The fighting continued, and the losses continued to mount.
Qing Lian summoned fiendish vines that created a natural landscape in the sky, but under the attack of the Bloodguards, this nature gradually withered. Blood polluted the rivers, ate away at the trees, and made the flowers wilt. Floods of iron and blood engulfed everything, including Qing Lian.
Li Feng, the young swordsman who was together with Liu Qianyi, was one of her admirers. The divine fire fan failed to halt the advance of the Bloodguards, but it did make Liu Qianyi rapidly consume spiritual energy. When Liu Qianyi swayed and realized to her shock that she didn't have much spiritual energy left, it was Li Feng who blocked a blow for her. His barrier shattered, and he was dragged into the ranks of the Bloodguards. But he didn't give up fighting, bursts of sword energy erupting and obliterating anyone who got close to him. Though he continued to shout and fight, everyone knew that the light would disappear eventually. And when the sword light disappeared, another life would meet its end.
Even Na Shan and Young Master Hua were gradually reaching their limits.
They were constantly retreating, and as they watched more and more Bloodguards squeeze their way into the battlefield, their hearts filled with despair.
"Tang Jie!" Na Shan shouted. "If you've got anything else, hurry up and use it!"
Tang Jie shook his head. "I do have a few more trump cards, but I can't use them yet."
"'Can't use them yet'?" Na Shan and Hei Yan grew frantic. "We're already at our limits. If you don't use them now, you won't get a chance to use them!"
"The problem is that he isn't at his limits," Tang Jie said, looking at the Blood River Lord. "He still has some tricks he hasn't used yet."
What?
Everyone was stunned to hear that the Blood River Lord still had more tricks.
Liu Qianyi suddenly said, "Then if I can get rid of the Bloodguards, you should be able to deal with the Blood River Lord's last move, right?"
"Of course," Tang Jie replied. "I'm keeping it precisely to deal with him."
"You?" Everyone looked at Liu Qianyi.
What could she have left?
Liu Qianyi clenched her teeth and said, "Alright. At this point, there's nothing else that can be done. Protect me!"
She suddenly broke away from the battle and rushed toward the nearby Soaring Immortal Hall.
Everyone else didn't understand what she was doing and thought she was trying to escape. Just when they were about to curse at her, Tang Jie said, "Cover her! She's going to activate the simulation formation!"
'The simulation formation'?
What is that?
Nobody knew what this was, but given Tang Jie's performance in this battle, everyone chose to trust him.
A moment later, countless spell arts exploded around her, blasting away the Bloodguards and opening a path for her.
The Blood River Lord also realized that something was wrong. Although he didn't know what Liu Qianyi was trying to do, he understood the principle that one should thwart everything one's enemy was trying to do. Seven Heart Demon avatars howled, and a giant hand formed within the Blood Sea and moved to strike Liu Qianyi.
Liu Qianyi kept going without even giving it a second look, choosing to trust her comrades.
A dragon of black flames rammed into the giant hand. As it exploded into flames, Hei Yan's complexion turned ghastly pale.
The giant hand kept going.
A giant axe streaked through the sky like a comet, and then dissolved into light upon contact with the hand, and Na Shan grunted as he was sent flying.
Countless crescent moon blades covered in lightning and fire flew over. The fingers of that giant hand flicked out, turning those blades into ash. Having the Nine Heavens Calamity Blades forcibly undone caused Tang Jie to throw up blood.
The blood hand formed from the combined power of seven Heart Demon avatars continued to press forward as if it had encountered no opposition.
Young Master Hua suddenly laughed and drew a circle in the air. The sky rippled, and a bizarre black hole appeared and began to exert a powerful suction that pulled vast quantities of blood from the giant hand. But the Blood River Lord didn't stop, the hand continuing to press forward. The seven Heart Demon avatars were even willing to sacrifice their own bodies, pouring all of it into the black hole. The black hole finally reached its limit and exploded, the immense power of the explosion also wiping out the hand.
But just when the blood hand was collapsing, a finger broke free from it, penetrating through that destructive vortex and striking Liu Qianyi in the back.
"No!" everyone shouted in unison.
At this moment, a golden mirror appeared on her back in a flash of light. The finger struck the mirror, and time seemed to stop. And then the mirror shattered, and the finger pressed onto Liu Qianyi's back and shattered her barrier. Liu Qianyi let out a cry, blood spilling out from her as she charged into the hall.
Everything stopped.
Everyone, including the Blood River Lord, stopped what they were doing and looked at the Soaring Immortal Hall.
They didn't know whether Liu Qianyi was still alive, whether she could survive taking an attack that had so much of the Blood River Lord's power behind it.
Time seemed to move so slowly that one second felt like a year.
Perhaps it was only one or two seconds, yet it felt like eons. Finally, a light shone out over the Soaring Immortal Hall, condensing into a thick pillar of light that extended to the heavens.
"Whoo!" The representatives all cheered.
As the beam of light flashed, spilling its light over the world, countless flickering and unreal scenes began to appear in the sky.
"This is…" The Blood River Lord stared up at those scenes in shock.
Those images drifted down from the sky as if they had mass, and then everyone witnessed the Hall of Three Immortals become its own world.
This world had mountains and rivers, cities and roads, birds and beasts, and even people to inhabit it.
