Chapter 508: Coveting Nirvana

Yiluan had mastered the Retrospection Witchcraft; I had also fallen victim to it, and he actually left this for me as well.

Unfortunately, he doesn't know the Fifth Chapter.

After memorizing the cultivation method from the Fourth Chapter, I again summoned the Ghost Faces to put the box back and had them erase the blood fingerprints.

Including the bloodstains on the mechanism side, I also carefully cleaned them up.

In the uninterrupted time, I began to seize the moment to practice the Retrospection Witchcraft; many skills do not weigh one down.

Until the night of the fourth day, I had a dream.

In the dream, I found myself in a sea of fire.

In that sea of fire, there seemed to be countless heavenly thunder and lightning, constantly striking me, beating me until my body was bruised and bloody, my belly burst open, a fiery red egg fell out from within, and was struck by lightning.

The eggshell was split into pieces, the egg liquid mixed with blood flowed all over the ground; a delicately carved baby, covered in blood, fell to the ground, staring at me with wide round eyes.

It seemed to be pleading for help, yet also resenting me for not protecting him……

I jolted awake from sleep, hugging the blanket and sitting on the bed, unable to regain my senses for a long time.

I didn't know how long I had sat there dazed; even though I later realized that was just a dream, I remained immersed in that heart-wrenching pain, unable to extricate myself.

I repeatedly rubbed my abdomen, making sure the Little Guy was still there; having been annoyed by me, it still moved, which somewhat reassured me.

But over the next two days, such dreams appeared again and again, each one more gruesome and more realistic than the last.

I wasn't sure whether such dreams were related to my practice of the Retrospection Witchcraft; after all, altering memories in the Fifth Chapter is problematic, so I dared not take the risk and thus paused my training.

But it was useless; the dreams persisted.

Furthermore, I began to feel drowsy; as soon as I fell asleep I would dream, and the more I dreamed, the more anxious I became, my spirit deteriorated, creating a vicious cycle.

During those days I became dazed and confused, my body temperature surged sharply, more violent and tumultuous than any previous occurrence.

My whole body ached.

The Innate Curse Mark ached, the Gu Poison flared up, the featherless wings on my back twitched from time to time, and the bones ached as well.

I felt that I was then in a state of near-death while still alive.

In the brief moments of clarity, I began to realize that perhaps my Nirvana Tribulation was truly approaching.

This near-death state, with my whole body on the verge of collapse, urgently needed a Nirvana to cleanse and grant rebirth.

If I could not achieve Nirvana, or if it failed, my life would be over.

I lay helplessly in bed, with no one to help me, and I didn't know what to do next.

Should I now go to Lush Paulownia Mountain?

But I simply lack the energy to get up and fight those guards outside.

During that period, someone came in to check on me, more than once.

But they seemed to know what I was about to face, and they only came to look, taking no other action.

Another two days passed; I didn't know if I had reached the stage of 'the last flicker of life,' when I saw a figure standing beside the bed, looking down at me.

I narrowed my eyes, trying hard to see who he was, but I could not make him out at all.

His face would sometimes be Yiluan's, sometimes Feng Xianqiu's, and sometimes it seemed that half his face grew several pairs of eyes, all greedily fixed on my belly.

I frantically waved my hands, trying to drive him away.

He was coveting my belly!

But no matter how I waved my hands, I could not touch him; he was like a phantom, as if imagined by me.

Finally, after countless changes, his face settled into that of Feng Xianqiu.

The next moment, the phantom vanished.

My belly twitched violently, then returned to calm.

Immediately afterward, I heard a rising and falling chorus of bird calls, and an awe-inspiring force surged from afar, enveloping my whole body.

I felt as if I were wrapped in a bubble, and also as if I had returned to the womb, being enclosed in an egg.

This egg floated in the amniotic fluid, its shell not yet hardened, everywhere crystal clear and transparent, making all my recent discomfort completely disappear at this moment.

I comfortably turned over, and the next moment I suddenly woke up.

My consciousness was clear, but the surrounding environment had not changed.

I am now inside a certain Formation Array; it is not a return to the womb, and the so-called 'egg sac' is not real, but rather a True Qi Circle or a barrier.

I furrowed my brows, my thoughts raced; soon I focused my mind and steadied my breath, summoned the Ghost Faces, and had them send the Soul-guiding Lamp to the Cold Pond in the interior of Phoenix Mountain, there to await me.

There was no spare time left for me; after completing that, I found my body being dragged by that powerful force, rushing swiftly toward a source of heat.

Whoosh… boom.

Two short muffled sounds, the protective membrane surrounding my body just broke like that.

Rolling flames instantly engulfed me.

Before I could react, a heavenly thunderbolt struck down from above.

There was no sound at all.

Like a stone sinking into the deep sea, everything was muffled.

I have witnessed them endure the Heavenly Tribulation more than once; those heavenly thunderbolts crash down, shaking heaven and earth, making the whole world seem to tremble, ears ringing, sometimes even causing a few seconds of deafness.

But here the heavenly thunder is not like that.

They are hidden within this sea of fire, either striking me or striking elsewhere.

Once they strike, they do not immediately dissipate; while darting elsewhere, they quickly recondense, and if luck is bad, the same bolt of heavenly thunder can fall on me repeatedly like a boomerang.

Not to mention lightning.

Here the lightning spreads in sheets, overlapping layer upon layer like a spiderweb, and when overlapped enough it condenses into fireballs.

At the moment a fireball strikes, I feel as if my heart would stop beating.

After a fireball hits the body, it instantly bursts open, dissipating in the sea of fire, awaiting the next condensation.

Is this…… Nirvana?

No wonder the Nirvana Phoenix is so rare; who exactly can walk out alive from this sea of Nirvana fire?

In my view, it's absolutely impossible!

What's even more unbelievable is that, after experiencing three heavenly thunderbolts and I don't know how many lightning strikes, I'm still alive.

The heavenly thunder and lightning struck, passing through my body; aside from my heart stopping for a few seconds, they didn't cause me much damage.

This strange feeling reminded me of a martial arts move I once saw on TV, called 'Striking the Cow from Across the Mountain'.

So-called Striking the Cow from Across the Mountain means attacking another target through an obstacle.

It seemed the heavenly thunder acted on my body, but through me it struck something behind me.

Behind me…… what is there?

I couldn't help but turn my head and look; I saw nothing.

Immediately after, another heavenly thunderbolt came at me; at the moment it touched my body, I stubbornly turned my head to look again.

Upon looking, I was greatly startled.

First to come into view was a pair of wings with a wingspan of two to three meters, massive wings……