Before Qing Feng Temple, the boundary between the Delusion Realm and reality swayed like a reflection in water.
Li Huowang curled up in a corner of the woodshed, his nails digging deep into the tender flesh of his palms as he tried to use the sharp pain to fight the maddening whispers and twisted visions clinging to his mind like gangrene.
Sometimes, Master's intestines swayed beneath the eaves like wind chimes. Junior Sister's face would occasionally melt apart and reform. He knew it was all fake.
His "illness" was acting up again, yet the sensation and the stench were so real that his entire body trembled.
Just then, every sound outside the temple—the wind's moaning, the insects' shrieking, even the ever-present mad ravings—abruptly vanished.
An absolute, reassuring stillness enveloped this tiny patch of heaven and earth. The creak of the woodshed's battered wooden door was startlingly clear.
Li Huowang abruptly raised his head, his bloodshot eyes fixed warily on the doorway.
Backlit by the sun stood a green-robed figure. There were no auspicious clouds around him, no myriad rays of fortune. He looked as ordinary as any pebble found in the mountains.
Yet Li Huowang's Spiritual Sense, sharpened to an abnormal degree by madness, screamed a warning. No, not danger, but something...
Something he could not comprehend—a vast, boundless aura of Order and reality, like the starry sky!
This aura was utterly incompatible with the chaotic, false world he inhabited, yet it gave his heart, which constantly struggled between reality and illusion, an unprecedented, cold sense of being anchored.
"Y-You... who are you?" Li Huowang's voice was dry and hoarse, carrying the exhaustion and vigilance of someone who had screamed for far too long. "Are you a new hallucination? Or... a Fate Controller?"
Ming Xin looked at the young man