As soon as the third challenge was announced, the cultivators by Xianyun Lake erupted into an uproar.
"Am I seeing things?? Making the Supreme Elder of the Emotionless Sect shed tears??"
"How is such a thing possible??"
"Even Old Demon Lu couldn't pull that off!"
"If the Illusory Alliance can't afford the rewards, they simply shouldn't offer them! Why resort to such underhanded tactics?"
"Unfair! This is unfair!"
...
Facing the collective protest of the cultivators, Rakshasa seemed to have anticipated it all along.
"Everyone, please hear me out."
Rakshasa's voice was steady, suppressing the cultivators' discontent with ease.
"The proposal we made, to make Elder Guo weep, is merely the ultimate vision of the illusion..."
"If no one can accomplish it, it doesn't mean this challenge has no victor."
"In that case, Elder Guo's judgment will prevail. With the discerning eye of the Emotionless Sect's Supreme Elder, there should be no error."
This explanation had been arranged by the Heart Demon beforehand.
Everyone knew that Guo Yunfeng would never shed tears for love, nor would she cry because of an illusion.
Thus, the determination of victory would naturally fall into Guo Yunfeng's hands.
In this way, the results could be manipulated at will.
They could decide who would take first place.
They could make Lu Ze finish last with no effort at all.
No one could find fault with it!
With these words, the once restless cultivators gradually calmed down.
Since making Guo Yunfeng cry was not a mandatory requirement, the difficulty of the illusion had greatly decreased.
All that mattered was catering to Guo Yunfeng's tastes.
"Junior Brother Lu, this challenge... is utterly despicable."
Zhong Yi frowned, hesitating as if he wanted to say more.
"Oh? What do you mean?"
Lu Ze asked with a smile.
"Cultivators who have reached the Unity stage through the Emotionless Path... it can be said that their seven emotions and six desires have long been severed. They cannot shed tears."
Zhong Yi's expression was serious, his voice lowered.
"If so, on the surface, the challenge is about whose illusion can make Elder Guo cry, but in reality, it's all based solely on Elder Guo's word!"
"If Elder Guo has formed some kind of agreement with the Illusory Alliance, then victory or defeat is entirely the Illusory Alliance's dictatorship!"
"Given the actions of the previous two challengers, I'm afraid..."
Zhong Yi's eyes were full of worry.
He knew that the Illusory Alliance would hinder Lu Ze from obtaining the Taixu Soul Crystal, but he hadn't expected their methods to be so cunning and malicious!
The cunning part was that, on the surface, the reasoning and rules of the third challenge were logical and completely justifiable.
Thus, even if the Illusory Alliance openly manipulated the rankings, no one could find a flaw!
"Senior Brother Zhong, do you think I too cannot move Elder Guo?"
Lu Ze asked unhurriedly in return.
"It's not that I don't believe in your abilities... it's simply that no one in this world can achieve this!" Zhong Yi let out a bitter laugh and shook his head.
"Making someone who has mastered the Emotionless Path to such an extent weep over love? That's as difficult as making a rooster lay eggs or making an iron tree bloom!"
Lu Ze blinked. "Actually, spells that make a rooster lay eggs are quite simple, Senior Brother Zhong. Would you like to give it a try?"
"???"
Zhong Yi's mouth twitched involuntarily, then he straightened his expression. "However, if Junior Brother Lu can create another illusion on the same level as 'This Demon Cultivator Isn't So Cold,' it might truly move Elder Guo—who knows..."
"'This Demon Cultivator Isn't So Cold'?"
Lu Ze raised an eyebrow, and a flash of insight struck him like lightning. In an instant, everything clicked.
No wonder the Illusory Alliance was willing to pay the price of the Taixu Soul Crystal to lure him offline.
No wonder the exchange had to use the Illusory Alliance's Illusion Tower.
No wonder the Illusory Alliance chose love as the final challenge.
All of it was for the technique he had used in "This Demon Cultivator Isn't So Cold"...
The ultimate technique of embodying the Dao and directing the illusion's progression!
An advanced version of the Transformation Dao Technique!
