Sheng Lingyuan gave him a glance.

"Um..." Xuan Ji paused for a moment, then improvised, "The History Museum has... that restored 3D map."

"You seem to know quite a bit." Luckily the emperor didn't know what a "restored map" was, so he managed to fool him for the time being.

Sheng Lingyuan sneered and walked along the path by the pond through the garden.

He plucked a palace lamp from the wall and said to Xuan Ji, "Looks like they're targeting me."

Xuan Ji followed him, dripping with sweat. Hearing this, his eyes flickered and he thought to himself, 'Well, not necessarily.'

The late night at the Du Ling Palace was incredibly quiet.

Unlike in historical dramas, after the gates were locked and curfew was enforced, there were no guards patrolling and all the servants stayed obediently in their designated areas, not daring to move around.

The only light came from the flickering palace lamps, casting a dim glow on the solemn walls and creating an oppressive atmosphere that made it hard to breathe.

"Why is it so quiet?"

"On the foundation of the Du Ling Palace, there are paintings of the Eight Trigrams of the Mountains and Seas, so there is no need for night patrols. It's normal to feel uncomfortable walking around at midnight." Sheng Lingyuan didn't turn around, but he seemed to sense Xuan Ji's discomfort.

He lifted the palace lamp and shone it on an ancient stone statue of a beast god not far away. The beast god exuded a primitive wildness and ferocity. Its eyes glinted in the light, and there seemed to be a soul within, fierce and bloodthirsty.

"There are sixty-four prehistoric spiritual objects guarding the formation's eyes. Do you recognize them? They've all fought against you in the past few days."

Xuan Ji: "..."

Should he feel honored?

"Oh, by the way," Sheng Lingyuan brought up the topic, perhaps remembering the little demon's poor performance in school, "give me your claw."

Xuan Ji stared at him expressionlessly.

"Come on, give me your hand," Sheng Lingyuan urged.

"What...hiss!"

Xuan Ji opened his palm and saw that the emperor was not afraid of getting burned, dipping his finger in the melted lamp oil and drew a "Clear Mind Talisman" in his palm.

The modern version of the Clear Mind Talisman is very common, and many special abilities can use it. Its effect is similar to that of menthol, basically just cooling and refreshing, and it is most commonly used before exams when seeking divine intervention.

However, when Emperor Sheng Lingyuan drew this talisman, Xuan Ji immediately felt the scorching hot lamp oil turn into liquid nitrogen.

His entire hand was frozen and ached, as if his joints were stiff.

Instinctively, he pulled his hand back and clenched his fist tightly.

Incredibly, as soon as he clenched his fist, the piercing coldness disappeared.

Xuan Ji tried to open and close his fingers a few times and found that as soon as he relaxed his fingers even slightly, they would immediately be frozen again.

He had to keep exerting force and clenching his fist to avoid the coldness.

"Get a good grip and remember, no matter what you see later, do not show any emotions," Sheng Lingyuan said. "Do you know what a heart demon is?"

Xuan Ji thought he knew, after all, it was a common theme in fantasy novels.

But he couldn't quite put it into words and could only vaguely say, "It's like... something that's hard to accept?"

Sheng Lingyuan: "..."

The emperor looked up at the oppressive sky above the Du Ling Palace and thought of the lively and mundane life of this little demon, almost unable to resist sighing.

"Everyone has things they can't let go of, but non-cultivators can't really be considered to have inner demons," Sheng Lingyuan said tactfully. "Ordinary people either work hard for a living, or indulge in sensory pleasures. Even if they sit quietly at home, their eyes never leave that little box of yours...that 'cell phone', their eyes, hands, and minds never rest, too busy to have inner demons."

Xuan Ji: "..."

Well, I guess internet addicts don't deserve to have inner demons.

"In your so-called 'special abilities' training, you only focus on the 'techniques' and neglect the cultivation of the heart. The cultivators of the past were different. When they entered into seclusion, it could last for a few days or even hundreds of years.

