Creeeak...
The ancient door seemed to have been sealed for ages. As it opened, it gave off an indescribably grating sound.
And this was only a side hall.
The moment Luo Chen stepped inside, he froze.
The interior rose as high as the heavens. Bookshelves climbed in tiers like stairways to a celestial kingdom, their half-illusory, half-solid volumes arranged by category.
For the first time, Luo Chen truly understood what it meant for books to fill halls until the oxen hauling them sweated.
A single side hall held this many Alchemy Dao texts?
Even Luo Chen, who had received the Heaven Refining Devil Monarch's Pill Dao Inheritance, marveled inwardly at Pill Saint Chu Yan's collection.
He beckoned, and a volume that seemed woven from white clouds flew from the nearest black shelf into his hand.
Before he could open it, a soft sound of surprise rang through the hall.
"Hm?"
"This book?"
Luo Chen rubbed the volume between his fingers. It felt almost alive.
He lowered his Crimson-Eyed Golden Pupils upon it, and the Cloud Qi wreathing the volume could no longer hide its true form.
Luo Chen slowly raised the book and examined it intently.
"This is actually a pill!"
To his surprise, the volume that looked like an ordinary book was, in essence, a pill.
It had taken that shape because someone had used an extraordinarily refined illusion, drawing on abundant spiritual energy to manifest a false image and deceive outsiders.
"A method left by Pill Saint Chu Yan?"
"He had such mastery of illusions?"
In the Cultivation World, illusions were often confused with soul arts, but the two were fundamentally different.
Illusions manipulated the five senses, causing false judgments about what one saw, heard, smelled, touched, or even ate.
Soul arts, by contrast, struck at the soul