He frantically searched for the eye of the formation that could break the array. He had read in books that as long as the formation's eye was destroyed, the array would collapse! But where exactly was that eye?
Suddenly, his vision blurred, and beside him appeared his mother, father, younger brother and sister, and the old steward of the mansion.
Xuan Jizi looked down in terror, only to find himself dressed in luxurious clothes, his hands pale and delicate—clearly the hands of a young master.
“Huasheng, Huasheng…” His mother reached out to stroke his face, and Xuan Jizi's heart trembled. Was this… his mother?
“No, no, no! It’s all fake! It’s all fake! Evil spirit! Show yourself!”
He spun around wildly, but suddenly heard a scream. He turned back and saw another version of himself plunging a sword into his mother’s abdomen.
“Stop! Stop! Ji Huasheng! Stop!” Xuan Jizi roared. But that Ji Huasheng grinned wickedly at him, then pulled out the sword and moved toward the other family members.
“Run! Run!” Xuan Jizi completely lost his mind.
He watched his family—those who had obstructed his path to immortality—die by his own sword once more.
“Huasheng… Mother made your favorite osmanthus cakes.” His mother’s voice jolted him awake. Xuan Jizi wheeled around—the mother who had just died had reappeared.
“Ah!!!” He screamed in terror. No, no!
Sure enough, the resurrected mother died again at the hands of the other him.
“It’s all fake, all fake.” Xuan Jizi clutched his head, his eyes bulging wide. He dared not look around. “Where… where is the formation’s eye?”
He frantically counted on his fingers, his ears filled with his family’s dying cries, relentless and accusing. This threw his mind into chaos. He remembered: he had done all of that. He was Ji Huasheng, and he was Xuan Jizi.
Everything around him kept shifting. The process of his killing repeated endlessly. Xuan Jizi’s fingers kept calculating, even digging his nails into his flesh.
“The formation’s eye, the formation’s eye!” Xuan Jizi suddenly understood. “I… am the formation’s eye?” That was what his calculations told him.
His resurrected family members looked at him with relief.
“I… I am the formation’s eye. If I break the array, I will achieve immortality!” He shouted wildly, then grabbed his sword, reversed the blade, and stabbed it straight into his own abdomen.
“Gousheng, are you okay? You’re sweating so much—there’s blood too!” Xu Xiaoya was frozen, not knowing what to do.
“Don’t touch me.” Fang Zhiyi watched Xuan Jizi pierce himself through the abdomen, spitting out another mouthful of blood. “The formation being broken naturally brings backlash. It’s normal—I mean, it would be too twisted if this turned into endless recursion.”
Xuan Jizi seemed to sober up slightly. Gripping the hilt, he looked in their direction.
Fang Zhiyi struggled to raise a hand and wave at him.
Xuan Jizi’s face twisted in fury: “You sinister wretch! You’ve ruined my path to immortality?!”
“That’s why I say madmen can’t be cured,” Fang Zhiyi said with a helpless smile.
“Now your tricks are spent, aren’t they? That evil artifact of yours is destroyed too. Will you still resist?” Xuan Jizi yanked the sword out abruptly, blood splattering everywhere. Fang Zhiyi could clearly hear the restless stirring of the “failed products” on either side.
Xuan Jizi raised the sword, pointing it at Fang Zhiyi. “In that case, I’ll make you firewood for my alchemy furnace! Hahahaha!” His face was savage—whether from pain or excitement, it was hard to tell.
Fang Zhiyi laughed too, just as fiercely.
“I realized earlier that this tattered Ten Thousand Souls Banner would be a hassle if someone took it.” He suddenly tore open his clothes, and Xuan Jizi froze. On Fang Zhiyi’s body were densely written small characters, and black qi emanated from within him, radiating outward.
“Gousheng!” Xu Xiaoya was terrified. She wanted to rush forward but didn’t know what to do.
“You… how dare you!” Even Xuan Jizi, a madman himself, was appalled. Using his own body as a medium to raise ghosts? Impossible! Absolutely impossible!
“Master, you taught me—you need qi. Five-element qi is hard to find, but yin qi is everywhere… You thought the Ten Thousand Souls Banner was a magical artifact? Wrong. It was just a medium.” Fang Zhiyi pointed to his own head. “I have one advantage: I’ve got a strong mind.”
“Madman!”
Fang Zhiyi took offense. “Hey? You, a lunatic, are calling me a madman? Have you no shame?”
As his words fell, several dark souls emerged from Fang Zhiyi’s body. Compared to the earlier ones, these dark souls were noticeably larger. But Xu Xiaoya covered her mouth, for she saw the face of Gao Mingzhi among them!
There was also a seductively curved woman and a short, round toad.
Xuan Jizi watched these three dark souls charge at him and raised his sword to defend.
He might have held the upper hand, but after stabbing himself, his stamina and agility had greatly diminished. Worse still, the three dark souls were incredibly agile and shameless in their tactics—strike and flee, strike and wait for another chance. They harassed him relentlessly, draining him both physically and mentally.
The piercing pain in his abdomen reminded him he was nearing his limit, but Xuan Jizi paid it no mind.
“You can’t kill me! I’m protected by the golden light of merit!”
“The golden light of merit?” Fang Zhiyi narrowed his eyes. “That was before. Now that you remember all the awful things you did, take a look—is it still there?”
“You… you… you…” Xuan Jizi began to tremble. Every scene in the illusion had actually happened!
Fang Zhiyi suddenly stood up, refusing Xu Xiaoya’s help, and flashed a sinister grin: “Ji Huasheng, have you really emerged from the illusion?”
