Spiral Illusion Realm

In the examination room, Li Tailai stood motionless, his eyes staring blankly ahead.

The person in front of him was not his medical assistant, but Ji Yin's junior sister, the cultivator Zuo Ling, director of the Jiangzhou Internal Affairs Bureau.

Li Tailai had never left the examination room. From the moment someone tapped him on the shoulder from behind, he had been trapped in an illusion realm laid by Zuo Ling. He was completely unaware of it.

Zuo Ling waved a finger between Li Tailai's eyes, a ball of spiritual light spinning ceaselessly on it.

As the spiritual light continued to spin, Li Tailai's pupils gradually dilated.

Just as she was about to succeed, a deep blackness suddenly spread through his pupils.

At the sight, a trace of anxiety flashed across Zuo Ling's face.

Her Spiritual Pressure rose sharply, and blazing white spiritual light burst from her eyes as she pressed her fingertip hard against the spot between Li Tailai's brows.

The vortex of spiritual light was intensified and erupted in an instant. Amid the flashing light, the blackness in Li Tailai's pupils temporarily receded, and he collapsed limply.

Two Internal Affairs Bureau agents carried Li Tailai away. Zuo Ling took a deep breath, and the spell formation at her fingertip dispersed.

"Director, how did it go?"

A subordinate entered from outside the door and asked with concern.

"Not very well."

Zuo Ling rubbed the spot between her brows, feeling utterly exhausted. The "Spiral Illusion Realm" she had just used to trap Li Tailai might not have produced any dazzling light pollution, but it had actually required a considerable amount of Divine Sense.

Li Tailai was an unregistered cultivator of unknown rank. Using an illusion technique on a cultivator whose background they knew nothing about was risky, so Zuo Ling, the Internal Affairs Bureau's strongest cultivator, had no choice but to step in personally.

Fortunately, he was not too strong.

After receiving Ji Yin's urgent intelligence yesterday, Zuo Ling had planned to capture Li Tailai alive. Before this, the Internal Affairs Bureau had never captured a cult leader of protector rank alive.

Every time these people were driven into a dead end, they would implode and kill themselves. Neither threats nor promises of reward worked on them. They were truly fanatical.

Today, Zuo Ling had tried to confuse Li Tailai with an illusion realm and disable his spiritual power without his realizing it. That way, he would not be able to kill himself.

But the attempt had failed.

"A powerful restriction was planted inside Li Tailai. It erupted just as I was about to break through it."

Zuo Ling explained to her subordinate.

"I barely managed to suppress the restriction's eruption, but I couldn't continue. His brain is mush now. Send him to headquarters immediately. Maybe they can dig something out."

The subordinate accepted the order and left. Zuo Ling picked up her phone and called Ji Yin:

"I didn't succeed on my end." She sounded a little annoyed. "Don't mess up on yours!"

"Ling'er, are you worried about me?"

Ji Yin shamelessly flirted with her during working hours, and, unsurprisingly, she immediately hung up.

Ji Yin smiled and paid it no mind. Zuo Ling had always treated him like that anyway, and he never reflected on his own behavior.

He casually slipped his phone into his pocket, then waved the traffic flag in his hand and stopped a car on the road.

"Hello." Ji Yin bent down and politely explained to the driver through the car window, "It's the college entrance exam today. There are traffic restrictions ahead, so please take a detour."

"I'm an examinee."

A student in the back seat took out his exam admission ticket. Ji Yin glanced at it and waved the car through.

He was wearing a traffic police uniform, with a dark face, fleshy cheeks, and stubble-a picture-perfect down-and-out middle-aged man. No one would have recognized him as the cultivator Ji Yin, director of the Ning City Internal Affairs Bureau.

After receiving Xiao Bing's intelligence, Ji Yin had immediately contacted his direct superior, Zuo Ling. Under Zuo Ling's direction, the Internal Affairs Bureaus' elite forces from several surrounding prefecture-level cities had now gathered in Jiangzhou.

Ji Yin was not alone. The roads around the examination site were already under the Internal Affairs Bureau's control. They only had to wait for the target to appear, and the cult would be unable to escape even with wings.

As for why Ji Yin, a bureau director, had disguised himself as a traffic officer and was checking cars personally, it was to do everything possible to save Lu Yuan.

