Chapter 173: Between Reality and Illusion

In the misty expanse, a shimmer of silver light rippled, and suddenly exquisite high walls, palaces, pavilions, and towers emerged. Between the peaks, delicate white jade arch bridges appeared, connecting them, presenting a scene of a celestial paradise.

As soon as these strange sights appeared, the cyan beam of light flew over and abruptly halted.

Fang Pan, clad in black, emerged from the light, standing against the wind. His gaze fell upon the lifelike buildings below, and he snorted coldly:

“Hmph! It seems you haven’t been idle these past six months. Let’s see what tricks you can still pull!”

With that, he leaped and flew straight toward the palaces, plunging into the hazy mist and landing directly on one of the peaks.

Fang Pan closed his eyes, his eyeballs rolling beneath his lids.

After a moment, he let out a soft exclamation and suddenly opened his eyes.

He found that he could no longer sense Han Li’s exact location, only vaguely judging that he was nearby.

His eyes sharpened. Though his body did not move, his figure blurred, and six identical clones flew out from his original form.

The seven Fang Pans immediately glowed with cyan light and shot off in seven different directions.

The seven cyan beams darted back and forth among the misty celestial palaces, their figures flickering, before returning to the original spot after a moment.

They shared a single mind, yet all came up empty.

Just then, one of the Fang Pans seemed to notice something. He immediately crouched down and reached out to touch the ground.

“This is… a formation within a formation!” He slowly withdrew his hand, stood up abruptly, and frowned.

As he spoke, the seven immediately turned back-to-back, forming a circle.

Simultaneously, they moved, swinging their black longswords. Seven massive blade lights interweaved and churned in all directions.

“Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh…”

Gusts of wind rose. The seven sharp blade lights twisted together, transforming into countless sword shadows, like a black lotus of blade shadows blooming and spinning into the sky.

The void above the sky trembled. The illusory jade buildings, under the tearing force of this vast and unmatched sharpness, flickered with light, twisted, and deformed.

Then, a series of “puff” sounds echoed in the void. The images of countless palaces gradually faded and disappeared, revealing the original appearance of the entire peak.

The peak had been artificially leveled. The ground was paved with white jade slabs, engraved with ring-shaped strange runes. At the center of the runes was a carving of a bizarre beast.

Around it stood over a dozen white stone pillars, more than ten zhang high, inlaid with many colorful crystals of various shapes, dazzling and brilliant.

Fang Pan’s seven figures merged back into one. He looked at the flowing light of the crystals, a dazed look flashing in his eyes. Then he suddenly turned his head and saw Han Li, clad in green, standing hundreds of zhang away, holding a circular formation disk and tapping on it rapidly.

As if sensing Fang Pan’s gaze, Han Li slightly raised his head, a faint smile curling at the corner of his mouth.

The formation he was activating was called the “Chi Li Illusory Light Formation,” a high-level illusion formation he had obtained through the Wuchang Alliance months ago, but it could only be used once.

For this, he had spent all his top-grade spirit stones, and even pawned off the two Earth Sun Fruits he had, as well as two high-grade spiritual treasures from the storage bracelet that Gan Jiuzhen had given him.

It was said that this formation possessed immense power. Even a late-stage True Immortal, even one at the peak, as long as they had not reached the Golden Immortal realm, once trapped, could not awaken on their own and would only sink deeper, eventually dying trapped, with even their Nascent Soul and divine soul unable to escape.

However, this formation also had significant flaws.

First, activating it took too long. Hence, Han Li had set up a “Nine Palace Heavenly Qian Talisman” outside this formation to buy time.

Second, the controller of the formation had to use themselves as the formation eye, carrying the formation disk and staying within the formation, undergoing the same trials as the trapped person, giving it a sense of mutual destruction.

But as the controller, one had many advantages. If one could wake up first by luck, they could directly control the illusion formation and attack the trapped enemy.

“You’re asking for death!”

Seeing Han Li’s gaze, Fang Pan’s pupils contracted. His figure blurred, and his black longsword shot forward, stabbing straight at Han Li’s heart like a sword.

At this moment, sweat was already beading on Han Li’s forehead. When Fang Pan’s blade was less than a hundred zhang away, his finger landed on the formation disk for the last time.

Fang Pan felt a flash of light before his eyes. Then, the colored crystals on the pillars blazed with brilliant light, and his vision blurred, making it hard to see clearly.

