Chapter 284 Invasion

Chapter 284: Invasion

"So you do have this skill..." Kong Yu sighed. "Call you dumb, and you show a little cunning. Call you clever, and you do something stupid."

Shang Yunduo had no energy left to retort. He had to play the Startle Kill Tune—a new technique he was using for the first time—maintain his small defensive formation, and keep his eyes and ears peeled in every direction.

A Foundation Establishment stage cultivator, no matter how capable, surviving a siege by a dozen-plus Nascent Soul cultivators and dozens of Golden Core ones at once was already a miracle. He wouldn't hold out much longer.

If his defensive formation weren't so small that they couldn't all pile in and attack at once, a single hit from each of them would've driven him into the mountain rock.

But picking up that Kong Yu seemed to want to help, Shang Yunduo had no time to ponder why. He found an opening and blurted out at lightning speed: "Senior, what exactly do you want to say? Are you gonna help or not? Then help! If I die, it's too late!"

Kong Yu deliberately laughed for a beat before saying, all unhurried: "You should be thanking me. If my demonic energy hadn't shattered the Dao hearts of a few Nascent Soul cultivators, why would they give a damn about some Foundation Establishment brat like you?"

Shang Yunduo thought, Man, you really know how to blow your own horn. Then I could say they're scared of my golden armor and my dragon bloodline.

Kong Yu: "You're right to think that. They do fear you're a dragon, worried you might have more tricks up your sleeve. What if you got desperate and went all out? Whoever charged in first would get wrecked, right?"

That's not even how that idiom works?! Shang Yunduo: "Are you going to help me or not?!"

Kong Yu: "Tsk... no patience at all."

Shang Yunduo: "I'll have plenty of patience once I'm dead."

Kong Yu chuckled: "You thought to hide the zither's sound—why not stack your Illusion on top to trap them first?"

Shang Yunduo: "You think I didn't want to?!"

Of course he'd thought of it! But the Mirage Art was never that easy!

Every use required prep work beforehand.

Besides, he was in such bad shape he could barely use spiritual energy, let alone the Mirage Art, which drained way more.

Kong Yu: "Can't do it?"

Shang Yunduo ignored him.

Kong Yu: "How about I teach you something simple?"

Shang Yunduo: "..."

Kong Yu: "Don't worry, I'll only teach you how to use the demonic energy in the Sea-Subduing Flag to draw out their Heart Demons. As long as you don't overdo it, you won't fall into demonic corruption."

Even though he suspected Kong Yu might be setting a trap, Shang Yunduo hesitated only a second before taking the bait. "Fine."

Kong Yu laughed heartily: "See? When it's life or death, what's so scary about demonic corruption?"

But a moment later, Kong Yu couldn't laugh so easily anymore.

He never imagined that Shang Yunduo—who seemed dumb as a rock, knew nothing about the cultivation world, and was slow and dull at understanding Spells—would pick up demonic techniques so fast.

Was he playing dumb?!

But Shang Yunduo's reaction didn't seem like it.

Shang Yunduo also hadn't expected Kong Yu to be telling the truth about it being simple.

Only after using it did he get why Kong Yu kept pushing him to merge the Mirage Art with his demonic energy—the two methods really did have a lot in common.

But on second thought, it made sense. The Mirage Art made people believe illusions, and using demonic energy to lure Heart Demons did the same. Of course they'd overlap.

Shang Yunduo couldn't afford to dwell on it. Learning on the fly, with no time to weave the new technique into his music, he just manifested an extra pair of hands to wield the Sea-Subduing Flag, continuing to play the Startle Kill Tune while re-channeling the demonic energy the way Kong Yu taught him.

Only after using the "right" method did he understand why Kong Yu called him dumb and said he was barely a beginner. His old way of imitating Spiritual Cultivators by using Anger was fundamentally wrong—he'd taken a huge detour when there was a straight road.

But even though the "straight road" was better, he wasn't used to it yet. He had to split his focus to force himself out of his old habits. And at a time like this, Kong Yu was still yapping, all shocked: "You can manifest a physical form?! Is that a bloodline talent too?"

Shang Yunduo gritted his teeth: "Don't... bother... me..."

He'd only manifested extra hands, not an extra brain. One brain tracking all this at once—he was about to crack!

For Spiritual Cultivators, manifesting a physical form at Foundation Establishment was hard enough. Even at Golden Core or Nascent Soul, without specific training, it was impossible.

