The antique Buddhist temple was under assault. With every shudder, Master Wuhen's body trembled in kind, while the weeping and laughter echoing from within his heart grew increasingly frenzied. The mental pollution contained in those sounds was enough to drive even a Level 7 Dominator into an immediate emotional collapse, plunging them into madness.
Evidently, this sudden assault had disrupted his rhythm of digesting the item and ascending to demigod.
As the tremors intensified, a dark, gaping fissure tore across the main hall like a ripped curtain. It rapidly widened and tore further apart until the entire illusion was shredded to pieces, leaving only the golden Buddha—the symbol of Master Wuhen's state of mind—standing enduring and unyielding.
The only one who could force entry into an Illusionist's illusion was an Illusionist of an even higher rank.
The Leader of the Southern Sect had arrived.
Once the temple vanished, a new illusion was born. Crimson magma surged forth, bubbling and gurgling, the blistering heat warping the air.
Master Wuhen found himself submerged in a blazing sea of magma.
To an Illusion Demigod, illusion was reality. Everything within an illusion was real, indistinguishable from the physical world.
The monk's robe on Master Wuhen melted away, revealing his robust physique. Immediately after, his lower body carbonized in the magma, exposing stark white bones that promptly turned glowing red...
Faced with the agony of being scorched by fierce flames, Master Wuhen's expression remained unchanged. Cradling his blackened heart with one hand, he reached into the void with the other.
A porcelain vial filled with golden liquid materialized.
He tipped his head back and downed the life fluid. Golden radiance bloomed across his dissolving flesh and blood, rapidly restoring his body.
This, too, was an illusion—yet illusion was reality.
Master Wuhen continued fusing with the black orb, racing against time.
Seeing that the roasting magma had failed, the dusky sky suddenly streaked with a vast rain of fire as meteorites plunged down, bombarding Master Wuhen in a dense barrage.
Without even looking, Master Wuhen conjured earthen walls radiating heavy halos of light, towering like bastions from an immortal realm, blocking the trajectory of the falling meteors.
This was not genuine earth power, but a defense constructed purely from illusion.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The thick, sturdy bulwarks shattered one after another under the meteorite barrage, yet the meteor shower had only been depleted by a third.
Master Wuhen sighed softly, lifted a finger, and said, "All falsehood shall return to nothingness."
The meteorites about to smash him to smithereens vanished one by one, returning to nothingness.
He pointed to the ground again. "Likewise, nothingness."
The boiling magma was extinguished, and the world lapsed into absolute darkness.
In a contest of illusion, the Leader of the Southern Sect was clearly superior to Master Wuhen, even though Wuhen had already begun fusing with a demigod item. Consequently, he had no choice but to invoke his "Nothingness" skill to dissolve the illusions.
In the endless darkness, a sharp beam of sword light flared up like dawn illuminating the night.
That radiant dawn shot forward—a woman flying upon a sword. Her features were cold and exquisitely breathtaking; blanket-thick white hair draped over her shoulders and back, and even her eyelashes were stark white.
Marshal White Tiger!
This, of course, was another illusion.
Riding her sword light, Marshal White Tiger charged directly at Master Wuhen. Even from hundreds of meters away, the razor-sharp sword qi perforated Master Wuhen with countless gashes, leaving him soaked in blood.
Master Wuhen cradled his heart with one hand while twisting the empty air with the other, conjuring a kindly, silver-haired elder.
The elder existed for merely a second before annihilating into nothingness.
This elder was the Lord of the Central Court, the entity of the highest standing among the Five Elements Alliance's five Alliance Leaders. With Master Wuhen's current status, he was not yet capable of manifesting him through illusion.
In a contest between high-tier Illusionists, illusions had to obey two rules. First, they had to adhere to real-world logic: things that existed in reality could be conjured at will, while things that did not exist could not be manifested through illusion.
Furthermore, if an Earth Monster was a defensive class in reality, an Earth Monster conjured in an illusion could not possibly possess high agility and massive damage output.
Second was the restriction of one's own level.
An Illusion Demigod could conjure people and objects of their own tier, but a peak Dominator could not manifest a demigod-level powerhouse.
By then, Marshal White Tiger had already arrived.