Before he could react, he felt his body go empty, as if passing through an invisible barrier. After stumbling, he rushed into a dimly lit hall.

He swept his gaze over the thick square pillars in the hall and the old fire basins hanging on them. Looking at the vigorous, green flames inside, he felt an indescribable familiarity.

“Clang, clang, clang…”

A sudden clanking of iron chains broke the deathly silence of the grand hall, and a low, hoarse yet authoritative voice rang out:

"Bold disciple, how dare you raise a blade against me? Are you seeking to betray your master and destroy your lineage?"

Fang Pan shuddered at the sound, and the blade he had thrust forward instinctively lowered.

He looked up at the wide black chair over a dozen zhang away, at the middle-aged man seated there, clad in a snow-white cloak, his skin blue-purple like a corpse, and murmured, "Master."

But then he shook his head violently, his gaze turning sharp again.

"You are not my master. You are merely an illusion conjured by the illusion array," he shouted, raising his sword hand again, pointing at the corpse-like man.

His form shifted, his silhouette instantly elongating, conjuring a series of blurred afterimages within the hall.

From those afterimages, figures continuously separated, and in the blink of an eye, seven identical clones surrounded the corpse-like man from all directions, closing in for the kill.

"Wretch, how dare you?"

The corpse-like man bellowed in anger, and without any incantation or hand seal, a vast aura erupted from his body, sweeping outward.

"Clang, clang, clang..."

A low sound of metal striking metal rang out. The black chains that covered the entire hall around the corpse-like man suddenly seemed to come alive, trembling and surging like black waves in all directions.

No matter how fast Fang Pan's seven clones were, they were all struck by the chains without exception, spitting blood and crashing to the ground.

"A little thing I raised, and you think you can overturn the heavens?" the corpse-like man sneered, glancing at Fang Pan prostrate on the ground.

Hearing this, Fang Pan's heart churned with shock. The corpse-like man before him was identical to his master in aura, methods, speech, and demeanor.

Could it be that what Han Li had activated was not an illusion array but some special teleportation array?

His originally firm conviction wavered for the first time.

"Wretch, won't you come and accept your death?" Before Fang Pan could figure it out, the corpse-like man shouted again.

Fang Pan's expression shifted uncertainly, and he began to hesitate...

Meanwhile, at the moment Fang Pan thrust his blade forward, Han Li's vision also blurred, and he fell into the illusion array.

He only heard a loud "whoosh" in his ears, and his body shot upward at great speed.

High in the sky, a massive expressionless face was slowly fading, and behind it, after a flash of dazzling purple light, a long white裂缝 slowly opened, from which faint sounds of Buddhist chanting emerged.

"The Gate of Immortality!"

Am I... undergoing tribulation and ascending?

Han Li never expected that the illusion he faced would be reliving the lightning tribulation of ascension.

As he marveled, a thunderous roar exploded above his head. A colossal seven-colored arc of lightning flashed down from the mouth of the now nearly invisible giant face, and with a single shake, it hurtled toward him.

A destructive aura that seemed to annihilate heaven and earth swept over!

Han Li instinctively waved his hand, and a string of golden thunderbolts shot out, meeting the seven-colored arc.

Looking down, he saw a dark green longsword in his hand, its blade exuding a familiar warm touch.

It was the Xuantian Slaying Spirit Sword!

Feeling the pressure from above, Han Li hesitated briefly, then shook his wrist holding the Xuantian Slaying Spirit Sword, and his entire form transformed into a dark green rainbow, soaring upward to meet it.

A thunderous boom resounded across the entire sky!

A dazzling halo that obscured the heavens flickered wildly in the void, then shattered amid violent fluctuations of laws.

Han Li's body plummeted from the sky.

He was now in excruciating pain, his whole body like a charred piece of charcoal, covered in crimson fissures, his physical form on the verge of collapse.

The dark green wooden sword in his hand shattered into powder with a crack and dissipated.

The massive illusory face in the sky became solid again, expressionless, its hollow eyes revealing a cold disdain for all things, before shattering with a bang.

Then, the Gate of Immortality, which had been wide open, suddenly closed, and beside it, a massive spatial rift appeared.

Through the rift, Han Li saw a profound darkness that seemed capable of devouring everything.

Inside, there was no light at all, yet it exerted a strangely irresistible pull on him, making him feel a sense of closeness and an uncontrollable urge to enter.