Chapter 165: You're the Fake One

Chen was stunned. For three full seconds, his brain refused to process the two words he had just heard.

Dan… Feng?

‘Imbibitor Lunae? The Vidyadhara Dragon Lord? Dan Heng’s past life? The one who caused the Sedition of the Five Dragons and was condemned to eternal exile… Wait, wait, wait! Let me sort this out!’

Chen felt as if his internal CPU was about to melt from the overload.

Phantylia’s Desperate Illusion was designed to manifest a target’s deepest fears, the very things they were most unwilling to confront. March 7th’s fear was being ignored, abandoned, and forgotten by everyone.

So, if this entire scene was an illusion constructed for Dan Heng… then her greatest fear… could it be reverting to Dan Feng?

No longer being Dan Heng of the Astral Express, a quiet archivist with a brand-new future.

Instead, being dragged back into that suffocating, guilt-ridden, and blood-stained past. Being forced to once again become the Imbibitor Lunae who had committed the Ten Unpardonable Sins.

Losing the identity of “Dan Heng,” losing the fragile peace and sense of belonging she had found on the Express, and being forced to shoulder everything associated with “Dan Feng” once more—the glory, the sins, the hatred, and those seemingly endless, tangled relationships?

If that was the case… then Phantylia’s move was truly vicious. This was a cruelty that went far beyond simple violence. This was an attack designed to negate a person from the very foundation of their existence.

Chen stared at the female Dragon Lord before him. Her temperament was solitary and cold, a perfect match for the ancient, dreamlike architecture of the Luofu surrounding them. She called herself Dan Feng, and in this setting, she looked the part completely.

He then thought of the Dan Heng he knew on the Astral Express—the one who quietly read her books, diligently practiced with her spear, and occasionally frowned with helpless exasperation when he or March 7th provoked her, yet always stood as a silent guardian at everyone’s back.

‘Phantylia, you green-flamed bastard,’Chen thought, a grimace twisting his lips.’You really know how to play dirty.’

“Dan Feng… right?” Chen finally said, composing himself.

“Fine. Whether you call yourself Dan Feng or Dan Heng, there’s something I need to tell you.”

He took a deliberate step forward, ignoring the faint, oppressive aura and the evident sense of detachment that emanated from her.

“This place,” he declared, gesturing broadly. “You, this street, the clouds in the sky, even the ants crawling on the ground—it’s all fake!”

“It’s all an illusion created by a green-flamed psycho named Phantylia!” he pressed on, his voice sharp. “Are you just going to stand here cosplaying the Dragon Lord and reminiscing about old times?”

“It’s time to wake up, Dan Heng. We need to find a way out of here and go beat that bastard up!”

After hearing Chen’s impassioned speech, Dan Feng’s eyes didn’t waver in the slightest. Instead, a flicker of cold indifference, bordering on impatience, passed through them. It was the look one might give a raving lunatic on a street corner.

She didn’t even bother to grace him with an emotional response, simply casting him a final, dismissive glance before turning to leave.

“Sigh…”

Chen watched that cold, isolated, and impossibly stubborn back retreat down the street. He scratched his head, a sense of frustration bubbling up. Things were getting tricky. The illusion’s reinforcement of her identity as “Dan Feng” was far deeper than he had anticipated. It seemed a conventional talking-to wasn’t going to cut it.

‘Since the soft approach doesn’t work,’he mused, his eyes darting around as a new, audacious plan began to form,’I guess it’s time for some hardcore shock therapy…’

Since this Dan Feng was so utterly certain of her identity…

Then what would happen if an even more ‘real’ Dan Feng were to suddenly appear? An existence who not only possessed the power of the Dragon Lord but carried himself with a more arrogant posture, better embodying the true aura of the original Imbibitor Lunae?

No sooner said than done.

Chen quickly ducked into a nearby empty alleyway. After confirming that no one was watching, he took a deep, centering breath.

In the system interface of his mind, he focused on the icon he had unlocked not long ago—the five-star Imbibitor Lunae!

A cascade of light flowed over him, reshaping his very form.

When Chen stepped out of the alley again, his appearance had been completely transformed.

With a clear goal in mind, his figure flickered through the street in a series of impossibly fast movements, materializing directly in the path of the female Dan Feng who was about to depart.

This time, he made no effort to conceal his power. He released the full, unadulterated pressure of the Dragon Lord, a power belonging to the true, five-star Imbibitor Lunae, without reservation.

It crashed toward her like an invisible tsunami.

“Impudent!”

Chen spoke, and his voice carried an immense, piercing authority that instantly drowned out all the ambient noise of the illusory street.

He tilted his chin up, his gaze sweeping down with undisguised disdain at the woman before him. His tone was a weapon, filled with unquestionable interrogation and… contempt.

“Who are you? How dare you impersonate the Vidyadhara Dragon Lord here and commit such acts of deception?!”

The female Dan Feng was clearly stunned by the sudden arrival of this ‘true’ source of power. She stopped abruptly, and for the first time, intense emotional fluctuations rippled through her stoic eyes.

She stared at the majestic Dragon Lord before her, clad in magnificent robes, his aura unleashed in its full, terrifying glory. Then, she subconsciously looked down at her own form.

“I… I am Dan Feng,” she said, trying to steady her mind, to repeat the truth she held as her foundation.

But her voice already carried an imperceptible tremor of doubt.

Chen snorted coldly and took another step forward. The pressure of the Dragon Lord around him intensified, growing heavier. Behind him, faint phantoms of surging tides and roaring waters began to manifest.

“Absurd! I am Dan Feng, the Vidyadhara Dragon Lord, Imbibitor Lunae, as witnessed by heaven and earth!” he boomed. “Your aura is cluttered and impure, and you are even in a female body, yet you dare to impersonate me?”

“What a clumsy imitation. A laughable phantom!”

He raised a fair, slender hand, palm upward. A wisp of pure, condensed draconic power slowly coalesced above it, transforming into a slowly rotating Dragon Pearl that pulsed with a heart-stopping energy.

“Look closely!” Chen’s voice suddenly rose, sharp as a blade. “This is the upright and honorable power of the Dragon Lord, originating from the Permanence itself!”

“That pathetic sliver of a similar aura you’ve stolen from who-knows-where… how do you dare call yourself Dan Feng with that?!”

The woman was struck as if by lightning. She stared blankly at the rotating Dragon Pearl, feeling the obvious essence of that same-source power, a power so much purer and more potent than her own.

“I… I am Dan Feng…” she murmured again, but this time, her tone was hollow, filled with immense confusion and a burgeoning self-denial. Her eyes began to lose their focus.

“I should be Dan Feng… The Vidyadhara Dragon Lord… but… you… who are you?” Her voice cracked. “If you are the real one… then I… what am I?”

The perception of being “Dan Feng,” the very identity granted to her by the illusion, was being forcefully smashed apart. A massive crack had just been driven through the foundation of her existence by this other, impossibly real Dan Feng.

“What are you?”

Chen seized the moment her mind faltered, closing the distance until he was almost face-to-face with her. His sharp, golden eyes locked onto her dazed, unfocused ones.

“You are nothing but an impostor!”

“A fake, pathetic enough to be trapped in the phantoms of the past!”

“A miserable creature who has forgotten who she truly is!”

“Look clearly! Feel it! I am the real Dan Feng!”

Chen’s voice dropped to a final, damning judgment:

“And you—you are just a phantom fabricated by an illusion, immersed in fake guilt and stolen glory!”

“No, I—I am not!!!”

[Elysian’s Note: Having a good time with the story? Every single bit helps immensely: