Zhuqing stepped silently, moving with the wind. The cold light between her ten fingers flashed, her sharp claws enough to tear apart solid boulders.
Her body blurred into motion, leaving faint afterimages that lingered only for a fraction of a second before dispersing. The air itself seemed to tighten around her movement, as though responding to the pressure of her killing intent. Each step she took was perfectly aligned with combat instinct, her trajectory sealing off every possible retreat path. In that instant, her attack carried not only speed, but absolute certainty.
But Xin neither dodged nor defended, just stood there, and said lightly:
"Ling Xiaoqi, remember, you are not just a healing Spirit Master. Your Life and Death Withering Grand Technique is more like a long-range mage, most afraid of enemies getting close. The Soul Capture can give you some self-preservation ability against close-combat Spirit Masters, but the Soul Capture ultimately relies on pupil techniques to release, which has too many limitations."
His voice remained calm and instructional, as if Zhuqing's lethal strike were nothing more than a demonstration being corrected mid-lesson. There was no tension in his posture, no defensive Spirit power fluctuation—only stillness, like a fixed point in the center of chaos.
"Self-Created Spirit Ability: Life and Death Illusion, can directly pull close-range enemies into a life and death illusion. The closer they get, the stronger the illusion becomes, unless the opponent's spirit power and mental force are higher than yours, they cannot quickly break free."
As Xin's words fell, Zhuqing's sharp White Bone Claw stopped three feet away.
It was not that she chose to stop.
Rather, her attack had already crossed into a different layer of space.
Around Xin, a Domain silently unfolded—begonia blossoms drifting through the air alongside black lotus petals. The two forces coexisted in eerie harmony, forming a boundary where vitality and decay intertwined. The petals rotated slowly, as if guided by an unseen law, neither accelerating nor falling, but suspended in an endless cycle.
Black and white did not clash here. They merged.
And when Zhuqing's claws entered that boundary, her expression changed instantly.
Her vision fractured.
The Slaughter Hall vanished.
In its place, a battlefield emerged—vast, desolate, and covered in dense gray mist that obscured everything beyond a few meters. The ground beneath her feet felt cracked and uneven, like fractured bone. Shadows moved within the fog, each one radiating pressure that instinctively triggered danger recognition in her mind.
Cold sweat appeared on her skin almost immediately. Her breathing became uneven, and her Spirit power circulation, once smooth and aggressive, began to waver. Her eyes lost focus for a moment, as though her consciousness had been pulled away from her physical body and placed into a constructed reality.
The most terrifying part was not the illusion itself, but the familiarity embedded within it.
Fear. Pressure. Defeat.
Memories she thought she had mastered were being reconstructed into tangible enemies.
Her attack target had completely disappeared.
It wasn't until Xin snapped his slender fingers that Zhuqing recovered from the illusion:
"Zhuqing, are you alright?"
The sound pierced through the illusion like a thread pulling her back to reality. The battlefield collapsed instantly, dissolving into drifting fragments of black and white light. Zhuqing staggered slightly, instinctively tightening her stance as she reoriented herself to the real world.
Her breathing was still slightly unstable, and her fingers trembled faintly as she lowered her claws.
Zhuqing wiped the cold sweat from her forehead: "So terrifying, Grandmaster. Just now, I felt like I entered another battlefield, like... I was facing Poison Douluo."
Her voice carried genuine shock. Even with her experience in Slaughter City, where death was a daily reality, this kind of attack was fundamentally different. It did not target the body, nor Spirit power—it targeted perception, memory, and fear itself.
"Perhaps this is because you were once injured by Dugu Bo and experienced his pressure."
Xin's explanation remained calm and analytical, as though he were simply confirming expected behavioral output.
"This Life and Death Illusion will automatically simulate the powerful individuals you've encountered in your life, opponents you fear, and engage you in battle. If you cannot overcome your fear and defeat this opponent, you cannot leave the illusion."
He paused briefly before continuing.
"And while you are fighting in the illusion, the black lotus is enough to devour your life, making you feel your vitality growing weaker and weaker, making it even harder to defeat the enemy you fear in your heart."
The ability was not a simple illusion technique. It was a layered system combining psychological reconstruction, emotional amplification, and life-force suppression. The longer one remained trapped, the more realistic the illusion became, and the more difficult it was to distinguish between memory and reality.
Ye Lingling's eyes widened slightly as she processed the explanation. As a healing Spirit Master, she immediately recognized the strategic value of such an ability. It was not just offense—it was control, deterrence, and survival integrated into a single technique.
It directly compensated for her lack of defensive capability.
"Grandmaster, how do I learn this Spirit Ability? Can a disciple learn your self-created Spirit Ability?"
Ye Lingling had some doubts. Self-created Spirit Abilities were often special skills created by rare geniuses based on their Spirit characteristics and personality, which others could not learn.
Just like in the Soul Master Competition, Divine Wind Academy's captain Feng Xiaotian's self-created Storm Devil Wolf Thirty-Six Consecutive Slashes could only be performed by him; others could not replicate it.
...
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