"During this time, they cut off all external distractions, questioned the heavens and earth, and reflected on themselves. Only then could all kinds of obsessions be infinitely magnified, and the demons of the heart would arise. These demons take your seven emotions as soil and your six desires as rain, born from your own heart and then devouring you. If you cannot break free from them for years, they will exhaust your mental strength and lead you to madness."

Some contemporary psychologists also believe that excessive self-reflection is harmful to both the body and mind.

Many symptoms of anxiety and depression are caused by a lack of communication with the outside world and an inward focus of attention.

Xuan Ji roughly understood and asked, "So why do we need to cultivate?"

Is it for energy conservation and emissions reduction?

The two of them walked in the desolate and oppressive night of the Du Ling Palace, one in front and one behind. Only the sound of their footsteps accompanied them under light of the palace lamp.

Sheng Lingyuan had his hands behind his back and slowly said, "The ten zhang of worldly desires is like a greenhouse, with a colorful world surrounding you, carrying you east and west, but also protecting you from being entangled by the demon of the heart, letting you live a muddled life in the mundane world.

"The cultivator chooses to exile himself from the worldly desires, wandering alone, seeking the great path and eternal life. The cultivator looks at the mundane world and feels that they are ignorant and unfree, while the mundane world looks at the cultivator and probably doesn't understand the pleasure of practicing hard for eternal life. Both have their own reasons, it's just a matter of personal choice."

Perhaps because he himself had no bottom line in his actions, as an ancient person born over three thousand years ago, Sheng Lingyuan was surprisingly enlightened.

As someone in the midst of the conflict, he viewed his political enemies and the enemy demons with an unusually peaceful perspective, almost with a historical objectivity.

He seemed to understand the truth behind all existence...no wonder he was highly accepted in contemporary society.

To a cultivator, ordinary people must seem like actors in a play.

Looking at too much pure white snow can cause snow blindness, and a pure white path can make one blind to the heart. One must have an extremely strong will and endure great self-consumption to not be crushed by the lofty and distant path of seeking truth and freedom.

The Shadow person could have lived their lives going with the flow, but Sheng Lingyuan unintentionally "awakened" them, causing them to struggle repeatedly between their innate servitude and their consciousness for three thousand years.

No wonder he hated the emperor so much that he gritted his teeth.

Once a greedy ruler, King Wei Yu fell into demonic ways. The witch people held a grudge against him, and the Shadow people's heavenly demon... was born from the anger of a long life.

These three different races, with their three different demons, were all born from the same source - the heavenly demon of Sheng Lingyuan.

In order to rise up, the human race once used the demon cauldron to open the Pandora box of demons, but in doing so, they also planted a deep-seated danger. Everything seems to be interconnected, and even the slightest action can have far-reaching consequences.

It's truly terrifying to think about.

Xuan Ji couldn't help but stare at the back of Sheng Lingyuan and lose himself in thought...

Has the emperor ever cut himself off from the outside world and asked the heavens and earth for answers?

And if so, what did he discover?

"Normally, heart demons require long-term cultivation to have room to grow. But this Demon Illusion Realm, to put it simply, is a formation that quickly plants heart demons," explained Sheng Lingyuan in a leisurely manner.

"Here, everything that you usually suppress and can't remember will be brought out by the illusion realm. Once your emotions are stirred, even if you're not a cultivator and know that this is an illusion, you will become a host for heart demons."

In other words, this illusionary space is like an "heart demon virus" accelerator.

Xuan Ji asked, "So how do we break the formation?"

Sheng Lingyuan said, "There's no need to break it. Maintaining this demon illusion is quite exhausting. Even if he drains the earth veins of Jiangzhou, it will only last for a short while before he collapses. As long as you hold onto the Clear Heart Talisman I gave you, don't let him stir up any heart demons in you and become a charger for this illusion. Soon enough, it will run out of power."

Xuan Ji: "..."

