Looking at the greed in Chen Yuan’s eyes, Lu Ze smiled faintly.
He had taken the bait.
Lu Ze understood what Chen Yuan was thinking.
After all, with their cultivation sealed away, what could cultivators possibly practice?
Only the basics.
But among everyone present, those qualified to participate in the Sword Ruins of Seeking the Dao—whose foundations had not been tempered through countless trials?
Even taking a step back, illusions cultivated the spirit and the mind.
If they truly practiced basic sword techniques, the results would be far inferior to wielding a sword in reality.
At their level, simply swinging a sword every day was already unlikely to produce much improvement. How much less could they accomplish by practicing their fundamentals in an illusion?
Therefore, when cultivation was sealed away, an illusion could never bring cultivators any advancement in the Way of the Sword.
If one wished to help cultivators advance in swordsmanship, one had to incorporate profound sword intent or insights into the illusion.
That was precisely why the Illusion Alliance was certain that even if Lu Ze participated, he would still lose.
Under normal circumstances, the Illusion Alliance’s approach truly did put them in an invincible position.
Unfortunately, Lu Ze actually knew a thing or two about the Way of the Sword.
Li Moran had shared countless insights into swordsmanship and all kinds of sword techniques with him in the past.
In terms of attainment in the Way of the Sword, Lu Ze surpassed more than ninety percent of the cultivators present.
Not to mention that after refining a Void Soul Crystal, he had gained new insights into the Array of Fearful Souls and Emotional Bonds.
This time, the sealing of cultivation differed slightly from the methods used before!
“Why can’t we comprehend the Way of the Sword just because our cultivation is sealed?”
After taking the illusion crystal, Li Moran furrowed her brows slightly, her face filled with confusion.
Everyone seemed convinced that once cultivation was sealed, an illusion would be useless for cultivation.
But in her eyes, that clearly wasn’t the case.
“Tsk. Is this what they call the misfortune of being a heaven-defying genius…?”
Lu Ze pursed his lips and rolled his eyes at Li Moran.
As expected, people could never truly empathize with one another.
The person standing before him was the heaven-defying senior sister who could even gain enlightenment while playing a game of Delta Force. How could she possibly understand the suffering of ordinary people?
“So that’s how it is… The world they see is different from the one I see?”
After listening to Lu Ze’s explanation, Li Moran nodded as if she understood, then smiled at him.
“So you’ve already thought of a solution… right?”
With Lu Ze here, he would definitely win.
That was what Li Moran believed.
“You guessed it.”
Lu Ze spread his hands and smiled mysteriously.
“This time, my illusion will not only seal away your cultivation, spiritual energy, and innate constitution…”
“It will also seal away all of your understanding of the sword.”
“What you have to do… is start from a blank sheet of paper and cultivate the Dao all over again!”
That was Lu Ze’s confidence.
Ever since he refined his first Void Soul Crystal, the world he saw had become like the one Li Moran saw when she gazed upon the myriad things of heaven and earth. It was no longer the same world others perceived.
The skill granted to him by the system was the Array of Fearful Souls and Emotional Bonds.
Originally, it had merely been an array that guided and manipulated cultivators’ emotions. But now, based on that foundation, he had developed new functions—
It could control not only emotions, but even memories, opportunities, and ultimately…
The Dao!
What Lu Ze had done was sever the cultivators’ connection to the Way of the Sword.
All their insights, experience, techniques…
Everything would be reset to zero!
Everyone would start from scratch!
This was cultivation in the mortal world reborn in an idealized state, with experts of every kind waiting for them to challenge them!
Under such conditions, anyone who failed to gain even the slightest insight or improvement might as well be taken outside and buried.
After hearing only a few words, Li Moran’s pupils contracted slightly, and a rare, excited smile appeared at the corners of her mouth.
In an instant, she realized just how extraordinary Lu Ze’s illusion would be!
With her level of vision, even if her cultivation were sealed, the virtual opponents in an illusion would not usually inspire any insights in her.
At most, she would think that her opponents relied on brute strength.
She could even use her seasoned experience and technique to counter them.
As for advancing in the Way of the Sword, that would be nothing more than a pipe dream.
But if what Lu Ze said was true…
Then she would gain an entirely new understanding of combat!
After returning from the illusion, she might undergo a fundamental transformation!
For an expert of her caliber, this was an exceedingly rare opportunity for enlightenment!
“An illusion this wondrous actually exists?”
Li Moran looked at Lu Ze in disbelief, plainly unable to suppress her anticipation.
“Of course. I am the greatest illusion master of the age.”
Lu Ze smiled calmly and placed the pale-golden illusion crystal into Li Moran’s Illusion Pagoda.
“Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice…”
“Make your entrance!”
As her divine sense sank into the crystal, everything around Li Moran gradually faded away.
In the darkness, a red maple leaf tore open an opening.
The sound of a maple leaf drifting onto the surface of the water, the clamoring of voices, and the rough gasps of breath blended together.
The air was thick with the mingled scents of earth and blood.
The scene slowly unfolded.
Deep within a chaotic battlefield, two cultivators wearing samurai garments and masks—styles Li Moran had never seen before—were locked in fierce combat.
The polearm was powerful and heavy, while the longsword was light yet no less vicious.
They were clearly ordinary moves, but Li Moran was startled to find them strangely unfamiliar.
So this is… what it feels like to pick up a sword again?
Li Moran raised her brows slightly, recalling Lu Ze’s words from earlier.
In the blink of an eye, the longsword pierced the opponent’s throat, scattering sprays of blood. The fierce battle had already reached its conclusion.
The short swordsman raised his black blade high.
“General Tamura has been defeated!”
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!
m back to his original world. In the end, he realized he had overthought things. [Hey, why is Shen Manni, the female lead, acting strange? Shouldn't she be fawning over the male lead at this point?] [Zhou Qiaoqiao, are you sick? Weren't you supposed to break off your engagement today?] [Damn it! An Youyi, please do your job as an undercover agent and sell my information to the protagonist, you idiot!] ... At this moment, Xu Mo himself didn't know that these female leads had already heard his inner thoughts. Then they decided not to play by the rules. Xu Mo: Please respect my profession as the big villain!
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."
