As the icy seawater submerged her head again and suffocation struck once more, the scene changed again.
This time, she stood on a desolate beach, tightly gripping a bloodstained cutlass.
Lying before her was the deputy she had once trusted most, with the very dagger she habitually used buried in his chest.
"Why..." Her deputy coughed up blood, his eyes filled with confusion and pain.
Zi Zhenzhu wanted to explain, but her throat seemed blocked, unable to make a sound.
The illusions revolved like a spinning lantern, each one striking precisely at the most vulnerable corner of her heart.
The heart-piercing agony of betrayal, the endless regret of losing companions, the instinctive fear of death...
Every time she reached the brink of death, a new despair awaited her.
She was like someone trapped in an endless cycle of purgatory, her consciousness repeatedly tugged between lucidity and oblivion.
Just as she felt her consciousness was about to shatter, the surrounding illusion cracked like glass struck by a heavy hammer.
Cracks spread from every direction before it finally shattered completely with a faint sound.
Dazzling light flooded her vision. Zi Zhenzhu opened her eyes with a violent gasp, drenched in cold sweat, and collapsed limply to the ground, trembling without cease.
Su Yu stood before her, his Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan fading to leave only his deep eyes.
His expression remained as calm as a gentle breeze beneath light clouds, as though that hellish torment had been no more than a trivial matter accomplished with a flick of his fingers.
"Zi Zhenzhu, you dared lay a hand on my woman. This is your punishment."
Zi Zhenzhu's heart clenched. The lingering power of the illusions remained, filling her with an instinctive wariness of the man before her.
"From this day forward, the Purple