Chapter Fifty-Two: Seeing Without Seeing (The End of The Serene Angel)

When it was Fu Qian's turn, Feng Yunhong's voice was already filled with despair.

The original vortex of flesh and blood had faded to the point of being almost invisible, his decades of accumulated power utterly exhausted and spent by Fu Qian.

And the individual transcendent consciousnesses contained within it had vanished into thin air along with it.

Complete, unmitigated, and hopeless annihilation.

"What was it you said just now?"

Facing Feng Yunhong's reluctant, roaring cries, Fu Qian suddenly spoke.

"You've endured unimaginable pain over the years, so I can never win against you, is that it?"

"There, let me treat you to a taste of what true pain is."

Tracing his connection to the vortex of flesh and blood, Fu Qian channeled endless mental shockwaves directly into Feng Yunhong.

Ah!

A beast-like roar erupted, and Feng Yunhong's consciousness instantly suffered violent, turbulent fluctuations.

Half a minute later, he let out a groan verging on total collapse.

"Who... the hell... are you?"

"Fu Qian."

Facing a dying man, Fu Qian still maintained the demeanor of a victor, pronouncing his own name with clear articulation and cadence.

With a burst of even more violent emotional fluctuation, Feng Yunhong could no longer hold on as his soul shattered completely, leaving behind a lingering, resentful dying breath that echoed for a long time.

"Even this requires paying money?"

Indeed, the joys and sorrows of humanity are truly not interconnected!

Fu Qian felt a brief wave of emotion; this fellow seemed to have misunderstood something.

Yet toward Feng Yunhong, he could not muster a shred of sympathy.

Leaving aside the fact that this guy was a ruthless veteran who had transcended death over a dozen times and hunted down two dozen stray lambs back and forth,

simply consider how for so many years, this fellow used this stone seat as a daily tranquilizer without ever discovering the true essence of the stone seat.

One can only say: an opportunity was given to you, but you simply failed to use it!

As the last trace of ambient noise vanished and the vortex of flesh and blood completely melted into his body, Fu Qian opened his eyes and slowly stood up from the stone seat.

From the outside, he looked no different than before, and his strength did not even show any obvious signs of growth.

Yet only he knew that he had completely changed.

Glancing down at his hands, he was entirely certain that he was now in a subtle state, existence akin to an intangible barrier.

It was hard to explain precisely, bearing a certain philosophical resemblance to "I think, therefore I am."

Meaning that only when he maintained self-awareness did he exist here.

Once he let go, his presence would diffuse, merging completely with the entire ruin.

Fu Qian looked back at the stone seat.

If his guess was correct, this object was essentially the materialization of the rules within the furnace, a high-order manifestation of the eerie Great Disintegration.

The meaning behind the name "Furnace" referred to the refining and recombination of life energy entering it, achieving a sublimation of life forms.

Those hand monsters, skull centipedes, and the like were merely the lowest-form manifestations of this recombination.

One could only say he had previously underestimated it; transcendental beings like Feng Yunhong and himself, who could not be "digested," were on one hand instinctively rejected by the furnace and treated like ambergris.

On the other hand, the possibility of the furnace digesting them still existed.

The prerequisite was a willingness to accept the impact—meaning to sit here, completely open up one's consciousness, and undergo baptism by that terrifying torrent of information.

Just as he had done moments ago.

At this very moment, Fu Qian confirmed that in a certain aspect, he was now homogeneous with the furnace itself.

Now, it was time to complete the mission.

Before leaving, a gleaming object caught Fu Qian's attention.

It was Feng Yunhong's halberd.

Fu Qian picked it up, weighed it in his hand, and casually thrust it into the ground beside the stone seat.

He had no interest in polearms.

Emerging from the underground chapel, no matter what monsters he encountered along the way, they completely ignored him, showing zero reaction and leaving his path completely unobstructed.

Utilizing his mysterious connection with the furnace, Fu Qian quickly located Ji Liushuang and her group.

At this moment, this group of people was groping their way along the edge of the furnace, searching for an exit.

