Neurotoxin

Xiao Yan looked at everything before him and let out a soft breath. Only now could he be certain that neither Hun Dai'er before him nor the Netherworld Poison Flame on the altar truly existed. They were counterfeits created from his own mind.

Because zombies had first come to mind, zombies had actually appeared before him. But his subconscious told him that such things could not exist on the Dou Qi Continent, creating a sense of dissonance. That was why Yao Lao had appeared to tell him that these supposed zombies were caused by poison.

But that alone had not been enough to dispel the dissonance in Xiao Yan's mind, so another person had been created to resolve his doubts. Naturally, the person chosen was the one who had left the deepest impression on him: Hun Dai'er. Yet his subconscious fiercely resisted Hun Dai'er, so what emerged instead was the so-called "Yun Dai."

That was precisely why Xiao Yan had found "Yun Dai" so familiar: he had been modeled on Hun Dai'er, with whom Xiao Yan shared a complicated relationship. The reason Xiao Yan had felt no wariness toward him was equally simple. This "Yun Dai" had essentially been created by Xiao Yan himself, something that did not exist, so he naturally sensed no threat.

Everything that followed had also been born from the thoughts in Xiao Yan's mind. Because he had watched zombie movies, the scenes he encountered after entering resembled Resident Evil. He had thought the Corpse Demons created by the Netherworld Poison Flame should be stronger than that, and then a skeleton on par with a Dou Wang had actually appeared.

All these fabrications had appeared to fill the gaps in Xiao Yan's understanding and lessen his sense of dissonance, weaving a flawless illusion to trap him within. But Xiao Yan knew very well that, with his willpower, ordinary illusions could not affect him at all. Only an outside force could influence him, such as... poison.

What the one administering this toxin did not know, however, was that all those coincidences along the way had long since put Xiao Yan on his guard. Thus, when that enormous skeletal hand pinned him down, he had already begun subtly using his thoughts to steer the entire illusion, testing whether the place he occupied was real.

Simply put, if the first half of Xiao Yan's experience had been a dream, the latter half had been a lucid dream under his control.

"So what if you've figured out that all of this is fake? You can't leave this place." The false Hun Dai'er did not vanish because Xiao Yan had exposed her. Sitting on the altar, she looked at him with mockery in her eyes. "You might as well sink into it. At least you'll die happy."

"Tsk, you really were made from my consciousness. Even the way you talk is just as irritating... but you don't understand me nearly as well as she does." Xiao Yan shook his head with a soft chuckle. "Even the Hundred Lifetimes Reincarnation couldn't make me lose myself. How could a mere illusion possibly trap me?"

As Xiao Yan's words fell, the space before him began to collapse. The next moment, the entire underground palace suddenly warped. Hun Dai'er let out a piercing shriek, stretched out her clawlike hands, and tore her own body into strips of flesh drenched in black blood.

Immediately afterward, countless jumbled sounds rang in Xiao Yan's ears: screams, laughter, sobbing, and shrill cries. The chaotic noises overlapped with the disjointed, bloody scenes, throwing his mind into turmoil.

An ordinary person confronted with such a scene would likely have gone mad long ago, but to Xiao Yan, it was merely a single hair from nine oxen. He sneered and slowly closed his eyes. In an instant, the clamor in his ears vanished without a trace.

When Xiao Yan opened his eyes again, the disjointed scenes in the underground palace had vanished without a trace, replaced by a gloomy forest. The moment he awoke, he felt himself suffocating. Looking down, he saw a black vine tightly coiled around his neck.

Not only his neck, but his limbs were also bound by those black vines. They were covered in sharp, poisonous thorns. An ordinary person bound like this would have been killed by the thorns even if the vines did not strangle them. However, a faint layer of white light covered his body, shielding Xiao Yan from those lethal injuries.

Xiao Yan immediately summoned the Nine Nether Flame and burned through all the vines. Before he could even land, countless black vines shot toward him, blotting out the sky. With a thought, pitch-black flames surged up and enveloped his entire body. The vines were instantly reduced to ashes by the sudden appearance of the Nine Nether Flame.

"This place is..." Keeping the Nine Nether Flame around his entire body, Xiao Yan surveyed his surroundings. He seemed to be in a forest filled with enormous black trees. The vines had shot out from those trees, and countless corpses and bare bones lay beneath them, presumably other unlucky victims. But... how had he ended up here?

"This is the Heavenly Poison Swamp." Just then, Yao Lao's somewhat weakened voice slowly sounded in his mind. "Little fellow, you're finally awake."

"Teacher, how are you?" Noticing Yao Lao's weakness, Xiao Yan immediately asked after him. That layer of white light around his body must have been formed from Yao Lao's power, preventing the black vines from harming him.

"Let's talk about you first." Yao Lao sighed. "Little fellow, what happened to you just now? Why did you walk straight in here without so much as looking back? And why didn't you respond, no matter how many times I called you?"

In fact, Yao Lao had also tried to forcibly take control of Xiao Yan's body, only to discover that he could not gain control no matter what he did. Thus, when the vines trapped Xiao Yan, he could only divert some of his power to protect him.

"I was poisoned just now," Xiao Yan said with a bitter chuckle.

"Poison? How is that possible?" Yao Lao sounded somewhat astonished. "With that Black Flame protecting your body, how could any poison harm you? Besides, I didn't sense any potent poison in you."

"It wasn't an ordinary poison." Xiao Yan shook his head. "I was affected by an extremely rare neurotoxin. It causes hallucinations, making people lose control of their bodies. It doesn't target the flesh, but the brain. I don't know how it managed it. All I know is that I was already affected by this neurotoxin before I even entered the village."