Chapter 84 - A Melancholic Sigh

“You were right Old 4th, this kid really is going to attempt a perfect completion of the true-false illusion trial!” Outside of the illusion world, the red haired woman’s eyes shone as she stared down excitedly.

“This will soon end. As Elder Shia says, it seems that he really did decide to attempt the most reckless and crazed method imaginable….the only means towards obtaining a Perfect Grade!” The stern man nodded in agreement.

“Agreed.” The masked man spoke this single word. The others waited for a moment, but it seemed that he had nothing else to say.

“That doesn’t mean he will succeed!” A giant of a man spoke in a deep voice, which sounded almost like the growling of a savage beast. If Yaan were to see this 17 feet tall behemoth, with dark skin and countless black tattoos, he would immediately recognise him as a member of the Aztec Tribe!

“The first step towards achieving perfection in any trial, is to understand the core purpose of the trial itself. This child clearly understands this, as it is a trial based upon the principal of pressuring the mind. That trial’s intent is to present us with the opportunity to take the first step onto the path of psyche power cultivation! And yet…”

Six of the nine beings present looked a bit gloomy as he said that, including the Aztec man himself, whilst the other three just sighed and ignored them. All of those six inhabitants of the 9th layer had attempted this trial in the past, yet none managed to achieve ‘perfection’.

They failed to grasp the opportunity of the trial, thus none were practitioners of this rare path. Honestly though, this was only normal…mind cultivation was simply too abstract to even begin grasping! And when you were in that illusory world, when your mind, your memories and your sense of self fell into such disarray, it was only natural that almost everyone would simply forget about all else, caring only about breaking free from this mental prison!

“You know, I bet he could have achieved a Mid Grade score back when the trial started!” The young girl giggled. “But he’s so weird, he realised it was all fake, he knew that he had the strength to break himself free, but he chose to follow along with the illusion! A weirdo, a real weirdo!”

“And how is that weird?” The stern man looked at her disapprovingly. She stuck out her tongue and folded her arms, a display ordinary for a child…but this girl had not been a child for over 400 years now, her acting this way was far stranger than anything else.

Ignoring her childish response, the stern man rubbed his beard as he continued to lecture her.

“Breaking out from the illusion by force is only slightly better than the worst method! Well, at least it is an active effort…” He glanced at the little girl as he said this, making her cough and look away. She was embarrassed that he’d brought this up again, even though it had been so long ago!

So what if she only achieved an Entry Grade? So what if she had completely lost herself for the entire time she spent in there, leading to her following her fate like Yaan once did, only not by choice, but because she was deluded by the illusion from start to finish? So what if she only escaped the illusion world due to pure luck…so what….

The girl drooped, sighing sadly. The stern man smiled slightly, before turning back to the illusion.

“His plan should be to devour the remaining fragment of his mind that has lingered in his body for so long, whilst simultaneously devouring the entire mind of his illusory self.”

“Will that actually work though, won’t the body die as soon as it losses all traces of his mind?” The red haired woman asked uncertainly.

“Not necessarily. It’s possible that after devouring a ‘real’ inhabitant of the illusory world, his mental awareness could reach a height at which he is able to fuse his psyche within the illusion, and his mind in reality, back into one! At that point, the illusory world would be distorted from its fated path, becoming an illusion that anyone could see through! Ah, of course, this is all my speculation, I don’t know all the secrets of this formation…” After saying this, she glanced at the old 4th trial spirit overseer.

The person who said all this was a woman, an official spirit of the 4th realm, just like the old man and the devil. The six inhabitants of the 9th layer didn’t dare look down on these individuals, as they possessed direct authority over the happenings throughout this crazy inheritance! So when she said all this, they nodded, assuming that this must be the case, even if she expressed her uncertainty at the end there.

Everyone assumed that Yaan was going to attempt something like this. Devouring his illusory self and retrieving the final fragment of his mind from reality to overcome the illusion and hence the trial.

However, the old spirit, who had remained silent until now, said something that left everyone feeling stunned.

“You seem to be forgetting that this child is not satisfied with perfection. He is striving for something beyond. Completing the illusory trial in the manor you all just spoke of, is clearly perfect, there is no other way to describe it.”

After a brief silence, the little girl perked back up and her excitement returned from seemingly nowhere.

“Then what’s he gonna do, what’s he gonna do?!”

“That…” The old man pondered on it, but eventually sighed and shook his head. “How could I predict something that hardly even makes sense…surpassing perfection, what does that mean, and how could we even judge such a thing?”

At this point, the devil spoke up in his deep and gruff voice.

“Predicting his idea is indeed not yet possible, but master once mentioned something to me. Throughout the universe, any trial on this sort of scale which is typically graded by the standard system, is never actually considered in terms of the Apex Grade. There are countless criteria for the prior grades, yet nothing is even considered of the apex.”

“Isn’t that just because it’s a myth, and that surpassing perfection isn’t actually possible?” The female spirit asked curiously. The spirit devil was far more knowledgable than herself, so she trusted his words more than her own assumptions.

“No, it is not a myth, it happens. Master witnessed such a thing, and more than once. He didn’t tell me much, but he did say one thing…he said that there is simply no need to create criteria to judge whether or not an Apex Grade was achieved, because when a trial is completed in such a way that the participant transcends perfection itself, everyone to witness that moment understands that the impossible has been achieved. There is no room for doubt when this happens, so trying to assess such a performance via conventional criteria is impossible.”

The devil spirit’s words made everyone fall deep into thought, each developing their own ideas about what ‘surpassing perfection’ really meant. It was like scoring 300 on a 100 point test, it just seemed impossible.

Back in the true-false illusion world…

Yaan didn’t know that his plan to surpass the ‘perfect passing’ of this trial had been realised by nine mysterious onlookers, but he wouldn’t much care anyway. He had long since guessed that at least someone should be watching him tackle this trial, or else how could he be judged on his performance?

However, those oh so mysterious onlookers, only grew increasingly bewildered as Yaan slowly down, now calmly jogging behind his younger self like a shadow.

They realised only now that Yaan’s form had become even more illusory than before! If previously, he was simply unnoticed by the illusory world and its inhabitants, then now, the fading of his existence was being reflected in the outside world!

His body outside of the illusion remained unaffected, since it was technically not within the illusory world. No, what faded away was his form within this illusion, this world that even now, Yaan was unable to distinguish from reality in the least. Everything was identical here, the only difference had been himself, from the moment he decided to walk away from his fate.

No, there was a second irregularity…Rui. She also diverged from her path, despite being an illusion in the first place.

Yaan didn’t for a minute believe that he had actually seen through the way to perfectly exit this world himself, yet Rui had discovered nothing.

It’s not that Yaan was overly suspicious of Rui, but more that he understood her methods, better than she realised. She had taught him how to survive as a demon after all, so he never once believed that Rui was truly acting freely and without some sort of scheme.

Yaan particularly felt this way when Rui started to, extremely slowly, ‘warm up’ to him.

It was a natural eventuality for two people stuck in disaster together to grow close, to develop feelings and a real connection, especially when they only had one another for support.

But Rui wasn’t just anyone. Her cold attitude towards him changed by a barely noticeable fraction over a period of months, or really years including the time Yaan spent unconscious. That change alone confirmed to Yaan that she had a very clear reason and purpose for everything she was doing, for following him, for helping him, yet not stopping him when he embraced a shocking danger…

Unfortunately, Yaan was still not nearly at Rui’s level of scheming, so was unable to guess at what she was doing during their time together. So, he had put those thoughts aside and enjoyed discussing matters with her, as doing this expanded his world view and his understanding of many things.

It was only when they reached Heavenly Path Mountain, that Yaan noticed something significant. Of course, he didn’t expect to see his younger self suddenly arrive from nowhere. The absolute shock and confusion he showed in that moment was very genuine…but he still noticed Rui’s change in expression. Since Rui already knew that there would be a second Yaan, her focus could only have been on one thing, something that Yaan somehow understood was exceedingly important.

When he laid his eyes on his younger self, a faint green illusory string appeared from nowhere, connecting between the two versions of him.

From then on, everything was a bit hectic. Watching Rui’s expression and her point of focus, whilst also battling with earnest in a desperate attempt to save his teacher, was quite taxing to say the least. But in the end, he was glad he did so, because he saw it.

When Rui saw her other self, her gaze flashed and she narrowed her eyes briefly. From this, Yaan guessed that a green string might have also appeared between the two Rui’s! Unfortunately, it seemed that Yaan was only able to see the string between himself, and himself.

Yaan immediately thought that these strings could be a path between the two diverged versions of themselves! That is, until he also saw the flash of an even fainter green string between himself and the other Rui.

