The Truth Behind the Chiming

In the mountain forest, several twisted fissures stretched dozens of yards across the ground.

"What did you say? You still want to go up the mountain?" Xu Fang roared.

"Ye Wuyou is our teammate. Whatever he did when we faced that Demon Beast earlier, even if the mission fails, we have to go back together." Lin Qingqing looked grave, but her words were firm.

During the earlier earthquake, an enormous fissure had suddenly opened between the three of them and Ye Wuyou. Then the mountainside had collapsed, filling the air with dust and sand and scattering them apart.

The three had just suffered injuries while facing a Demon Beast in an "Illusion Realm." After traveling through the night as well, they were already exhausted in both body and mind.

Now Xu Fang and Lin Qingqing were arguing.

Xu Fang believed they should return to the foot of the mountain to rest, while Lin Qingqing insisted they keep searching.

Neither would yield, but Bai Changzai, who had barely spoken all this time, finally spoke up.

"Lin Qingqing, I think we should leave this place as quickly as possible, rather than look for that newcomer named Ye Wuyou. Don't you think everything happening right now is far too strange?"

Both turned to look at Bai Changzai.

"First we sensed the Demon Fox's aura, then we saw the beacon smoke on the mountain. After that, a Demon Beast appeared out of nowhere, followed by a sudden earthquake. Any of those things might be normal on its own, but with all of them happening together, don't you think something's odd?"

Bai Changzai sighed. Perhaps he was the only one of the three still calm.

"And there's something even stranger. I didn't notice it earlier, but look at your injuries."

Bai Changzai held out a hand. A ragged wound marked it, though it had already stopped bleeding.

"This doesn't look like an injury caused by that Demon Beast. It looks more like something else..." Bai Changzai said.

Lin Qingqing and Xu Fang both froze, then began carefully examining their wounds.

Those fine cuts really didn't look like something that Demon Beast, with its mouth larger than a person, could have inflicted...

"Jingle, jingle..."

What was that sound?

Why was there a bell ringing?

Shock crossed their faces, but then the ground beneath their feet began shaking violently again.

"No, we have to go back now! Back to the foot of the mountain-no, out of the Cloudmist Mountains!"

Yet a second chime rang out.

"Jingle, jingle..."

The sound had grown a little more urgent.

"What's going on? My head suddenly hurts so much... Xu Fang, what are you doing?"

Lin Qingqing clutched her head as savage pain bored madly through her mind. Out of the corner of her eye, however, she saw Xu Fang walking toward somewhere with a wooden expression.

"This chiming... there's something wrong with it. It disturbs the mind." Bai Changzai's voice trembled slightly with pain, but he still seemed relatively lucid.

Then the third chime rang out.

"Jingle, jingle..."

This time, even Bai Changzai fell into a daze in an instant, his body walking uncontrollably toward somewhere.

Lin Qingqing, Xu Fang, and Bai Changzai moved through the mountains with stiff bodies and vacant eyes, like three corpses.

Had anyone still been able to fly and look down from above, they would have seen where the three were heading.

The foot of the mountain. Cloudmist Village.

Another earthquake?

The earthquake interrupted Ye Wuyou's standoff with Bai Lu and the others, but the chime that followed made them all freeze.

Though the three recovered after only a brief moment of bewilderment, how could an ordinary bell affect cultivators' minds?

"This is... damn it, could this be the Thousand Illusions Purple-Gold Bell?" Bai Lu seemed to realize something, her voice turning shrill.

Her younger sister, who knew where the bell was, had died. The Thousand Illusions Sect Disciple, who knew how to control and use it, had died too.

Then why would a Magical Treasure ring by itself?

She knew less about the Thousand Illusions Purple-Gold Bell than her younger sister had, but during these past few days with the Thousand Illusions Sect's last Disciple, she had managed to coax out a little information.

The Thousand Illusions Purple-Gold Bell was a supreme treasure the Thousand Illusions Sect had obtained by chance, and the very foundation upon which the sect had been established.

Its origins were unknown, but with this supreme treasure in the Thousand Illusions Sect's hands, even a Sect Master in merely the Fourth Realm could contend with someone in the Sixth Realm.

By rights, the Sect Master should have carried such a powerful treasure on his person.

But the Thousand Illusions Sect had not. On the contrary, they seemed somewhat wary of the thing, keeping it shelved away under strict guard all day.

