Wu Feng's murmuring—soaked in greed and madness—filtered through the gap in the window paper in broken fragments, drifting into Mo Fan's ears.
He watched the two robber cultivators kneeling on the floor, clawing at empty air, completely lost in their delusions.
A chill crawled up from the soles of his feet to the back of his skull. He subconsciously lightened his breathing.
The power of this illusion was monstrous.
It didn't just deceive the eyes and tongue—it reached into the deepest layer of a person's mind and infinitely amplified their desires.
Making them unknowingly degenerate into slaves until their oil dried up and their lamps went out.
Just as Mo Fan was pulling back from the window, his spine still cold—
Tap... tap... tap...
Footsteps. From beyond the courtyard's old arched gate.
Light footsteps. But in the dead silence of the side courtyard, they rang out with startling clarity.
What put Mo Fan on highest alert was the rhythm—perfectly even, unhurried, and moving with a clear target. Straight toward the guest rooms.
Fang Tong? Is that him?
The guide's deceptively honest face flashed through his mind.
Pieced together with everything he'd observed, the conclusion came instantly: this guy was absolutely involved!
He cannot find out I'm awake.
Mo Fan moved without a sound. Like a weightless phantom, his toes barely kissing the ground...
He darted rapidly back into his own room before the footsteps could take three more paces.
Returning to his bed, he didn't simply lie down and "play possum."
He'd felt the illusion's terrifying grip firsthand.
Even he—with two lifetimes of memory and a Soul Strength that dwarfed any ordinary cultivator—had struggled in it, dripping cold sweat and suffering from churning Qi and blood.
If he lay there now with steady breathing and a rosy complexion, Fang Tong would see right through him.
He had to make it convincing.
Mo Fan collapsed onto the bed fully clothed, eyes shut.
In secret, he frantically drove his Qi and blood into reverse circulation, forcing a fine sheen of cold sweat to bead across his forehead and the tip of his nose.
At the same time, he deliberately broke his own breathing rhythm—his chest heaving in ragged, uneven surges, low, suppressed groans working their way up his throat.
His hands seized the bedsheet beneath him, knuckles straining white, veins standing out across the backs of his hands.
He worked hard to simulate the exact portrait of a low-tier cultivator trapped in a nightmare, struggling painfully but unable to wake up.
While he held that performance, he split off a wisp of focus to take control of Mo Yan, who was meditating in the shadows across the room.
Under the stimulation of Mana, the middle-aged swordsman's face projected by the [ Moon Veil Gauze ] instantly shifted.
The originally cold, blank expression gave way to something rawer—brows knotted tight, cheek muscles twitching slightly from "exertion."
The leather-gloved hand clamped dead onto the hilt of the rusted sword.
The entire body presented an aggro state, radiating the energy of someone about to suffer a mental breakdown and start hacking wildly.
Mo Fan had barely finished setting the stage when the footsteps outside stopped.
He kept his eyes shut.
He didn't dare activate [ Death Vision ] to investigate at this moment, terrified that any ripple of mental energy would trigger the opponent's vigilance.
He could only push his hearing to its absolute limit instead.
The footsteps paused first outside Wu Feng and San Niang's door.
A sound came through—barely audible. A single, soft, contemptuous cold sneer.
Fang Tong's voice. He was clearly very satisfied with the completely fallen state of that robber cultivator couple.
Then the footsteps moved again.
This time they carried the unhurried ease of a seasoned hunter checking his traps—and came to rest directly outside Mo Fan's door.
The air froze in that moment.
Mo Fan lay still, eyes closed, but he could clearly feel a cold, clammy gaze, like a venomous snake, staring dead at him through the slit in the window paper.
It moved across his face. Across his white-knuckled hands. Across his violently heaving chest. Assessing the "prey's" level of struggle.
"Tough little bastard..."
Fang Tong's extremely faint, low-voiced curse came through the wall.
"Actually still tanking it, hasn't completely sunk in yet. Looks like I'll have to wait another half day."
Hearing this mutter, the stone sitting in Mo Fan's chest dropped halfway. First hurdle. Cleared.
He was just beginning to secretly rejoice—just starting to think Fang Tong was about to leave—when...
Tap, tap...
Those footsteps, which had just walked two paces away, came to an incredibly abrupt halt.
Subsequently, Mo Fan's ears captured a trace of extremely faint clothing friction.
Fang Tong had turned back!
