After seeing with his own eyes what Li Junwu had spoken of, Xu Yuan fell silent.
Sunlight filtered through the reconstructed city defense canopy into the city as though veiled beneath a gloomy shadow. Light and dark alike seemed drained of color, making the entire prefectural city resemble a faded scroll.
The crater carved into the city like a festering pustule had smoothed over, the city walls were no longer broken, and the obliterated city blocks had reappeared. Within them, the common folk who should have died looked around in bewilderment.
Sweeping his gaze over everything in the city, it seemed Zhenxi Prefectural City had reverted to how it had been before the battle began, as if all they had gone through had been nothing more than a pipe dream.
Yet at the center of it all, Mu Nuo's body remained mangled and incomplete. Those pitch-black eyes without whites were still not fully open, but the aberration it radiated had already begun to spread.
To distort an entire prefectural city before even fully awakening—wasn't this oppressive aura a bit too overwhelming?
It felt like the entrance of a final boss.
As the one who had released this monster with his own hands, Xu Yuan realized he was not quite as tense as he would have expected.
The reason was a bit embarrassing to admit, but perhaps it stemmed from the sense of security provided by the Lord of Guyuan.
Had it been any of the other world bosses in *Cangyuan*, whether the Barbarian King or the Desert Enchantress, Xu Yuan might have felt a twinge of dread facing this ominous imp. The performance Mu Nuo was displaying already looked a bit overpowered.
The White Emperor was different.
That guy was a world boss whose difficulty rivaled even his Prime Minister father's.
Surrounded by dragon phantoms, the figure stood haughtily in the void. Even at the epicenter of the aberration, the filthy shadows around could not corrode him in the slightest.
Perhaps due to the bizarre shifts in his surroundings, the White Emperor did not rashly strike at Mu Nuo again. Instead, he watched calmly as the creature's body reconstituted itself like floating paper.
Taking advantage of this lull, Xu Yuan began to probe the various blocks of the ghost-like city beneath his feet.
Although the White Emperor was holding down the front line, Xu Yuan could not guarantee Mu Nuo wouldn't mount a sneak attack. He needed to plan ahead and gather some intelligence first.
As Source Qi surged out from his markings, Xu Yuan steered a serpent of Source Qi into one of the city blocks restored by Mu Nuo. Countless details flooded into his mind.
The recast street surface was physical, not an illusion. What was more, its material was no different from a normal street, all poured from blue mud.
Doubt welled up.
Though blue mud was not particularly precious as a building material, it was not ordinary earth and stone either; its manufacturing process was rather intricate. How had Mu Nuo bypassed those steps to reproduce blue mud?
Could it truly be rewinding time?
Looking down upon the vast, undamaged prefectural city for a moment, Xu Yuan instantly discarded that rather absurd notion.
Impossible. If Mu Nuo truly wielded such power, it could probably tear through a military array of a hundred thousand soldiers single-handedly.
Then how on earth had Mu Nuo reproduced this blue mud?
A ghost domain?
As the offspring of a yin ghost, it wasn't surprising for Mu Nuo to possess a ghost domain.
Yet Mu Nuo wouldn't even know the process for making blue mud. It was like using a 3D printer in his past life to print out a nuclear warhead, only to find the warhead could actually detonate.
The tangled thread of thought had only just surfaced before Xu Yuan nipped it in the bud.
There was no need to overthink it. If a cultivator's Dao domain could materialize things using the rules of the mortal world, then a yin ghost's ghost domain could distort those rules and turn illusion into reality.
The materialized blue mud was probably the result of Mu Nuo distorting some rule.
With this in mind, the serpent of Source Qi flared lightly, instantly cracking the street's pavement with fine fissures.
The scene that followed immediately validated Xu Yuan's suspicion.
Like memory metal from his past life, the cracked ground healed at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Silently noting this, Xu Yuan sent the Source Qi serpent bursting through the soil, coiling around a previously deceased thug and rocketing into the sky.
A moment later, the full-bearded thug was dragged right before Xu Yuan.
The once-dead, full-bearded thug desperately wanted to struggle free and plead for mercy, but pinned under the Source Qi of a Saint, he could not even twitch an eyelid.
Having already tested the inanimate objects materialized in the city, what Xu Yuan needed to test next was the "living beings" resurrected by Mu Nuo.
A torrent of Source Qi forcefully poured straight into the man's body, instantly mapping out every internal detail before Xu Yuan's eyes.
Meridians, dantian, heartbeat, flesh and blood—all were identical to a living human's. The only question was whether he was a "person" with independent consciousness, or merely Mu Nuo's puppet.
