Wuwangyuan-5
The deeper Ji Wang went, the more inexplicable unease he felt.
At first, I only felt slightly dizzy, like when I suddenly stood up after squatting for a long time, and my vision became blurry.
But as they ventured deeper into this scorched earth, Ji Wang's dizziness gradually worsened, turning into a persistent throbbing pain, and the scene before him began to blur and distort.
The scorched earth stretched and contracted at times, and the towering black stone pillars seemed to be slowly writhing.
"Stay close to me." Bu Jiu's voice seemed to come from a great distance.
Ji Wang felt his wrist being tightly gripped by Bu Jiu, and a small stream of cool demonic power continuously flowed into it, trying to help him stabilize his mind and resist the intrusion of the chaotic outside world.
But this seems to have limited effect.
Just as Ji Wang was struggling against the dizziness and trying to see the road ahead, he suddenly caught a glimpse of several blurry shadows beside him out of the corner of his eye.
It wasn't a physical entity; it was a translucent, bluish-white, ethereal shadow.
His heart skipped a beat, and he stared intently.
There appeared to be several figures dressed in Taoist robes, both men and women, walking slightly ahead of him, heading in the same direction as them.
Their faces were indistinct, only their general outlines and the hems of their robes fluttering in the wind could be seen. They seemed to be talking to each other in hushed tones, but their voices were intermittent, mixed with the wind, and could not be heard clearly.
Hallucination?
Ji Wang squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them again. The figure was still there, even clearer now.
He could see that one of them carried a long sword on his back, while the other was making hand gestures, with a faint light flashing at his fingertips. They walked steadily, oblivious to their surroundings, as if they were walking on a familiar road.
A sense of familiarity, accompanied by a severe headache, struck Ji Wang, causing him to stagger.
"Ji Wang?" Bu Jiu immediately noticed and steadied the person next to him with his arm.
He followed Ji Wang's dazed gaze. But in his eyes, there was nothing on this land except for the two of them.
"What did you see?" Bu Jiu asked slowly.
"People..." Ji Wang's voice trembled slightly, his eyes fixed on the several illusory figures walking side by side, "...wearing Taoist robes..."
Before the words were finished, the illusory figures suddenly vanished. But not far ahead, in another open space, several figures dressed in the same Taoist robes formed a circle, with something seemingly placed in the center.
One of them suddenly stood up, pointed deeper into the wasteland, and became agitated.
My head is splitting with pain.
Ji Wang felt as if he had been forcibly stuffed into a fragment of another time. The interplay and collision of real perceptions and illusory memories made his stomach churn, and he almost vomited.
“The lingering thoughts here are too strong, and they resonate with you… Don’t look at them, hold fast to your true self!” Bu Jiu’s voice was unusually tense. He was almost half-embracing Ji Wang, trying to use his demonic power to construct a domain that would isolate the chaotic thoughts from the outside world.
However, the normally stable demonic power, the moment it spread, caused violent fluctuations with the omnipresent residual spiritual energy in the air. Not only did it fail to create an effective barrier, but Bu Jiu also felt himself being devoured.
Bu Jiu gritted his teeth. It seemed that in the depths of the Boundless Plains, not only was there chaos in the spiritual energy, but it also seemed to be repelling the demon race.
Ji Wang's perception of the changes in the outside world became increasingly blurred. He only felt that Bu Jiu's arm holding him was tighter, and the demonic power that was trying to soothe him was intermittent, which made him even more uneasy.
His forehead was soaked with cold sweat, and even with his eyes tightly closed, straining until his eyes hurt, the phantoms did not disappear.
They intensified their efforts, relentlessly drilling into his mind—
"Southeast corner! The key point of the formation must be secured!"
"It's too late... He's here—Daoist Yun Shen!"
I felt the earth tremble violently beneath my feet, and heard the muffled sound of rocks cracking. Even my skin felt a phantom pain as if it had been scraped by violent spiritual energy.
Ji Wang felt a chill run through his body, and his teeth chattered uncontrollably. He couldn't distinguish which of his feelings were his own and which were those of the Taoist monks.
"Bu...Jiu..." he squeezed out broken syllables through clenched teeth, his fingers gripping Bu Jiu's shirt tightly. "My head hurts so much...so many sounds..."
Seeing him curled up in pain, Bu Jiu stopped repairing himself.
The next instant, a sharp pain seeped from his bone marrow and spread, but his expression remained unchanged, and he didn't even furrow his brow. Instead, he used a gentler power to continuously inject into Ji Wang's heart meridian, not to dispel the external demons, but only to protect his foundation and keep his consciousness from dissipating.
“Take a deep breath, Ji Wang.” Bu Jiu forced Ji Wang to raise his head, even though the person in front of him had unfocused eyes. “Just look at me. Listen to my voice. Don’t worry about anything else, that’s all in the past.”
He wiped the cold sweat from Ji Yan's forehead. The fox tail also wrapped tightly around Ji Wang's waist, keeping him by its side, afraid that he would fall.
However, the memories of this land are too persistent, and the resonance with Ji Wang's soul is too intense.
Just as Bu Jiu was trying his best to comfort him, Ji Wang's unfocused pupils suddenly contracted.
A white figure appeared in his mind, standing alone in the center of a huge, violently rotating array of light composed of countless runes.
A fierce wind howled, whipping the man's robes and causing his dark hair to fly wildly. He turned his head slightly, his lips moving as if he were saying something to himself.
The lip movements...
