Chapter 259: Soul-Falling Formation (3)

On a moonless night, the people who were tied up and piled in the corner of the yard had no idea what was happening. They only saw a flash of light, like a bolt of lightning, briefly and terrifyingly illuminating Luo Xuanyi and Li Yuanmiao, who was motionless at her feet.

Only the Blackwood Sect monk Fei Han knew that Li Yuanmiao had stopped breathing. But no matter how he expanded his perception, he could not figure out what had happened.

Fei Han sensed that Li Yuanmiao, thrown by the black mist, had suddenly fainted and collapsed to the ground. The girl, pale to the point of radiance in the darkness, did nothing but take out a stick of incense and light it. She stood abruptly and silently in the dilapidated courtyard. A cold, misty wind blew across the broken eaves, creating an eerie atmosphere.

Could they be from the Paper Arts Sect? Or perhaps hired by King Yu to capture them and take them to Zhatian City? There's no need to capture anyone else then.

Just as Fei Han was thinking about what Luo Xuanyi would do to Li Yuanmiao, he was horrified to find that Li Yuanmiao's breathing began to weaken, gradually becoming almost inaudible. Li Yuanmiao's soul flew out with his last breath, and his soul disappeared, leaving only a residual image of white light.

Li Yuanmiao is dead!

Fei Han was stunned, stunned. He couldn't believe that Duke Yu's brother had died inexplicably in such a place. The shock of this death blew away all the political scheming in his mind, and he finally began to realize that Luo Xuanyi might just be a passing evil cultivator who'd killed someone.

Luo Xuanyi had no idea of Fei Han's complicated thoughts, and even if she knew, she would not bother to care. She was now concentrating on studying the Soul-Falling Formation of the Inter-World.

The soul fell into the formation, and the world was already a stranger. The Guhu Town established by Luo Xuanyi did not let Li Yuanmiao see any flaws. Even if he was deliberately arranged to be a beggar, at most he felt a little dazed.

Li Yuanmiao was lost in thought, and Luo Xuanyi's arrangement of a "family down on its luck" life story complemented his own logic. This meant that as long as the logic was perfect, even if the identity arranged in the formation was very different from the original, it would still be feasible.

A thin layer of incense ash settled on the hollow of his hand. Just half a quarter of an hour had passed, but Luo Xuanyi had attempted to speed up the time within the Soul-Falling Formation. From the shop's opening in the morning to its closing at night, almost an entire day had passed. It seemed that time within the formation could be manipulated by Luo Xuanyi's will, without anyone within it realizing it.

In addition to verifying these two points, Luo Xuanyi also tried to control Li Yuanmiao in the formation and let the "townspeople" kill him. The former was unsuccessful, at most making Li Yuanmiao feel a little hungry, but the latter was more interesting.

When she first learned the Soul-Falling Formation, Luo Xuanyi learned from the knowledge that the person who set up the formation could not really harm the person who entered the formation unless he or she committed suicide.

But how do you know if it works without experimenting?

Under her manipulation, the butcher who opened the door that morning was about to trample Li Yuanmiao to death, but he simply stood still and scolded him. Since direct manipulation with murderous intent was impossible, Luo Xuanyi changed her mind and tried to cause an accident to kill Li Yuanmiao.

At the time, the butcher, eager to open his shop for business, pushed Li Yuanmiao away with a palm strike. Inadvertently, Li Yuanmiao's head fell directly onto the edge of the canal's masonry. However, the butcher's force was too great, and Li Yuanmiao rolled over, avoiding the impact.

The next time, the customer lifted the weakened Li Yuanmiao and threw him directly onto the bluestone slab. However, this time, Li Yuanmiao only felt psychological pain, without actually having any bruises.

However, Li Yuanmiao was hungry, so he ate the dough Luo Xuanyi had prepared and drank a lot of cold water, which caused his stomach to explode and he died. The soul dissipates after death, and the body naturally stops breathing and dies.

By comparing the two, we can see that the death of the Soul-Falling Formation in the Interworld is the evolution of the "deception" of the formation - one mistakenly thinks that he is dead, and his soul disperses into reincarnation.

Luo Xuanyi's job was to guide him. Li Yuanmiao's every psychological behavior seemed to be determined by himself, but Luo Xuanyi could reinforce his psychological direction by stripping him of his original environment, fabricating stories, and using complex and emphasized suggestive behaviors.

From the outset, Luo Xuanyi manipulated Li Yuanmiao into feeling a slight, though not intense, hunger. She reinforced the suggestion by arranging the images of a butcher, a noodle soup shop, diners eating noodles, and the aroma of the kitchen—all real-life objects. Li Yuanmiao, under the influence of these suggestions, felt genuinely hungry, growing hungrier.

He believed he was hungry, so the Soul-Falling Formation took advantage of the opportunity to shake his soul. Under the misleading formation, his soul believed it and then fed back the feeling of hunger to Li Yuanmiao.

Similarly, Li Yuanmiao's death was based on the real-world laws of "dough swells when water is added" and "a burst stomach leads to death if untreated." Luo Xuanyi allowed the dough to absorb water and swell, and Li Yuanmiao actually felt the bloating. His spirit received feedback, which in turn fed back to him the painful sensation of "increasing distension." Over and over again, he actually caused his stomach to explode and die.

To use the Soul-Falling Formation, whether it was to kill or allow the soul to merge into the formation, a great deal of guidance and suggestion was required. Killing mortals was indeed laborious, but killing cultivators was a safe option.

Luo Xuanyi carefully noted down her insights from these experiments. Li Yuanmiao was an outsider grain officer and unfamiliar with the local customs and terrain of Guhu Town. Therefore, she would next use the captured maids from the Li Mansion as a comparison.

With a slight flick of her finger, the eight formation flags re-entered the sky. Luo Xuanyi, already somewhat familiar with the process, set up the second formation. Without even a glance, she casually summoned a maid from the corner with her death energy and flung her into the formation, casually kicking Li Yuanmiao's corpse to the side.

Fei Han felt nothing around him. The maid who flew to Luo Xuanyi fell into a familiar sleep. Looking at Li Yuanmiao's body rolling to his feet, a sense of crisis arose spontaneously.

First update~Thanks to ni487 for voting for a monthly ticket~

Thanks to Yi Zhongtou for the monthly ticket~

Thanks to Ruoyou Shaoyuexi for the monthly ticket~