A True Face-Off

The longer one lingered on the true plane, the higher one's "degree of reality" became. In the end, there would no longer be any possibility of leaving under one's own power; one would only sink into endless hunger and bloodlust.

On the fourteenth mountaintop, a gigantic wheel-shaped Dao artifact was embedded at a slant. Some bell-like "ornaments" hung from it, like a bronze wheel crushing down upon the endless Black Mountain.

A strange wind howled, pouring into the cracks of those enormous bells, accompanied by bizarre wailing cries. Even from afar, they were unbearable to hear.

It felt as though his three souls and seven spirits were about to be called out of his divine body by that mournful droning.

Perhaps for that reason, there were few corrupted beings on this mountaintop.

But as Li Qingyun approached, he saw the figure of an Eight Fruits corrupted being sitting cross-legged beneath the giant wheel's shadow, which hung like a curtain from the void.

This Eight Fruits corrupted being had already undergone severe mutation. His body was covered in bulging tumors of every strange shape—some resembled human faces, some hands and feet, and countless other forms besides.

Yet he seemed to retain some measure of reason. Sitting there cross-legged, he appeared to be using the droning cries of the giant wheel's bells to resist the corruption and barely maintain his clarity.

Whoosh!

A strange wind blew fluttering petals along, swiftly closing in on the giant wheel's mountaintop. Amid the rain of flowers, Li Qingyun's transformed Jing Hua Daoist emerged, a wicked smile on half of his handsome face.

"Fellow Daoist? Or monster?"

Standing beneath the giant wheel's shadow, he smiled lightly at the tumor-covered Daoist a hundred zhang away.

By now, it was no longer difficult for him to leave behind an