Stunned, Yaan had glanced at Rui, realising that he could now see the string connecting her to her other self! No, there were two…three…

The four of them, two sets of two, each stood there as those bewildering green strings connected them all to one another. Dazed and confused, Yaan glanced at Rui again, only to find that her calm demeanour had already returned. Yaan felt bitter…if she was hiding this from him right from the beginning, then she would not explain it even if he asked.

His thoughts travelled here and there, connecting dots and gradually solving the unknowns. He realised that from the moment they met one another in this illusory world, Rui had likely already began to put her scheme into action.

The reason that he returned to Heavenly Path Mountain was because Yaan decided to face his fate, right?

No…it was because Rui was searching for something, and for whatever reason, that something was related heavily to Yaan himself. Unknowingly, Yaan was influenced by her despite his caution, believing that the decision to return to the mountain was entirely is own.

In reality, this decision was one that he may very well have settled on anyway, but Rui’s mild, unnoticeable influence, set the outcome that she desired in stone.

Rui played her own game the entire way, and Yaan still didn’t understand 90% of it. Apparently, witnessing the appearance of those faint green strings was so important to her that she would even halt her soul’s recovery, forgetting all else, just to see if her conjecture was correct.

Yaan didn’t understand her actions or motives, but likewise, there were points surrounding Yaan’s actions and plans in this world that she also didn’t fully understand.

However, Rui seemed to believe that she understood Yaan’s intentions at the end there.

They had both been deceived by one another, but the exact extent and intent behind that deception was a mystery. Truthfully, Yaan wasn’t bothered by it at all…if this duplicated Rui had instead not schemed a single time in these five years, he would actually feel a hundred fold more uneasy!

Yaan laughed and shook his head with an amused smile. Currently, the fading of his form had become so severe that even the outside observers were struggling to keep track of him! He really did look like an illusion, drifting behind his other self…

“An old immortal with the intelligence and scheming ability that I still cannot begin to fathom…how could I possibly see through anything in this world that you had not deduced for yourself?” Yaan chuckled again.

“And yet, despite the lies, your facade of ignorance…you still helped me. You helped me, because you realised from the moment we met, that you needed me to complete this trial perfectly in order for you to survive. You also realised that by aligning yourself to my path, we would inevitably end up here, with our other selves…this alone shows that your understanding of this illusion world is much deeper than my own…”

Yaan mumbled to himself, watching his own younger self gasp for breath whilst continually looking back and around in his fear.

“I still don’t understand this clearly though. Why are you, an illusion of the true Rui and an inhabitant of the illusion world, deliberately trying to have the very world in which you reside, destroyed? Actually, the answer is obvious, yet I still can’t understand it at all…the two of us must fuse with our others in order for you, the illusion of Rui, to survive past the trial, and past the unknown fate of this mysterious illusion of a world.”

Yaan had slowly built up this list of vague conjectures all throughout their journey, but he only confirmed it after seeing Rui’s reaction to the appearance of those green strings. It was as if the existence of those strings confirmed that she was correct in doing all this.

And knowing Rui, Yaan was certain that this was all for the sake of her survival. Most likely, her ‘warming up’ to him and becoming more talkative along their journey, was all part of her plan to land at this conclusion…

All along, she planned for the two of them to latch onto Yaan’s fate, since this road would eventually lead them back towards their others. Even though it was Yaan who told her that she needed to fuse back into the other Rui, that was her intention all along; her complete lack of hesitation in doing so proved this well enough.

In her plan, she entirely believed that so long as they reached this point and she fused back with herself, that Yaan would go on to do the same. Yaan entered this illusory world under crazed circumstances as he strived for power without regard for the consequences. She was confident that Yaan would choose the option leading to the greatest possibility of stepping on the psyche path.

Indeed, that was his plan. And as Rui expected, Yaan was now going to integrate with his other self. The only difference, was that he had no plans of devouring his other self, none whatsoever.

As Yaan stepped towards his illusory self, he thought about what he was about to do. He closed his eyes and let out a deep sigh, containing all of the complex emotion he had built up throughout his time spent musing over this illusory world for these past few years. This sigh seemed to fuse with the world, reverberating across this region, and even causing a gust of wind to casually sweep by.

And like that, the Yaan who entered this trial realm seemed to overlap with the body of his young self, completely disappearing. He did not regain control over his other self, it was as if he had truly vanished.

The younger Yaan suddenly stopped, quickly looking around in bewilderment as a strange melancholic sigh entered his ears. He could swear that this sigh seemed to originate from the world itself…after bitterly shaking his head, he realised that he was probably just imagining things due to his unstable mental state. It was probably just an illusion.