At this critical juncture, Master Wuhen conceived a solution. He conjured a tattered quilt and draped it over himself.
The dazzling sword qi—like a torrent of silk, a majestic rainbow—swept in with thunderous momentum, carrying a lethal intent capable of destroying all things. Yet it crashed entirely against the tattered quilt, erupting into a magnificent blaze of sword light.
Wrapped in the quilt, Master Wuhen stood completely motionless.
The Coward's Quilt!
A Dominator-stage rule-based item. Once wrapped in the quilt, one became utterly indestructible. No attack in the world could breach the quilt's defense, because it was an absolute rule.
Marshal White Tiger cast a deep glance at the quilt before dissolving into thin air.
The illusion fell back into darkness once more.
The Leader of the Southern Sect did not press the attack. He seemed to have given up, waiting for the quilt's duration to expire.
Illusions had to comply with real-world logic; items manifested through illusion exacted the same cost as their genuine counterparts. If Past Without Trace kept cowering inside the quilt, he would be permanently sealed inside once time ran out.
However, the quilt's active duration was four hours.
"Ling Tuo, you're still not going to strike?"
A faint, deep voice echoed from the dark.
In the next second, a majestic surge of yin energy descended. Vast swathes of yin energy condensed into dark clouds, churning and rolling across the high sky. Within the black clouds, countless hideous ghostly faces loomed.
Ghostly wails echoed throughout the entire illusion space.
The moment this Night Walker, who cultivated the path of the Taiyin, arrived, he transformed this illusory realm into a chilling netherworld of ghosts.
Amidst the colossal, terrifying black clouds, a bright, pure full moon rose. Its pristine moonlight tore through the clouds, shedding silvery gossamer brilliance.
Bathed in the moonlight, the vengeful spirits surged with violent energy. Grotesque faces craned out from the clouds, countless claws flailing as they circled above Master Wuhen's head like a pack of starving hyenas.
As moonlight fell upon Master Wuhen, the ragged quilt dissolved like foam.
It had been concealed and neutralized by supreme lunar power.
The vengeful wraiths in the dark clouds shrieked and swooped down, swarming forward like a school of piranhas smelling blood.
***
*Let me sort this out. Let me sort this out...* Sitting by the stone table, Zhang Yuanqing's thoughts raced.
According to the Old Ancestor, the end of every class path represented a specific authority within the Spirit Realm game. In that case, the Musician corresponded to the code responsible for selling potions, granting revival coins, managing the spawn point fountain, and refreshing NPCs.
The Scholar was the Kiri of every map, overseeing weapon crafting, synthesis, drop rates for materials, and so on.
The Void (Merchant) class was obviously the game's trading system. Wasn't that Myriad Worlds Mall literally the game's in-game shop?!
Every orthodox class "controlled" a segment of the codebase. So what kind of authority did Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, and Earth, as well as the orthodox classes overseas, represent?
And what authority did the Night Walker govern?
Zhang Yuanqing pondered for a few seconds, and his eyes lit up. The prophecy of the Compass of Light went:
*When the sun, moon, and stars return to their places, the gods slumbering in chaos will awaken; the King seated high upon the divine throne will lead the gods to reignite the war, and the world shall enter a new cycle.*
Taking this prophecy into account, one could deduce the Night Walker's status among all the administrators—the damned game designer!
The damned dev who could roll out version updates!
As everyone knew, the Third Major District hadn't opened yet. What the Compass of Light's prophecy described was actually the game dev logging in, releasing a patch update, and launching the Third Major District!
Then all orthodox classes would take their positions, launching a war against the evil faction.
So what role did the evil faction play in the Spirit Realm? Zhang Yuanqing had pieced it together now.
—Viruses!
Evil classes lacked a demigod stage, which meant they had no administrative authority and were not administrators. In other words, evil classes were foreign organisms.
They were viruses!
*If that's the case, I've cracked most of the Spirit Realm's secrets.*
The game known as the Spirit Realm had already been born in ancient times. Empress Wa was the first-generation administrator, and players—the living beings of Earth—continually leveled up and evolved within the game.
Until one day, a meteor swarm struck Earth, bringing the virus with it. The virus dealt a devastating blow to the ecological balance of the Spirit Realm, resulting in Empress Wa's demise, the extinction of ancient cultivators, and the Spirit Realm shutting down its servers.