Making it feel as natural as your own body was even harder. Otherwise, Master Kongchan of Huasheng Temple wouldn't be so proud of manifesting hands to mimic demonic zither playing.

But he was different. The Mirage Dragon Clan were masters of illusion. As long as he could picture it and held firm in his conviction, he could turn himself into someone born with four arms and four hands.

Besides, after hanging around the demon clans and envying the tiger clan's big tails, he'd actually studied how to manifest physical forms.

Then he'd learned dragon transformation in the Endless Sea. An extra pair of hands was nothing next to that—manifesting the Golden Dragon was way harder.

Kong Yu taught him to use his body as the flagpole. As long as the pole didn't shake, the flag could fly as far as it wanted.

He still had to circulate his meridians to drive the Sea-Subduing Flag, but controlling it with his whole body put way less strain on them than his old self-made method. And then Shang Yunduo had a sudden idea—what if he threw in the Kunze Lamp?

When he tried linking the two artifacts through his body, the zither's sound suddenly swelled, and the vast demonic energy within the Sea-Subduing Flag exploded outward with the music at a speed Shang Yunduo couldn't have imagined.

The blast of sound startled even Shang Yunduo for a second. His already crumbling defensive formation shattered on the spot, and the newly surged demonic energy enveloped all the cultivators who had been hovering safely outside its range.

They'd long been wary of the demonic energy expanding—those annoying black mists outside Wentian City were hard to forget—but the grating zither music threw them off. Even the Nascent Soul cultivators had to split their focus to guard their heart meridians, pissed that a dragon could play the zither. The sudden blast came out of nowhere, freezing everyone nearby for a split second. Only a few Golden Core cultivators—extra sensitive to sound and already hurt by the Startle Kill Tune—had pulled back to heal and escaped the demonic energy's sweep.

They stared in shock, never expecting the black mists to burst outward instead of creeping along.

Shang Yunduo, though, didn't dare freeze. The second his technique worked, his little defensive formation broke too. Nascent Soul cultivators lived up to their rep—even while taking hits they'd never felt before and dealing with sudden chaos, they never forgot their main goal and the simplest way out: kill him.

Attacks came instantly. Their timing was impressive—he had to hand it to them. Luckily, they all struck at once and got in each other's way, so not every spell and artifact hit him.

Shang Yunduo held his zither up, took a hit he couldn't dodge, and barely slipped into the black mists.

The formation plate he hadn't managed to grab shattered completely in a flash of spiritual light—no hope of fixing it now.

His golden armor was half-cracked, half his body numb. Gritting through the pain and swallowing blood, he switched the tune to Falling Dream on the spot.

Falling Dream stacked with the Mirage Art, plus the demonic technique he'd just learned but barely understood, just barely dragged even the Nascent Soul cultivators into the mirage.

Only then did Shang Yunduo get a second to spit out the pooled blood, nearly blacking out and collapsing. "It actually worked..."

Kong Yu: "Worked what? Your half-assed skills won't hold that many people for long. Hurry up and find their Heart Demons like I taught you!"

Shang Yunduo couldn't spare a moment to catch his breath and gulped down another big handful of spiritual herbs.

The Heart Demon technique Kong Yu taught required infusing demonic energy into others' souls and Mind Seas, and he had to link his own soul to the demonic energy to see their desires and fears through it.

This method was far from easy—even Nascent Soul cultivators would struggle with it.

Kong Yu figured Shang Yunduo couldn't do it. That was exactly the step where he himself had fallen into demonic corruption back in the day.

But Shang Yunduo, badly wounded, pulled it off on the first try.

Kong Yu was so stunned he thought he was hallucinating.

Shang Yunduo, whose head was spinning from the injury and whose body was about to give out, felt no obstacle at all—he just followed Kong Yu's orders on autopilot.

Diving into different people's Mind Seas at once was like astral-projecting through several worlds at the same time.

It would've been tough, but after that insane soul-trip through time-space fragments looking for Hui Shuang, this new kind of "trip" just made him a little dizzy—no big deal.

The Heart Demon art had two big problems. First, you had to control your spiritual soul with pinpoint precision—split off a piece, link it to demonic energy, ride that energy into someone else's Mind Sea, and then hop between different Mind Seas on the fly. Second, you had to avoid peeking into someone else's heart demon and accidentally waking your own—getting hit with backlash and losing yourself.