He could even use a charger as an analogy!

If he were to wander around in modern society for a few days, would he be able to catch some lightning and repair a battery with his bare hands?

"Wait a minute," Xuan Ji snapped out of his thoughts. "Why do I need to be the only one to pay attention? Didn't you just say that this illusion was aimed at you?"

What did he mean by that?

Was he looking down on him?

Sheng Lingyuan just smiled and remained silent.

"Your Majesty, is this discrimination?" Xuan Ji protested.

Sheng Lingyuan lifted the palace lantern and a familiar palace appeared before his eyes. Despite the high eaves, it was unusually oppressive - this was the Emperor's sleeping palace, which Xuan Ji had dreamed of before.

"I lived in the East Inner Palace for over twenty years," Sheng Lingyuan acted as a tour guide and introduced, "Let's go, I'll take you in for a stroll."

As he spoke, a group of eunuchs entered in file, and Sheng Lingyuan followed them with the palace lantern in hand.

The palace was already dark, and the palace people were all wearing soft-soled cloth shoes, with their sleeves tightly tied. When they passed by quickly, they were like a group of alert raccoon dogs, making no sound.

No one dared to lift their heads or even breathe loudly. When they arrived at the entrance of the inner palace, they knelt down quietly in a row, waiting for the summons from inside.

Xuan Ji noticed that each of them was holding a pottery jar.

"What is this?" he asked. Sheng Lingyuan didn't answer.

At this moment, the leading palace maid whispered cautiously outside the hall, her voice barely louder than a whisper: "Your Majesty, the new batch of 'Soul Shock' has been cooked. As per your orders, we added thirty percent more."

A cold voice came from inside the inner hall: "Put it down and leave."

The eunuchs didn't dare to breathe and quickly packed the ceramic jars before hurrying out.

In the blink of an eye, there was not a single ghostly figure left in the sleeping hall of the Emperor Wu's palace.

Even the closest attendants had to wait in the outer hall. Entering without being summoned at night was a capital offense.

"Soul Shock?" Xuan Ji turned his head and asked, "Isn't that the curse of the Witch Clan?"

He remembered that when Aluojin was a mischievous child, he was hung up and beaten by his father for stealing the "Soul Shock Curse" from the Great Sage and putting it under Sheng Lingyuan's pillow.

Sheng Lingyuan walked in and said, "Yes."

The curtains of the inner chamber's bed were lifted, and the emperor from three thousand years ago beckoned a pottery jar with his hand.

The two emperors were only two meters apart, but thankfully their attire was different enough to tell them apart.

Xuan Ji couldn't help but worry that something unexpected might happen if the two emperors got too close, so he quickly grabbed Sheng Lingyuan's coat sleeve and said, "Wait, shouldn't you keep some distance from yourself?"

"It's fine," Sheng Lingyuan calmly gazed at his past self, "Only when the mind is stirred and one is lost in illusion, unable to distinguish between inside and outside, will they merge with their memory of themselves."

Xuan Ji followed his gaze to the former emperor in his memory, who expressionlessly opened a pottery jar.

Inside were some strange leaves with round, rolling witch language burned onto them using some secret method.

The emperor picked up a piece and looked at it before pouring the entire jar of "Soul Shock Spell" into the incense burner at the head of the bed. Then he placed the incense burner on the bedside table and calmly removed his outer robe, lying down as if it were routine.

The "Soul Shock" leaves in the incense burner slowly curled up, emitting a terrifying white smoke that slowly enveloped the person on the bed.

Xuan Ji was shocked and asked, "What...what are you doing? Are you trying to kill yourself?"

Sheng Lingyuan, holding the palace lamp, calmly replied, "It's just the Soul Shock Curse. Didn't I tell you before that although it can cause nightmares, it's also a good thing for tempering one's mind..."

"What on earth?" Xuan Ji furrowed his brows, feeling exhausted from dealing with elderly relatives obsessed with health products.