And what would happen if he died once more?
The thought had just crossed his mind—
*Snap—*
The man's neck snapped ninety degrees, his head drooping against his chest like that of a rag doll.
To a martial apprentice in the Bone Tempering realm, such an injury was undoubtedly fatal. Under Xu Yuan's monitoring, the man's vital aura ebbed away as rapidly as any normal mortal's. Yet just as the man died completely once more, Xu Yuan suddenly witnessed an extraordinarily bizarre sight.
Color drained from the thug whose neck had been twisted to the right. Skin and flesh turned shriveled and blackened, eventually dissolving into a puff of shadow and vanishing.
Even to a Saint's eyesight, this transformation occurred in the blink of an eye. What surprised Xu Yuan even more was that almost the instant the thug's body vanished, another full-bearded man condensed in the street below.
The man seemed to retain his memories from just moments before. After reviving, he glanced around in bewilderment, peered tremblingly up at the sky, met Xu Yuan's gaze for a fraction of a second, and instantly fled like mad into a nearby building...
Just as Xu Yuan was about to reel the man back up for further study, Li Junwu's voice suddenly came from the prefectural yamen:
"Changtian, did you find out what happened in the city?"
Suppressing the urge to probe further, Xu Yuan looked back. Li Junwu had already arrived before him with the aid of the city defense formations, speaking rapidly:
"The commoners revived in the city don't seem to be puppets."
"Why do you say that?" Xu Yuan asked, furrowing his brows.
Li Junwu's voice was hoarse and low:
"Since arriving in Zhenxi Prefectural City last year, I've gotten to know some shopkeepers and commoners here. Their habits after reviving are virtually identical to what I remember. If they were puppets, it would be impossible to simulate them so convincingly."
As she spoke, a hint of urgency crept into her voice:
"The city defense canopy has reopened, and the damaged formation pathways have been reconstructed, but I seem to have lost control over that portion of the formation. In fact, those reconstructed formation patterns are steadily eroding the parts that remain."
He wasn't surprised that Li Junwu couldn't control the reconstructed formation, but the erosion of the remaining formation provided him with fresh intelligence.
"Mu Nuo wants to turn the entire prefectural city into a part of itself."
Li Junwu froze for a moment, her beautiful eyes widening slightly.
"A spell art like this exists in the world?"
Xu Yuan cast his eyes down at his right hand, where the markings had spread, and said softly, "Don't be too nervous. This is merely Mu Nuo's ghost domain; it can't amount to much yet."
"A ghost domain can turn illusion into reality?"
"You didn't know?"
"Huh?"
"..."
Xu Yuan was silent for a moment, but then let it go.
Just as in his past life the vast majority of nations never possessed a complete industrial system, and even among those that did, most suffered considerable shortcomings.
Zhenxi Manor had strong military might, but its foundation was too shallow—so shallow that it remained oblivious to vast amounts of intelligence and closely guarded secrets.
Xu Yuan could treat such intelligence as common knowledge because of his noble status in the Prime Minister's Manor, whereas what passed for common sense to him was often the deepest of secrets to the outside world.
After he gave a brief, concise explanation, Li Junwu immediately wore an expression that said: *How could such a thing possibly exist in this world?*
She looked both silly and endearing, leaving Xu Yuan speechless.
Yet there was nothing to be done; humans as a species simply could not comprehend things beyond their perception.
Paying no further heed to his bosom buddy's shock, Xu Yuan swiftly organized the intelligence he had gathered.
The city's commoners had indeed revived—revived within Mu Nuo's ghost domain, retaining their personalities and memories from life.
Perhaps because of his position, upon realizing this, Xu Yuan felt no dread toward the current situation. Instead, a touch of greed stirred within him.
At this moment, he suddenly understood the minds of those people in movies and TV shows who created doomsday viruses or machine uprisings.
When the benefit was great enough, humanity was capable of forgetting the risks.
Mu Nuo was an existence that could make someone forget risk.
In his past life, a world without the supernatural, people had never abandoned their pursuit of death and immortality despite their powerlessness. The cultivators of this world had pursued both since antiquity, yet their efforts had inevitably ended in failure.
Yet now, within Mu Nuo's ghost domain,
the boundary between death and life had blurred.
Just as the cultivators of ten thousand years ago had studied aberrant ghosts within the Deathly Quiet Underground Palace, Xu Yuan wanted to capture this imp and use it as a living specimen to probe the boundary between life and death.
Even if that failed, if he could devour it and make its power his own, applying this Living Dead Domain of infinite resurrection to the Black Scale Army, it could completely upend the warfare of this entire era!
Chapter 677