Chapter 422: Death Game
"Step inside, and indulge in slaughter. Only death can stimulate a martial cultivator's full potential, allowing you to continuously grow stronger. Only those who survive in the end are qualified to become the glory of Snow Moon. To participate in the Snow Domain Grand Competition and leave Snow Moon, you must first gain the recognition and glory of Snow Moon."
This was the final voice heard by the crowd enveloped in the black mist. The old man's hands continued to weave strange hand seals without pause, the black mist churning endlessly. After a moment, the rolling black mist gradually calmed down. Within that gray mist, the crowd could actually see scenes unfolding before their eyes.
"What is this?"
The crowd's eyes trembled. At this moment, they saw the black mist transform into a gray glass pane. Through it, they could clearly see the people wrapped within the black mist inside.
But what shocked the crowd was that although the people inside were very close to each other, extremely close, they were looking around in all directions, as if searching for something.
The people inside... couldn't see each other?
"What's going on?" Everyone's eyes narrowed. How strange. The crowd shrouded by the mist seemed to have suddenly lost their sense of direction. Two people might be only two or three meters apart, yet they acted as if the other didn't exist, groping as they moved, and their movements were exceptionally slow.
Looking up, the crowd turned their gaze to the old man still forming seals, their eyes flickering uncertainly.
An illusion. Yes, the old man was definitely casting an illusion, trapping the people inside.
"Darkness Binding!" someone murmured softly, and the crowd once again understood the true meaning of Darkness Binding—it made everyone blind, as if groping in the dark, trapped within the illusion.
What the old man had cast was indeed an illusion.
The moment the crowd was swallowed by the black mist, the old man's final words echoed in their ears: "Step inside, and indulge in slaughter." As these words fell, it was as if they had arrived in another space, a completely unfamiliar one.
Even Lin Feng and Meng Qing were separated, unable to see each other. They had been standing together at the start, but now they couldn't sense each other's presence.
"This is... an illusion!" Lin Feng looked up at everything before him. The night, the full moon, and the endless crowd had all vanished, replaced by a palace—a snow-white palace, vast and empty, with only him, Lin Feng, inside. Moreover, this palace seemed to have many turns and corners.
Anyone who saw such a drastic change in their surroundings would realize it was an illusion. But the old man who had set up the illusion was clearly confident enough: even if you knew, what could you do? You still couldn't break this illusion. You had to stay here obediently.
"It seems a slaughter is unavoidable here," Lin Feng thought to himself. He took a step forward. Instead of staying put and trying to figure out how to break the illusion, he decided to find Meng Qing first and reunite with her before considering other options.
The people inside this illusion were not like the ordinary crowd outside. These were all geniuses, not a single weakling among them. Lin Feng was worried about Meng Qing, even though her strength was formidable.
"Such a realistic illusion." Lin Feng strolled through the palace. His footsteps echoed faintly on the quiet blue stone slabs, creating an eerie sense of silence and emptiness. It didn't feel like an illusion but rather a real world.
As he reached the first corner, a terrifying aura suddenly descended, causing Lin Feng's entire body to tense up. Then, a sound of wind breaking rushed toward him, aiming to kill.
A cold smile curled at the corner of Lin Feng's mouth. A terrifying aura burst forth from him, sword energy surging wildly into the sky, causing the entire palace to tremble slightly.
The ambusher's face changed drastically. Inside this illusion, their perception seemed severely limited, unable to spread out. They could only rely on intuition and sound to detect others. He had heard Lin Feng's footsteps and set up an ambush here, meaning he had no idea it was Lin Feng.
"Wait!"
The man shouted, but his fist continued to strike forward. His mouth said "wait," but his hand didn't stop. Wait? Could he afford to wait? In a moment where a single breath could decide life or death, who dared to wait? He had seen Lin Feng and didn't want to fight, but since he had already struck, he had no choice.
"Die!"
