"You are not Qingnv. Qingnv has been dead long ago. Who are you?"
Mr. Shuangyue put away his umbrella tiredly. After several rounds of unilateral failed attacks, she no longer planned to waste her energy in the illusion. She wiped the sweat from her face with her cuffs, stared straight at the figure in front of her who could never be hit, and asked.
“It doesn’t matter who I am, what matters is that I am here.”
Her voice was so familiar. Even though so much time had passed, when this voice reappeared in Shuangyue-Jun's ears, it still evoked her memory of a profound night a hundred years ago. What she wanted to find out was whether the bastard pretending to be a Hongxuanqing girl in front of her was another illusion created by Maharaja, or...
Hongxuan Long Night?
He shouldn't appear here... There's no chance. This was Lord Shuangyue's first reaction when he came up with this idea. But in fact she couldn't be sure, and she knew very well that the moment she thought this way, Maharaja could capture this thought and use it. Therefore, in what kind of quagmire was she sinking deeper and deeper? She was not Unimaginable.
"Okay, I don't care who you are. But, let me out."
"But there is nothing binding your hands and feet." The young girl turned her head and said, "You can leave at any time."
Mr. Shuangyue felt faintly angry. Although she knew that memories would be beautified, in her beautified distant memory, this face was indeed so gentle - although many times, someone was using her to deliberately provoke. But Lord Shuangyue could tell the difference clearly, because so many people around her had told her that the original owner of this face was such a kind and powerful goddess. Although she had never seen it, with this illusory impression, she was able to construct a close outline and equate it with the face that brought her bad memories.
Just don't add any worse memories to this moment.
"Stop joking." Mr. Shuangyue's tone was always stern, "Let me go now. I don't want to fight you. You are no different from a ghost. I have tried so many times and I can't touch a hair on your face, so I Your efforts will not be in vain. But I also hope you will be wiser and stop using this face to say things that are not worthy of it or do more things that are not worthy of it."
The image of Qingnv lightly shrugged her shoulders and said helplessly: "Okay, okay, I won't joke with you anymore. It's never difficult to leave the illusion - because the key to leaving is in your hand."
"...?"
Mr. Shuangyue showed a puzzled expression. But it wasn't because she didn't understand what he said, but because she was doubting it. Like the previous phantom of the Hundred Skeleton Lord, she knew very well that this statement meant something.
"Then I'm afraid I have to come to my conclusion." Lord Shuangyue said sideways, "You are the phantom of Mahuluojia. You use various methods to defraud me of the Red Pearl."
"What an interesting conclusion."
"Qingnu" said this as if all the previous hallucinations had nothing to do with her. Lord Shuangyue looked at her beautiful face, her long frost-white hair, her crimson dress... all of this made her feel kind and repulsive. She began to understand that Maharaja's illusions were impossible to dodge. Because it does not affect what people see and hear through the five senses, but directly touches the human spirit, extracting and projecting real or once real images in the mind. These sounds, pictures and feelings have nothing to do with personal will, but are directly determined by thinking.
...Then why is it using this trick now?
Naturally, the sooner you use this terrifying skill, the better. You can control the situation before anyone can figure out what is going on, and hold everything and people's thoughts firmly in your palms. But it didn't, and even gave Kanna-kun time to explain it to everyone, so that they all knew its tricks in advance and were immune to lies to a certain extent.
So, so…
"I've seen through your trick."
"Huh?" Qingnu tilted her head.
It stands to reason that when she realized this moment, Maharaja should have noticed it. But it doesn't, either it doesn't have the most direct mind-reading ability, or it feels overwhelmed so it responds by pretending to be stupid. For whatever reason, this is bad for it.
"You have not yet obtained the right to use the Chizhen Pearl."
Qingnu didn't say anything, just looked at her.
"The moment before I entered the illusion - I was indeed swallowed by Maharaja, but I did not die directly like this. Perhaps it is because the moment Lord Utsuki handed it over to me, its ownership It has been delivered into my hands. Even if you eat me, kill me, and take the Red Pearl as your own again, you will not be able to gain its power."
"..."
"I can't tell the power of the magic weapon. Maybe each magic weapon has a different temperament. After all, strictly speaking, they were all 'robbed' by Kanna-kun thousands of years ago. But it is obvious that, at least now, The Chizhen Pearl is in my hand, and I have no idea of giving it to you, so you can't get it... At least for you, 'permission' is a very important thing, it represents the will of human beings themselves. Break into us In the spiritual world, it is indeed not a polite thing to control our thoughts. If your direct goal is to cause pain and creating despair is your instinct when eating, then to a certain extent...it is reasonable. But except Besides, as long as there is a little twist and turn, you need to get 'permission', which is the law that binds you."
