Chapter 185 Understanding is Control

The wind on the rooftop was still howling, sweeping away the remaining ritual embers.

An Xiaowei vanished completely, along with her paranoid ambitions and selfishness, vanishing into nothingness. I half-knelt on the cold, rough concrete floor, gasping for breath, each breath straining at my torn mind and body.

It seems easy to win, but the cost is actually huge.

Before the residual power absorbed in the Memory Museum had time to completely transform the pollution, it encountered An Xiaowei's possession.

A lot of energy had just been expended in fighting against this body possession formation. After a brief period of coordination in fighting against the external enemy, the original evil god power and mental strength in the body fell into a fierce tug-of-war again.

The impact of An Xiaowei's final body possession ritual was like the most violent chisel, which severely cracked the balance I was already struggling to maintain.

The residual taint from Gali slipped in, clearer and more alluring than ever, mingled with an impotent rage at the power stolen from him.

Can't fall here.

I forced myself to stand and looked around. The rooftop of the residential building was a mess, the ground covered in charred marks and strange patterns from energy burns. I had to leave immediately. The commotion just now was too loud. The Investigation Bureau or something else might be attracted at any moment.

"Xiaobai?" I called in a low voice.

The shadows rippled, and the figure of the Night Wolf silently emerged. It approached cautiously, its dark green eyes scanning between me and the surroundings with concern. It also had several scorch marks on its body, clearly affected by the ritual's outbreak.

"We have to go." I took a deep breath and tried to mobilize my mirror jumping ability.

However, as soon as I thought about it, the scene before me immediately began to double and distort. The overdrawn mental energy and excessive use of illusory authority made it difficult for me to maintain stable control over even my most familiar abilities.

No way...

People can't, or at least shouldn't be so unlucky.

After gritting my teeth, I finally chose the most primitive way - to leave the area on foot and at least find a hiding place first.

However, Xiaobai growled and suddenly crawled down.

I took one look at it and rode it without any psychological burden.

With Xiaobai's stealth ability, he took me away from this place quickly and found a relatively hidden basement in the ruins to hide temporarily.

…

The hours spent in the basement were painful and long. The physical injuries were secondary; the mental chaos and conflict were the most fatal. I closed my eyes and looked inward, my consciousness sinking into the chaotic sea of ​​​​knowledge.

Gali's power was like a black icy ocean, roaring and surging, trying to drown everything.

I subconsciously began to meditate on the Cloud-Thunder Pattern. The Cloud-Thunder Pattern was like a magic needle that stabilized the sea, firmly fixing my mind and preventing me from losing control.

However, unlike before, there is something else in between.

That is the glimmer of light that comes from a deeper understanding of the nature of illusion after going through the test of the "Mirror of Heart".

They do not have the direct stabilizing ability like the Cloud Thunder Pattern, nor are they as aggressive as the Power of Gali. They are more like a cognitive anchor, a more thorough understanding of illusion and reality.

I recall the feeling of looking in the mirror at countless possible selves. Those illusions were powerful because they precisely tapped into my inner desires and regrets. But they ultimately failed because I realized that no matter how beautiful they were, they were only possible, not the real me.

"Illusion... isn't completely false..." I muttered to myself, enduring a headache as I tried to grasp a glimmer of understanding. "It stems from reality, from the projection of the human heart... The most powerful illusion isn't about creating bizarre scenes, but about weaving the truth that people are most willing to believe..."

It is as if all of human’s imaginary creations are based on what one knows and are processed and imagined on this basis.

The same was true of An Xiaowei's ritual. She constructed an alluring prospect of power advancement, but its essence was still an illusory trap.

"Then...what about the other way around?" A thought flashed through my mind.

"If I can more clearly understand 'self', can I more accurately distinguish or even... 'define' illusions?"

I tried not to use force to suppress Gali's whispers and those chaotic illusions, but to "observe" them from a new perspective, just like a calm painter examining his palette, distinguishing which were foreign stains and which were reflections of his own thoughts.

Something wonderful happened.

When I stopped viewing them as monsters to be driven away and instead viewed them as a stream of information to be observed and analyzed, the feeling of passively enduring them eased. I could even vaguely sense the specific frequencies and emotional fragments contained in Gali's whispers, as well as the source of my own distracting thoughts.

Only by understanding can we control.

I tried to guide the part of the luminous light that came from the experience of the "Mirror of Inquiry" like weaving a silk thread, extremely weakly and tentatively to slightly deflect a chaotic thought that was trying to attack my consciousness.

Success! That thought seemed to hit an invisible, slippery membrane, gliding past the edge of my consciousness!

Although it was only a trivial operation, it lifted my spirits! This wasn't a brute force confrontation, but a more subtle guidance and resolution! My use of illusory authority has reached a new level, moving from crude "creating illusions" or "mental shock" to a more in-depth "influencing cognition" and "weaving information."

This breakthrough gave me a great shock. With this foundation, plus the power of faith, Gali was injured by me once. After comprehensively evaluating the situation from many aspects, I may not be unable to fight Gali.

Although I guess I won’t get any benefit in the end.

But at least, this is a good sign.

After initially stabilizing my mind, I began to carefully explore the remaining energy traces after An Xiaowei's ritual failed.

These energies are very strange. They have lost the control of An Xiaowei's strong personal will and become like ownerless ghosts, but they still maintain extremely high activity and purity.

Most of them clearly bear the characteristics of Gali, cold and chaotic, but seem to have been "purified" by some method, weakening their direct contamination, making them more like a highly compressed illusory essential energy.

Another small part contains An Xiaowei's own spiritual fragments and some lingering obsessions.

An Xiaowei was worthy of being the top researcher of the Investigation Bureau, and she was able to achieve this level.

Facing these drifting powers, absorbing them is extremely risky, but the temptation is equally great. This may be an opportunity to quickly replenish strength or even deepen your understanding of illusions.

I was a little hesitant about this.