Volume 3, Chapter 404 – The Thing Lu Zhuxin Fears Most

Up on the viewing platform, the hand Wei Ziqing had been using to toy with the formation disk paused for a moment.

He had noticed the strange look on Lu Zhuxin’s face.

“So it seems she noticed the hint I left behind.”

Wei Ziqing wore a smile, casting Lu Zhuxin an encouraging look.

“Do try not to disappoint me.”

“…” Lu Zhuxin’s face went stiff. She had the distinct feeling that man was looking down on her somehow.

“What did he mean, this world never had a Peach Blossom Spring to begin with?”

“What did he mean, the root of overcoming fear lies in fear itself?”

“What kind of word games was he playing with her?”

[Host, this is Wei Ziqing giving you a hint to help you clear the Illusory Heart Formation. He’s helping you cheat.]

“Tsk…” Lu Zhuxin scoffed coldly. “What a pointless trick.”

“If he really wanted to help me cheat, why not just tell me the method to break the Illusory Heart Formation outright. Or simply open a back door and let me clear it directly.”

“With the formation disk in his hand, there’s no way he couldn’t manage that.”

Inwardly, Lu Zhuxin sneered. “In plain terms, he doesn’t want me passing the Illusory Heart Formation without doing anything at all.”

“Even if he’s already decided I’m not as simple as I look, he still wants to use the Illusory Heart Formation to test what I’m really made of.”

[But that sentence really is the key to clearing the formation.]

Lu Zhuxin raised an eyebrow. “Are you trying to say it’s better to teach a man to fish than to give him a fish?”

“It’s useless. Even knowing the key, so what.”

“If the Illusory Heart Formation were really this easy to break, that crowd wouldn’t be wearing the expressions they are right now.”

“A hint that means nothing wanting to earn my good favor?”

“How fake of you, Wei Ziqing.”

[…]

Lu Zhuxin let out a soft laugh.

Her demonic power lay dormant within her body, and refined spiritual energy drawn from heaven and earth slowly transformed into attributeless spiritual power.

She held the jade tablet and, testing the waters, channeled that attributeless spiritual power little by little through her fingertips into the tablet.

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A moment later, as Lu Zhuxin’s spiritual power flowed in, the jade tablet gave a faint tremor and released a dim, glowing light that gently enveloped her.

Lu Zhuxin felt an inexplicable pull emanating from the jade tablet, as though trying to draw her mind and spirit into it.

But the power within the tablet was far too weak to shake her sea of consciousness.

“I see. So that’s how it works.” Lu Zhuxin now roughly understood the mechanism of the jade tablet.

The tablet was the medium for the formation laid out across the grounds, and also the key to entering the illusion.

The Illusory Heart Formation was a formation meant to test, not a killing formation with offensive intent. On its own, it had no power to forcibly drag someone into the illusion.

“Even if it’s an illusion, at its core it’s still something derived from a formation.”

“Heh heh… if it’s still fundamentally a formation, then this will be easy.”

Lu Zhuxin murmured to herself.

Her fingertips shifted slightly.

[Zzzzt…]

[#¥% Consuming heaven mandated value…]

[@%* Judgment successful…]

[@#%¥ Activating!]

Lu Zhuxin let go of her resistance to the jade tablet entirely, actively casting her own consciousness into it.

This illusion formation could read a person’s subconscious.

It could conjure the scenes buried deepest within a cultivator’s heart, the ones they least wished to face.

At the same time, it could also weave pleasant dreams, letting someone accomplish, within the dream, whatever they most desired.

Those two lines Wei Ziqing had given Lu Zhuxin referred to exactly this.

Lu Zhuxin was also curious just how far this formation’s ability to read consciousness could reach.

And what kind of scene would this formation conjure up, specifically for her?

“Facing what you fear most, recognizing what you want most. That is the true purpose of the Illusory Heart Formation.”

“So then, within this formation, what would be the thing I fear most, and what would be the thing I want most?”

