Chapter 2768 Visions
Chapter 2768 Visions
Lin Mu was caught off guard by Little Shrubby's words.
'How so?' Lin Mu asked, his curiosity piqued.
'She's strong… very strong. But there's something else… her body doesn't feel human,' Little Shrubby replied, his fur bristling slightly.
Lin Mu's expression shifted. 'Not human? She looks human enough…' he thought, suddenly more wary.
Meanwhile, Lady Yeon's gaze flickered toward the small feline, her eyes shimmering momentarily. And in the very next instant, the world around her changed.
A powerful illusion unfolded before her, engulfing her senses. She found herself in a vast, primeval forest, dense with towering trees that loomed like silent sentinels. A heavy mist curled around ancient roots, and the cries of countless beasts echoed through the air. But at the heart of the forest, a presence loomed—an entity so vast, so overwhelmingly powerful that it made her breath hitch.
Twin emerald eyes gleamed through the thick canopy, burning like miniature suns. The ground trembled as a massive figure stepped forward, its form wreathed in roaring, golden flames that licked at the air like hungry tongues. The sheer pressure of its presence bore down on her, suffocating, primal, and unrelenting.
Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, the vision shattered into a thousand pieces.
Lady Yeon gasped, her heart hammering in her chest. A cold sweat broke out on her back, yet before she could even begin to process what had happened, she felt two more pairs of eyes lock onto her.
'There are more?' she realized with growing dread. Her gaze followed the source, tracking them to Lin Mu's sleeves. And then she saw them—two vertical pupils, slit-like and merciless, staring straight at her.
A chill crept up her spine. Then the world around her collapsed once more.
She was no longer in the banquet hall. Instead, she stood within the boundless expanse of an infinite void. Before her, two celestial pillars loomed, stretching endlessly into the cosmic abyss. One pillar was black, the other white, seemingly still at first—until they began to move.
They twisted, bent, coiled. Their movements were deliberate, ancient, as if the laws of the universe themselves bowed to their existence. Atop these pillars were those same piercing eyes, gazing down at her with an indifference so absolute it made her feel like a mere speck of dust in the vast expanse of eternity.
She wanted to move. To breathe. To scream.
But she couldn't.
Before the cosmic dread could fully sink its claws into her, the scene shifted again. The pillars entwined, merging into one, and from their confluence, a great celestial star ignited. Darkness pooled at its core, swirling and twisting with light, dividing into four distinct sections—two larger portions of pure light and deep shadow, and within them, two smaller spheres of white and black, mirroring their opposites.
Lady Yeon's blood ran cold.
'Taiji?' she thought, her mind reeling. Every cultivator knew this symbol—the fundamental balance of existence. Yet before she could even rationalize what she was witnessing, realization struck her like a thunderbolt.
They were not pillars.
They were serpents.
The moment the truth dawned upon her, the illusion shattered with a resounding crack. Lady Yeon stumbled backward, gasping for air. Her vision swam, her limbs felt weak. But the nightmare was not over.
Another presence.
Another gaze.
Before she could recover, her eyes met another abyssal stare, and she was swallowed whole once more.
This time, she stood in the depths of a nightmare.
A realm of death and decay sprawled before her, where rivers of coagulated blood and filth carved their way through mountains of shattered bone. A sinister red moon loomed overhead, its eerie glow casting grotesque shadows over the landscape.
WHOOSH.
The moon… disappeared.
Something vast eclipsed it, blocking out the heavens themselves. A dark figure emerged, cutting across the sky with a terrible, monstrous grace.
A bird.
But not just any bird. It was an entity wreathed in blackness, its six colossal wings stirring up a tempest of rot and pestilence. Merely gazing upon it made her insides churn, a nausea unlike anything she had ever known clawing at her stomach.
And then it screamed.
A cry so piercing, so utterly catastrophic that it ripped through existence itself. The landscape trembled, cracked, and then—
Nothing.
Everything crumbled, turning to glimmering shards of nothingness that the beast devoured in one terrible gulp before vanishing into the darkness.
Lady Yeon was yanked back into reality, but her body refused to obey her. She swayed on her feet, her vision darkening at the edges. The banquet hall, the worried faces of the people around her—all of it blurred.
"Lady Yeon!" Daoist Chu's voice rang in her ears as she teetered on the brink of collapse.
Strong arms caught her before she could hit the ground. The moment she met Lin Mu's eyes, a strange, inexplicable calm washed over her, momentarily easing the overwhelming fear gripping her heart.
'No… not again.'
Her protest was in vain.
The illusion took her one final time.
But this time, it was different.
She was no longer in a nightmare.
A vast, serene landscape stretched before her, where emerald grass swayed in the breeze, and towering trees whispered their secrets to the wind. At the center of this tranquil world stood a lone figure, his back to her.
His stance was firm. Resolute.
Slowly, he turned.
Lady Yeon's breath caught in her throat. The moment his gaze fell upon her, an unseen force drained the energy from her very soul. A frown marred his face, handsome yet unfathomably distant.
"This is not your fate to see," his voice rumbled, shaking the very fabric of the illusion.
"BEGONE."
And with that single word, the world around her shattered like brittle glass.
Lady Yeon fell into unconsciousness, the last thing she saw being the panicked faces of those around her before darkness claimed her.
An unknown amount of time passed before she finally stirred.
Her eyelids fluttered open, revealing a familiar ceiling above her. She was back in her own room.
"My… room?" she murmured groggily, struggling to sit up