And considering her younger sister... although she was already dead, her mad desire to obtain that supreme treasure could only mean it had some connection to the Demon Fox Clan.

As these thoughts flashed through her mind, the second chime rang out.

Then came the third.

Jingle, jingle...

At that moment, Third Realm cultivation was as fragile as paper. No matter how Bai Lu and the remaining Man in Plain Clothes resisted, they could not stop the chiming from penetrating them.

Shrouding themselves in vital breath, using supernatural abilities-even covering their ears was useless.

The chiming rang directly inside their minds.

Bai Lu's vision gradually grew unreal, until at last it sank into darkness.

Then, just like Lin Qingqing and the other two before them, their figures began walking down the mountain, stiff and unconscious.

They, too, were heading toward that village.

Another figure descended the mountain alongside them.

The Man in Brocade had long since had his chest pierced through. His breath was gone; he was already dead.

Yet now his body stiffly rose to its feet and walked toward Cloudmist Village.

But the chiming did not stop.

Perhaps it was because one person still remained here.

For some reason, Ye Wuyou now stood in midair, as though he were flying.

This was something only the Middle Three Realms could do. Beyond the reach of ordinary sight, a spectral blue figure appeared behind Ye Wuyou. Countless spectral blue hands gathered into a mass beneath his feet.

"Ghost" carried Ye Wuyou like this, lifting himself into the air.

But Ye Wuyou's expression was no longer as deathly still as before. Or rather, a few traces of human emotion had appeared on his face.

He stood in the air, but a closer look revealed that he seemed to be trembling slightly, beyond his control.

Yet he still laughed aloud.

"Good, good, good! I wondered what you were. Nothing but a scrap touched by a little great Dao aura, now refined into an artifact by someone and barely possessing a shred of intelligence. You don't even qualify as a remnant, yet you dream of influencing me?"

"You would do better to offer yourself up obediently. Once I capture that white fox, I'll hang you on a chain around her neck. That will give an artifact like you a place to belong."

"Know this: defy Heaven, and you may yet live. Defy me, and there is no hope of survival!"

The voice was still Ye Wuyou's, but its tone was utterly different from before.

Arrogant beyond measure.

The fourth chime struck again. This time, it seemed a little heavier.

Jingle, jingle.

Ye Wuyou's upper body remained motionless, but his legs shook violently and uncontrollably. Even so, he seemed determined to preserve a measure of dignity.

"N-nothing more than this. I don't even fear the Great Dao Resonance. How could I submit to this little noise of yours?"

"Not enough! Again! Do it again if you dare!"

The fifth chime crashed down.

The chiming was no longer clear and delicate. Its pitch shifted, turning sharp and urgent.

Ye Wuyou's eyes bulged as though their corners would split, and his entire body began to shudder.

Inside his mind, a hammer seemed to be pounding down madly, again and again, nearly driving him insane.

Ye Wuyou wanted to say something, but at that very moment, the sixth chime rang out without giving him the slightest respite.

It was as though his behavior had enraged it.

His head was still intact, but thunderous crashes echoed within it, like an electric drill boring into his brain and blasting it apart.

His consciousness vanished in an instant. The string called reason within his mind gave a crisp twang, then snapped as well.

[Alas, what pain, what sorrow! Having already entered the state of no-self, invincible throughout the world, you have now become ensnared by appearances before this artifact.]

[Even so, you still have a fallback. The great Dao remnant has already fused with you. These Flowers in the Mirror, Moon in the Water cannot disturb your mind at all.]

[A mere relic bearing a trace of aura is nothing to fear. Once you awaken, you can suppress it with a casual gesture.]

The narrator's voice rang through Ye Wuyou's mind, ethereal and hollow.

Perhaps, just as the narrator in his mind had said, the chiming could disturb everyone else's minds, but Ye Wuyou, possessed by an uncanny entity, would remain unaffected.

But that required Ye Wuyou's mind to still be lucid.

Ye Wuyou... had gone mad.

Crack, crack...

A series of crisp cracking sounds reached his ears, as though something were shattering.

Through his already blurred vision, Ye Wuyou seemed to dimly make out something new in the sky.

It was a bell.

But now the bell was trembling. Its purple-gold shell crumbled bit by bit, as though something were bursting out from within.

Crack.

The shell shattered and fell to the ground, revealing something round inside.

In the night sky, that thing seemed to overlap with the moon, yet it blotted out all light and shadow.

It was an eyeball.

That night, many more people appeared in Cloudmist Village.