Chapter 278 The Bet
Mu Jianjian looked down at the white flower in her hand, which withered little by little, turning grayish-brown and falling to the ground, as if its life force had been drained and it was lifeless.
The girl's voice continued in her ear, exactly the same as her own, making her feel completely disoriented.
"But in fact, I will not be excited by you, nor will I impulsively use my spirit to appear beside you."
"You have already lost the moment you appear in my spiritual realm, for in my spiritual realm, I am the king."
Mu Jianjian flipped her right hand, and withered petals fluttered down to the ground. She said softly, "That's what Bian Yi said before."
If you look closely, you can see that the two people's abilities are separate yet complementary.
One controls people's souls at the level of divine consciousness, while the other creates his own unique otherworld. It's hard not to ponder the relationship between these two in the upper realm, which is why she spoke to them in such a probing way.
“Bian Yi? He told you his real name?” Upon hearing this name, the woman's tone clearly paused. “I don’t want to be associated with him.”
Suddenly her hand was grabbed, and Mu Jianjian looked up at Tang Ruan, who was greeting her with concern. For a moment, the image blurred, and she could only see the corners of Tang Ruan's mouth moving, but she couldn't hear what she was saying.
“Well, anyway, you’re already in my spiritual ‘boundary’,” the girl’s voice rose, sweeping away the unpleasant feelings that Bian Yi had just had. “But I still have to thank you for your body. I can use you to bring them to the ‘Lord’. With so much fresh blood and life, the ‘Lord’ will definitely be happy.”
"Why me?" she asked.
Why was Bian Yi the first to notice her, and why did this person choose to attack her first?
This was no coincidence; the enemy was lurking in the shadows, and she had no choice but to investigate the reasons.
"Ah, you didn't know? Bian Yi told you his name, but not this?" The girl's voice was cheerful. "Since he didn't tell you, I certainly won't tell you either."
The sound abruptly stopped there, leaving Mu Jianjian, who had been pulled back into the "boundary," to finally hear Tang Ruan's voice clearly.
"Jianjian, you really don't look well today... Shall we take a break?"
Mu Jianjian turned her head to look at Tang Ruan, who was supporting her arm.
She hadn't seen her former best friend in a long time, but her current worried expression overlapped with her memory, making it all the more real.
But she couldn't wait any longer. Her consciousness was now trapped in the "boundary," and her body seemed to be controlled by that person. What did the "sacrifice" have to do with the "master" she mentioned?
The series of problems gave Mu Jianjian a headache. She clenched her left fist and tapped her temples, which made her feel much better.
He won't accept her provocation, won't even spare a wisp of his divine consciousness...
"I'm leaving." Mu Jianjian smiled and pulled her hand away, her eyes filled with reluctance.
"Where are we going?" Tang Ruan asked, waving her hands behind her. "We agreed to come to the amusement park when we have time off. Don't you want to play with me anymore?"
Mu Jianjian slowly shook her head, but this time she didn't answer any questions. She simply walked quickly straight outside.
It wasn't that she didn't want to, but that she had more important things to do.
However, now that we know this is a spiritual world, everything becomes much easier.
——
"What do you mean by this?" Mu Jianjian stopped in her tracks, looking aggrieved and frightened. She glanced around at the three people surrounding her. "Why are you attacking me?"
"Fake! So fake! This isn't Jianjian's personality at all!" Wan Xing pointed directly at "Mu Jianjian's" nose. "When Jianjian is in this situation, she usually just yells at us for being crazy, she would never put on a wronged expression!"
"Where is my sister?" Linghu Zhuoyu's body was enveloped in grayish-white talismanic light. He lowered his eyes, his brows furrowed with a murderous intent that wanted to destroy everything. His fair face had long lost its previous gentle appearance.
Sang Wanyue and Ye Wulu did not speak, but both used secret techniques to target "Mu Jianjian" in the center to show their attitude.
Mu Jianjian reached out and bit her nail. She glanced at the three people around her, and slowly lowered her body under their gazes. Just as she was about to reach out and touch the small white flower in the crevice of the stone wall, a burning pain surged into her brain, forcing her to stop.
Something went wrong in the "boundary" she created!
After she separated her divine sense to investigate the situation within the "boundary essence," she frowned for the first time and gritted her teeth.
"Mu Jianjian—"
——
Mu Jianjian stood at the very top of the Ferris wheel. She glanced at the sea of fire in the amusement park below, then lowered her eyes and sat on the very edge of the steel frame, three hundred meters above the ground. At this moment, her gaze was level with the ground, enveloped in red.
Most "realms" created by cultivators have borders, and she had just tested them; the border in the "realm essence" was this amusement park.
"You're insane, Mu Jianjian!" A sharp female voice appeared in her mind. "If you're going to burn everything down here, you won't survive either!"
"I don't care," Mu Jianjian yawned slowly, blowing on the hot air rising from below. "It's not a loss for me to exchange my life for your 'Boundary Essence,' but if you lose your 'Boundary Essence,' you'll lose your trump card and will only be killed by my friends."
As the fire spread with the strong winds, it reached the Ferris wheel, causing the massive circular structure to sway precariously and emit a piercing creaking sound.
The girl sat alone at the very top, her slender figure blurred by the scorching sunlight. Her eyes swayed with the Ferris wheel's movement, and upon closer inspection, one could see the various purplish-blue marks on her body.
After she said something like "let's all perish together," there was a noticeable long pause in the other person's voice.
"What are you thinking about?" Mu Jianjian looked down at the steel bars that were starting to loosen. "I'm quite surprised. The character development in your spiritual space is really good, but many details still have the shadow of the cultivation world."
For example, the pills sold at the stalls are now accompanied by strange flames that have set the entire amusement park ablaze.
Even if you're fooled, you'll gradually notice the strangeness of this place.
She heard a soft snort in front of her and then looked up.
The white mist, carried by the wind, transformed into the silhouette of a tall woman. She floated in the air, her face obscured by the white mist, yet her displeasure was palpable.
"Finally, you've decided to show yourself," Mu Jianjian narrowed her eyes. Although she was a little disappointed that it was just a misty form, she was generally satisfied. "Aren't you going to introduce yourself? If you don't want to tell me your name from the upper realm, at least tell me the name of the person you're possessing, right?"
She swung her legs in high spirits, but the movement was too big, causing a creaking sound below.
“Gu Qiongyi,” the woman said impatiently, “Mu Jianjian, let me tell you clearly, if you set fire to my ‘boundary essence’ and burn it to death, your own consciousness will also die here. Even if your body is still there, your spirit will be destroyed, and you will not be able to enter the Yellow Springs!”
How exactly did she discover her own "boundary quality" weakness?
Although this is a spiritual space, it is also a semi-physical existence. If this place is destroyed, it will be a great damage to her divine consciousness!
She was able to quickly regain her senses and, with just a few words, grasp the attributes of "boundary quality" perfectly...
Despite the menacing threat, Mu Jianjian wasn't intimidated. She smiled and said, "Although you won't tell me your reasons for targeting me, I think there are only a few, right?"
"Because I ruined your plans in the secret realm and Yingzhou, you naturally see me as a thorn in your side. Now that you have recognized me through the rare pupil-changing technique, you can stain the blood soil needed for the 'sacrifice' with blood, killing two birds with one stone."
But there was one more thing Mu Jianjian didn't say: ever since she and her senior brother were exposed to the sight of the people from the upper realm, she couldn't help but wonder if they were trying to find out if she was her senior brother's weakness.
This is clearly... killing three birds with one stone.
"So what if you know?" Gu Qiongyi stared at the girl in front of him, who was teetering in the air and about to fall into the sea of fire at any moment. He said coldly, "All you need to know is that even if I'm not here, there will be another one. And you are just an ant in the lower realm, a fish on a chopping board, at the mercy of others..."
“If you were truly confident of victory, you wouldn’t say things like that to scare me,” Mu Jianjian paused, “Actually, I wasn’t entirely sure before whether doing this would harm you or threaten you, but now I’m certain—”
She leaned closer to the white mist, watching the mist disperse and gather with her breath. "You're even going to the trouble of using your spiritual sense to negotiate with me, doesn't that mean my guess is correct?"
Gu Qiongyi stared intently at the beautiful girl with a smile as lovely as a lotus flower, a sense of absurdity that had not surfaced in his heart for a long time.
