The Snow Mosquito King's thoughts raced, and fear overcame all else. For a moment, it even forgot the intense pain wracking its body.
"Congratulations, Master! Felicitations, Master! Master's divine art has reached great completion, taking a step onto the heavenly path! From now on, Master can roam the world freely, traversing the hundred realms, slaying gods and buddhas alike..."
Li Yan coldly cut off the Snow Mosquito King's rambling.
"If there is a next time, I will destroy your primordial spirit and turn you into a puppet. It is quite easy for the snow mosquito clan to produce a new king!"
The Snow Mosquito King's heart pounded with fear as it listened. For a fleeting moment, it had indeed considered turning the tables. If it could subdue Li Yan, and then use its own formidable strength to break the shackles, it was possible that their blood pact could be reversed, making it the master and Li Yan the slave.
At that point, Li Yan, and even the Lesser Purple Divine Dragon-Elephant under his control, would live or die by its will.
It felt that as a soon-to-be third-rank demonic beast, it should have this capability. But it had never expected that a single slap would shatter all its fantasies.
Before its master, it couldn't even last a single round. It could be crushed a thousand times over with ease.
Although it couldn't see through Li Yan's cultivation, it could guess that he had already stepped onto the Golden Core path, becoming one of the envied mid-rank cultivators.
With Nascent Soul cultivators and above rarely making appearances, Golden Core cultivators could practically walk sideways through the world.
What shocked the Snow Mosquito King even more was that it had been with Li Yan for many years. From the conversation between Li Yan and Bai Rou on Windy Cool Mountain, it knew that he had only reached Foundation Establishment right before going to the Northern Abyss Demon-Suppressing Pagoda.
'Reaching the Golden Core stage at just over forty years old... Is this talent? This is monstrous! No, in the future, I must cling to his thigh...'
For a Foundation Establishment cultivator to step into the Golden Core realm before the age of one hundred was already considered top-tier aptitude. Li Wuyi, for example, had successfully formed his core in his seventies.
The Snow Mosquito King met Li Yan's gaze. Usually silver-tongued, it was now reduced to a stammer, a chill seeping through its body.
After Li Yan finished speaking, he stared at the Snow Mosquito King for a while longer, the coldness in his eyes slowly dissipating and returning to his usual impassive expression.
"You will go over there and wait. Then you will slowly answer my questions!"
He pointed towards the ball of white mist in front of them. The Snow Mosquito King didn't understand what Li Yan meant, but it figured it couldn't be anything good. Fear immediately washed over its face.
'I was careless this time. In the future, I must not act without absolute certainty. You must remember this lesson, you must. Do! You! Understand?'
The Snow Mosquito King constantly admonished itself in its mind. It thought Li Yan was punishing it, but it also knew that its life was at least not in danger, otherwise it would have already "happily flown away."
But how could it dare to speak now, let alone resist? With a miserable look, it beat its wings and flew into the mist, acting rather brazenly.
It knew that the more of a rogue it appeared to be, the less this baleful star would make things difficult for it. It only hoped it could survive this time. Over so many years, it had come to understand a good deal about Li Yan's personality.
After entering the faint white mist, the Snow Mosquito King tensed its entire body, bracing for the impending, boundless pain. But after a breath, it felt nothing at all.
The Snow Mosquito King couldn't help but stare blankly, its eyes wide, as it felt the white mist envelop its body.
"What's going on? Could... could this be a potent poison that targets the soul?"
At this thought, the Snow Mosquito King felt as if its soul was about to be torn from its body. The more it thought this way, the more it felt that something was wrong with its body.
It had seen the poisons Li Yan concocted before. They were absolutely among the strangest in the world.
Just then, a ripple went through its sea of consciousness. The Snow Mosquito King's divine sense became a little hazy, and Li Yan's voice came through at that exact moment.
"Do you feel anything unusual?"
The moment the Snow Mosquito King opened its eyes, it could no longer see the scene outside the white mist. Li Yan's figure had also vanished.
The white mist before it seemed to have grown much thicker, obscuring its vision and blocking its divine sense.
'I knew he was up to no good. He's trying to trap me in a restriction and torture me...'
The Snow Mosquito King's heart began to tremble. In an instant, many scenes of Li Yan torturing people flashed through its mind.
'In the cave, a Golden Core cultivator's skin is completely red, like a human-skin lantern, his eyes pleading for death as he looks at me.'
'In the sky, a demonic clan cultivator is fighting Li Yan. Suddenly, a piece of his flesh falls off without warning, then another, and another, trailing long green tendons, looking just like a series of meteor hammers. The demonic clan cultivator shrieks miserably...'
The Snow Mosquito King shook its head violently, trying to cast all the fear from its mind. Its years of understanding Li Yan still made it give up on the idea of immediately fleeing.
It looked around and sensed itself, not understanding what Li Yan meant by his question. It answered uncertainly.
"Un... unusual? Master, no, there isn't. You... you can't scare me like this. I know I was wrong, I really know..."
The Snow Mosquito King's tone was already trembling. It was now certain that Li Yan was using some vicious method on it.
Suddenly, its vision blurred, and it found that Li Yan had reappeared before it. The Snow Mosquito King immediately shut its mouth, its face full of fawning and flattery.
Li Yan looked at the Snow Mosquito King, his divine sense carefully sweeping over its body, a look of hesitation in his eyes.
He had been sitting cross-legged in the same spot the whole time, without moving an inch. But he had found that after the Snow Mosquito King entered the faint white mist, when it answered his question, it was speaking to an empty spot, completely ignoring his existence.
'This ball of white mist isn't very thick. At such a close distance, it should be able to see me clearly with its naked eye.'
'But it's just muttering to an empty space. Looking at its mental state, it's quite normal.' Li Yan already had a guess in his mind. He suddenly spoke again softly.