Ji Wang's headache and turbulent emotions reached their peak at this moment. Blood spilled from Ji Wang's lips, splattering onto the scorched earth and spreading out in a dark red hue.
"Ji Wang!" Bu Jiu sensed the chaos within his body and panicked immediately.
"Shh..." A disturbing sound came from the scorched earth shrouded in mist nearby.
The sound was dense and rapid, like countless segments scraping the ground.
Immediately afterwards, several waves of violent demonic energy appeared suddenly from multiple directions without any concealment, and converged on their location at an astonishing speed.
It was Ji Wang's violent spiritual energy fluctuations that attracted something that had been dormant in this land of death for a long time.
As Bu Jiu watched all this, the corners of his lips actually curled up slightly.
The Ji Wang in his arms, who couldn't even draw a talisman properly back then, is now enough to disturb this wasteland that has buried countless souls, making all the demons and monsters restless.
This proves that his three hundred years of waiting were not in vain. What he protected and guided during this time was by no means ordinary.
The sounds of fighting and the explosions of demonic energy around them all became blurry and distant.
Ji Wang's consciousness, torn apart by excruciating pain, plunged into a bizarre and chaotic depth.
It was pitch black all around, except for a faint light in front of them, where a figure stood.
Ji Wang's gaze was fixed on that face—it was exactly the same as his own, yet it appeared more mature.
The man stood quietly, seemingly admiring Ji Wang's almost blank expression.
A moment later, he opened his mouth, and it was the same voice Ji Wang had heard in front of the stone tablet: "You've arrived?"
“Yun Shen… Dao Zun? Is this really what you look like… or am I seeing things…” Ji Wang asked uncertainly.
Yun Shen Dao Zun looked back at him with an expression that was almost like looking at a fool.
“No wonder…” He shook his head very lightly, “Bu Jiu used to always think I was foolish in some ways. I didn’t expect that after all the reincarnations, my spirit would not be extinguished, and my nature would be…” He paused, as if choosing a word that would not be too harsh on Ji Wang, “more innocent.”
"Now that I'm here, experiencing it firsthand, seeing it with my own eyes, hearing it with my own ears..." Daoist Yun Shen added calmly to the last sentence, "and you're still asking this kind of question."
His tone was not accusatory, but rather calm, as if stating a fact, which made Ji Wang feel ashamed.
"Do you know now?" Daoist Yun Shen asked, as if for a final confirmation, "You are me."
Ji Wang swayed under the impact of those words, but did not answer. Instead, as if the last bit of strength to struggle had been crushed by the facts, he simply sat down on the ground with a "what's the use of trying" attitude: "I also had my doubts."
He said sullenly, "But I can't do anything, I don't remember anything. Apart from the occasional headache and seeing some strange things, how am I like you?"
This reaction was truly unexpected; Daoist Yun Shen was clearly taken aback for a moment.
Then, as if he could no longer hold back, he chuckled softly. The laughter carried a long-lost freshness, diluting the composure that surrounded him.
"Hey, you..." He shook his head, looking at himself on the ground, hugging his knees and looking sullen. "I've finally managed to put on a bit of dignity and act mature. With you like this, I'm easily ruined."
As he said this, a lively expression appeared between his brows.
Ji Wang raised his head and looked at the Daoist Master in front of him, who had "broken his composure" because of his words. The inferiority and pressure he felt due to the comparison were somewhat relieved by the laughter.
So it turns out that he wasn't always so aloof and flawless in his past life?
Yun Shen Daozun chuckled a few times before stopping. When he looked at Ji Wang again, his expression was serious: "Back then, when I tried to annihilate myself by burning my soul, I did not completely dissipate. When my soul was at its weakest, the 'Lord' used a secret technique to forcibly restrain my consciousness, which was on the verge of collapse, and imprison it in the core of another array."
"His intention is not to destroy my remaining soul, but to use it as bait. What he wants is to lure Bu Jiu here so that he can capture him all at once."
"The formation at Xuanming Temple..." Ji Wang instantly understood it.
"Exactly. Bu Jiu forcibly tore through the confinement set up by 'Zun Shang' and rushed into the place where the backlash was most intense... At the cost of damage to his original foundation and injury to his soul, he managed to snatch back my last remnant soul from 'Zun Shang's' hands, which was about to be assimilated and devoured by the formation."
"However, due to the severe damage to your soul, your past power and memories have almost completely dissipated. After reincarnation, only a trace of innate spiritual light remains... This is the root cause of your extraordinary talent yet sealed memories. It is not forgetting, but rather the severe injury has not yet healed, and you are still in a deep slumber."
After he finished speaking, the space fell silent.
The image seemed to flash through Ji Wang's mind along with his words. Bu Jiu's bloodstained fingertips touched that remnant soul, then he tightly grasped it, protecting it in his arms, closest to his heart. That person used his body as a shield, isolating himself from the extremely terrifying power pursuing from behind.
The truth, like a mountain, crashed down on Ji Wang's heart, piecing together all the fragmented clues seamlessly.
Looking at Ji Wang, the Daoist Yun Shen finally showed a kind of relieved calm on his face, which was so similar to Ji Wang's.
Ji Wang asked the slowly dissipating phantom, "Won't you borrow my eyes to go and see him again?"
"What nonsense are you spouting?" Daoist Yun Shen's voice grew even softer, like a final admonition, "You and I are one, why do we need this one glance?"
“You’ll remember the rest.” His last words were as soft as a sigh. “This time, don’t let him bear it all alone.”
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com