This time, that cold gaze didn't return to Mo Fan on the bed. It locked dead onto Mo Yan in the shadowy corner.
As a veteran who had tumbled through the bottom rungs for years, Fang Tong's intuition was sharp.
From the moment they met at the market, he had harbored a massive apprehension toward this black-clothed guard whose entire body radiated death energy without a shred of living aura.
Even now, seeing that the figure also seemed trapped in the illusion, the unease at the bottom of his heart still hadn't vanished.
An uncontrollable variable. And the safest way to handle an uncontrollable variable was to gank it while it was down!
Outside the window, Fang Tong's hand moved slowly toward the bone-cleaving knife at his waist. Fierce light flashed in his eyes as he fell into an extremely intense psychological game.
Should I seize the opportunity and strike first, stabbing this guard to death with one knife?
But... his hand rubbed against the hilt of the knife, hesitating to draw it.
What if this knife goes down and doesn't kill him, or the fresh blood and killing intent stimulate this master and servant, forcefully jolting them awake from the edge of the illusion?
If my unauthorized actions ruined the Master's grand plan, then this dog life of mine wouldn't be enough to compensate, no matter how many lives I had!
Outside the window: Fang Tong, locked in intense mental gymnastics. Inside the room: Mo Fan, enduring terrifying torment.
He still maintained the heavy, chaotic breathing of someone trapped in a "nightmare," not daring to blink even as a drop of cold sweat rolled into his eye.
But beneath that thick layer of coarse cloth quilt, his right hand was already gripping the bone dagger—quenched in highly concentrated corpse poison—in a death hold.
Every muscle in his body was coiled like tightened steel wire, poised at the absolute critical point, ready to explode at any moment.
As long as the slightest sound of a blade leaving its sheath came from outside the door.
As long as that wooden door showed any sign of being breached. Mo Fan would not hesitate to tear off his disguise and erupt instantly!
With his current explosive power, coupled with Mo Yan's coordination, he had absolute certainty that he could snap this traitor's neck with a blitz before Fang Tong could send out any distress signal!
Time stretched infinitely.
The standoff—separated by nothing but a thin layer of window paper—lasted for over half an hour.
Every minute. Every second. The air in the side courtyard was so oppressive it drove one mad.
On one side: a hound ready to kill at any moment. On the other: a peerless ferocious beast disguised as prey. A single spark could detonate the powder keg.
Finally.
"...Forget it."
An extremely faint sigh drifted through the door.
"I haven't seen a single Qi Condensation cultivator who could wake up intact from the Master's array. It's just waiting another half day; not worth taking the risk."
Absolute fear of the "Master's" majesty ultimately overpowered the killing intent in Fang Tong's heart.
He released his hand from the knife hilt, turned around, and his footsteps gradually faded away, ultimately leaving this dead-silent side courtyard completely.
...Phew.
It wasn't until the footsteps completely disappeared from his perception range that Mo Fan's taut nerves finally relaxed a sliver, but he still didn't open his eyes immediately.
Because, during this half-hour standoff, Mo Fan wasn't merely waiting passively.
Fang Tong didn't know that although Mo Fan on the bed kept his eyes tightly closed from beginning to end...
He utilized the Necromancer's trait, treating Mo Yan's hollow, emotionless eye sockets in the corner—invisible to any spiritual sense scan—as his own "third eye"!
Through the cracks in the door panel, Mo Fan had keenly captured two extremely fatal pieces of key information!
In Mo Yan's visual feedback:
Fang Tong was holding an oddly shaped oil lamp. When that oil lamp burned, it emitted an extremely pungent, even somewhat spicy special odor.
And more importantly— Inside both of Fang Tong's ears, wads of cotton soaked in some black medicinal liquid were stuffed dead tight!
An oil lamp. Earplugs.
Mo Fan's mind moved fast, rapidly piecing together these two details with the illusion he had experienced earlier.
He recalled the tempting smell of cake at the village entrance.
He recalled the overly enthusiastic concern of the villagers, and the increasingly irritable and violent emotions he felt after hearing those voices...
That's the key. That's how to break it.
"Master?" "Array?"
In the pitch-black room, after confirming Fang Tong had gone far away, Mo Fan slowly opened his eyes on the bed.
He sat up and casually wiped the forced cold sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.
The confusion, irritability, and bloodthirsty impulses remaining in his eyes from the illusion had vanished completely without a trace.
Replacing them was an absolute coldness and clarity, like ten-thousand-year-old ice.