The cult ritual Lu Yuan had mentioned in his intelligence matched what headquarters had learned. In other words, Lu Yuan had successfully resisted the brainwashing of the cult's mental technique.

That meant Lu Yuan's Divine Sense was definitely above twenty.

That was frightening, far surpassing even Dean Yu Zheng's level at the same age. Zuo Ling and Ji Yin agreed that they had to save Lu Yuan. This boy was of great importance to the Hua People and absolutely could not be sacrificed in vain on such a small mission.

The road Ji Yin was stationed on was a main route to the Guanghua Examination Site. With more than an hour left before the exam, many vehicles were moving slowly along it.

If Lu Yuan were in one of those cars, Ji Yin would stop it on the pretext of an inspection. But Ji Yin's luck was not very good. Lu Yuan was on another road.

Linchun Road.

Besides the driver, Xu Wenbin, Guo Huai, and four other cultists were in the vehicle with him.

"Hello, it's the college entrance exam today. There are traffic restrictions ahead, so please take a detour."

A traffic officer knocked on the window with a broad smile.

The driver looked back at Guo Huai, who nodded. The driver rolled down the window.

"We're taking an examinee to the exam."

Guo Huai greeted the traffic officer with a smile, then handed over the exam admission ticket.

The officer glanced at the ticket, nodded, and made a gesture to the people behind him.

"Let them through!"

Several other traffic officers were at the roadblock. One of them pressed a button, raising the barrier.

Guo Huai quietly breathed a sigh of relief.

He did not notice that several traffic officers were drifting toward them, seemingly by chance.

But Lu Yuan's nerves had been taut the whole time. He realized these were Internal Affairs Bureau people, and they were about to make their move!

Lu Yuan lowered his head and quietly circulated the Body-Protecting Shield within his body at full power.

The van slowly started moving. Just then, the traffic officer who had checked their documents knocked on the window again.

"Hello, your rear tire has blown out. Would you like to pull over and change it?"

Guo Huai was puzzled. The tire had blown out? He instinctively instructed the cultist in the front passenger seat, "Get out and take a look."

The cultist nodded and opened the door.

The instant the door opened, four cultivators disguised as traffic officers suddenly attacked.

At the driver's seat, a cultivator punched through the window. His fist continued forward with undiminished force and slammed into the driver's forehead. The driver's eyes bulged from their sockets, and he died on the spot.

At the front passenger seat, the cultist was abruptly dragged out with the door. Before he could understand what was happening, a knife-hand strike hit his neck and knocked him unconscious.

The van's two rear doors were likewise wrenched open, and the cultivators swarmed in.

Only then did Guo Huai realize things had gone terribly wrong.

"Fight them!" he roared. "The Divine Lord is great!"

The cultists, who had been in complete disarray inside the van, immediately found their backbone. Baring their fangs and brandishing their claws, they lunged at the Internal Affairs Bureau cultivators.

They were all ordinary people and were subdued in just a few moves. But that brief obstruction gave Xu Wenbin a little time.

He twisted the heel of his shoe and threw himself bodily at a cultivator beside him.

"The Divine Lord is great! My lord, run!"

"Damn it! Get clear!"

The cultivator Xu Wenbin had collided with instantly sensed danger. Spiritual light rose from his hands as he grabbed Xu Wenbin and hurled him with all his might toward a place with fewer people.

But he was still a little too late. Xu Wenbin exploded in midair. A full kilogram of explosives was hidden in the sole of his shoe, and the blast was immensely powerful.

The shock wave swept out toward nearly a hundred civilians below. They stared dumbstruck at the sudden disaster, with no time to dodge.

At that critical moment, the last cultivator holding the rear used his Divine Sense to light up an azure bead and sent it flying toward the explosion with a wave of his hand.

The azure bead shone with brilliant divine light in midair, transforming into a transparent barrier ten meters square.

The barrier blocked most of the explosion's shock wave, leaving the civilians below unharmed. Only then did they come to their senses and flee, screaming.

The van was not so fortunate. The barrier did not cover that side.

The cultivators attacking the cultists barely managed to use their True Essence to withstand part of the bomb's impact, but the shock wave still sent them staggering in all directions.

Not one of the cultists was spared; they were all blown to pieces. Even the van was ripped apart by the powerful shock wave, its roof blown off and its chassis snapped in two.

With such power, the consequences if it had been detonated in the examination room were unimaginable!