42 The Pride of Heaven (Part Fourteen)
He killed "her".
The moment Lou Tinglan saw her, she knew that "she" was not Ran Qinghe.
Because... Ran Qinghe would never smile at him like that.
He initially thought the other party had used an illusion to transform into Ran Qinghe's appearance. However, even after he used the barrier-breaking technique, the other party's expression remained unchanged.
He couldn't help but think of an outrageous possibility: could it be that "Ran Qinghe"... has lost her memory?
Inside the Void Cauldron, there are countless unexplored ruins. Perhaps she has stumbled into some place and her consciousness has been disturbed by something unknown.
Ran Qinghe smirked coldly. She had realized that the person in front of her was completely unfazed by her subtle attacks. Seeing that her sneak attack had failed, she immediately unleashed her spiritual power to strike.
Lou Tinglan parried each move, secretly confirming in his heart that if it wasn't the same person, even their spiritual power level and attack posture wouldn't be exactly the same. It seemed that she had indeed fallen into the illusion of the ruins, which had disturbed her mind.
Lou Tinglan carefully controlled his spiritual power, avoiding her vital points. Faced with Ran Qinghe's repeated attacks, he focused on defending and remained locked in a stalemate with her, neither of them able to gain the upper hand.
Assessing the situation and making judgments has always been Ran Qinghe's forte, and this is also true of her copycat body.
She originally intended to deal with the strongest person first, which is why she abandoned the other four and left first. But right now, Lou Tinglan is a tough nut to crack.
She had a strange intuition that a soft approach should work on Lou Tinglan, and that he should be completely infatuated with her.
"She" is clearly no different from her, so why can this person recognize her at a glance?
Since "she" alone cannot handle Lou Tinglan, it would be better to go back and call the other four together. Most of the day has already passed; those four should have successfully launched their sneak attack by now.
She unleashed an explosive talisman to block his path, then immediately turned and vanished back into the darkness.
But in the darkness, five people walked towards her. Her secret joy was barely out of her mind before she suppressed it.
How could this be? How could there be five people?
Even more coincidentally, Lou Tinglan had already caught up, and "she" was caught in the middle, with nowhere to hide as the fire talismans were scattered.
Lou Tinglan realized what was happening almost the moment his gaze fell upon the real Ran Qinghe. However, he still didn't kill her, but instead cast a binding spell lightly, trapping "her" in place.
On the other side, Ran Qinghe was quite surprised to witness Lou Tinglan trapping her clone. How could he be so sure that she was the real Ran Qinghe?
Mingyu cautiously refrained from stepping forward, fearing that a single misstep would result in Lou Tinglan slitting his throat again. Fortunately, Shui Rong'er used her magic to heal him; otherwise, he would have truly perished here today.
He thought to himself that although Shui Rong'er's cultivation level was not high, her medical skills were truly superb, pulling him back from the brink of death. Perhaps for this reason, Fu Ji, who usually never fought back or talked back to Shui Rong'er, seemed to have gotten angry, and the two of them didn't say a word to each other for the rest of the journey.
With a masked figure between them, the two sides found themselves in a standoff.
Lou Tinglan: ...
Ran Qinghe and the other four: ...
Finally, Ran Qinghe broke the deadlock and asked, "What do you plan to do with this puppet master?"
Lou Tinglan was also entering the Mirror Domain for the first time, and asked again in confusion, "A clone?" Fu Ji told him everything about the Mirror Domain again, but when he mentioned something about "all the reactions of the clone being the same as the cultivator's own", Lou Tinglan's figure swayed almost imperceptibly for a moment.
He suddenly realized a possibility: so... was that kiss a genuine reaction from Ran Qinghe's heart?
His heart was burning fiercely. After a long while, he replied, "Let's bind her for now and leave the Mirror Domain first."
Ran Qinghe denied it, saying, "No way." Didn't she know herself well enough? This binding net could only hold "her" for a while at most. If they didn't remove this binding body in time, "she" might catch up with them before they even left the mirror domain.
"Wouldn't it be more straightforward for you to kill her with one sword, and that would also eliminate any worries about the future?"
In her eyes, the superimposed body was just a monster conjured by the mirror domain. Since the monster was harmful, it should be eliminated cleanly and decisively.
But in Lou Tinglan's eyes, this "cloned body" had Ran Qinghe's face on it, and even its movements and micro-expressions were exactly the same as hers. He was slightly moved and hesitated to make a move.
This "overlay body" was just as clever as Ran Qinghe, and immediately devised a scheme, saying, "The Immortal Lord would naturally not be willing to kill me. Before you all arrived, the Immortal Lord was making love with me on this ground. The passion has just ended, so he probably wouldn't be willing to kill me."
She rolled up her sleeves, revealing pale arms covered in bruises, a truly gruesome sight. "The Immortal Lord is incredibly eager when it comes to doing that."
Everyone stood there, mouths slightly agape, stunned, seemingly caught off guard by this earth-shattering secret. Ran Qinghe's pupils constricted, and she stared directly at him.
A blush crept onto Lou Tinglan's ears, but her expression remained cold and unchanged. She simply shook her head and said, "No."