Lin Feng roared. A killing sword energy surged violently, piercing into the man's fist. Blood splattered as the ambusher's fist was torn apart by the terrifying sword energy. When Lin Feng's hand collided with his fist, a miserable scream rang out. Starting from the fist, the man's arm was sliced apart inch by inch until a sword energy pierced his throat.
The first Mysterious Martial Realm cultivator was dead!
"Such terrifying strength!"
Under the full moon, countless people looked up at the clear image, their hearts trembling.
They couldn't sense the auras of Lin Feng and the other man, but they could see their battle. Even when Lin Feng made his move, the glass-like black mist rippled slightly, as if unstable.
With one strike, Lin Feng had killed a Mysterious Martial Realm expert, and he had been the one ambushed.
A figure fell out of the black mist, causing the crowd's eyes to tremble again. The figure that fell out was a corpse—the man Lin Feng had just killed.
After death, he immediately left the illusion, but in the illusion, he had been truly killed.
This illusion was terrifying.
Inside the illusion, Lin Feng killed his opponent and was stunned to see the figure disappear.
"Out of the illusion?" A flicker of doubt crossed his eyes. Did that mean the other party had withdrawn, or died?
Frowning for a moment, Lin Feng soon confirmed that the man was dead. The smell of blood was so real, and when they had been enveloped by the mist, the old man had said to indulge in slaughter. In this illusion, the scenes were fake, but the killing was real.
"A boring game."
Lin Feng's heart turned cold. This was the game of those in power, treating their lives as child's play. If you wanted to select the most outstanding geniuses, you could hold a grand battle. But instead, this person had created such an illusion, trapping them inside, forcing them to kill each other, using slaughter to see who could survive to the end.
Even though these people were all gifted, so what? In the eyes of the person in the sedan chair, their lives were worthless. All he wanted was the few useful people selected in the end. The rest had no value—dead or alive.
"Ah..." A scream came from Lin Feng's right, snapping him back to his senses.
"The one who ambushed me earlier was in the palace on the left. This scream came from the palace on the right."
Lin Feng pondered. The palace he was in seemed to be made up of rooms, with people on both the left and right.
"And ahead!" Lin Feng's gaze sharpened. In front of him was a door, and on the left and right, there were also doors. Behind each of these doors, there were probably people.
"A nine-grid formation!" A sharp glint flashed in Lin Feng's eyes. He looked up toward the diagonal above, which was directly above the palace. Instantly, his pupils contracted sharply.
A door. There, too, was a door.
The people who had stepped into the black mist should all be behind these doors.
"A death game. This illusion is clearly a death game."
Lin Feng's heart grew colder and colder. Since he had discovered this, others would soon realize that everyone was nearby, behind those doors. Right now, there was probably someone eyeing the palace he was in.
"Hmm?" Just then, Lin Feng frowned. He turned around and saw that not far ahead of him, the ground suddenly bulged upward, and a pair of sneaky eyes appeared there.
"As expected, there are people below too." Lin Feng showed a look of understanding.
The sneaky eyes froze for a moment upon seeing Lin Feng, then slowly retracted, pretending nothing had happened. This scene brought a hint of mockery to Lin Feng's lips.
"Wait!" he called out softly.
The figure retracting downward froze in place, unable to continue pretending. He looked at Lin Feng with a trembling, awkward smile.
"I didn't know you were here, sir."
"It's fine. Come up first," Lin Feng said with a smile.
The man's body stiffened, unsure whether to go up or stay down, hesitating greatly.
"Chi, chi..."
A faint sound rang out. The man's trembling smile froze on his face, his pupils turning white, his eyes filled with extreme terror.
A stream of blood spurted from the top of his head, shooting out like a fountain, horrifyingly gruesome.
Lin Feng's gaze also froze. There was someone below him.
"So cruel!" Lin Feng's eyes turned icy cold. He stepped toward that direction, a thick killing intent radiating from him.
PS: Asking for flowers. The flowers haven't been doing well today.