The five-and-a-half-year-old baby doctor comes to the city to cure those who refuse to listen.

In the courtyard, it was so quiet you could hear your own heartbeat.

The disciples of Xuanyao Valley on the wall were still watching the show with expressions of amusement, their faces completely drained of color.

They watched helplessly as their junior brother, a living person, was nailed to the ground by a half-eaten candied hawthorn skewer.

The thin bamboo skewer wasn't even stained with much blood.

"You...you're asking for it!"

Zhao Tiansha's eyes instantly turned red.

He felt as if someone had slapped his face hard with the sole of a shoe, and it stung painfully.

He roared, making the courtyard vibrate.

He transformed into a black lightning bolt, leaping down from the wall. His withered hand grew larger in the wind, carrying a terrifying power that seemed capable of crushing the air, and hurtled straight at Chu Chen on the Nine Dragon Cauldron.

"I will grind you to dust!"

The aura of a master at the peak of his power erupted without reservation.

The atmosphere in the courtyard suddenly became heavy. Li Weiguo and Falcon felt as if they had been hit in the chest with a sledgehammer, making it difficult to breathe.

Lin Jianguo's face turned pale, and he instinctively wanted to rush over and hug Chu Chen back.

But Chu Chen was still sitting on that huge bronze cauldron, swinging his short legs.

He even had the leisure to reach out his little hand and pat the body of the cauldron.

"Dinner's ready."

He called out in a childish voice.

Just as Zhao Tiansha's palm, powerful enough to shatter stone tablets, was about to strike Chu Chen's crown chakra.

The whole world seemed to have been muted.

The scene before Zhao Tiansha's eyes began to distort and spin.

That ancient Nine Dragon Cauldron, that wretched child, and those ant-like people in the courtyard—all shattered and vanished like reflections in water.

Instead, there was an endless, thick, white fog.

"Um?"

Zhao Tiansha's palm struck empty air, and he flipped in mid-air before landing steadily.

He looked around warily, finding only six or seven disciples with equally bewildered expressions beside him.

"Elder, what... what kind of sorcery is this?" a disciple asked, his voice trembling.

"What's the panic!" Zhao Tiansha sneered, his face showing disdain.

"A mere illusion, yet you dare to show off your amateur skills before an old master like me!"

He pointed his fingers like a knife and swung them sharply at the thick fog ahead.

A sharp burst of energy sliced ​​through the thick fog like a blade, revealing a vacuum passage several meters long.

But the next second, the surrounding mist seemed to come alive, rushing in and instantly filling the passage.

Everything returned to normal.

Zhao Tiansha frowned.

He tried throwing a punch in another direction, the wind whistling through the air, but the result was the same.

No matter how he attacked, this damned fog seemed endless.

"Come closer! Don't get separated!" Zhao Tiansha shouted in a deep voice.

He sensed that something was wrong.

"Junior Brother Zhang, where are you?" a disciple suddenly exclaimed.

Everyone turned around abruptly, only to find that one of their fellow disciples, who had been standing behind them just moments before, was gone.

It vanished without a trace, as if it had evaporated into thin air.

A chill ran from the soles of everyone's feet straight up to the top of their heads.

Just then.

A child's innocent nursery rhyme echoed softly through the thick fog.

"I searched and searched, and finally found a little kid..."

"Give me a salute, shake my hand, you're my good friend..."

The sound was elusive, sometimes near, sometimes far, like someone singing right next to your ear, or like it was coming from a very far place.

"Who! Who's playing tricks on me! Show yourself!"

One of the bolder disciples mustered his courage and roared.

He had barely finished speaking.

"ah--"

A piercing scream rang out from beside him.

Everyone turned their heads sharply, only to see another disciple beside them with a willow branch, like the sharpest javelin, piercing through his chest from behind, bringing with it a puff of warm blood mist.

That once supple willow branch now shimmered with a metallic luster.

Even more bizarrely, there were no trees around them at all!

"Enemy attack! Form ranks!"

Zhao Tiansha shouted sternly.

However, it was too late.

Screams echoed one after another in the thick fog.

One of the disciples was entangled by vines that suddenly sprang from the ground and dragged into the depths of the thick fog, leaving behind only a series of muffled sobs.

Another disciple was smashed into a pulp by a rock that fell from the sky.

Zhao Tiansha attacked frantically in the direction of the screams, but each time, his attacks were like hitting cotton, only stirring up a cloud of mist and hitting nothing at all.

He watched helplessly as his disciples died one after another in all sorts of bizarre ways.

Fear gripped his heart and completely overwhelmed his reason.

"Pfft!"

The final scream subsided.

In the thick fog, only Zhao Tiansha remained.

His whole body was tense, and his breathing was rapid, like a wild beast driven to the brink of despair.

"This...this is not martial arts..."

His lips trembled as he muttered to himself.

A martial arts master's inner energy can split mountains and shatter rocks, but it can never turn tree branches into steel spears or make rocks grow legs.

This was a power he had never seen before, one that he had only seen scattered records of in the sect's oldest texts.

Formation!

Immortal techniques!

The moment this thought popped into Zhao Tiansha's head, he felt his worldview crumble.

"Who...who are you?!"

He roared hoarsely at the empty, thick fog.

……

Outside the thick fog, the courtyard was calm and peaceful.

Li Weiguo and Falcon stared in disbelief at the motionless thick fog in front of them.

They could hear faint screams coming from inside, each one more piercing than the last, before gradually fading away.

From the outside, the fog appeared as calm as the morning mist, without a ripple.

Chu Chen remained seated atop the Nine Dragon Cauldron.

He had somehow acquired a string of glistening candied hawthorns in his hand.

He took a bite and mumbled something to Lin Jianguo, who was standing next to him with a similarly blank expression.

"Grandpa, see, I told you to take hide-and-seek seriously!"

"They didn't play properly, so they were eliminated."

Lin Jianguo opened his mouth, but couldn't utter a single word.

He now looked at that cloud of fog as if he were looking at the mouth of a monster that could devour everything.

And his beloved grandson is the owner who feeds the monster.

……

In the thick fog.

Zhao Tiansha completely broke down.

He dared not move again, but leaned against a cold stone, putting all his strength to the limit, and warily watching his surroundings.

The nursery rhyme started playing again.

"Let's walk in a circle, let's walk in a circle..."

"We've walked one lap, and there's another one to go..."

Zhao Tiansha felt like his nerves were about to snap.

He turned around abruptly and looked at the "rock" he was leaning against.

That's not a stone at all.

That was clearly a stone lion commonly found in gardens, used to ward off evil spirits.

At this moment, the stone lion was slowly, very slowly, turning its head.

A hint of mockery flickered in the eyes of that stone sculpture as it stared intently at him.

"what!"

Zhao Tiansha let out a strange cry, his soul almost leaving his body, and he scrambled forward as fast as he could.

He didn't know how long he ran until he crashed into a big tree and stopped.

He leaned against the tree trunk, panting heavily, his heart pounding as if it would jump out of his throat.

"Huff...huff...a hallucination, it must be a hallucination..."

He comforted himself.

Just then, a human face slowly appeared on the trunk of the big tree he was leaning against.

A face that's making faces and grinning.

"uncle."

That face actually spoke.

I've found you!

A cold breath brushed against his neck from behind.