[Chen Jiuyan fell silent for a moment. Her face went from pale to flushed; only after steadying herself did she gradually dispel the chill in her heart.]
[At last, she pulled herself free from that dreamlike, illusory realm, yet her heart remained impossible to calm.]
[That illusion had been far too real and shocking, as though she had personally lived through it, dragging her back into memories of the past.]
[Once, she had followed her father into the deepest reaches of Marsh Lake, where an ancient palace lay hidden—the Dragon Palace, a forbidden ground known to all beneath heaven.]
[At the heart of Marsh Lake was a lifeless expanse, silent and devoid of all vitality.]
[That day, she had seen the Lord of Marsh Lake. An enormous creature had emerged from the water, bearing the body of a Flood Serpent and covered from head to toe in scales. It had seemed like a divine being of the mortal world, not some so-called demon.]
[Yet the Flood Serpent in that illusion had been identical, down to the slightest detail, to that horrifying figure in her memories, making her lose her composure for a time.]
[The uncertainty in Chen Jiuyan's eyes still flickered as she stared fixedly at the youth before her, as though she wished to see straight through him.]
[Only someone who had entered Marsh Lake and seen that "Flood Dragon" could possibly have depicted it, could they?]
[But on second thought, given your age and experience, and with you so far away in Bianjing, that was absolutely impossible.]
[What was even more shocking was this!]
[You had not even reached your coming-of-age ceremony, yet your Primordial Spirit cultivation had already reached an extremely high level—higher even than hers.]
[Otherwise, how could you have escaped her illusion technique and instead