Chapter 286: The Blue-Faced Imp
Chapter 286: The Blue-Faced Imp
An imp with a blue face and fangs pounced into a blank sea of consciousness, its eyes gleaming with malicious joy. It cackled, "What abundant spiritual sense! It will take me a long time to devour it all!"
Its eyes, like brass bells, suddenly spotted the ink painting within the consciousness, and its smile froze. "What are you doing here?"
The ink painting looked puzzled. "This is my sea of consciousness. Why wouldn't I be here?"
"No, that's not right! You shouldn't be here!" The imp's eyes darted around, its expression shifting. Suddenly, it shouted, "A manifestation of spiritual sense, an innate talent! A heavenly gift! Excellent! Simply excellent!"
The ink painting frowned. "Are you referring to me as nourishment? Does this blue-faced imp feed on cultivators' spiritual sense?"
The ink painting recalled Mr. Zhuang's words: "The observation paintings reflect others' spiritual sense and their understanding of the heavenly way. In other words, what is observed is another's 'path' or perhaps a 'path' that is not human. Once spiritual sense indulges in it, there are often terrible consequences..."
Could this blue-faced imp be the "non-human path" Mr. Zhuang mentioned? The ink painting's gaze sharpened. "What exactly are you?"
The imp grinned maliciously. "Little brat, after I devour you, you'll know."
Before the ink painting could react, the imp transformed into a blue shadow, its teeth bared in a vicious snarl, and pounced towards the painting, as if intending to swallow it whole.
The ink painting quickly retreated, its movements graceful, evading the imp's attack.
The imp was taken aback, and the ink painting paused as well, realizing that within this sea of consciousness, he could utilize the Flowing Water Step.
Previously, upon entering his consciousness, he had been sitting in front of the Dao stele, drawing array patterns and had not attempted to use his movement technique. It was only now, after inadvertently dodging the imp's attack, that he became aware of this ability.
Since he could use the Flowing Water Step, could he also use spells?
As the imp lunged again, the ink painting dodged and simultaneously tried to use the Water Prison Spell and the Fireball Spell.
However, neither spell could be cast.
The Flowing Water Step manipulated spiritual power with one's spiritual sense, using spiritual power to guide one's physical body.
Now, within his sea of consciousness, the ink painting existed solely as a spiritual sense entity, devoid of spiritual power and physical body. Naturally, he could move with the same agility as the Flowing Water Step.
However, the Water Prison Spell and the Fireball Spell relied on spiritual sense to drive spiritual power and condense the spells, with spiritual power as their foundation.
Without spiritual power in this sea of consciousness, it was impossible to cast spells.
The imp moved extremely fast, but the ink painting's movements were even more exquisite, effortlessly evading the imp's attacks.
The imp's face twisted with rage.
However, the ink painting's heart sank slightly.
He could only dodge with the Flowing Water Step; he couldn't trap the imp with the Water Prison Spell or attack with the Fireball Spell. He was just a sitting duck, and continuing to dodge like this wasn't a long-term solution.
He needed to think of something else!
After futilely lunging for a while, the imp still couldn't land a hit on the ink painting. Feeling mocked, its eyes blazed with malice. "It's your fault for pushing me too far!"
"Once I catch you, I'll chew you into tiny pieces!" The imp then ripped off its left arm and stuffed it into its mouth, chewing it into a pulp.
At the same time, a violent aura rose from the imp.
Its body grew larger, its eyes filled with murderous intent, its fangs lengthened, and its face became even more hideous. In just a moment, it transformed into a true evil ghost.
"Now you can't escape." The evil ghost grinned at the ink painting, but the painting had stopped running and stood its ground.
Unbeknownst to the ghost, intricate patterns had appeared around the ink painting.
"Show-off!" the ghost rasped, charging at the ink painting without fear.
As it approached within a zhang, it touched the patterns, and a terrifying force shook it violently.
Vast flames engulfed it, burning its body and causing unbearable pain.
The evil ghost screamed in disbelief, "It's an array! Are you an array master?!"
Seeing that the array was effective and even more powerful than he had anticipated, the ink painting breathed a sigh of relief.
Since he couldn't use spells, the only thing he could rely on was the array.
The ink painting cultivated the Heavenly Secret Manual, and the bottleneck of this technique was the mystery array.
The mystery array was formed within the sea of consciousness, and to unravel it, the ink painting had to draw the array patterns within his consciousness, unravel the mystery, and break through the bottleneck.
