Ultragenic Warlord

Chapter 604: Illusory Training

"Isn't this... me?!" Zhang Lie finally recognized that he was the one being depicted on the portrait, but that the artist had taken certain liberties with his appearance.

The Baimei… Zhang Lie finally remembered who they were now! While trying to hunt down disaster-grade lifeforms, he had slaughtered a post-peak-grade lifeform following the list collated by the monarch of stars.

Unexpectedly, the alien race living at the foot of the mountain which this beast made its home treated the beast like a deity. The fact that Zhang Lie had slaughtered it was naturally a source of tension.

Zhang Lie had just killed the lifeform when the alien priest and his followers had come up to the top of the mountain for a sacred ritual, and they caught Zhang Lie red-handed. Fortunately for the Baimei, their priest was intelligent enough to venerate Zhang Lie as their new god instead.

Zhang Lie had left them a map and a command to find him in Renhuang—and the Baimei had indeed made that thousand-mile journey.

Zhang Lie found their dedication remarkable and unfortunately rather risible, but he didn't know what to think about the fact that they had begun trying to spread their religion.

Yun Bing continued, "Many of the citizens of Renhuang saw your fight against the asura, and they also witnessed your strength for themselves. They already revere you, so the religion is spreading at an amazing rate."

Was Zhang Lie supposed to stop them? He felt as though he would just make matters worse. With his current strength, he really was quite indistinguishable from a god. In the end, his desire to avoid trouble won out. "Very well—let them be."

Once he had finished his business, he would immediately ascend to the third realm; he could afford to let his successor deal with the issue, couldn't he?

Yun Bing was basically able to manage the entire kingdom on her own, and she would only come to Zhang Lie with matters too important for her to deal with. After making a few other reports, she turned to leave.

Meanwhile, Zhang Hanxiang had already finished choosing her new mount. Zhang Lie marveled at how smoothly things were going for her—it had taken him far too long to try to finish maxing out his peak gene fragments himself.

Subsequently, Zhang Lie began to train the members of Team Zenith, Zhang Hanxiang, and others in resisting illusion-based techniques by constructing nightmares for them.

At that very moment, their eyes were all gleaming with a rainbow sheen. Zhang Lie had them experience an illusion, then wake up after a set amount of time. He would repeat that process over and over again, until they were able to develop some resistance to it—just like how you could develop resistance to poisons by exposing yourself to small quantities of poison at a time.

Zhang Lie's training intensified in a similar manner. He started by constructing small nightmares for them, ones that weren't completely realistic and would allow them to identify the differences between dream and reality. Ideally, they would be able to jolt themselves awake.

Subsequently, he would inflict more detailed and more complicated nightmares on them, until they were almost unable to distinguish between dream and reality, their senses dulled and muddied.

Zhang Lie felt as though it was almost time to stop. Short bouts of illusion were acceptable, but if they were to experience these illusions for too long, they could easily develop mental problems.

He was rather satisfied with Team Zenith's ability to resist these illusions, which had started out strong and was growing even stronger with his training. More surprisingly, however, was Hong Xi—her original resistance was even higher than those of the members of Team Zenith.

Although she still couldn't compare to Zhang Lie, who had reincarnated, she was still miles beyond the others in terms of mental resilience.

This was largely an artifact of her upbringing and childhood—she had had to grow strong in a clan besieged by what seemed to be an unassailable foe in order to take care of her brother. It was a credit to her resilience that she had even survived so long.

Zhang Lie was also shocked that Zhang Hanxiang's mental resilience was on par with those of Team Zenith's. His sister was far less a greenhouse flower than he had given her credit for.

He caressed his sister's head lovingly. "Very good. Keep working hard."

Although Zhang Lie had deliberately softened the impact of her nightmares, it was impressive enough that she had gotten to the third stage in his training already.

Zhang Hanxiang glanced at him with visible unease and dissatisfaction. "Are we still continuing, Brother?"

Li Feng gasped as he lay on the floor drawing breath. "Captain, this is the most horrifying, most disgusting training I've ever experienced!"

Perhaps a hundred years might have passed in an illusion, and even if you knew your world were fake, you didn't know how to break out. Everyone within seemed as though they were real, and you could easily develop some feelings for them.

Worse still, Zhang Lie liked to layer these illusions one within the next like a matryoshka doll. Upon breaking out of the first set of illusions, you would find yourself in a second set, rather than reality. And when you discovered something wrong with the second set of illusions and broke through that as well, you might find yourself in a third set.

Yang Ze's forehead beaded with sweat. "I killed myself in the illusion—only to find myself in another one!"

If not for the fact that Zhang Lie would break them out of their illusions after a set period of time, Yang Ze wouldn't have been able to distinguish reality from illusion. Each layer of illusion was more realistic than the last, and it was almost impossible to distinguish them all.

The first layer was obviously a dream. The second layer seemed real, but contained events that would never happen in reality. The third layer, on the other hand, was almost a perfect copy of the real world.

In general, the first layer was a pleasant dream, the second a nightmare situated in the real world, and the third a dream that seemed infinitely close to being real, just like the one in which Amurong had found himself.

At times, Zhang Lie would switch the order up, turning the first layer into a nightmare, the second a pleasant dream, and the third a near-reality nightmare. Unless you were able to distinguish illusion from reality, you could very well be trapped deep within your mind.

Fang Yi rolled his eyes at Yang Ze. "You're complaining about three layers? I'm already on the fourth—there's still a long way to go."

Yang Ze was repulsed. "Four layers?! Captain, just how many layers of illusions did you prepare?"

Zhang Lie replied calmly, "It doesn't matter how many layers there are. An illusion is just that, nothing more—as long as you're able to cleanly distinguish between illusion and reality, as long as you have that willpower, you can break through even 99 layers of illusions."

"99 layers! No, there's no way!" Yang Ze pretended to slump down and froth from his mouth.

Beside him, Hong Xi really did begin to vomit. Her face was pale, almost stark white. Sun Mengmeng patted her back as she sat by her side. It took Hong Xi a long while to recover, and her face remained pallid all throughout.

"Just what did you see to make you so uncomfortable?"

Hong Xi shuddered with her entire body, as though she didn't want to relive her experience ever again.