"Is there any scientific basis for this? The mind cannot be honed through nightmares, otherwise, horror movies would be considered 'brain-boosting equipment' instead of 'curses'. I think this can only lead to sleep disorders and nerve damage - your migraines might have been caused by this... Who's outside?"

A light and hurried footstep could be heard outside the sleeping quarters. A palace maid quietly lit a lamp, casting a shadow on the window.

The person outside didn't dare to come in or make a sound, just waiting silently.

As the light came on, the white smoke from the burning incense dissipated quickly.

Sheng Lingyuan, who had already closed his eyes, was disturbed and slightly annoyed as he asked, "What's going on?"

The person kneeling at the door replied softly, "Your Majesty, Prince Wei Yun has returned."

Upon hearing this, Emperor Sheng Lingyuan immediately flipped out of bed and hurriedly brushed off the incense burner to dispel his fear.

He spoke quickly, "Take him to the South Study and wait for me there. I'll be there shortly."

Without waiting for the eunuch to bring him clothes, he hastily threw on his outer robe that he had just taken off, not caring about his appearance. He walked out in a hurry, almost as if he was barefoot.

The Emperor was usually calm and collected, never one to lose his temper.

Xuan Ji had been with him for some time and had never seen him so agitated before.

He began to suspect that he had an improper relationship with Wei Yun.

Oh, and he had even personally sealed Wei Yun's tomb!

Lost in thought, Xuan Ji and Emperor Sheng Lingyuan followed their memories and arrived at the South Study.

Wei Yun returned in a hurry, and there was no fire in the South Study. The room was chilly, so the eunuch had to give him a hand warmer to hold.

Xuan Ji saw the living Prince Wei Yun and noticed that even when he was alive, he had a face full of bitterness and resentment, not much happier than the corpse at the bottom of the sea.

"Your Majesty." Wei Yun bowed and said, his whole body covered in dust, his hair unwashed for months, soaked in dew, and his pants covered in mud.

"Please forgive me, Your Majesty. I rushed here and didn't have time to tidy up."

"Get up, Ah Yun, you've worked hard."

Young Emperor Sheng Lingyuan swept away his previous coldness and ordered someone to bring him a bowl of hot soup. Wei Yun thanked the emperor and finished his soup in just a few minutes.

Meanwhile, the young emperor squirmed in his seat as if there were a nail sticking out of it, changing positions uncomfortably.

He impatiently waited for Wei Yun to put down his bowl before dismissing the attendants and eagerly asking, "So, did you find any clues?"

Wei Yun respectfully replied, "Yes, Your Majesty. I visited the winged clans, and the sword spirit you described was originally a bright red color with auspicious symbols on its head. The eggshell it hatched from had five-colored radiance. Such a spiritual creature can only be from the Vermilion Bird clan."

After listening, Sheng Lingyuan was first stunned, then settled down and pondered, tapping his knee with his fingers.

"Impossible," he said in a deep voice after a while. "The Vermilion Bird clan was wiped out by the demon king decades ago. They wouldn't have left any survivors."

"Yes, but there is another hidden story," Wei Yun replied.

"You know, among the demon race, the more noble the lineage, the harder it is to have offspring. The Vermilion Bird clan is an ancient innate spirit creature, possessing divine power, but reproduction is difficult. In the past hundred years, they have only had one new offspring. Unfortunately, it coincided with the loss of spiritual energy in the demon realm, and many ordinary little demons were stillborn.

"The divine bird clan was not spared either. The clan leader and several elders personally protected the egg, but they still couldn't save the little Vermilion Bird inside - the eggshell should have had five-colored auspicious clouds swirling around it, but the clouds were stagnant, and inside was a stillborn that couldn't hatch. During the Nanming Valley incident, this stillborn had just been buried."

"Stillborn?" asked Sheng Lingyuan.