With a faint sense of anticipation, Lu Zhuxin let her consciousness sink completely into the formation.

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After a brief moment of disorientation.

Lu Zhuxin felt her vision slowly returning.

She blinked, and before her eyes lay a scene she knew all too well.

It was a plain, cramped little room, furnished simply with a few pieces of furniture.

Against the wall, a glass cabinet displayed a few delicate, adorable figurines of pretty girls.

On the coffee table in the living room, an old laptop was playing some unnamed cartoon.

Outside the window, the sunlight was thick and bright.

Voices, the sound of cars, honking horns, endless noise came pouring in through the window all at once.

“…”

Lu Zhuxin drew a deep breath. Her chest felt tight.

She knew exactly what this place was.

How could she ever forget it.

This was her own room.

The place she had lived before her transmigration.

“What is this supposed to mean…” Lu Zhuxin laughed coldly. “Is this the place I most want to go back to? Or the place I fear most?”

Ding! ——

A ding sounded from the kitchen.

That familiar sound made Lu Zhuxin’s body stiffen.

That was the sound of a microwave.

“Could it be…”

Lu Zhuxin turned her head with difficulty and looked at the digital calendar on the wall.

“February 19th, 2024. 5:27 PM.”

Lu Zhuxin’s pupils constricted sharply.

That date!

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That time!

It was that day!

She froze where she stood, every muscle in her body going rigid, a chill washing up her spine.

She looked toward the door of her room.

The wooden door stood half open, the room beyond dim and shadowed.

Lu Zhuxin worked her dry throat and slowly stepped forward.

She reached out her hand and gently pushed against the wooden door before her.

With a creak, the wooden door swung open.

What met her eyes was a bed.

The bedding lay in disarray, and a few clean changes of clothes sat carelessly at the foot of the bed.

There was no one on the bed.

Lu Zhuxin let out an inexplicable breath of relief.

“Heh… scaring myself over nothing.”

She raised her hand and gently patted her own chest.

But at that very moment, a hand landed on her shoulder.

“Excuse me, were you looking for me?”

“My dear father.”

Every hair on Lu Zhuxin’s body shot up at once.

“Damn it!”

She spun around abruptly and found herself facing an all too familiar visage.

It was a red haired, seductive woman, tall and slender, with a pair of flame red fox ears nestled among her hair.

“Ming Zhaoxi!”

Lu Zhuxin instinctively stumbled backward.

A smile bloomed across Ming Zhaoxi’s face. “Heh heh! Father, you seem quite unhappy to see me.”

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The corners of her mouth stretched back toward her ears, revealing a row of pale, sharp fangs.

She lunged forward, throwing herself at Lu Zhuxin.

The room was no more than a dozen square meters, and Lu Zhuxin had nowhere left to retreat.

Ming Zhaoxi seized Lu Zhuxin’s shoulders with ease and pinned her down onto the sofa.

“Got. You. Now.”

Ming Zhaoxi laughed softly as she clamped her hands around Lu Zhuxin’s throat.

Sharp fingernails dug deep into Lu Zhuxin’s neck.

Suffocation and searing pain slammed into Lu Zhuxin’s mind, wave after wave.

“Let go of me! Ming Zhaoxi, let go of me!”

She struggled, she fought back.

Her fingers clawed desperately at Ming Zhaoxi’s cheeks.

But her nails only managed to leave a few shallow scratches across that face.

A sense of despair gradually swallowed her whole.

Ming Zhaoxi’s expression grew ever more savage.

Just as Ming Zhaoxi was about to crush her throat completely.

“Enough!”

Lu Zhuxin snapped, low and sharp.

Ming Zhaoxi’s movements froze in place. Everything around them froze at that same instant, as though someone had pressed pause on the whole world.

Lu Zhuxin shoved Ming Zhaoxi off with all her strength, flipped herself upright, and looked at that face now so close to her own.

“So then… to this illusion, the thing I fear most is Ming Zhaoxi?”

“Heh heh…”

She let out a low, furious scoff.

“How utterly ridiculous!”