Chapter 363: Chapter 263: Which State Territory Are You From, Demon Fiend?

"You little punk, if you don’t wake up right now, you’re gonna be a goner."

The Bow Lady issued a grave warning.

Spurred by the Bow Lady, Yang An snapped awake, instantly understanding the situation.

He hadn’t reached Bai’an City yet. He was currently on a barren mountain, two hundred li away from it.

Everything he had just seen was an illusion!

That meant Qing Xin receiving orders from Hai Shu Bodhisattva, announcing his death, abandoning the search, and even attacking him when he cried for help... all of it was fake.

This barren mountain was littered with corpses and remains. Human bones and the carcasses of birds and beasts were scattered everywhere, giving the place a deeply sinister and evil aura.

Even the breeze carried a thick, rotten stench.

Yang An remembered now. The first time he passed through here, he had casually dispatched a Demon Fiend, which had then drawn a large number of other Demon Fiends to pursue him.

This meant the pursuing Demon Fiends had also been fake.

Thankfully, the Bow Lady’s sharp intervention had snapped him out of it so quickly.

To have seen so many false images in just a single moment was utterly terrifying.

Just as Yang An regained his senses, the entire ground began to shake, and a sinister wind howled.

Within Yang An’s perception, the aura of a Demon Fiend surged skyward, terrifyingly close.

The countless bones and remains trembled as large masses of black flesh burst from beneath the ground. The scattered skeletal fragments were all drawn to it, attaching themselves to the flesh.

In the blink of an eye, a spider-like Demon Fiend, formed from a tangled mass of flesh and bone, appeared before Yang An.

It had over a dozen enormous legs, and its body resembled two spherical, fleshy tumors. The upper half of a man’s torso sprouted from the top, and the man’s face was completely covered in eyeballs.

A thick Red Fog was constantly emanating from the monster’s body. After leaving its form, the fog quickly turned transparent, blending in with the air.

That was how Yang An had been caught off guard. Now, he finally saw the truth of it.

At the same time, the auras of countless other Demon Fiends appeared in the surroundings, all closing in on his location.

The Demon Fiend before him was at the Late Stage of Corpse Transformation. Its Cultivation Level wasn’t particularly high, but its hallucinogenic abilities were impossible to guard against.

Seeing that Yang An had come to his senses, it finally revealed its true form; otherwise, Yang An would never have even detected its presence.

"To think it’s the Buddha’s Son from the Great Virtue Temple. Why not stay and join us? The Monks of the Great Virtue Temple want to kill you. What’s so bad about being a Demon Fiend?"

Its dozen-plus legs waved like Soul-Calling Banners. The Demon Fiend’s true body, perched atop the fleshy tumors, spoke as its many eyeballs bulged and pulsed.

A mere glance at those eyeballs would make any Cultivator with a shallow Cultivation Level dizzy and unable to control their own body.

Evidently, this creature had also seen what Yang An had experienced within the illusion.

"That illusion was just a fabrication you created."

Yang An was dismissive. ’Although, it’s not like something like that is impossible. The Great Virtue Temple really is that way.’ 𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂

"The illusion may have come from me, but wasn’t its content born from your own heart? Buddhist Practitioners often speak of taking refuge. Why not take refuge in your own heart and join us?"

The Demon Fiend cackled.

Yang An was a little surprised. ’This Demon Fiend knows so much? And it’s a philosopher, too?’

’But he had no intention of becoming a Demon Fiend. He was human.’

’First he’d joined the Golden Thread Pavilion, then the Great Virtue Temple. If he became a Demon Fiend now, wouldn’t that make him a thrice-serving turncoat?’

So, his only response to the Demon Fiend was a cold glare.

"Fine, fine, have it your way. I’ll just capture you and ’refine’ you instead. Heh heh."

The Demon Fiend threw its head back and laughed.

In its eyes, this so-called Buddha’s Son had only just entered the Corpse Transformation stage. He would be an easy catch.

’It seemed like every Demon Fiend had the ability to assimilate others into their kind. Otherwise, how could there be so many of them in the world, an endless tide that could never be fully culled?’

’The Four Outer Domains each had major powers presiding over them, yet the Demon Fiends remained innumerable to this day.’

’Yang An thought he might have just discovered the source of all these Demon Fiends.’

"Bone-Eating Forest!"

The Demon Fiend’s dozen-plus legs slammed down, plunging deep into the earth.

The other Demon Fiends drawn to the area were getting closer and more numerous. This one seemed eager to capture Yang An and claim all the glory for itself before the others arrived.

Yang An reacted instantly, leaping away.

Within a radius of several hundred meters, a multitude of bone spikes erupted from the ground. In a mere instant, the area was transformed into a forest of bone.

Countless plants, rocks, and clumps of earth were riddled with holes the moment the bone forest appeared.

Each bone spike that shot up from the ground was several dozen feet high. They stood densely packed together before suddenly bending inward, curving down to form a cage.

The bone spikes constantly emitted more of the Red Fog, attempting to envelop the entire forest of bone.

But then, a dense flurry of Golden Radiance flashed through, and the massive bone spikes were smashed to dust by its rays.

A figure whose very flesh and blood seemed to be suffused with Golden Dust shot through the Red Fog, appeared before the Demon Fiend in an instant, and threw a punch.

The pupils in the countless eyeballs on the Demon Fiend’s face all dilated, and an invisible, distorting force materialized in front of Yang An.

A sneer appeared on the Demon Fiend’s face.

"This is the power of distortion! All your attacks will be warped. You’ll never even touch me!"

But the words had barely left its mouth when, in the next instant, a brilliant light erupted before it, swallowing it whole.

The light engulfed the countless surrounding bone spikes, destroying them all in an instant. The Corpse Transformation Demon Fiend didn’t even last a single breath before it was reduced to ash in endless agony.