Thanks to Zhong Yi's inadvertent reminder, Lu Ze suddenly understood everything.
The leader of the Illusory Alliance possessed extraordinary means, seemingly capable of analyzing the mystical techniques of others.
Clearly, they intended to decrypt the secrets of "This Demon Cultivator Isn't So Cold" by examining the traces he left within the Illusion Tower!
"Junior Brother Lu, what's wrong? Why that expression?"
Zhong Yi looked at Lu Ze puzzled, utterly confused by his suddenly enlightened demeanor.
It couldn't be that he had been possessed by Li Moran and achieved enlightenment just through idle chatter, could it?
"Nothing, thank you for the reminder, Senior Brother."
Lu Ze shook his head and replied with a faint smile.
"So, Junior Brother Lu, do you plan to create another 'This Demon Cultivator Isn't So Cold'?" Zhong Yi immediately became somewhat excited.
Although Su Di'er was a heartache that would forever remain in every cultivator's soul, there was no denying that the illusion was incredibly addictive and irresistible!
"Of course not."
Lu Ze dismissed Zhong Yi's idea.
Now that he knew the Illusory Alliance's intentions, he certainly wouldn't let them have their way.
The skills Lu Ze had acquired from the system, such as the "Fear Soul Bind Chart Formation," could never have their mysteries uncovered by others.
Even the remnants of the Heavenly Dao couldn't see through them.
But the technique of embodying the Dao used in "This Demon Cultivator Isn't So Cold" was something he had comprehended on his own, without the system's protection.
It was indeed possible for the Illusory Alliance to steal it.
Therefore, under no circumstances would he use this technique within the Illusory Alliance's Illusion Tower.
"You're right... If the judge were the young woman behind Elder Guo, it might be possible."
Zhong Yi rubbed his nose a bit awkwardly, consoling himself.
"Oh, why do you say that, Senior Brother Zhong?" Lu Ze couldn't help but grow curious.
"At Elder Guo's age, she has probably long been disillusioned with 'love.' Even if Junior Brother Lu carved flowers out of thin air, she wouldn't feel anything," Zhong Yi replied helplessly.
"That's because what Senior Brother Zhong refers to isn't love, but rather romantic infatuation," Lu Ze struck the crucial point with a single remark, causing Zhong Yi to give a start.
"True love transcends gender and age... it appeals to everyone."
Watching Zhong Yi's expression of sudden realization, Lu Zhe found it amusing.
"Ah, never mind... I forgot Senior Brother is a typical straight man. He probably doesn't get it."
Zhong Yi: "???"
As for this challenge, Lu Ze already had an answer in mind.
In his previous life, there were no shortage of games themed around "love."
Especially the GALGAME genre, which stood as its own category, almost always revolving around love, with no lack of tear-jerking masterpieces among them.
However, when facing Guo Yunfeng, who had cultivated the Emotionless Path, Lu Ze did not plan to use GALGAME as the template for his illusion.
Because the "love" in GALGAME was mostly filled with the youthful elements of "romantic infatuation."
Choosing such an illusion would be like making an 80-year-old woman in his past life play a Japanese-style GALGAME—completely out of tune.
But when it came to love...
Almost instantly, the name of a game locked itself in Lu Ze's mind:
"To the Moon."
Lu Ze chose "To the Moon" as the blueprint for his illusion for two reasons:
First, as a tear-jerking masterpiece that had made countless tough men weep in his previous life, "To the Moon" truly achieved a universal appeal, transcending age and gender, captivating everyone.
With the support of the fear-binding soul formation granted by the system, Lu Ze was about eighty percent confident that he could move even the Supreme Elder of the Heartless Sect.
Secondly, to prevent the Phantom Alliance from stealing the secrets of the Dao-Transforming Art, Lu Ze decided to avoid open-world, multi-ending immersive games.
To the Moon adopts a spectator perspective, using an omniscient viewpoint to explore the protagonist's past, which perfectly fits the requirements of a linear, single-ending format.
