Chapter 264 - 167: Re-entering the Heart Prison, It’s a Callback

Chapter 264: Chapter 167: Re-entering the Heart Prison, It’s a Callback

His mind empty and serene, Zheng Xiu did not hesitate. He cleared his thoughts and lay down on the lake’s mirror-smooth surface.

After lying down, Zheng Xiu closed his eyes.

The placid lake began to boil. Bubbles swelled, rose, and burst into nothingness.

From within the bursting bubbles, the inky black water writhed. Like countless tentacles, it wrapped around Zheng Xiu and pulled him beneath the surface.

In the blink of an eye, Zheng Xiu sank completely, and the boiling black lake once again grew calm.

Zheng Xiu felt himself drifting, just like the sensation of Divine Travel—no physical form, only his Spirit.

It was a state of pure existence where only his "Spirit" remained.

The scene before him shifted. Image after image flashed before his eyes. Zheng Xiu felt as though he remembered them, but the moment his mind snapped back to awareness, he couldn’t recall a thing.

"POP~"

Zheng Xiu felt as if he had passed through a thin membrane, arriving in another place entirely.

A row of candles hung on the walls, neatly arranged, their flames lighting a path deep into the darkness.

The neatly arranged cells were clean and tidy, their walls adorned with torture instruments of various shapes.

Zheng Xiu drifted down until his toes touched the ground. He glanced around and was startled to realize the scene was incredibly familiar.

It was the Zheng Family dungeon.

Zheng Xiu soon discovered that the candle flames on the walls seemed frozen in place, not flickering in the slightest. The fire on each wick was silently stilled.

In the distance, a withered figure sat cross-legged. His complexion was grim, his eye sockets sunken. He was nothing but skin and bones.

Zizi lay beside him, eyes shut tight in a deep slumber. Teardrops clung to the corners of her eyes. She wasn’t breathing, and her heart wasn’t beating.

The world stood still.

Heaven and Earth were frozen in time.

’That’s me.’

Zheng Xiu was amazed by what he saw. After a moment, he recognized the skin-and-bones figure as himself.

’It all connects!’

The "frozen" scene before him didn’t shock Zheng Xiu. He had once used the [Heaven and Earth Sword Intent] as "Zheng Baimei" and knew that in a spiritual state, the flow of time was inconsistent. Time was more of a "sensation," and the perception of it was completely different between the two states.

’I’m back here.’

Zheng Xiu hesitated for a moment, wanting to reach out to his "physical body" and see if he could return to his Main Body.

But just as Zheng Xiu was about to touch his own body, blood-red eyes suddenly snapped open all over the "skin-and-bones Zheng Xiu."

Before he even made contact, the fingers of his Human Soul recoiled as if shocked.

When he looked again, the blood-red eyes that had covered the body were gone, as if they had been an illusion.

Those blood-red eyes struck Zheng Xiu as incredibly familiar.

’The Crow Fosterer!’

Zheng Xiu realized with a start.

’Could it be...?’

Suddenly, a horrifying thought struck Zheng Xiu as he recalled that single glance from the Crow Fosterer.

He now understood completely. That glance from the Crow Fosterer hadn’t just affected "Zheng Baimei"!

The reason he had fallen into this bizarre state wasn’t entirely due to the influence of Gongsun Mo’s Deceitful Object, nor was it solely because of the strangeness of the Cannibal Painting. The primary cause was the Crow Fosterer’s Miracle Technique!

That glance from the Crow Fosterer had brought him... "death"!

That was why he had fallen into such a bizarre state!

His Human Soul had left his body!

A Life and Death Struggle!

’But if the Crow Fosterer brought me death, why am I still alive?’

’Is it because...?’

Zheng Xiu’s spirit form sat cross-legged on the ground. He looked from the motionless Zizi and her sleeping face to his own skin-and-bones self, thinking how tragic the scene was.

He mulled it over for a long time, replaying the events again and again, thinking about his Path.

Zheng Xiu suddenly had an absurd thought.

’Unbreakable?’

’The Crow Fosterer did bring me "death." ’

’But my Main Body is in a prison, and it comes with the [Unbreakable] trait.’

’Could it be that precisely because of this [Unbreakable] trait, "Prisoner" Zheng Xiu is stuck in this state, neither truly living nor truly dead?’

’It’s like...’

’I’ve bugged out?’