During that catastrophe, Empress Wa erected a firewall that temporarily wiped out the Spirit Realm viruses. But she hadn't eradicated them completely. The viruses tenaciously took root in the Spirit Realm's system, giving rise to the orthodox faction and the evil faction.
Thus, the conflict between the orthodox and evil factions was fundamentally a war between programmers and viruses.
The objective of the orthodox classes was to collect the administrator privileges scattered across Spirit Realm instances, reclaim control over the game, and purge the viruses.
Then the objective of the evil classes wasn't hard to guess either—to prevent administrators from arising.
And then seize control of the Spirit Realm game.
Now, Zhang Yuanqing still had three unresolved questions:
First, why would the evil classes invest in Night Walkers?
The Night Walker was an orthodox class. By all logic, it was inherently aligned with the administrators and in direct opposition to the viruses.
Unless there was another secret behind the Night Walker class.
Second, who developed the Spirit Realm game in the first place?
Third, where did the virus come from?
Thinking up to this point, Zhang Yuanqing glanced at the Xie family ancestor.
"Don't look at me. Once you marry the Xie girl and father a cub, I'll tell you the rest of the intelligence," the child said casually.
"How did it turn into having kids now?" Zhang Yuanqing curled his lip. "Once I have one, will you say, 'Wait until you have ten'?"
"Not quite." The child reached out with an oily hand, wiped it on Zhang Yuanqing's shoulder, and said, "Once you and the Xie girl have a child, I'll promise to let your child become the Xie family patriarch. But they must bear the surname Xie. As for the children you have with other women, they can take your surname."
Zhang Yuanqing raised an eyebrow, finally realizing the Xie family ancestor's ambitious scheme. He wanted to use Zhang Yuanqing's bloodline to establish a Night Walker branch for the Xie family!
Think about it: with Yuanshi Tianzun's talent, there would definitely be Night Walkers born among his future children. The more children he had, the more Night Walkers there would be.
That way, the Xie family would gain a sizable number of Night Walkers, elevating their family's strength to new heights.
*Still, this old rogue is quite upfront and hearty. He shares high-level secrets without hesitation—much better than the riddle-makers I usually run into...* Zhang Yuanqing rather appreciated the Old Ancestor's temperament.
This was a demigod worth getting close to.
Having unraveled a portion of the Spirit Realm's secrets, he felt remarkably cheerful and put his looming lethal calamity out of his mind. Raising his cup, he said, "Old Ancestor, from now on, you're my own ancestor. Cheers, drink up!"
If he married Little Green Tea and the Palace Mistress in the future, this man truly would be his unshakeable ancestor.
*Yeah, before the Crab Banquet ends, I'll butter him up some more. Who knows, maybe I can snag a few bottles of life fluid,* he thought.
"By the way, Old Ancestor, I heard Family Head Xie Su is still inside the Spirit Realm?" Zhang Yuanqing hadn't forgotten his promise to Little Green Tea. "Lingxi told me the Palace of the Arbiter of Fate isn't very difficult, and there was already a walkthrough guide for it. By all accounts, he should have come out long ago. Did something unexpected happen—a hidden quest, perhaps?"
Based on his experience, the Palace of the Arbiter of Fate was a cleared instance, and Xie Su was plenty strong, so the only remaining possibility was that he had triggered a hidden quest.
The Old Ancestor said casually, "Anything is possible."
*That's way too perfunctory...* Zhang Yuanqing muttered inwardly.
The hundred-year-old child gave a scoff. "Once you enter an instance, life and death are left to heaven. Coming out alive is best; if not, that's just fate. No need to dwell on it. Drink, drink!"
As one of the first generation of Spirit Realm walkers, he had witnessed far too many such occurrences. Seeing lovers, children, grandchildren, and so forth return to the Spirit Realm one after another, he had long grown detached.
"You truly are broad-minded, Old Ancestor. Living in the present is the way to go," Zhang Yuanqing said insincerely as he raised his cup.
At that moment, the two men holding their cups both turned toward the courtyard gate.
The hurried clicking of high heels approached, followed by Xie Qin's reporting voice from outside the door:
"Old Ancestor, the Family Head has returned. He has urgent business with you."
Chapter 627