The "Copy Body" continued, "Is it really not true? Can the Immortal Lord really remain unmoved by my face? But I see that the Immortal Lord is clearly moved."
"Just now, if I hadn't attacked you, wouldn't you have kissed me directly? Do you dare admit that, Immortal Lord?"
The original words were about her failed sneak attack, but to others, they were interpreted differently, as if Lou Tinglan had forced her, only to be resisted.
Lou Tinglan didn't say "no" again. He wanted to deny it, but it was something that hadn't happened yet, and he couldn't predict his own actions. So, he could neither deny nor admit it, and simply avoided Ran Qinghe's burning gaze.
Seeing that "Fuzhiti" was about to press her advantage again, Ran Qinghe finally couldn't bear it any longer. She couldn't tolerate saying anything flirtatious to Lou Tinglan, and she couldn't tolerate hearing any more intimate words between the two of them from "her" mouth.
"Enough." She stepped forward with a stern face, grabbed Lou Tinglan's right arm that was holding the Tranquil Heart Sword, ignored his barely perceptible resistance, and slowly sent the Tranquil Heart Sword into the Dantian that controlled him.
She didn't know why she did this; perhaps it was resentment, perhaps shame, or perhaps a slight hint of jealousy. But in the end, Lou Tinglan killed Ran Qinghe.
As the last clone disappeared, the pitch-black mirror domain slowly receded, finally revealing the ruins where they had originally been.
Ran Qinghe didn't look at him again, and walked far ahead with the four people she was traveling with, leaving Lou Tinglan alone, far behind.
He felt that his mind had been slightly shaken by the sword strike. He took off his headband and looked at the sword again. The red mole on his forehead seemed to be a silent mockery of him.
Only now did he finally understand that his Dao Heart Tribulation Seal was not a serious injury, nor was it a depletion of spiritual energy. His tribulation seal was intricately connected with Ran Qinghe.
*
Meanwhile, outside the void cauldron, Elder Lou Li, who was watching every move inside, was even more furious.
"Look, look, does this look like they haven't put any thought into it? It's not just a little, it's a huge investment of their time."
"Why do you not want to hurt her even in the slightest?"
Lou Zhen retorted, "Knowing he had such intentions, you still suggested he enter the cauldron. Isn't that like sending a lamb to the slaughter?"
Lou Guan, sitting between the two, was really annoyed by their argument. He gently comforted them, "Alright, stop talking about 'minds' and 'minds'. You two are making me dizzy. Ting Lan is kind-hearted and doesn't want to hurt anyone."
"Besides, even if Tinglan really has something, Ran Qinghe might not." She watched as Ran Qinghe pierced through Tinglan's protective body without the slightest hesitation.
Even if the man is interested but the woman is not, nothing will happen.
Suddenly, because of this mirror domain, she began to look at Ran Qinghe with a newfound respect.
Lou Zhen guessed her underlying meaning from her words: "You don't mean to take Ran Qinghe under your wing, do you?" Seeing her smile without speaking, Lou Zhen became even more anxious. "Tinglan already treats Ran Qinghe differently. If you're thinking of taking her as a disciple, won't they have to see each other every day?"
"Besides, we teleported them into the Mirror Domain with the intention of getting these five people to give up. Why do you still want to move them right in front of you?"
Lou Guan slowly smoothed out non-existent wrinkles on his sleeves and smiled, "When did I say I was going to kick these five people out? I was just testing Ting Lan's thoughts."
"If those five are eliminated, I will lose 100,000 high-grade spirit stones. Thinking about it, it still hurts a little."
"Little sister! Which is more important, spirit stones or Tinglan?!" Lou Zhen cried out in desperation.
When the Discipline Hall was first established, there were only four of them in the sect. Lou Yunya was their senior brother, so the four of them always addressed each other as brother and sister.
Later, as the Discipline Hall expanded, they became elders. In order to maintain some semblance of elder authority, they tacitly stopped mentioning the title. Only occasionally would Lou Yunya, that carefree fellow, still call her "little sister" in private.
She was momentarily lost in thought, as if she were remembering someone from the past.
"Who do you think Tinglan looks like?"
In her view, he was neither as carefree and fearless as his father, Lou Yunya, nor as simple-minded and dull as his mother, Qianxue.
But they were also very clear that it was better if they didn't resemble each other, so that they wouldn't end up with the same fate.
After the time for reminiscing about the past ended, Lou Guan returned to the main topic:
"The assessment time is about to end. Of the original fifty-two teams of cultivators, only eight teams remain. The five Nascent Soul cultivators that the Third Elder bet on are arrogant and have a high opinion of themselves, but they have made it to the end. The five cultivators from the five sects that the First Elder bet on are skillful and have a high level of cultivation. The ruins are no problem for them."
"In my opinion, the assessment of the ruins is about to come to an end. Why don't we put them together and let them decide the winner themselves?"
"If we don't fight it out and let these teams keep trying to break into the ruins, even if Yunya Academy ceases to exist one day, we may not be able to determine a winner."
Lou Zhen finally calmed down: "Then let's follow the tradition of Yunya Academy and have a free-for-all. The last one standing will be the winner."
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