In the face of Hanhai's anguished, blood-weeping questioning, "Venerable Tianjue" finally turned his head to "look" over.
His eyes remained shut, and his voice was exceedingly bizarre—halting and erratic, rising and falling unpredictably.
"Who am I?"
"...Guess."
As he said this, he abruptly clenched his left hand.
The Cloud Water Heavenly Palace, which had already fallen into dead silence with no survivors left aside from Hanhai and Taiyi, suddenly rang out once again with the agonizing wails of the disciples in their final moments.
Pinned in midair and unable to move, Hanhai watched translucent figures rise one after another from the disciples' mangled corpses.
As if still frozen in the instant right before death, their faces were filled with terror and despair.
"Ahhhhhhh..."
What "Venerable Tianjue" had done went far beyond simply "killing" them!
He wanted the disciples of the Cloud Water Heavenly Palace to live for all eternity in the agonizing torment of the instant before death!
What kind of deep-seated enmity could drive someone to commit such a heinous act?
Filled with boundless grief and fury, Hanhai erupted with all his might in an attempt to break free of the restraint.
Yet he could not budge the black rays piercing his body in the slightest. Instead, the recoil caused blood to leak from his seven orifices, leaving him in a wretched state!
Hanhai could only watch helplessly as the figure before him transformed all the slaughtered disciples into miserable existences neither truly living nor truly dead!
"Venerable Tianjue walks the path of slaughter."
"Methods like this are something he could never accomplish."
"No, that's not right..."
Hanhai's eyes glazed over as he mumbled under his breath.
A moment later, as if striking upon an idea, Hanhai shuddered. "The Heavenly Physician? You are the Heavenly Physician?!"
As Hanhai shouted this, the figure tormenting the disciples of the Cloud Water Heavenly Palace paused slightly.
A bizarre smile then appeared on his face.
"The Heavenly Physician..."
"Heheheh, indeed. I am the Heavenly Physician!"
Once those words left his mouth, the world in Hanhai's eyes shifted drastically.
The murderer, who had previously borne the appearance of "Venerable Tianjue," instantly transformed into the Heavenly Physician!
Compassion filled his gaze, sanctimonious and dignified—yet his deeds were horrifying beyond belief!
And the black sword-lights trapping Hanhai also morphed into slender black needles!
"It really was like this!"
"Why! Heavenly Physician!"
Believing he had uncovered the truth, Hanhai let out an earth-shattering roar.
"Why! Why!"
He demanded answers over and over.
Yet the Heavenly Physician turned a deaf ear, his expression never wavering from start to finish.
Only in his turbid eyes was there a trace of appreciation as he gazed at the "resurrected" disciples of the Cloud Water Heavenly Palace, as if admiring his own masterpiece.
The newly reborn disciples were initially bewildered, looking down at their translucent bodies before glancing around.
Gradually, however, they began to understand what had happened to them.
Hanhai's furious roars also made them realize who was responsible for it all.
"Heavenly Physician!"
"Heavenly Physician!"
One after another, venomous roars echoed through the Cloud Water Heavenly Palace.
It was enough to make one's blood run cold.
Yet the Heavenly Physician looked as though he were listening to a marvelous symphony, a look of intoxication surfacing on his face.
This drove everyone from the Cloud Water Heavenly Palace past their emotional breaking point; they wished nothing more than to tear into the Heavenly Physician's flesh.
Yet they remained under the Heavenly Physician's control, able only to howl in vain without mounting any real resistance.
After an unknown amount of time, as if he had heard enough, the Heavenly Physician's expression suddenly shifted.
With a cold snort, endless darkness swallowed everyone in the Cloud Water Heavenly Palace.
...
The vision ended abruptly.
When light returned, it went back to a short while earlier, to the moment in the grand hall when Hanhai was speaking with Taiyi.
*It seems this nightmarish memory is the very source of Hanhai's torment,*
Li Fan thought to himself.
Viewing this memory several more times from Hanhai's perspective to ensure there were no other anomalies, this wisp of divine sense prepared to leave.
Yet to Li Fan's surprise, he found no way out!
Through continuous cycles, the scene here had grown extraordinarily close to real space and time.
One could awaken from an illusion or a memory.
Yet how could one return to reality from reality itself?
Connection with the outside world had been severed. Li Fan tried numerous methods to depart, but all ended in failure.
Still, Li Fan did not panic.
After all, what had entered was merely a wisp of divine sense he had split off.
To his true body, the injury of losing this wisp could heal in less than a breath's time.
Normally, since escape was hopeless and this posed no harm to his true body, Li Fan's wisp of divine sense could simply annihilate itself and be done with it.
Yet driven by the instinct for survival, this wisp of divine sense still wished to make another attempt to see if a way through could be found.
*Even an outsider like me cannot escape this eternal nightmare, let alone Hanhai, the master of this domain.*
*Yet the underlying cause of this predicament is well worth considering. Is it that Hanhai suffered too great a shock and cannot free himself? Or is it...*
Startled but composed, Li Fan continued to experience the nightmare through Hanhai's perspective.
After reliving the hellish scene once more, when darkness surged following the Heavenly Physician's cold snort, Li Fan focused intently and peered into the dark.
The darkness lasted only a few breaths.
At first glance, it appeared to be pure blackness caused by missing memories.
Yet Li Fan keenly perceived that the period of darkness was split into two distinct parts.
The first part was Hanhai's perception of the outside world being forcibly veiled by someone.
Only after that came the interlude before the nightmare's cycle restarted.
Both manifested as a dead, pitch-black silence, so Hanhai, caught in madness, had no way of distinguishing between the two.
Only an outsider like Li Fan could vaguely detect the subtle difference.
In fact, had Li Fan not been long accustomed to worldly tragedies, heart steeled like a rock, and barely shaken by the horrific scene in the Cloud Water Heavenly Palace, allowing him to maintain absolute calm, even he would have struggled to notice the disparity.
With a breakthrough point found, this wisp of divine sense waited through the nightmare cycles, attempting to pierce the darkness and witness what was happening outside.
*It seems that "Heavenly Physician" didn't stop because he grew tired of listening. That sudden subtle change in his expression...*
*Someone arrived,*
Li Fan realized.
After patiently enduring over a hundred cycles, gathering bits of subtle light and shadow from each run like pieces of a puzzle, Li Fan finally pieced together what had taken place during the moment obscured by the darkness.
Shortly after the "Heavenly Physician" suppressed everyone in the Cloud Water Heavenly Palace, a figure flew over from the horizon at extreme speed.
A look of mockery surfaced in the "Heavenly Physician's" eyes, his figure fading away until he vanished completely.
And the newly arrived figure was startlingly also in the likeness of the Heavenly Physician!
Chapter 954