Chapter 129: Lunar Deluge
As Xiao Nanfeng watched the stars in his stellar lake grow more numerous, he suddenly felt a sharp yank on his neck.
Something's wrong! He could sense that he had been lifted into the air. By the time he stabilized himself and landed on the ground, he found himself in a domain enshrouded by mist.
"Is this an illusory realm?" Xiao Nanfeng blanched.
With no hesitation, he summoned a cloud of superior yin frost, which he was just about to use to shatter the illusion before him when a gale blew by. The superior yin frost dispersed, not having been able to bring him out.
Xiao Nanfeng looked over to the source of the disturbance, only to see Madam Rouge stepping into the mist. Had it been the one to induce that breeze?
"You again?" Xiao Nanfeng frowned.
He summoned even more superior yin frost, but another gust of wind dispersed it and prevented Xiao Nanfeng from escaping.
"Madam Rouge, you really are getting arrogant, aren't you?" Xiao Nanfeng's eyes flashed as he pounced toward her.
Just then, a length of red rope appeared from nowhere, looped around Xiao Nanfeng's neck, and hung him in the air.
"What?" Xiao Nanfeng immediately grew alarmed.
He tore off the length of rope as he fell to the ground.
As the length of red rope landed, it suddenly grew to over a hundred times its original size. Its body was coiled up, as though it were a huge python. With a tremor of the rope, the mist all around the domain turned a sinister red.
Xiao Nanfeng blanched. "You were the one who dragged me into this illusion?"
He had guessed that the red rope had managed to escape from the chest, but not that it would be so strong as to be able to create an illusory realm and drag him inside as well. Madam Rouge must have taken the opportunity to add insult to injury.
The red rope didn't speak. Rather, it coiled around Xiao Nanfeng, inspecting him carefully.
Xiao Nanfeng was preparing to manifest his black lotus within the illusory realm and seal the red rope when he suddenly stopped moving. His physical body was in trouble.
Xiao Nanfeng's body was still dangling from a beam in the ceiling. The red rope around his neck had grown tighter and tighter, but the qi within his body served as innate protection. The three blazing suns in his dantian moved along his hundred divine channels, shrouding his body in golden light and blazing flame that surrounded the red rope on his neck.
Even so, with great effort, the red rope was able to suppress the flame.
The red rope and blazing flame were at a stalemate when a thin red thread suddenly emerged from the main body of the red rope, heading straight for Xiao Nanfeng's forehead, as though to possess him.
With a sudden hum, a black lotus appeared right outside his mindscape, preventing the red thread's intrusion.
The red rope seemed particularly annoyed, and it vibrated incessantly. With his three suns protecting his body and the black lotus protecting his spirit, however, Xiao Nanfeng was perfectly safe from the red rope's assault.
The red rope had no other recourse than to deal with Xiao Nanfeng's spiritual avatar within the illusory realm instead.
Within the illusory realm, Xiao Nanfeng was belatedly able to sense that the black lotus was already defending against something, and he gave up on the notion of summoning it into the realm.
As he stared at the thick coil of rope before him, Xiao Nanfeng's eyes turned cold. "You aren't another cursed effigy, are you? Just you wait and see what I'll do when I get out of here."
He punched at the red rope, which defended by tightening its body and launching its bulk at Xiao Nanfeng's fist technique, dispelling it. The red rope's momentum was undiminished as it struck Xiao Nanfeng and sent him flying out, too.
"You were pretending to be dead, but you're actually this strong! Let's go again," Xiao Nanfeng challenged it coldly.
At the same time, he melted a portion of the remaining third of the frozen spiritual power in his mindscape, then punched at the red rope again. This time, the technique, bolstered by spiritual power, formed a huge fist that struck the red rope.
The resulting shockwave caused the red mist to disperse instantly, and the red rope itself was sent flying. It scattered into a hundred fragments, which reformed into the original red rope.
"To be able to regenerate your body like that... you really are a cursed effigy, aren't you?" Xiao Nanfeng looked toward it in shock.
The gigantic red rope shot toward Xiao Nanfeng again.
"Die!" Xiao Nanfeng shouted back.
The red rope exploded when struck by Xiao Nanfeng's technique and transformed again into a hundred fragments. As they landed on the ground, they quickly began to reform once again.
"Infinite regeneration?" Xiao Nanfeng asked in shock.