"Alright, you can come back now!"
The Snow Mosquito King in the white mist nodded its head like a pecking chicken.
But in the next moment, Li Yan saw the Snow Mosquito King flap its wings, turn a few circles in place, and land on the ground again, continuing to fawn over the empty space in front of it.
"Master, my loyalty to you can be witnessed by the sun and moon, attested to by heaven and earth..."
Watching the Snow Mosquito King chattering endlessly at nothing, Li Yan stroked his chin. After rubbing it a few times, he nodded.
"So this thirty-first poison is an illusion poison!"
Three days later, Li Yan had already returned the Snow Mosquito King to the Earthen Patch.
He then took out more than a dozen ordinary snow mosquito demonic beasts and tested them one by one. He had basically figured out the properties of the "poison" that had separated from his Fragmented Poison Body this time.
Any living creature that entered the faint white mist would, through breathing and unnoticed absorption through the skin, have the poison enter its body. It would quickly cause them to fall into a strange illusion.
By communicating with all the snow mosquitoes, Li Yan found that the illusion they experienced was related to their thoughts at the time.
After the poison took effect, it would not affect their consciousness or lower their cultivation, but it would cause the poisoned individual to enter a subconscious state.
They would automatically simulate an environment based on their current state of mind, becoming immersed in it and unable to extricate themselves as their consciousness fell into the trap.
But as long as they were removed from the white mist, with the Snow Mosquito King's mental fortitude, it would take about thirty breaths to wake up on its own, while an ordinary snow mosquito would need over a hundred breaths.
This meant that the poison could be dispelled on its own. At the same time, the poison's effect was directly related to the target's mental fortitude and cultivation level.
Even the Snow Mosquito King, already at the Pseudo-Core realm, needed thirty breaths to wake up after leaving the white mist. What about a Golden Core cultivator? Even if it only affected them for a single breath, that would be enough to decide their fate.
Li Yan was extremely excited about this. But what excited him even more came later. For the first two days, he was constantly communicating with the various snow mosquitoes to get test results.
On the third day, he spent his time actively controlling the faint white mist.
In the end, Li Yan was pleasantly surprised to find that not only could he control the density of the faint white mist, turning it colorless, but he could also actively drive the poison to create the illusion he wanted to affect the target.
However, if he actively drove the poison to create a specific illusion, it would consume a large amount of his own divine sense and soul power.
Moreover, the stronger and more numerous the creatures controlled within the illusion poison mist, the more his consumption would increase exponentially, making it harder to maintain the illusion without it breaking.
Take the Snow Mosquito King, a peak second-rank demonic beast, for example. When Li Yan actively drove the illusion poison to create an illusion, he could maintain it for about a hundred breaths. And this was with a full major realm of difference between them.
"The gap between Golden Core and Foundation Establishment is too great. If I were to use this against a Golden Core cultivator, while actively creating an illusion, I might not even be able to maintain it for thirty breaths."
What Li Yan was thinking was not that he could trap the opponent for thirty breaths—a powerful opponent might break the illusion and walk out in a single breath—but that he could maintain the illusion he was actively creating for that duration.
Of course, if there was no special reason, Li Yan just needed to trap the opponent in the illusion poison. As for what illusion would appear, that would depend on what was born from their own heart at that moment.
After all this, Li Yan's phantom form arrived in his sea of consciousness. The current sea of consciousness could be described as "vast and boundless."
Although Li Yan's divine sense power had not yet reached that of a late-stage Golden Core, it had long surpassed that of a mid-stage Golden Core, reaching over three thousand li, about three times that of an ordinary initial-stage Golden Core cultivator's divine sense.
Under the blue sky and white clouds, the previous thousand-zhang lake had expanded by another thousand zhang. The black water rippled, and a gentle breeze blew through the air, stirring the lake's surface.
This place now felt somewhat similar to the Earthen Patch space, but this was a space of consciousness, not a real existence. It was a result of his cultivation method, which was fundamentally different from the Earthen Patch.
Li Yan did not know that when a cultivator's cultivation reached the Great Ascension stage, their sea of consciousness could transform into a real space, becoming a world of its own.
At that time, it could support living beings, who might live for generations without ever knowing they were living in someone else's sea of consciousness.
Each person's sea of consciousness looked different. Li Yan's phantom stood in the air. Focusing his spiritual power, he reached out towards the huge lake below.
During the Foundation Establishment stage, he had obtained the cultivation incantation and the "The Five Elements Return to Primordial Genesis" method. This time, he wondered what else he would get besides the Golden Core stage cultivation incantation.
Although the Gui Water Immortal Sect didn't provide many immortal arts for each realm, or even any at all, when they did, they were bound to be extremely profound. Li Yan couldn't help but look forward to it.
The moment his spiritual power touched the lake's surface, a golden light flashed out of nowhere on the mirror-like black water, and then a dense patch of text appeared.
Li Yan skipped directly past the Qi Condensation and Foundation Establishment chapters and then saw the "Golden Core Qi Refining Chapter" incantation.
Li Yan was not in a hurry to memorize it. Instead, he skipped past it again and focused his spiritual power on what came after the incantation. As expected, he was not disappointed. Here, Li Yan saw an immortal art manual.
"Wave-Hiding Soul-Slaying Art" — "To hide is to be a shadow, appearing and disappearing at one's side, unknown to gods and ghosts, coming and going between heaven and earth like a gentle breeze..."
Li Yan quickly browsed through this immortal art, his heart filled with great joy.
"So it's a complementary immortal art for the Gui-Yi Water-Parting Spike!"
The general summary alone made Li Yan understand the true purpose of the Gui-Yi Water-Parting Spike. It was commonly used for sneak attacks and assassinations.