Chapter 139: Illusion Layering

The Dragon-Snake Sword, having transformed into a top-tier spirit treasure, exhibited a vastly increased might, though its demand for spiritual power was equally immense. Thanks to Yang Xiao's continuous consumption of premium pills, his personal spiritual power was already considered exceptionally formidable among those of his peer rank. Even so, upon wielding a top-tier spirit treasure, he could still distinctly feel the rate at which his surrounding spiritual power drained was remarkably swift. At this pace, he feared it would be difficult for him to sustain a prolonged battle.

However, no sooner had one wave of winged centipedes been annihilated than another wave swept in with rapid speed, appearing as though they were endlessly inexhaustible. This left Yang Xiao feeling profoundly alarmed.

How could there be so many powerful intermediate spirit beasts within the sea of beasts?

No, something was wrong with these spirit beasts.

Yang Xiao quickly discerned the underlying issue. The circumstance of these successive waves of spirit beasts appearing at the horizon was completely identical. Furthermore, despite having killed so many spirit beasts, the corpses on the ground merely formed a single covering layer and failed to accumulate further. Regardless of how many more spirit beasts were slain, those corpses refused to increase in quantity.

This was precisely where the problem lay. These spirit beasts were evidently not real; they were entirely fabricated by illusion arts.

"It's just that this fabrication is far too lifelike," Yang Xiao smiled bitterly. He could even hear the grinding sound of those spirit beasts' teeth and the whistling wind stirred by their flapping wings. All of this felt so overwhelmingly real that it was hard to imagine an illusion art could reach such a degree of authenticity.

Yet, even as Yang Xiao thought this, he dared not slacken his hands in the slightest. He certainly could not guarantee whether these spirit beasts would truly cause him harm or leave him completely uninjured if he chose not to attack them.

After all, everything was entirely too real, forcing him to treat the situation as a formidable enemy and fight desperately to cope with it.

"It seems this illusion art is draining my spiritual power. Once my spiritual power is exhausted, that will likely be my most perilous moment. However, I absolutely cannot simply wait here like this." Naturally, having formulated a plan in his mind, Yang Xiao released his spiritual sense, intending to seek out the vulnerability of this illusion art.

To his astonishment, however, a layer of pink mist seemed to shroud the perimeter of the illusion, and his spiritual sense struggled to penetrate deeper into the surrounding fog, making it exceedingly difficult for him to ascertain the exact location of the illusion caster.

Under such circumstances, Yang Xiao had no choice but to test the waters. Once he obliterated a wave of centipede spirit beasts, he launched a full-power strike toward the area where he detected the densest concentration of the surrounding pink mist.

With a loud crash, driven by Yang Xiao's full exertion of the Sword Soul Realm, a massive tear was instantly ripped open across the distant firmament. At that moment, he saw a vast swarm of wing-fluttering, butterfly-like spirit beasts turn to ashes under his single slash. Yet, these butterfly spirit beasts appeared to be in immense numbers; shortly after, those from the surrounding area quickly moved in to fill the vacancy, and this patch of the firmament was stitched back together once again.

This move indeed yielded some results, granting Yang Xiao a glimpse of the conditions outside the illusion, though he remained somewhat uncertain whether those surrounding butterfly spirit beasts were genuine or merely a component of the illusion.

Even so, Yang Xiao did not hesitate at this juncture. The previous strike had clearly shaken the illusion art, to the extent that even the frequently appearing centipede spirit beasts failed to manifest this time. Even so, Yang Xiao certainly could not assume the illusion art possessed only this much capability; clearly, the illusion was still brewing some formidable ultimate move. If he failed to break out of the formation now, the consequences would be unimaginable.

Striking while the iron was hot, Yang Xiao quickly retrieved his newly refined Thunder Emperor Scepter and, coordinating with the lightning seal, unleashed several lightning dragons to charge toward the specific directions he had targeted. Simultaneously, the Sword Soul Realm descended to shroud several other directions.

Although this segmented attack diminished the individual offensive might, it allowed him to simultaneously launch a comprehensive assault across multiple bearings in all four directions. This approach should prove significantly more effective for shattering the illusion. Naturally, the directions Yang Xiao locked onto were the results of his meticulous probing—these were the core locations of the illusion, where the pink vapor converged most densely.

Following this heaven-shaking attack by Yang Xiao, the illusion surrounding him instantly collapsed. The original palace grounds shattered inch by inch, revealing the true countenance of the beast sea.

By this time, Yang Xiao had naturally figured out how the illusion was constituted. It turned out that this illusion was not artificially set up by a person, but rather jointly created by countless pink butterflies in the vicinity.

One could see individual butterflies vibrating their wings to emit miniature illusion arts, and the superposition of countless minor illusions formed a gigantic illusory castle. The individual miniature illusions generated by single butterflies lacked formidable power, but when all these illusions stacked together, the resulting might was truly immense. Had it not been for Yang Xiao's profound understanding of illusion arts, which enabled him to see through it, he might well have sunk into the illusion, unable to extricate himself.

"Such formidable stacked illusions!" Yang Xiao exclaimed in admiration. He had initially thought someone had laid down an illusion specifically to target him, only to discover it was the handiwork of these pink butterflies. Although each of these pink butterflies existed merely as a low-tier spirit beast and appeared largely devoid of aggressiveness, when countless butterflies combined, the power of the illusion they unleashed was immense. Had it not been for the top-tier spirit treasure he had recently refined, he would have found it exceedingly difficult to extricate himself from this illusion.

"It is best to leave this place immediately," Yang Xiao thought, swiftly flying upward by several dozen feet before soaring toward a region sparsely populated by butterfly spirit beasts.

As he flew away from the swarm of butterfly spirit beasts, he incidentally eliminated some of the residual butterfly spirit beasts. As he had anticipated, these spirit beasts possessed no special abilities aside from the illusion arts, and he could easily cut them down. However, their advantage lay in their overwhelming numbers—dense and packed into hundreds of thousands or even millions—making it impossible to eradicate them completely. After killing some, others quickly rushed in to fill the gaps, leaving the population of spirit beasts seemingly undiminished. Such a sight would cause anyone's scalp to tingle.

Furthermore, had Yang Xiao delayed his departure by even a moment longer, the shattered illusion formation would have been reassembled by these butterfly spirit beasts, reforming a brand-new palace castle. If Yang Xiao had still been standing in the same spot, it was entirely possible he would have been trapped all over again.

Flying a bit further away, Yang Xiao looked back to see clusters of pink figures reconverging to form a mist-like pink haze. Yet, as the mist gathered in greater volumes, it vanished once more, replaced by a resplendent palace gleaming with gold and jade.

Clearly, the butterfly spirit beasts' illusion formation had activated once again, awaiting its next unfortunate victim.