Chapter 1791: Strange Residents

He was carrying a pair of water buckets, seemingly intending to fetch water from the lake. His movements were initially unhurried, but when he inadvertently looked up, he saw the Heavenly Palace team on the opposite bank.

He immediately widened his eyes, then his foot slipped, and he fell sprawling on the stony beach. The pebbles on this stony beach varied in size and were very uncomfortable. Some were larger than coconuts; anyone who accidentally bumped into them could suffer a large hole in the back of their head. But the farmer seemed to feel no pain at all; he scrambled up and ran into the woods. His panic was such that it seemed as if the figures on the opposite side of the lake were all demons.

Bai Ziqin could not ignore this anomaly. With a wave of his hand, three people rushed over to apprehend the farmer.

A strange thing happened:

Three burly, strong men could not catch a small, thin farmer! This farmer appeared to have no cultivation or martial skills; he was just an ordinary person. A Luodian from the Heavenly Palace team reached out and grabbed his arm. By all accounts, it should have been as easy as holding a chick, but with a single flick of his arm, he made the strong man stumble!

“Hmm?” Bai Ziqin frowned. This farmer had neither technique nor divine power; he just possessed brute strength.

Under everyone's gaze, with Heavenly Palace envoys and gods watching, the man, frustrated, no longer held back. He wrapped his arms around the farmer in a rear-naked choke, aiming to strangle him until he could no longer resist. At first, the farmer was indeed choked to the point of rolling his eyes, instinctively trying to pry open the strong man’s wrists. The man's wrists were twice as thick as his own, yet no one expected that the farmer could actually pry them apart! The strong man roared repeatedly to encourage himself, using all his might, yet the farmer kept prying his hands further and further apart.

Two cultivators nearby couldn't stand it anymore. They threw out a demon-binding rope and tied the farmer up securely. To deal with a mere country bumpkin, they had to use a magical artifact—this was truly preposterous. As a result, the farmer, in a burst of ferocity, almost tore the demon-binding rope apart. Another person, seeing the unfavorable situation, quickly added another rope. Only then was the farmer subdued and forcibly dragged before Bai Ziqin.

Throughout this process, the farmer kept shouting and yelling. His mouth was moving very fast, but the problem was, no one present understood him! Due to the language barrier, everyone heard his speech as gibberish.

When he was dragged before Bai Ziqin, he immediately fell silent. His face turned pale, and his body kept shrinking backward. This was a clear sign of extreme fear. Bai Ziqin knew he wasn't perfectly handsome, but he wasn't terrifying either. So, what exactly did this person see?

“Look at the reflection in his eyes!” The gray parrot flapped its wings, flew behind the farmer, and nudged the back of his head. The man stumbled forward, and the image in his eyes was magnified into a ghostly silhouette that floated before Bai Ziqin—

It was a Yaksha, with blackish-blue skin, covered in scales, a flat nose, protruding mouth with buck teeth, and vertical pupils. Its appearance was menacing. Anyone who looked closely at such a ferocious monster would be terrified.

Bai Ziqin stared at it, and it stared back at Bai Ziqin. Bai Ziqin tilted his head, and it tilted its head too. So, in this farmer's eyes, Bai Ziqin looked like this?

He pointed to Bai Shi nearby: “Look at him.” The farmer didn't understand, so the guards nearby turned his face to directly face Bai Shi. Looking at the phantom reflection in his eyes, Bai Shi appeared as another Yaksha: gray-haired, with a hooked nose, dark red, viscous skin, and slightly smaller in stature. It was the same when the farmer looked at others; the figures he saw automatically transformed into Yaksha appearances. However, Bai Ziqin also noticed that these Yaksha appeared somewhat blurry, their scales not finely detailed, resembling crudely made puppets. Yet, their terrifying and ferocious aura effectively compensated for this.

“What the human eye sees is nothing more than light at play,” said the gray parrot. “Qianhuan or the Illusion Sect has cast an illusion over all of you, making this farmer believe you are monsters.”

But Bai Ziqin couldn't clarify the situation because of the language barrier.

“Why Yaksha?” If it was an illusion, why Yaksha specifically? What was wrong with letting the farmer see something else? In the Illusion Realm, the beings that emerged from the Inverted Lake to kill and devour people, and fought against the Heavenly Palace team, were also Yaksha. Now, having crossed the lake into the real world, they themselves had transformed into Yaksha in the eyes of the locals. This inversion was chilling to ponder.

Bai Ziqin lowered his head and saw that the ring on his hand was not glowing. This indicated that it hadn't detected any divine power or disguise. If it wasn't a spell at work, why did this farmer see them as Yaksha?

While he was pondering, the farmer suddenly turned ferocious, snapped the Immortal-Binding Rope, and bolted towards the woods. His speed was remarkable.

Bai Ziqin casually said, “Kill him.”

Bai Shi grabbed his spear and threw it, piercing the farmer's back. His aim was extraordinarily precise; the spearhead flew through the farmer's chest with a swift whoosh, entering from the back and exiting from the front. The man let out a piercing cry, then collapsed to the ground, dead.

Bai Shiqi casually picked up the Immortal-Binding Rope from the ground. Seeing the clear signs of it being forcibly broken, he couldn't help but exclaim, “Where did a farmer get such strength?”

Bai Ziqin's expression grew even more somber: “You should be asking, how could an ordinary person, with their heart pierced, scream so loudly?” The farmer's dying scream echoed through the sky, startling the crows in the forest. Even those with strong lung capacity couldn't imitate such a sound, let alone a dying person. Just this mountain farmer made everyone feel that something was deeply wrong.