When she was learning about "boundary matter" from her master, she was often criticized for her practice being too extreme.
Master said that if one focuses too much on investigating the truth of the "boundary" and neglects the goodness of one's own spiritual world and the strength and health of one's body, one will eventually put the cart before the horse and stray into a dead end.
But the longer this person spends with her "boundary essence," the more likely they are to discover the flaws in her secret techniques!
“Maybe I shouldn’t be talking nonsense,” Mu Jianjian pointed to the Ferris wheel that was about to collapse beneath them, “but time is running out, we don’t have much time left to think, have you made up your mind?”
Is it better to let her perish along with the "boundary" she has painstakingly built over the years, or to take away the original "chessboard," rearrange it, and then determine the winner?
"A madman." Gu Qiongyi looked at the other person as if he were an idiot.
She had cultivated "boundary essence" in the valley with her master since childhood, spending hundreds of years transforming it into a perfect prison designed for the enemy. And now she was being asked to give up so easily…
"Have you decided?" Mu Jianjian happily accepted her new title.
"Squeak—squeak—squeak"
The shaking grew more intense, and with a loud crash, the Ferris wheel dropped a bit, and the girl's body plummeted downwards, bringing her even closer to the sea of fire below.
“This is the last part of your ‘boundary essence’ that hasn’t been burned. If this part is also burned, then it will truly disappear,” Mu Jianjian said with a smile. “What will you do if the original body returns to the upper realm without the ‘boundary essence’?”
As soon as the girl finished speaking, the Ferris wheel beneath her finally gave way and collapsed with a crash. The steel frame and her slender figure plummeted downwards, falling into the sea of fire.
It was only a blink of an eye, but in Gu Qiongyi's eyes it felt like ten thousand years had passed.
She had to admit that her thoughts were completely under her control.
If it were to exchange Mu Jianjian's life for the "boundary essence" she had been working on for a hundred years, she would definitely not be willing. But now that the other party had said it so bluntly, it was as if her lifeline had been grabbed by the neck.
Moreover, her last sentence clearly indicated that she knew the other body technique hadn't been used!
Amidst the blazing flames, Gu Qiongyi gazed at the girl's figure about to plunge into the sea of fire and slowly uttered three words.
“‘Boundary Matter’ dissipates.”
The imagined spiritual world here is different from the cultivators I killed before; it feels like a completely new world...
As Gu Qiongyi sensed the shattering space around her, an idea popped into her mind.
She seemed to have found the reason for Bian Yi's failure.
If it's true, it would be a great discovery.
——
The overwhelming dizziness made Mu Jianjian frown. Her knees buckled and she was about to fall forward when a warm embrace caught her before she even touched the ground.
"Yueyue?" She looked up and saw the woman with a worried expression, and forced a smile. "What just happened? Are you alright?"
Although she gambled correctly and made Gu Qiongyi dissipate the "boundary essence," allowing her to return to her body, the damage to her consciousness was difficult to recover from in a short time. Stinging sensations came in waves from her brain, making her face even paler and more fragile.
"No, what happened just now?" Sang Wanyue's eyes showed heartache.
“I’m being controlled,” Mu Jianjian rubbed her head, stood up from her embrace, glanced at everyone’s faces around her, and fixed her gaze on a group of cultivators in the corner. “She might be among these people. Be careful of any plants with white flowers.”
“Plants!” Wan Xing spoke first. “I can try using a secret technique.”
She frowned and placed her hand on a corner of the wall, silently chanting in her heart. Her arm gradually merged into the wall and even became one with the branches clinging to it!
A moment later, an inconspicuous little white flower in the corner seemed to sense something and tried to retreat into the corner, but it was too late, and the whole plant withered and decayed.
"The flowers here seem a bit strange..." Wan Xing muttered to himself, then walked to a corner.
She has the lowest cultivation level and the weakest comprehension among the five-person team. If she has the opportunity to demonstrate her value, she will definitely work hard and not let Jianjian down.
"Don't touch her. Her name is Gu Qiongyi. Her secret technique is similar to imprinting a mark on your consciousness with flowers and plants, pulling you into the spiritual world she creates."
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