Arrays are manifestations of the rules of the heavenly way, and their essence lies in the comprehension of the heavenly way through spiritual sense.
In the external world, when drawing arrays, one needs to rely on array mediums to carry the array, use spirit ink to engrave the array, and finally, activate it with spiritual power.
The effects of the array are achieved through spiritual power.
The might of the array is, therefore, the destructive power of various spiritual powers like the five elements.
But the arrays within the sea of consciousness are different.
In the sea of consciousness, there are no external objects, only the essential spiritual sense, so the effects of the array are actually the effects of the spiritual sense.
The might of the array is the might of the spiritual sense.
The first-grade earth fire array painted by Mo Hua exploded, producing flames that were not real fire, but illusory fire condensed from spiritual sense.
It could only injure spiritual sense, causing immolation without fire, along with the illusory pain of burning.
And coincidentally, this Blue-faced Imp should be similar to the ink painting in the sea of consciousness, a illusory spiritual sense entity.
Now it seemed that the array was even more effective than the ink painting had imagined.
The array, constructed purely with spiritual sense, was extremely potent, capable of injuring the very essence of the evil ghost's spiritual sense.
Mo Hua's spirit lifted, and his gaze gradually turned cold.
Drawing arrays took time, and previously, while being pursued by the imp, he hadn't had the leisure to think about anything else. Naturally, he hadn't had the opportunity to draw an array.
But now, the imp's rage and its monologuing had bought him some time.
It chewed on its own arm for a while, then enlarged its body, wasting even more time.
This lengthy preparation time was more than enough for Mo Hua to draw an array.
The imp had transformed into an evil ghost, appearing to become stronger, but it had also given Mo Hua, a master of arrays, the time to draw an array.
An array master who stands within an array is the most powerful.
A cold light gathered in Mo Hua's eyes as he began to consider how to finish off this little ghost.
Having been chased by it earlier, he was seething with anger, and now he naturally wouldn't let it get away.
The Blue-faced Evil Ghost was shaken by the earth fire array and fell to the ground, howling in pain as it was burned by the fierce flames.
It tried to extinguish the flames, but they were formed from the spiritual sense power of the array and had no physical entity, only a spiritual sense illusion.
The Blue-faced Evil Ghost couldn't put out the fire, and it continued to burn until the ghost's blue skin was charred black before gradually dying out.
The Evil Ghost stood up, its charred skin quickly recovering to its original state, but its aura had weakened.
Its appearance was only a spiritual sense illusion, and the array fire had burned its spiritual sense.
Even if its appearance remained unchanged, its spiritual sense origin had suffered significant loss.
The Blue-faced Evil Ghost glared at Mo Hua with malevolence, but its bravado was skin-deep, and its heart was filled with deep wariness.
"What kind of little monster is this? It can manifest spiritual sense and even condense arrays with its spiritual sense?"
In terms of pure spiritual sense power, it was stronger than this little cultivator.
If they were to engage in a normal spiritual sense battle, it could easily devour this little cultivator alive.
But the fact that this little cultivator could use arrays made all the difference.
Arrays inscribed the heavenly way and represented the most extreme application of spiritual sense.
Especially in this spiritual sense confrontation, the array, aided by the heavenly way, directly injured the origin, making it even more powerful.
With this thought, the Blue-faced Evil Ghost's heart filled with retreat.
It was pointless to continue this fight.
It couldn't do anything about this little cultivator.
Not only could it not defeat him, but if it continued to fight and was injured by his array, it might even suffer a severe loss of vital energy or completely dissipate.
"Little imp, I won't let you off," the Blue-faced Evil Ghost said through gritted teeth as its body slowly backed away.
Mo Hua frowned when he saw that it was trying to escape.
His arrays, whether for offense or defense, could only be used in one place.
Now that the Blue-faced Ghost wanted to run, it seemed that there really was no way to keep it here.
The Blue-faced Evil Ghost slowly retreated to the edge of Mo Hua's sea of consciousness, and it looked like it would escape at any moment.
Just then, midnight arrived.
In the middle of the pale sea of consciousness, a fragmented stele quietly appeared.
A profound and boundless aura instantly spread out.
Within this aura was an immense terror.
The Blue-faced Evil Ghost suddenly realized something, its eyes widening as its blue face turned pale with fear, and it screamed in a harsh voice, "What is this?!"
(End of Chapter)
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