Kong Yu hadn't warned Shang Yunduo about any of this.

The first was hard because almost nobody could pull it off fast—only Nascent Soul Stage cultivators who'd specifically trained their souls, and even Kong Yu hadn't mastered it until he hit the Deity Transformation stage.

The second was hard because it happened without you noticing—one slip and you'd be affected.

But he never would've guessed that for Shang Yunduo, none of this was hard.

Sure, Shang Yunduo couldn't match Nascent Soul Stage cultivators in most things, but when it came to soul control, even Deity Transformation stage cultivators rarely came close. He'd drifted in the Endless Sea as a soul for countless years—every single sea clan character he'd conjured was a brutal test of soul control, and that's not even mentioning how he later learned the Mirage Art to shape a body from his soul and studied Spells with the sea clans.

As for the second problem, he was even less worried. For the Mirage Dragon Clan, the very first lesson before learning the Mirage Art and soul-wandering was telling truth from illusion.

Plus, this time he only had to send in a sliver of Spiritual Sense—no need to merge his whole soul—and he could use the demonic energy to dig deep into people's memories fast, switching between Mind Seas like flipping through security cameras. He was just an observer, and he had a ton of control over what he did.

Mirage Dragon wandering wasn't like that. He could only choose to leave early; inside time-space fragments, he was a participant, gaining insight and Cultivation through experience, and those trips often lasted centuries. The memories were real, and if he did it too often, he seriously risked mixing up memories, forgetting who he was, and losing himself entirely.

Plus, his Illusion Art let him see demonic energy crystal clear. He could hide in it, use it like a safety line, and ride it in and out—how the hell could he get lost?

Shang Yunduo cautiously but boldly snooped through people's consciousness and memories, and immediately got why Kong Yu could grab hold of their fears and desires.

Inside a Mind Sea, the color of Anger was brighter and purer than in the real world. If you just focused on that, it was like a vivid oil painting—one glance and you could spot where a color burned hottest.

Follow the most saturated color and you'd find what the person craved or feared. Some just buried it shallow; others buried it deep.

"See it?" Kong Yu's voice came out of nowhere. "Use your Illusion to play out their wishes or fears, and you'll get a taste of a shaken Dao heart—or even a shattered one. But you'd better hurry. Nascent Soul Stage cultivators are fast. If they catch you and you haven't taken control, they'll kick you out of their Mind Seas hard. Then it's your soul that gets wrecked. At your current level, you'd either die or end up a crippled, drooling idiot."

But reading people's hearts was never that easy.

Even inside someone's consciousness, all you had to go on were their memories and emotions.

There was no faking it in a Mind Sea—more direct than facing the person—but that depended on who you were.

How could you sum up a whole life from just a few fragments?

Shang Yunduo knew he couldn't do it.

He really admired Kong Yu—able to read each person's desires and fears from scraps like that, then lead them along step by step through conversation, rattling their minds, shaking their souls, and finally dragging out their heart demon to smash their Dao heart.

How was he supposed to figure that out? He had no clue!

He couldn't even tell if what was left in those Mind Seas were memories or fantasies. Some of those heavy, vivid fragments made him physically sick, let alone using Kong Yu's trick—sinking into someone's consciousness through demonic energy, slipping into their body, and feeling their feelings firsthand.

How could someone, for no reason at all, torture and kill a beloved friend who had saved their life out of sheer jealousy, then weep hypocritically and frame someone else, and even trick away their friend's Dao companion?!

And another person's largest consciousness fragment was nothing but childhood slaughter of a demon beast—stab after stab after stab, endlessly, until it should have been minced meat, yet still stabbing. Was that right? The amount of blood and the way it splattered far exceeded what that Little Beast could have produced.

Shang Yunduo shuddered in disgust. If he actually followed Kong Yu's method and experienced that firsthand, he'd probably grow his own heart demon. He even suspected Kong Yu had gone demonic precisely because he'd done this too many times.

Thankfully, there were normal people too—one whose lifelong regret was failing to save his child, whose life's purpose became growing stronger, stronger, ever stronger, obsessively striving to become the number one in the cultivation world.

After quickly reviewing everyone, Shang Yunduo still had no confidence he could shatter others' hearts as swiftly as Kong Yu. All he could do was use the Mirage Art to recreate the fragments that had left the deepest impression on them, or the memories he deemed important.

And then, change the ending.