The red rope moved rapidly and quickly coiled around Xiao Nanfeng's body. Within moments, he had been trapped in its center. The red rope grew tighter and tighter, as though intending to coil Xiao Nanfeng to death.
Xiao Nanfeng snorted, struggling as he bolstered himself with spiritual energy.
With a great boom, the red rope that had coiled around Xiao Nanfeng had been destroyed. Even so, its fragments were rapidly surging together as the rope reconstituted itself.
"That old eunuch deliberately freed you in hopes that you would destroy me, didn't he?"
Xiao Nanfeng and the red rope continued their fighting.
Although the red rope was able to regenerate, Xiao Nanfeng discovered that it grew weaker each time it did so.
At the same time, not far away from the mist, Madam Rouge was carefully grabbing onto a fragment of red rope. She arduously put it to her mouth and swallowed it, belching out a puff of red smoke. Her weak body seemed to suddenly have received nutrients.
Madam Rouge didn't stop there. She manipulated the fog to cover her tracks as she followed behind Xiao Nanfeng, who was obliterating the red rope over and over again. Madam Rouge consumed those fragments bit by bit.
The red rope, fighting in earnest, discovered something amiss. Not only was it continuously having to reform its body, its fragments were slowly disappearing!
The red rope suddenly paused its attack as it attempted to find where its missing fragments had gone. Xiao Nanfeng likewise stopped. He had finally consumed the last of the spiritual power stored in the frozen mountain, and he had no more he could use.
Although he did have some reserves that the black lotus had collected and processed, it wouldn't last for long. Furthermore, Madam Rouge was skulking in the depths of the realm.
"Red rope, if we keep fighting like this, we'll both lose out. Shall we call it a truce? Let me out of this illusory realm, and we won't bother each other any longer," Xiao Nanfeng offered.
The red rope continued searching for its missing fragments, clearly not interested in accepting Xiao Nanfeng's offer.
Seeing that the red rope was ignoring him, Xiao Nanfeng continued, "Let me be frank, then. Another cursed effigy is present in this illusory realm, waiting for the two of us to tire each other out so she can take advantage."
The red rope trembled in outrage, finally understanding what had happened to the missing fragments of its body. The other cursed effigy had eaten them!
The red rope flicked its body, dissipating the mist that had hung over the realm and revealing a cloud of red mist in the distance. Within that cloud of red mist was a bleached white skeleton.
The red rope shot toward Madam Rouge.
Madam Rouge, having eaten some fragments of the red rope, had grown significantly stronger. She glanced at Xiao Nanfeng with vexation, as though blaming him for revealing her presence. Rather than taking the red rope's blow head-on, she flashed away toward the mists further in the distance.
The red rope continued chasing after her. Both of them vanished into the mists.
Sensing an opportunity, Xiao Nanfeng again gathered a cloud of superior yin frost, with which he attempted to break out of the illusion. Suddenly, however, howling winds formed around him and dissipated the frost, preventing Xiao Nanfeng from escaping.
"Even though she's being chased by the red rope, is Madam Rouge still unwilling to let me go?" Xiao Nanfeng frowned.
He knew that, although he had successfully incited a confrontation between the red rope and Madam Rouge, as long as he remained within the illusion, he would have to face them both eventually.
"In the end, I can't keep relying on others' strength. I have to grow strong enough to be able to break out of this realm myself. Fortune, keep helping me nullify my karmic consequences!" Xiao Nanfeng turned back to his scriptures.
At the same time, within his mindscape, the starlight in his stellar lake began to flare. Gradually, the entire lake began to gleam with pulses of spiritual light.
Subsequently, all that starlight gathered by the middle of the lake, which seemed to be gestating something particularly mysterious.
After two whole hours, with a huge bang, all the starlight transformed into a glowing orb that slowly floated above the surface of the water. It shone with radiant light, illuminating everything around it.
It looked as though a full moon had suddenly emerged from behind floating clouds, shining so brightly as to illuminate the sea underneath.
"A full moon hanging overhead, a swell of water underneath—I must have reached Lunar Deluge!" Xiao Nanfeng's eyes lit up.
Within the illusory realm, Xiao Nanfeng's spiritual avatar grew several times stronger. His spiritual power was tinged with a silvery-white glow, magnifying his strength.
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