27: Chapter 27 The Illusionary Moon Pearl: Breaking Through the Illusion!

At this moment.

She was leaning sideways against the doorframe, raising a finger and beckoning to them.

A smile played on her lips, one that was both gentle and sweet, as if laced with honey.

In the next second, her figure suddenly distorted and vanished.

The red lanterns continued to flicker, casting alternating light and shadow onto the stone tiles before the door.

"Just now... was that an illusion?" Lu Wanqing's voice was trembling.

No one answered her.

Everyone was staring at the door, chills creeping up their spines.

In the palm of Jiang Xiaohong's hand, a Curse Power Crystal had already coalesced, but his fingers twitched slightly, causing a tiny crack to appear on its surface.

He had felt resentful energy from a Resentful Spirit before, and had even come into contact with one at close range.

But the moment that female ghost stood before the door and beckoned to him just now, even his breath had hitched.

Because if the female ghost had actually rushed over at that moment, his spell might not have finished forming before his throat was bitten through!

At the rear of the team.

Taking advantage of the moment when everyone's attention was drawn to the female ghost, Lin Ye fished out the fist-sized, lustrous white bead from his inner pocket.

The huanyue bead given to him by Tushan Yue.

The moment the bead fell into his palm, a cool sensation spread up from his hand and entered the space between his brows.

He blinked, and the scene before him suddenly changed.

The dilapidated and worn, yet otherwise normal-looking villa, revealed its true form at this moment.

The entire building, from top to bottom, every floor and every wall, was covered in dark red chunks of flesh.

The surface of those chunks of flesh was wet and still writhing slowly, like the internal organs of some giant beast had been turned inside out and plastered onto the walls.

A viscous yellow liquid seeped from the gaps between the flesh, trickling down the wall crevices and dripping onto the stone tiles with a faint sizzling sound.

The surface of the flesh was crisscrossed with scars.

Human faces could be vaguely seen.

Some were embedded in vines, showing only half a face, while others bulged out from the folds of the flesh, their mouths wide open as if screaming silently.

These faces were not static; they moved, writhing slowly and silently, occasionally opening their hollow eye sockets, rolling them around, and then closing them again.

Piercing through the villa's outer walls, Lin Ye saw what lay even deeper.

Beneath the villa, in a cavernous space even larger than the building itself, hung a heart.

The heart was half a person's height, dark red all over, its surface densely covered with black blood vessels that pulsed rhythmically.

The ends of the blood vessels wrapped around the heart dug deep into the surrounding soil, extending in all directions like roots, burrowing into the mountain, into the rocks, and into the deepest depths.

The entire mountain had been penetrated by this network of blood vessels.

With every beat of the heart, those blood vessels swelled, drawing some kind of dark red substance from all over the mountain and pumping it back into the heart.

It was like a high-speed water pump, constantly absorbing, transforming, and storing.

Something was brewing here.

A late-stage Resentful Spirit, even one on the verge of breaking through to a Fierce Ghost, could not possibly refine such a massive, physical heart of resentful energy.

This was no longer a scale that could be achieved simply by devouring the fear of living humans.

This was a planned, purposeful transformation of the entire mountain, turning it into her own hatchery!

The female ghost's ambition was not merely to hunt a few living humans; she was setting up a grand scheme, nurturing something.

No wonder there were so many human faces embedded in those chunks of flesh. They weren't decorations; they were fertilizer.

"Quite an ambition..."

Lin Ye's eyes narrowed slightly as he put away the huanyue bead and took out the zhulong staff.

"This damn place..." Wang Zheng swallowed hard and looked back at Jiang Xiaohong. "Brother Jiang, how do we get in?"

Before Jiang Xiaohong could speak, another trialist beside him had already flushed red in the face.

Gao Yan.

Hailing from the Barbaric Martial Arts Plane, he had scored seventy-one points in the initial test. He had the largest build and the most straightforward temper among everyone.

Unable to bear this oppressive atmosphere any longer, he spat on the ground. "Playing tricks! You think some amateur illusion can trap me? Just wait, I'll go open the door!"

The people around him didn't say a word, looking at him as if he were a brave warrior.

He strode toward the villa's main door, his footsteps thudding heavily against the stone tiles.

However, just as he approached...

The brass handle of the door flashed briefly.

Gao Yan's pupils shrank...

Before he could react, the entire door, along with its frame, suddenly contracted inward, turning into a massive ghost mouth lined with sharp teeth, swallowing Gao Yan whole!

"Ah!!"

Gao Yan's miserable scream echoed clearly.

The ghost mouth chewed three times, "crunch," "crunch," "crunch"...

Then, it opened a crack, spat out a pile of bloody bone fragments, and reverted back to the dilapidated and worn door from before.

Everyone remained silent for a full five seconds.

They were instantly overwhelmed by immense dread.

Lu Wanqing abruptly closed her eyes, faint blue light patterns appearing on both sides of her temples.

This was the visible manifestation of the Psionic Plane's core ability, "Mental Detection," being pushed to its absolute limit.

A ripple of mental fluctuations, invisible to the naked eye, spread from between her brows. It swept across the villa's main entrance, across those writhing chunks of flesh, and across the beating heart deep underground...

Half a second later, all the fluctuations instantly snapped back.

She suddenly opened her eyes, her pupils contracting violently and her face turning deathly pale, as if she had seen something she shouldn't have.

"Inside... it's not just one Resentful Spirit..."

"So many... so, so many... The core is there too. She's already awake. She knows we're here..."

She lowered her head and looked at her hands.

She had always believed she was one of the strongest in this batch, with seventy-four points and a Mental Detection ability that was second to none in the Psionic Plane, and she had even been secretly proud of it.

But of the things she had just detected, any single one picked at random could tear her to shreds at close range!

Jiang Xiaohong clenched his fists tightly.

The Curse Power Crystal in his palm had shattered at some point, and purple-black curse energy dripped down through the gaps in his fingers, sizzling as it burned small pits into the stone tiles.

He had come to get the core, not to throw his life away.

But this ghost domain...

This was simply not the kind of setup a Tier 2 ghost domain should have!

Captain Zheng was wrong.

Fang Zhenyuan was wrong.

Everyone was wrong.

The waters here were far deeper than they had imagined!

"Is it a bit too late for us to regret now..."

Wang Zheng said, his voice lacking confidence, sweat dripping from his forehead.

Just then, the heavy door of the villa suddenly opened on its own.

There was no creaking, no sound; it just pulled inward silently, as if someone inside the house was opening the door for them.

"Get back!"

Shen Qinghan barked sharply, gesturing for everyone to stay alert.

However, the horrific scene did not occur.

Standing inside the doorway was a little girl wearing a floral dress, her hair in pigtails, her face round, and her skin so white she didn't look like a living person.

Holding a dirty toy teddy bear in her arms, she tilted her head and looked at everyone outside the door, blinking her eyes and revealing an innocent, naive smile.

"Big brothers and big sisters, are you here to play with toys with me?"