It could be said that To the Moon was almost the optimal solution to this problem.
close your eyes and open them again, only to find yourself transmigrated into the role of a villainous male supporting character. Readers familiar with urban wish-fulfillment novels know that it is only through the relentless antics of the villainous male supporting character that the plot between the male and female leads can progress. As the villainous male supporting character, Long Aotian not only has to bully the female lead, harass the second female lead, and flirt with the third female lead, but he also has to go all out to antagonize the male lead. In the end, when his body is discovered, he is still clutching half a moldy fried dough stick in his hand. Fully aware of the plot, Long Aotian is determined to change his fate, starting with the female lead! In the beginning, the female lead lacks confidence: "Big brother, I hope I didn't scare you?" In the middle, the female lead treads carefully: "Brother Long, please don't hit me, okay?" Later on, the female lead becomes coquettishly clingy: "Aotian, it's time to pay the 'public grain' tonight." Long Aotian's legs go weak, and he feels like crying: "I taught you to be thick-skinned, not shameless!"
nd fell into a coma while saving his younger sister from an out-of-control car. He became a vegetable. No one knew that his consciousness had crossed into a world of cultivation. Over the course of sixty years, he began as the lowest kind of mine slave, struggling to survive amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood. By sheer chance, he eventually obtained the complete memories of a fallen Immortal King. Alchemy, medicine, formations, feng shui, physiognomy, artifact forging… Every great inheritance of the cultivation world was now his. But when he opened his eyes again, he discovered that ten full years had passed in the modern world. To pay for his treatment, his father had sold the family’s shop and house, leaving himself covered in lasting injuries and illness. His mother had cared for him day and night, and more than half of her hair had already turned white. His younger sister, who had been only fifteen back then, was now twenty-five. To help repay the family’s debts, she had been forced to lower her head and put on a smiling face in places of glittering lights and endless revelry. Only then did Chen Xuan understand that what he had lost was not merely ten years. He had lost the life his entire family was meant to have. The good news was that he had brought back the memories of an Immortal King’s entire lifetime. The bad news was that his soul had returned alone—his cultivation had not come with him. Spiritual energy was scarce, resources were depleted, and the modern world still had firearms, surveillance, capital, and laws. If he wanted to protect his family, break free from everyone’s control, and become truly invincible beneath the heavens, he would have to start all over again.
s the Eldest Princess, renowned for her cold and aloof detachment, became the most docile of lambs, obeying his every command without question. But when the final move was played on the chessboard, as Gu Chenghan seized everything and ascended on the verge of apotheosis, that very Princess suddenly embraced him from behind, her tone carrying a dependence never heard before: "Wait... you haven't yet... commanded me to love you forever." Gu Chenghan froze abruptly. She... hadn't been hypnotized?! ... [The Eldest Princess's Diary] [When my soul was extracted, becoming the sole spectator outside my own shell] [At first, there was overwhelming fury, until I saw] [How he used my sword to effortlessly shatter my inescapable doom] [How he wielded my authority to eradicate fatal conspiracies I had never even detected] [Like a deity, he rescued me from the deep mire I was trapped in] [If not for those annoying vixens, he and I would be a match made in heaven] [I think I am ill, gravely ill] [My deity should belong to me alone] ... "Hypnosis? Oh, it succeeded, my dear Master." "Only this time, it's my turn to hypnotize you."
he colors of other people’s emotions. Light red meant anxiety. Gray meant exhaustion. Orange meant excitement. Yellow... meant repression. At the same time, he could gain unlimited control over one of those colors. Pale cyan: relaxation. Using this ability, he started offering “two-yuan hugs,” spending an afternoon exchanging emotional-color experiences with others. Then came his final female customer of the day— a girl whose emotional color was pure black... —— A week later, Xu Chuan had become skilled at using pale cyan—Relaxation—treating it like a bottle of menthol balm whenever he needed it. That was when he discovered he had unlocked another unlimited emotional color: Purple, the color of fear. So these emotional colors refresh every week? Fine, I take it back—I’ll never call you useless again... —— Much later, after Xu Chuan had accumulated countless emotional abilities, one night, he suddenly found himself inside someone else’s dream. There, he could use the emotional colors he possessed to paint. And in her dream, he painted her a shower of pink shooting stars, spreading across the depths of the night sky...