It no longer felt like they were in the Hall of Three Immortals, but out in the cosmos, watching a world pass through time. And then, in the blink of an eye, they had left the river of time and were within a bustling city.
They saw pedestrians walking here and there, laughing and chatting. The representatives and the Blood River Lord looked at each other, neither understanding what was going on.
Tang Jie seemed to understand a little, muttering, "The formation of simulation… simulating the secrets of the heavens."
He thoughtfully gazed around him.
But he wasn't given much opportunity to comprehend all this.
While the representatives were stunned by the sights, the mindless Bloodguards continued their march.
Ignoring the scenes around them, they continued to attack the representatives.
Alarmed, everyone could only keep retreating. As they retreated, they found that, for some reason, they couldn't fly within the simulation formation, only run.
A representative shouted as he retreated, "What's going on? After wasting all that power and effort, all we got were these illusions? Can anyone tell me how we're going to kill those Bloodguards with these illusions?"
Nobody replied.
They didn't understand the significance of the simulation formation, nor did they understand why Liu Qianyi thought that activating the formation could deal with the Bloodguards.
But at this moment, Tang Jie noticed something.
He pointed and said, "Look at those Bloodguards."
"Look at what? Big Brother Tang Jie." Hei Yan widened his eyes and looked over and over, but he didn't notice anything special.
"They're walking on the road," Tang Jie replied.
Everyone was dumbfounded. One person angrily said, "Duh! If they weren't walking on the road, what would they be walking on?"
"But there was no road there before," Tang Jie replied. He pointed at the road and said, "Before the formation activated, that place was just empty space. And over there was a hall protected by a barrier. There should have been no walking through it."
Tang Jie pointed at locations on the road. With his incredible memory, he had a clear idea of where everything had been before the formation appeared.
After pointing out all this, Tang Jie said, "If this is an illusion formation, why have all the obstructions been removed and a road appeared out of nowhere?"
"Are you saying that we're not in an illusion, but in a real world?" Shui Yao asked.
Everyone gasped, their blood turning cold.
"Big Brother Tang Jie, are you saying that all this is real?" Hei Yan asked.
"Perhaps it's not real, but it's also not an illusion," Tang Jie muttered. "It's the future."
"'The future'?" This word left everyone stunned.
"Yes, 'the future'!" Tang Jie replied. "This simulation formation simulates the future of every person. The future contains countless possibilities and countless directions. Because every kind of possibility can exist, every kind of possibility is real. But in the end, only one possibility can be realized, so every possibility could also be fake. This isn't an illusion, but an existence between reality and illusion. And in this place, reality and illusion can interchange."
Everyone looked at each other, and after a while, Na Shan grumbled, "I don't care about some changing between reality and illusion. I just want to know how we can use this formation to kill them."
"The simulation formation is meant for simulating the future, so it itself does not possess the power to kill." A voice came from behind them, and everyone turned around to see Liu Qianyi coming out from a room. Some blood was flowing from the corner of her mouth, and her steps were unsteady. It was clear that the Blood River Lord's palm had inflicted serious wounds on her. "But just as Young Master Tang said, the future is full of possibilities. Every decision we make could affect our future. The simulation formation simulates the future, so it's constantly changing, and many of these changes will depend on your actions."
"'Our actions'?" Na Shan narrowed his eyes.
"Yes!" Liu Qianyi confirmed. "In this world, everything we do is interconnected, our every action influencing the future, and some of them are more important than most. The changes of the simulation formation are unfathomable, and it is suffused with the Great Daos. It has Yin and Yang, and it has Reality and Illusion. It has Space and Time, able to gain a foothold in the river of time and peer into the future. And it also has Karma and Fate. If you give it a cause, it will give you an effect."
"I see." Tang Jie got what she was saying.
He turned to the Bloodguards and muttered, "Bloodguards don't have minds of their own, and their nature is to kill. I don't know what sort of effect the simulation formation will give them, but I at least know what sort of cause they will give the formation…"
As Tang Jie spoke, the charging Bloodguards began to slaughter the surrounding pedestrians.
Yes, those pedestrians created by the simulation formation were being massacred by the Bloodguards.
They were killing machines and showed sympathy to no one. They simply advanced and killed all in their way.
The representatives retreated while the Bloodguards advanced, and the existences within this illusory city suffered.
Whether they were real or fake, the Bloodguards killed them all.
Tang Jie felt like he was back in Basking Moon Academy's Celestial Execution Hall, remaining unmoved as an entire city was slaughtered.
Blood flowed through the city, and cries of misery and sorrow rang out.
If this was the future, it was a most tragic future.
Finally, the people of the city were enraged by the Bloodguards.
The scene suddenly shifted, and the representatives observed the common folk of the city pouring out with whatever they could use as weapons. With hoes, pitchforks, shovels, and scythes in hand, they charged at the Bloodguards. Chopping boards and pot lids served as their shields, kitchen knives and ladles as their weapons. In vast numbers they charged into the fray and commenced their own massacre.
Illusion turned into reality—that of an enraged populace rising up in rebellion.
The Bloodguards, which had always had the advantage in numbers, were suddenly lost in the tide of the people's war.
Tang Jie saw people shouting and howling as they poured in from all sides like ocean waters.
The Bloodguard army soon vanished like a rock thrown into the sea, throwing up a little froth before disappearing without a trace.
Comments