These thoughts flashed through Li Ling's mind. Pretending nothing was wrong, he reassured her, "Don't worry. This mark looks harmless. Nothing will happen for now."
Unfortunately, whatever one feared was exactly what came.
As though deliberately trying to slap him in the face, the mark began changing the moment he finished speaking.
It slowly closed in on itself, its Other Shore Flower-like patterns transforming into the phantom image of a blood-red eye.
The eye was closed, but once it opened, something terrible would surely happen.
Seeing this, Li Ling acted decisively, extending his mental will into it.
In an instant, he arrived in a murky, indistinct place resembling a dream world.
Yet this clearly was not a dreamscape, but a void harboring spiritual consciousness, a mysterious place rooted deep within the souls of all living beings.
Here, Li Ling saw a hazy expanse of heaven and earth. Beneath a dim, gloomy sky, blood spread out, silently overflowing a pool resembling an earthen pit and winding outward.
Around this blood pool bloomed blood-red Other Shore Flowers, their spider-lily-like petals giving off an eerie glow against the darkness.
"This is the place I saw before!"
Li Ling froze for a moment, then suddenly spotted the phantom girl he had seen previously.
Thinking back carefully, her features had actually been somewhat blurred. Only as he saw her again did they gradually become Lin Rouniang's.
She had not noticed Li Ling's arrival. She continued through the flowers, walking step by step toward the blood pool.
"What exactly is she trying to do?"
Li Ling had an ominous feeling. His intuition told him that if he let her enter this blood pool and merge with it, a great terror would descend.
He therefore rushed forward and seized her.
Lin Rouniang abruptly turned her head, her