Just then, Bai Shi, holding a silver bead fruit, said, “Lord Envoy, the fruit's glow has disappeared.” Since they landed, the silver bead fruit's glow had been steadily weakening. Now, a full quarter of an hour had passed, and the glow was gradually fading away. Even the silver bead fruits on the branches had reached their limit, as daylight had fully broken. The silver bead fruit, no longer glowing, looked just like a large pear.

This meant they couldn't return to the Illusion Realm. Bai Ziqin hummed in acknowledgment: “Let's go to the town ahead and see; these places are all off.”

The gray parrot asked him, “How so?”

“The combined population of mortals in both the real and illusory realms of this Inverted Sea exceeds two to three hundred thousand. Have the immortal caves captured by the Divine Venerable in the past ever housed so many mortals?”

“Never,” the gray parrot replied without hesitation. “So-called immortals are mostly solitary figures; those who can establish a proper base usually only have a few hundred mortals serving them at most. I was already somewhat surprised to see tens of thousands of living people on the island when we entered the Inverted Sea Illusion Realm this time.”

“Is spiritual energy what limits the number of people in a cave dwelling?”

“Of course.” There were many reasons, but Bai Ziqin had hit upon the key point, so Miao Zhantian continued along his line of thought: “Spiritual energy in a cave dwelling is precious; it's barely enough for immortals themselves, so why would they be willing to share it with mortals?”

Bai Ziqin then pointed at the sand table: “Even if the Inverted Sea can absorb the spiritual energy from the Glimmering Gold Plains for its own use, isn't it excessive for True Person Qianhuan to keep hundreds of thousands of mortals in his cave dwelling? Even if they were to serve the entire Illusion Sect, thirty to fifty thousand would be more than enough.”

“Qianhuan isn't that benevolent. These hundreds of thousands of people must have another purpose.”

Bai Ziqin hesitated, about to speak but stopping himself. As the saying goes, 'raise an army for a thousand days to use them for an hour,' but to raise so many mortals for so many years—what could be the reason?

The gray parrot understood: “Speak your mind.”

Bai Ziqin still hesitated for a moment before quietly asking, “Based on your judgment, Divine Venerable, is this truly the real world?” Of course, he firmly believed in Miao Zhantian's divine power. However, hadn't the matter of He Xiao's connection to the Great Square Pot also escaped Miao Zhantian's perception back then? Although the Eye of Truth was powerful, it was not absolutely un-deceivable. Moreover, this time they were facing an ancient Mirage Immortal whose temperament, methods, and cultivation were all unfathomable!

The gray parrot remained silent, seemingly lost in thought, then suddenly flapped its wings and flew towards the farmer's corpse on the ground. When it perched on a branch and looked down, a small, one-eyed phantom appeared above its head. The eyeball rotated twice and then suddenly turned red! It then emitted a red light that enveloped the farmer's corpse. Everyone watched intently. At first, there was nothing unusual about the corpse, but as the Eye of Truth blinked twice, the red light intensified, becoming a brilliant, blood-like red. Anyone could tell that Miao Zhantian had increased his focus and divine power on the Eye of Truth. Under the red light, the farmer's corpse became increasingly transparent, from the outside in. Not only his skin and clothes, but even the muscles, organs, nerves, and bones within his body were revealed. With the Eye of Truth's blessing, everyone temporarily gained X-ray vision.

“No!” the gray parrot suddenly exclaimed. “This isn't a living person's soul fire!” Under the red light, the Heavenly Palace members could indeed see a small cluster of flames flickering within the farmer's skull, but it was growing dimmer and dimmer. “From my Eye of Truth's perspective, a living person's soul fire is light yellow. The stronger the soul power, the deeper the color.” With that, the Eye of Truth changed direction and shone directly on Bai Shi. The latter instinctively raised a hand to block it, but once he was enveloped in the red light, others could see a vibrant deep-yellow flame active within his brain. With this comparison, everyone saw the problem:

The cluster of flames in the farmer's mind, however, was a dark greenish-blue!

Bai Ziqin understood: “Humans are born with a body and soul in harmony; the soul fire is nourished by the life furnace, giving rise to self-awareness. This is called a living soul.” He looked again at the farmer's dark greenish-blue soul fire: “This is… a dead soul?”

“Precisely!” Miao Zhantian's tone carried anger. “This isn't a living person at all!”

No sooner had he spoken than the corpse on the ground melted in the red light. It was like a wax figure melting in fire, or ice and snow dissolving. The farmer's corpse flattened and, before everyone's eyes, turned into a puddle of clear water on the ground. With its true nature seen through by the Eye of Truth, it could no longer sustain itself and finally revealed its form.

“Water husk!” Bai Shiqi exclaimed in shock. “He… he and the Yaksha have the same body!” The Yaksha were creations of Qianhuan, and so was this farmer.

“With a dark greenish-blue soul fire, even if you hadn't killed him, he couldn't have lasted long in this world.” However, Miao Zhantian couldn't say how long it would take for these dead souls to fade from a dim soul fire to complete dissipation, as this was the Inverted Sea, and no one knew what Qianhuan had done to these dead souls.

Bai Ziqin frowned: “But judging by his reactions, he didn't seem to know he was a dead soul.” The farmer's reaction upon seeing the Heavenly Palace team was that of a living person fearing Yaksha.

Just then, the team sent out to search for the Illusion Sect's whereabouts returned and quickly reported. It turned out they hadn't found the Illusion Sect team, but they had discovered another set of strange tracks in the woodland by the lake.