51. Illusion Formation?
When Gong Yiling saw the system’s message, its voice had already fallen silent, and no matter how she called, there was no response.
Heh… I knew I couldn’t rely on this system at a critical moment. Based on its past performance, it probably decided to do this a long time ago.
However, at this moment, she didn’t need the system to explain. The quest itself was quite clear.
A chain quest within a secret realm, nothing much to say about that. What was worth mentioning was the content of the quest.
The truth behind the fall of the Desolate God Kingdom. She had been very curious about this when she heard the story.
A prosperous dynasty, an invincible undead army, suddenly destroyed by a seemingly capable emperor, and this emperor, as if he had foreseen it, had prepared such a long-term underground kingdom for himself.
To say there was no story in it, Miss Gong certainly wouldn’t believe it.
After all, the last person who did something like this and lost his family’s fortune was named Yang Guang. He had to have done something outrageous. And if he was an extreme tyrant, he wouldn’t have left behind no evil reputation.
The more sudden this matter was, the more it meant that there must be an internal reason.
Therefore, when Gong Yiling pulled Xuan Lingling along and followed Yan Chuyue, she casually told her about this quest.
“You’re the author. If you were to write it, how would you write it?”
As they walked, looking at the murals on the walls of the corridor that gradually extended with their footsteps, murals that seemed to be about the successive emperors or that last emperor, Yan Chuyue couldn’t help but stroke her chin.
“Emmm… if you ask me, let me think…”
An ambitious and peerless emperor, an undead army that swept across the entire continent, and from the external design of this underground palace, the various aspects of the entire dynasty’s development were far superior to the present.
After the dynasty was destroyed, many skills were lost. Just the mechanism at the main gate was far beyond what current technology could achieve.
“Could it be—” Yan Chuyue stroked her chin and said, “the Heavenly Sin?”
“Silly.” Gong Yiling smiled and complained, “The Heavenly Sin was still sealed a long time ago. It’s unknown if its followers were even born.”
“Then it’s a deus ex machina.” Yan Chuyue shrugged. “According to the conventional tropes of this kind of work, in the end, an existence that claims to be some ancient god will definitely appear, and then with a flip of its hand, it will destroy the invincible dynasty.”
“Just like that?”
The real story sounded not interesting at all.
Yan Chuyue said, “If you ask me to think of it on the spot, I can only think of this. If it were that simple, this quest wouldn’t be marked as a nightmare.”
“That guy has been playing with quests for a long time.” Miss Gong rubbed her forehead with great displeasure. “Do you remember I told you about that quest where you choose a side?”
“Hmm?”
“The final reward for this quest is the map here. You say we’re already here, and we may not have to come back in the future. It’s better not to give me this map.”
The deceptiveness of this operation was truly a masterpiece. The key was that Gong Yiling hadn’t even gotten that thing, and now she didn’t know what special places were hidden in this divine palace.
Even this path, they had been walking for a long time, and it always gave people the feeling that they were walking in circles in a formation.
No… that’s not right.
Gong Yiling suddenly noticed the content of the murals on both sides. This content was clearly repetitive, very much like what they had seen when they first came in.
However, just based on this, she couldn’t conclude that they were trapped in a formation, because the murals on this wall might have only had that much content. After they were finished, they couldn’t stop people from repeating them, right?
So, although she noticed this, Gong Yiling didn’t tell the others, but secretly placed a small, almost invisible ornament in the repeated place.
After a while, Gong Yiling finally called out to the others.
“Everyone,” Gong Yiling picked up the small pendant from the ground and said with some difficulty, “I have some unfortunate news for you.”
“We should be trapped in some kind of recurring labyrinthine formation.”
Of course, she wasn’t the only one who had discovered this.
The old man Murong Jing had brought had also been looking at the murals on both sides, and he had also noticed that the murals were clearly problematic.
However, as a formation master, the reason he hadn’t mentioned it was mainly because…
“I… haven’t detected any flow of formation power.”
Any formation, whether it was an illusion formation or other forms of labyrinthine formations, would inevitably have a strange flow of spiritual energy. A high-end formation master could tell if they were in a formation just by judging the changes in the surrounding spiritual energy.
And now, the problem was that this Old Mr. Mu didn’t feel a single bit of spiritual energy flow, but this illusion formation seemed to still exist.
At this time, Gong Yiling couldn’t help but circulate her own cultivation technique and found that her cultivation body was still in a restrained state.
In other words, this area was also affected by the immeasurable meteorite iron, and no one could cast spiritual arts.
If so—how was this illusion formation set up?
This question, Old Mr. Mu couldn’t explain for the time being, and Xuan Lingling was even more so.
She wasn’t a formation master at all. Who knew if the other party had really found a professional? Now she couldn’t even make up a story and could only frown and pretend to be mute, showing a look of thinking about something.
“Strange…”
Gong Yiling looked at the ornament in her hand and couldn’t help but think, “This is all an area covered by immeasurable meteorite iron. We can’t adapt to the spiritual law, and the other party naturally can’t either.”
“If there’s any illusion formation that can be activated without relying on the power of spiritual energy, nascent soul, or ghost essence, what would it be…?”
Hearing her talking to herself, Yan Chuyue couldn’t help but add with a smile,
“It can’t be that the whole room has turned into a Möbius strip, and we can’t reach the end no matter what, right?”
However, the moment she heard this sentence, Gong Yiling’s eyes suddenly lit up.
It changes on its own, yes, it changes on its own!
No wonder she had a strange feeling when she saw the two stone statues outside the door before. If everything could be explained by that method, then it would make sense.
Thinking of this, Gong Yiling first gave Yan Chuyue a strange big hug, and then pulled Xuan Lingling forward a few dozen steps more than the others.
“What’s wrong? Do you want me to take you out? This place can’t trap me.” Xuan Lingling said very confidently.
“No need for that.” Gong Yiling smiled. “Lingling, you help me verify one thing now. Just do as I say.”
