once have been a being on the level of a Heavenly God?* That thought surfaced from the depths of Qin Ming's heart; otherwise, how could its spores be so terrifying?
This time, he survived by the skin of his teeth, enduring the trial with immense difficulty. Passing through the fifth illusory realm, the motley light particles inside him were thoroughly snuffed out, slain by his Hunyuan force.
Qin Ming found himself utterly exhausted. His flesh was no longer as full, feeling as though he had shed a fifth of his body weight.
He opened his eyes. The dim night and the sky full of firefly-like spores were clearly reflected in his heart.
He hoped that everything he had experienced was merely a dream. Yet the patch of ash on the ground before him and Tang Xumi's tattered garments were still there, proving that some horrors were no illusion.
Qin Ming buried Tang Xumi where he lay. After a heavy sigh, he began surveying his surroundings.
In just this short span of time, towering giant mushrooms had appeared in the distance, one after another. Rooted deep in the earth, they drew upon the power of Fire Springs, growing with frightening speed.
In Kunling, even in regions cloaked in lightless dark, super Fire Springs ran deep underground; with the Great Dream Divine Mushroom reviving here, it lacked none of the substances needed to fuel its growth.
Qin Ming's heart grew heavy. If not for the Thirty-Six Heaven-Anchoring Divine Stakes sealing this area, the dancing spores would likely have caused the entirety of Night Province to fall.
He strongly suspected that the otherworld harbored immense trouble, and that they had inadvertently unleashed a monster capable of destroying the world.
Not far from him stood a colossal mushroom towering into the night sky, its immense cap resembling a dense, heavy cloud fraught with crushing pressure.
Suddenly, Qin Ming noticed with a jolt that many of the towering mushrooms were dimming. Turning from motley colors to pitch-black, they rotted rapidly, shedding showers of black dust.
*Are they self-destructing?*
Even where he stood, black powder drifted down, and he swiftly moved out of the way.
Then, Qin Ming watched as a concentrated cluster of divine light, dazzling to the utmost, rose from inside each ruptured giant mushroom, soaring into the sky toward a cloud-piercing giant divine mushroom standing before the earthen city.
*A hundred rivers converging into the sea—is the Great Dream Divine Mushroom about to emerge into Night Province in its complete prime?* Qin Ming felt deeply unsettled; this monster's revival and growth were simply too fast!
From the earthen city, brilliant rays of light shot forth, striking the colossal divine mushroom that pierced the clouds. Cracks spiderwebbed across it, and parts even shattered, but drawing on the power of the Fire Springs, it healed rapidly.
Over the earthen city, endless spores descended, sinking into the Fire Springs...
Qin Ming's heart sank. Could even the ancestral masters and primal ancestors sheltering in the earthen city fail to hold out?
*Huh?* Suddenly, he sensed disaster.
As the spores settled on the ground, more and more colorful spirit mushrooms broke through the soil, and illusory visions once again danced before his eyes.
*Why is this happening?* Qin Ming's hairs stood on end. He had already survived five illusory realms and had consistently protected himself with heavenly light—how had he succumbed again?
Could it be that once ensnared by the Great Dream Divine Mushroom, it was a fight to the death, condemning him to sink forever into illusory realms?
In his final moments of lucidity, Qin Ming saw that these spirit mushrooms were peculiar: many assumed human form, tore themselves from the earth, and sprinted toward the earthen city.
The ground quivered faintly as an army of mushroom men charged toward the earthen city!
...
Across Night Province, an uproar erupted everywhere.
No one had imagined that the unearthing of Purple Dawn Cave would unleash such terror, summoning a world-ending monster.
The night papers, world papers, and other publications reported on it extensively. Panic seized the people in every city beneath the dark sky; if the Great Dream Divine Mushroom were to enter the world, it would bring utter devastation.
"Rest assured for now, everyone. It is currently contained within Kunling. With the Thirty-Six Heaven-Anchoring Divine Stakes in place, even with a sea of spores drifting through the air, it cannot escape."
This incident also shook the various clans beyond Night Province.
Upon hearing the news, several old monsters gasped, finding it hard to believe.
Some among them had faintly heard a legend.
"By conservative estimates, the Great Dream Divine Mushroom is a being at the Great Perfection of Earth Immortal. It might even be a Heavenly Immortal! It was sealed in a forbidden ground, yet this time some of its spores were inadvertently drawn forth. Is it seeking to revive in Night Province?"
Those were the exact words of an old monster from outside Night Province.
When the news spread and people learned the origins of the Great Dream Divine Mushroom, they turned cold from head to toe, their hairs standing on end.
If it truly was a Heavenly Immortal, one wrong move could bring about the end of days!
Helian Chengyun, Leng Mingkong, Present Rulai, and an old monster of the esoteric sect—four supreme experts clad in specialized armor—entered the isolated earthen city.
In the end, they withdrew in helplessness.
According to their estimates, as that ten-colored divine mushroom continuously absorbed the super Fire Springs of Kunling, it was close to breaking through to the Earth Immortal level; destroying it was impossible.
The specialized armor they wore could block the spores of the Great Dream Divine Mushroom.
However, they did not dare bring anyone else out, fearing that the unpurified spores lingering within their bodies might spread across the land of Night Province.
At the same time, they brought out deeply troubling news: the situation of those in the earthen city was dire. Unless sheltered by ancestral masters, even formidable paragons like Pei Shuyan, Cui Chonghe, and Little Rulai could not resist the corrosion of the illusory realms.
Several ancestral masters and primal ancestors had even succumbed while attempting to intercept the ten-colored divine mushroom. Now drowsy and muddled, their lives were not in immediate danger, but their condition was grim.
As report after report arrived, people everywhere gasped in dread. If the Great Dream Divine Mushroom truly returned at the level of an Earth Immortal at Great Perfection, how terrifying would that be?
"What we fear most is that it has surpassed the bounds of an Earth Immortal—that a sealed Heavenly Immortal is reviving!"
According to the judgment of Helian Chengyun, Present Rulai, and the others, there were likely no living souls left outside the earthen city; no one could withstand the erosion of those compounding illusory realms.
Soon, people of every path grew anxious, making inquiries everywhere to see whether their own experts and disciples had entered the earthen city.
When the final list emerged, some rejoiced while others mourned.
In Chixia City, Meng Xinghai bolted upright, having received definitive word: Qin Ming was nowhere to be found in the city.
In fact, rumors claimed that the group exploring the otherworld had most likely perished, with survivors being practically impossible.
Time flew by, and two months passed.
By then, people were certain that aside from the earthen city still holding out, no one could possibly have survived in the territory overrun by the "offspring" of the Great Dream Divine Mushroom.
"Qin Ming likely died there," some murmured in private.
"What? He fell in the Divine Mushroom Forbidden Ground? That's completely unexpected!"
Many were stunned by the news. Without the protection of an ancestral master, even peerless seeds like Xiao Jinye and Little Rulai would almost certainly fail to survive.
Chapter 376