Volume 3, Chapter 405 – Reversing Control of the Dream

“How utterly shallow.”

Lu Zhuxin pressed a hand to her forehead, her expression turning cold.

She gave the frozen Ming Zhaoxi one last deep look, then raised a hand and gave it a light wave.

Ming Zhaoxi’s figure dissolved like foam.

She lifted her head, her fine brows knitting as she looked into the empty air. “03, can you see other people’s dreams through this formation?”

The system gave no response.

“Zero Three? Zero Three? Are you dead?”

Still, the system gave no response.

Lu Zhuxin’s brow rose.

“Could it be that this Illusory Heart Formation is even capable of blocking my connection to the system?”

Lu Zhuxin steadied her mind and reached out carefully with her own spiritual sense.

Under the effect of her mastery over formations, the formation’s concealment no longer posed any obstacle to her.

A moment later, Lu Zhuxin opened her eyes, an expression of surprise on her face.

“The very foundation of this formation was built using the fox demon dream weaving technique!”

Lu Zhuxin suddenly understood why the one controlling the formation couldn’t see the specific dreams of those being tested.

A human’s spiritual consciousness could not directly decipher the fox demon dream weaving technique.

Whoever had constructed this formation had only used the dream weaving technique’s foundation as a template for the formation, without ever being able to analyze the technique’s true core.

“The dream weaving technique is one of the fox clan’s closest guarded secrets. There’s no way any fox demon would have willingly leaked it to outsiders.”

“Whoever designed this formation must have had some connection to fox demons.”

“To have had access to the dream weaving technique, they must be one of the formation masters who had already pledged themselves to the fox clan.”

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Of course, Lu Zhuxin had no interest in tracing the origins and history of the formation.

She had no talent for illusion techniques, but she was reasonably skilled in the dream weaving technique itself.

“The system can’t monitor in here because this place is, at its core, a dream realm woven by fox demons.”

“If this formation really was built on the foundation of the dream weaving technique, then doesn’t that mean I have a chance to take control of the dreams this formation weaves?”

At the thought, Lu Zhuxin steadied her mind and slowly released the demonic power that had lain dormant within her.

Earlier, she had been able to draw spiritual energy directly from heaven and earth to activate the jade tablet. But to control the dream itself, she would need to use her own fox clan demonic power.

Having already gained experience linking into a dream once before, she was no stranger to how to stir a dream into motion.

Lu Zhuxin let her demonic power spread outward, transforming into countless shadowy afterimages of fox tails.

She curled her fingertips, and a wisp of fox fire kindled at her fingertip, its pale green flame burning open hollow openings in the empty air.

Within those hollow openings lay countless profound formation patterns.

That was the foundation upon which the Illusory Heart Formation had been built.

Lu Zhuxin closed her eyes, and the fox tail afterimages surrounding her transformed into a web of roots, plunging violently into the emptiness before her.

In an instant, the entire dream realm shook violently.

All the scenery around Lu Zhuxin faded into insubstantial nothingness in that moment, leaving behind nothing but endless profound arcane script.

…

Within Huayue Court, Wei Ziqing’s brow furrowed.

“What’s going on?”

He looked down at the formation disk in his hand.

At that moment, the Illusory Heart Formation’s disk was trembling violently in his hand, burning hot to the touch.

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He had used this formation more than once before, and this was the first time anything like this had happened.

“Is something wrong with the formation? Is someone about to break out of it?”

“No, this doesn’t look like a sign of someone breaking the formation.” The voice of the person within the ring spoke up. “I’ve seen prodigies before who were capable of forcibly breaking the Illusory Heart Formation. When the formation breaks, it doesn’t look like this.”

As the two of them spoke, the formation disk in Wei Ziqing’s palm stopped trembling.

Only the burning heat still had not faded.

“Strange!” the person within the ring said. “The spiritual energy consumption within this disk is running about thirty percent faster than before. This disk overheating looks more like a sign the formation is being pushed beyond its limits.”

“Heh heh, could it be that one of the candidates taking the test this time has something unusual about them?”

Hearing this from the person within the ring, Wei Ziqing immediately lifted his head and looked toward the distance.

Chi Xiyan, Lu Zhuxin, and Bu Lianshuang were not positioned far apart from one another.

All three had their brows tightly knit, as though they had each run into no small amount of trouble within the formation.

“Could it be because of them?” Wei Ziqing asked.

“Not certain.” the person within the ring answered. “I’m not the one controlling the formation. There’s no way to tell what’s happening inside the illusion from out here.”

“Still, if one of those three girls really is your fated one, it wouldn’t be strange for her to have something unusual about her.”

“Generally speaking, the firmer a person’s will, the greater their resistance to the Illusory Heart Formation.”

“The only question is just how strong a will it would take to make the Illusory Heart Formation’s consumption spike by thirty percent out of nowhere.”

Wei Ziqing said nothing, only quietly watching the three girls.

In the end, his gaze settled on Lu Zhuxin.

Deep down, he had a feeling that whatever was causing the disk to act strangely had something to do with that girl.

…

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Within the Illusory Heart realm.

Lu Zhuxin opened her eyes, a smile curling at the corner of her mouth.

“It worked!”

At that moment, she stood suspended in emptiness, and before her floated countless illusory dream bubbles.

These dream bubbles belonged to the dozens of young men and women taking part in this round of the selection.

Just as Lu Zhuxin had suspected earlier, she truly could use the fox demon dream weaving technique to seize control of the Illusory Heart Formation.

Of course, accomplishing this also required mastery over formations. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been able to break through the formation’s blockade and reach the core of the Illusory Heart Formation in the first place.

“Now, let’s see where Chi Xiyan and Bu Lianshuang’s dreams are.”

Lu Zhuxin drifted toward the dream bubble nearest to her.

The bubble was a chaotic haze, showing nothing at all.

Lu Zhuxin thought for a moment, then reached out and gave the bubble a light poke with her finger.

In an instant, Lu Zhuxin transformed into a beam of light and merged into the bubble.

What met her eyes was a courtyard.

A young girl was curled up against the wall, her face full of fear as she stared straight ahead.

An older woman was being held down on the ground by several servants, being subjected to a beating.

“Stop hitting her! Please, stop hitting her!”

“Mother is going to be beaten to death!”

Lu Zhuxin stood in the empty air, watching the scene before her with no expression on her face.

These people seemed entirely unaware of Lu Zhuxin’s presence, absorbed in whatever it was they were doing.

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“So this is what it looks like to observe someone else’s dream from within the Illusory Heart realm.”

“But this isn’t the person I’m looking for.”

Lu Zhuxin raised a hand and gave it a wave, and the scene before her gradually faded away.

She left the dream bubble.

“Let’s see the next one.”

Lu Zhuxin turned and drifted toward the next dream bubble.

This bubble belonged to a young man whose greatest fear was that someone would find out he had wet the bed when he was nine years old.

With a look of pure disgust, Lu Zhuxin waved the bubble away.

The dream space woven by the Illusory Heart Formation was, after all, not the same as a linked dream. She couldn’t manipulate it as freely as she could a linked dream.

She had to make contact using her own demonic power in order to read the contents within each dream bubble.

“Next!”

The third dream bubble belonged to the legitimate young lady of a great noble clan, and the bubble was filled entirely with the kind of unsightly, filthy affairs that clan harbored.

“Next…”

Lu Zhuxin moved quickly, giving each dream bubble only a single glance.

The moment she found it wasn’t the target she was looking for, she abandoned it at once and moved on to the next.

After passing through several dozen dream bubbles in a row, she finally found a familiar figure within a bubble radiating a cold chill.

“Found it!”