The three teams had gathered together, their numbers even smaller than before, indicating they had suffered additional casualties.

Broken arrows fell from overhead as that archer brother began testing for possible weak points at higher elevations.

However, the majority of the people clearly looked hopeless, their eyes filled with hesitation and despair.

Fu Qian walked steadily forward, discovering that everyone remained completely blind to his arrival; their gazes swept right through him as if he were entirely empty space, like looking at thin air.

This state was truly extraordinary.

The fact that the monsters ignored him could be explained by his assimilation into the furnace, treating him as one of their own.

Yet for this group of people right before him to show the exact same reaction was quite interesting.

Fu Qian recalled the furnace's effect of obliterating external information, feeling it was of a similar nature?

Their eyes clearly saw him, but their minds failed to register that they were seeing him, hence they made no reaction whatsoever.

To verify his hypothesis, Fu Qian chose to walk directly through the formation.

As a result, out of the entire group, only Li惟玄 (Li Weixuan) furrowed his brow, looking around with a hint of alertness.

Indeed, unless the gap in cultivation realms was too vast, it was very difficult for anyone to detect the anomaly.

Now, the barrier was right before his eyes.

Fu Qian reached out and touched it directly.

If the last time he had been squeezed out, this time he was being absorbed.

Fu Qian felt as if he had become a part of the barrier, like a droplet of water merging into the vast ocean, able to move through it effortlessly.

It seemed it was time to clock off.

"Dean Li, I still think we should explore the interior of the ruins."

At that moment, Fu Qian heard Ji Liushuang speaking in a low voice to Li Weixuan.

"Although it was my suggestion to follow the edge to look for a breach, it now seems like a waste of effort."

"Besides, Fu Qian is still inside. No matter what, we should at least verify his condition."

"He acted willfully on his own accord, completely disregarding the safety of others. I see no obligation to risk our lives for him!"

The voice of opposition arose, as expected.

This young woman had a good heart, even though she had no idea he had just walked right past her.

Li Weixuan also acknowledged Ji Liushuang's view, but the dissenting voices within the team made him hesitate as well.

After all, the current situation was far too bizarre, and taking rash action was simply too risky.

Moreover, judging by Ji Liushuang's description, the student named Fu Qian behaved rather strangely indeed.

Fu Qian had originally intended to leave them behind, but the scene before him made him pause his steps for a moment, and after a brief thought, he called out directly to Ji Liushuang. 5

Ji Liushuang was arguing heatedly with Yuan Xin and the others when a sudden intuition struck her, and she looked up toward a certain spot ahead.

That place was clearly empty, yet she felt a persistent sensation that it was calling out to her.

Leaving the others behind, Ji Liushuang walked up as if guided by a ghost, reached out to touch the empty air, and then turned back with an expression of disbelief.

"There's... a hole here?"

As she spoke, even Ji Liushuang herself found it hard to believe.

Yet beneath her hand, she genuinely touched a smooth opening, just large enough for a person to crawl through by bending over.

As soon as her words left her mouth, the crowd froze for a fraction of a second before surging forward instantly.

A path to survival actually existed!

After confirming that the passageway was real, under the coordination of Li Weixuan and Ji Liushuang, the emotionally stirred group filed through the tunnel one after another, escaping this despair-inducing cage.

Ji Liushuang insisted on remaining the very last to leave.

The moment she stepped through the tunnel, she quickly picked up a few stones from the ground to build a small marker, intending to leave a sign for Fu Qian who had yet to emerge.

Yet a few seconds later, she stared with some perplexity at the marker on the ground, unable to remember why she had done such a thing.

At this time, the group that had escaped death celebrated joyfully, and following Li Weixuan's call, they rapidly evacuated in the opposite direction.

After the crowd had receded into the distance, Fu Qian floated down lightly from the barrier.

Utilizing his resonance with the barrier, he had just attempted to open a path through it, and to his surprise, it had actually worked.

One could only say that Ji Liushuang had won a chance at survival for the entire group.

[Containment successful.]

At that moment, the anticipated prompt finally rang out.