With that simple question, Xuan Jizi’s expression froze instantly.
“An illusion… Am I still in the illusion?”
“Kill me, and you’ll see your parents again.” Fang Zhiyi even walked toward him, his face twisted in a chilling smile.
“Madman! Madman!” Xuan Jizi suddenly screamed. “No! No! You’re real!”
Fang Zhiyi stopped: “So?”
“So…”
“So you are Ji Huasheng, the one who killed his entire family.”
“Shut up!!!” Xuan Jizi went completely insane, clawing at his own face as if trying to tear away every trace of his past.
“You will never attain immortality.”
As Fang Zhiyi spoke again, the three dark souls encircling Xuan Jizi repeated in unison—a young man’s voice, a child’s voice, a woman’s voice.
“You will never attain immortality! Ji Huasheng! You will never attain immortality!”
Xuan Jizi clutched his head. His once-clear mind fell into chaos once more.
“Stop corrupting my determination!” He suddenly let out a guttural roar, reaching for his sword but grasping only air. Looking up, he saw Fang Zhiyi towering over him, holding his sword.
“Unworthy Disciple, return my sword!”
“When it comes to swordsmanship, I’m your ancestor.”
ut it can buy an entire year of absolutely perfect training results! Su Yu stared at his empty wallet and decisively opened up various online loan platforms. “Borrow a thousand bucks! Recharge my vitality!” Boom! His vitality broke a hundred points, shattering the limits of the human body! “Borrow ten thousand bucks! Recharge my combat skills!” Boom! A basic punching technique so common it was everywhere instantly maxed out, revealing the ultimate assassination technique of Five Elements Unity—Inner Force! When a rich kid hired assassins for a midnight ambush, aiming to break both of his legs, they instead ran headfirst into a monster—a human-shaped tyrannosaur, brimming with dragon-like vitality. With just two fingers, Su Yu snapped a steel staff reinforced with alloy. Staring at the killer’s stash of stolen cash—a staggering quarter-million dollars—he showed a corporate-sincere smile: “Thanks for the pre-exam gift pack, Mr. Zhao! I’m gonna go re-invest this!” Three days later, at the National Martial Arts College Entrance Exam, while everyone else struggled just to reach the passing line, Su Yu threw a single punch—and more than a thousand vitality points literally detonated the entire arena!
ing gift was a patch of barren land, and disciples were all picked up along the way. He spent fifty years diligently building three "ramshackle little sects," thinking he could finally live a carefree life relying on his disciples. But right at the fifty-year mark, he was suddenly swept away by a spatial rift and exiled to the Chaos Desolation, the Disorderly Ruins. There was no spiritual energy there, only slaughter. Relying on the cultivation feedback from his disciples, Gu Changyuan hacked his way through a sea of blood for eleven hundred years. When the system finally fished him back out, he discovered the ramshackle little sects he'd built back then had developed a rather... unusual style. Hold on... I vanished for a thousand years, so how did my ramshackle little sects become holy lands?!
young master of the Shen family—a figure of immense power and wealth beyond measure—and awakened the "Destined Ultimate Villain System"! His starting scenario? Running into his icy fiancée who shows up with a mountain-descending divine doctor to break off their engagement. The divine doctor arrogantly taunts: "What does your Shen family have besides a bit of stinking money? You're not even worthy of tying Qingxue's shoelaces!" Shen Fei just smiled. He completely defied the usual script: "Fine, I agree to break off the engagement. Also, notify the finance department to withdraw all investments from the Su family." Minutes later, with its capital chain severed, the Su Group teetered on the brink of bankruptcy! The once aloof and proud ice queen CEO was thrown into utter panic. That very night, she went to Shen Fei's villa, casting aside all dignity to beg and plead desperately... From then on, in this world teeming with Sons of Destiny, Shen Fei embarked on a path of extreme dimensional suppression! A mountain-descending divine doctor? Peerless medical skills? Shen Fei: "Reporting you for practicing medicine without a license! I'll gladly take your ancient medicinal cauldron and twin sister assassins." The Crooked-Smiling Dragon King? Commanding a hundred thousand soldiers with a single order? Shen Fei: "Illegal assembly and suspected treason! Let a fleet of attack helicopters sanitize the area and teach you what the state apparatus really means!" A reborn tycoon? Knows all the golden opportunities of the next decade? Shen Fei: "A trillion in capital to reverse and pump the stock market, making you blow your margin and jump on the very first day of your rebirth!" What Chosen Ones? What bearers of Heavenly Fortune? In Shen Fei's eyes, they're all just chives (i.e., suckers/marks) waiting to be harvested! Shen Fei: "Sorry, but as the Destined Ultimate Villain, I don't play by the rules of honor. I only play the game of dimensional suppression."
iemie, male, Race: Moon. Hobby: Collecting anomalies. At first, he thought he possessed two systems: the Crimson Rainbow Moon and the Clear Cold Frost Moon. One day, he discovered that he himself could also become a system for others, holding the chessboard of fate. The Eighth Epoch, also known as the Eternal Moon Epoch. Humans, witches, elves, bloodline descendants, specters, demons, and spirits together compose a new history. Walking the path on behalf of the moon, before he knew it, Chen Miemie's footsteps were followed by all manner of strange and wondrous anomalies. As time passed, many titles circulated about him—The King in Yellow, Lord of Anomalies, Heart of the Eternal Moon, and more. "Me? I'm just a traveler who enjoys collecting interesting creatures," Chen Miemie said.