"Your Majesty, the stillborns of the demon race, who were unable to be born due to insufficient spiritual energy during their formation, are not the same as the dead infants understood by the human race. They are in a state of neither life nor death, and the demon race refers to such stillborns as 'Heavenly Spirits.' There are many secret techniques that use Heavenly Spirits as bait."

"You mean..."

"If I'm not mistaken, the original form of the Heavenly Demon Sword Spirit is probably this Vermillion Bird Heavenly Spirit. It was cut out of its eggshell by the human race and sacrificed by eighty-one experts who carried the human race's fortune during the Great Demon Sacrifice, thus creating the Heavenly Demon Sword.

"Your Majesty, think about it. With the power of the Heavenly Demon Sword, how could an ordinary little demon withstand it? Only a predestined spiritual object with the power of gods and demons could do so. Moreover, the birthplace of the Heavenly Demon Sword was the Vermillion Bird Temple."

The amount of information was overwhelming, and Xuan Ji was stunned listening on the side.

The young emperor spoke with an uncharacteristic impatience, "You said before that if we find the original form of the Heavenly Demon Sword Spirit, we can repair the Heavenly Demon Sword. But if, as you say, its original form is the Vermilion Bird..."

"Vermilion Bird Heavenly Spirit, Your Majesty. Heavenly Spirit forging has its own peculiarities, and I can explain in detail."

Sheng Lingyuan waved his hand, "Go ahead."

"Usually, when a sword breaks, its spirit will also be destroyed. But I searched through our clan's records on refining weapons and found an exception. There was a long sword whose blade had snapped, but it was made of rare thousand-year-old mysterious iron. The sword's owner sought out one of our clan's skilled craftsmen and asked for the sword to be reforged.

"The original spirit of the sword was a rabbit heavenly spirit. During the second refining process, the craftsman, who was also a skilled earthen alchemist, wanted to restore the sword as much as possible to its original state. So, he found another rabbit heavenly spirit to use as the new spirit. After the mysterious iron sword was reforged, the craftsman was surprised to find that the sword spirit had 'died and come back to life.'"

The young emperor's eyes lit up, surprising Xuan Ji.

It was a light he had never seen in the eyes of Sheng Lingyuan three thousand years later.

"Our ancestors believed that this is the characteristic of the 'Heavenly Spirit'. You know the heavenly rules, which involves refining living beings into tools, belongs to the second level. It must give way to the first level of heavenly rules - 'Life, Aging, Sickness, and Death'.

"But using the Heavenly Spirit to refine tools is different. The Heavenly Spirit is originally something that is neither alive nor dead, but it gains intelligence after being refined into a tool, which is considered 'alive'. As a result, the weapon spirit is of the first level, while the weapon body is of the second level.

"The weapon spirit may be able to detach from the weapon body and become alive. The key to refining living beings into tools is 'blood' and 'bones'. Blood is the source of the spirit, and bones are the form of the spirit. If we can find bones and blood that are of the same origin, and refine the Heavenly Demon Sword again under the same conditions, perhaps we can save the sword spirit!"

Xuan Ji was stunned and turned to look at the Sheng Lingyuan beside him, who was from three thousand years later.

Once again, the Emperor, dressed in a stone-colored long coat, stood against the wall with his lantern in hand, looking at his past self from three thousand years ago with indifference.

He was quite fashionable, leaving his coat unbuttoned.

"Yes, it is true," said the Emperor to the shocked little demon. "My sword was broken, and back then, Wei Yun, the 'Tian'er,' was by my side. I ordered him to find a way to repair the Demon Sword."

His tone was casual, as if it were a trivial matter.

However, Xuan Ji noticed that his indifference was forced.

This was the Demon Illusion Realm, where every blade of grass and every tree was born to provoke the heavenly demon. There could be no insignificant matters here.

Xuan Ji thought again about the mysterious wooden doll.

Sheng Lingyuan rarely spoke so definitively, so why was he so sure that the wooden doll couldn't be Zhi Chun?

For some reason, Xuan Ji's heart began to beat faster and his fist involuntarily loosened.