Seeking Guidance

Six seconds?

"That's impossible!"

"I've been through a very, very long time, long enough that it has given rise to all sorts of complex emotions within me!"

Zhu Liangping looked at the wooden box.

He reached out and opened the wooden box, then carefully unwrapped the beads from the fur, without touching them.

But at this moment, the transparent bead in the wooden box had disappeared, and the light that had been affecting him had also ceased to have any effect.

"Never mind your situation, quickly find the beads!"

Wang Haoran extremely anxious.

Since beads inevitably come into contact with light, necessary testing is required.

Even with three sequence committee members present, Zhang Xuezhou watching over them, and the aid of video equipment, they still managed to lose the precious pearl obtained from burning the corpse flower.

Just as the appearance of the precious pearl was incomprehensible at the time, its disappearance at this moment is also inexplicable.

What did you see?

Li Yingbo raised his flashlight, its high-powered beam illuminating the surroundings and making the small room extremely bright.

There were three sequence committee members in the room, and even in the event of an unexpected situation, Zhang Xuezhou remained outside the door to prevent any further accidents.

The door was locked tightly. Wang Haoran and Li Yingbo searched the room thoroughly but couldn't find the bead again. Zhu Liangping was extremely listless, and the bloodshot in his eyes hadn't faded yet.

Li Yingbo gave a brief response regarding the timing of Zhu Liangping's incident, which inevitably prompted further questions.

"I saw what Zhu Wei looked like before he died. He lay in front of me for a whole week, staring at me with wide eyes, and I stared back at him!"

Zhu Liangping found it hard to believe everything. He muttered to himself several times before falling silent. He only spoke reluctantly when Li Yingbo asked him.

"From the moment we turned off the lights to the moment we saw the anomaly on the monitor, and then to the moment we broke down the door, the time was only six seconds, not a second more," Li Yingbo corrected.

"But the time I experienced was truly a week," Zhu Liangping said with a grim expression. "If we calculate based on your time, if you had arrived even ten seconds later, I might have suffered a mental breakdown!"

Zhu Liangping not only has a high sequence advantage, but he also has a very strong psychological resilience.

However, Zhu Liangping felt that he couldn't endure being in this bizarre situation for very long.

"Even with Old Ren's deterrence and suppression, there was no such situation," Li Yingbo said.

"His deterrent and repressive power is no match for this bead!"

Zhu Liangping pursed his lips.

Ren Yisheng's Dragon Elephant Combat Technique at least had an initial stance, but the bead only caused him to hallucinate as soon as it shone.

Even more outrageous is that this illusion gives people a false sense of time, which is even more unsettling than feeling like each day is an eternity.

"If Old Ren is inferior to this bead, and this bead has disappeared somewhere, what will happen when the bead is exposed to sunlight?" Wang Haoran asked with a grim expression.

"If the bead were a solid, it couldn't just disappear for no reason," Li Yingbo said. "That doesn't conform to normal physical definitions."

"But this room definitely doesn't have it," Wang Haoran said in a deep voice. "We've searched every inch of the room!"

"The surveillance footage shows the bead suddenly disappearing," Li Yingbo frowned. "Ryohei, do you have any other feelings right now?"

"You suspect that the bead has entered my body?"

Zhu Liangping's expression turned extremely grim after regaining his senses.

"Besides seeing Zhu Wei's visions before his death, what else did you see? What else did you hear?" Li Yingbo pressed.

"Seeing... Hearing..."

As the deep-seated impression of Zhu Wei's death gradually faded from his mind, Zhu Liangping also remembered some other things.

"Zhu Wei then raised his head and said two things to me: one was, 'I'll remember your face,' and the other was, 'We'll meet again someday!'"

After thinking for more than ten seconds, Zhu Liangping finally recalled a strange sound.

This was just before Li Yingbo and his men broke down the door, and before his hallucinations slowly faded away.

"Oops!"

Wang Haoran murmured to himself.

Zhang Xuezhou's initial assessment of seven points has now likely improved to nine points; the corpse flowers they eradicated in the Pan'an sinkhole are very likely related to Huang Daoxian.

Zhu Liangping's experience also proves the existence of Huang Daoxian, rather than making them doubt that Huang Daoxian belongs to a hundred years ago and has no connection with modern society.

The other party has always been present in the Scarlet Alliance State, but due to certain limitations, it has been difficult to cause trouble and has not triggered a catastrophe like that of the Thousand Islands Alliance.

"Does he mean to plant a seed in Ryohei's mind, like he did with the emperor of Luofu?" Li Yingbo frowned.

"I'm not feeling well right now," Zhu Liangping sighed.

"Go get a medical checkup first, just in case that thing really did plant a bead inside your body and then grow a flower!"

Wang Haoran thought about the corpse flower that had been burned to ashes, then about the remaining beads in the pit, and then looked at Zhu Liangping.

Whenever he thought of Zhang Xuezhou mentioning the purple sword orchids growing from the bodies of the emperors in the Dongshan Imperial Mausoleum, he vaguely felt that a giant corpse flower might be growing inside Zhu Liangping's body, which sent chills down his spine.

This prompted Wang Haoran.

"If I had known this would happen, I would have preferred to destroy this thing," Li Yingbo said, his teeth aching.

"This is what's left after burning 100 kilograms of fuel; it's at least resistant to high temperatures and flames," Wang Haoran cautioned. "Conventional methods of destruction might be useless against it, and we might only have a few seconds to deal with it, or even no time at all!"

"As long as it remains a solid..."

"This violates the definition of physics!"

Li Yingbo said something, while Wang Haoran offered a reminder.

The ability to disappear in just a few seconds is an unpredictable event, and even if Wang Haoran intended to destroy it immediately after acquiring it, he could hardly guarantee the outcome.

What should we do now?

"Old Zhu should go get a medical checkup first. If he has any tumors or foreign objects in his body, he can have surgery to remove them as soon as possible!"

"Do we have to have the surgery done in the dark with the lights off?"

"If it's such a major surgery, I can already imagine the excruciating pain it would cause!"

During their brief exchange, Li Yingbo, Wang Haoran, and Zhu Liangping all looked rather grim.

"If Huang Daoxian possesses this, we would be utterly defenseless against the attack; numbers wouldn't matter. But if he uses it, it will undoubtedly have a far more powerful effect!"

After thoroughly cleaning up the small dark room for the test, Wang Haoran gestured for Zhang Xuezhou outside to turn on the lights.

After searching under the lights until they could find nothing more, they murmured amongst themselves and then went out together.

"Do you want to go in and search?"

Li Yingbo accompanied Zhu Liangping to his physical examination, while Wang Haoran closed the door to the small dark room and asked Zhang Xuezhou a question.

"He should have already taken the bead back; it's not here!"

Zhang Xuezhou belatedly realized that some problems had arisen.

The purple-glowing gem that is fixed in place by the Zixiao Palace formation is likely not continuously powered, but rather is more likely imprisoned by the formation, preventing it from leaving the Zixiao Palace.

Thinking about how he had even dared to dream of using modern technology to light a lamp next to this gem, Zhang Xuezhou felt a toothache.

Huang Daoxian's strangeness and difficulty in dealing with him also made Zhang Xuezhou feel that he was hard to handle.

Even if he might have burned the other party's physical body, Huang Daoxian still posed a significant danger.

In a confrontation, either side, lacking sufficient understanding or resources, could be directly destroyed.

If he wants to learn the correct methods to deal with Huang Daoxian, he will likely have to seek guidance from the Immortal Court.