Seeing that Qingnv did not speak, she continued: "This is not difficult to explain. You do not belong to the human world, and humans will be subject to various restrictions if they want to live in other places in the six realms. You might come to the human realm. There are also some shackles of rules.”
The young girl stood quietly in front of her, her hands clasped together in front of her body. She still squinted her eyes, her expression was that iconic smile, and it seemed that there was never a moment of anger. After listening to Lord Shuangyue's question, she immediately opened her eyes and said to her:
"Did you want to know what I was?"
"You want to answer me?"
"I am your fear."
At the moment when these six short words ended, Lord Shuangyue did feel a real sense of... fear. Because what she heard was clearly not the familiar female voice, but another familiar male voice. But - there's something subtly different. It was a kind of overlapping sound, as if two or even more people were talking at the same time, but she could only hear and understand two of them clearly. One voice indeed belonged to Lord Kuchue, and the other was a somewhat hoarse voice that she had never heard before. Then Mahulaka would not fabricate a voice that did not exist in her memory out of thin air, so could it be...
The voice of Maharaja himself?
The voice was hoarse, hazy, and cold. Like a person from outside the world who is so old that time has forgotten him, like a drowning person who has just been fished out of the water, like a dying person whose neck has been violently strangled by a wild beast.
Before he could fully understand the origin and meaning of that sentence, a terrifying face rushed towards him. Is that the face of Qingnv, the face of Lord Kagyue, or... the face of Maharaja? Perhaps just like the voice, it is both and neither. The festering face on the left side is dotted with three scarlet eyeballs that are ready to fall off at any time. The black vertical pupils belonging to the snake seem to be trembling inside, like a worm trying to break out of the cocoon. A terrifying face passed directly over her face, and she smelled a burst of blood, and then she came to another place that did not belong to the southern country.
Nor does it belong to this moment.
She saw her father's coffin being covered and lowered into the pit. That's not good wood, it's so thin that it breaks into pieces if you knock it. My father lived a life of peace and quiet, but in the end he left nothing for his family. The mother held Siyan with one hand and herself with the other, pulling them both into her arms at the same time. The sound of the suona and the clatter of paper money in the wind drowned out my mother's sobs.
Was the mother crying at that time? When she raised her face, it was clearly expressionless, and Mr. Shuangyue also remembered clearly that her face was clean and there were no water stains. But now that I think about it, there is indeed a dampness on my shoulders.
Was my mother so tall at that time? Or was it that I was just too young at that time? And at that time, was there already white hair crawling on her hair?
She couldn't feel much sadness at that time, and her age limited her understanding of it all. It wasn't until time slowly passed and someone was completely missing from her life that she was slowly overwhelmed by the sadness. For my brother and mother, this scene was indeed a shocking moment, but life goes on after that. For her, this memory was so long that every year she became more and more aware of the pain that she had ignored at that time.
At that time, she only had fear - the abnormal behavior of the adults around her, the harsh sounds she had never heard before, and the fear that her eyes would be filled with only monotonous white.
Mr. Shuangyue thought that the sadness in the future had completely covered up or even replaced the inexplicable helplessness at that time. But at this moment, this forgotten emotion was completely awakened, and she once again truly felt the fear of her young self on that day.
And then... more deaths.
The senior sister was lying in a pool of blood, with a sharp knife stabbing through her chest. Her familiar green clothes are like the leaves that set off the flowers. Even if they are stained with mud, no one will care. Compared to Fiery Red, it is so humble.
A woman with half her face burned, her body penetrated by a mana light arrow, and holes dotted with sparks spread across her chest. She really wanted to die, so she put herself in danger and stood in front of him without hesitation.
Also dying with the same mood was a little maid. She died at the hands of the corpse of her beloved young master, but at the same time it was for them, for all of them.
There are also cute and beautiful little girls like her - kapok monsters, burning in the fire of the swamp. Did she die for all of them too? She didn't even struggle.
As for Siyan's death, she had never witnessed it with her own eyes, and she had not even participated in the burial. But she had indeed dreamed of such a horrific scene...a simple house, blood all over the floor. Even if it is a dream, it will not be let go.
The deaths of many and countless people flashed before her one by one. What's more, after she became the Six Paths Impermanence, she tried her best to save the dead lives but ended in failure. There were people and monsters; some she had forgotten, and some she still remembered clearly. These old accounts were reviewed one by one and kept flashing before her, and she herself continued to participate in these desperate moments.
Yes, she was scared.
Not for death itself—but for his own inability. How many lives that could have been redeemed will be ruined by this incompetence in the future? She didn't know, there wasn't enough time for her to figure it out.
The final image is of a weird, two-headed snake.
And in her hand appeared a wakizashi that she had lost not long ago.
The snake looked at her and she looked at the snake.
