The entire sect is obsessed with love, but I'm the only one who's truly insane.

Lin Du wasn't very patient, especially when she knew roughly what the outcome would be.

The ghost within the skull did not respond; there was only silence.

With a crack, the skull shattered.

Immediately following was the crack of a whip, and the bones of the deceased scattered in all directions with a clatter.

The onlookers shivered all at once.

"And what about you?"

This time, Lin Du received a response.

She closed her eyes and saw the answer the ghost had given her.

This place is called Lance City, the largest central city in the Lance world.

At first, no one thought there was anything wrong with the world of rhyming verses, until disasters occurred frequently, the sea turned into a lake, and the sun and moon gradually dimmed.

For over a thousand years, no one has ascended to immortality, and the spiritual energy has become increasingly thin. The spiritual veins and spirit stone mines seem to take even longer to generate spiritual energy than before.

Only then did a high-level cultivator confirm that the Lanju Realm might be collapsing.

The collapsing small world will gradually become unable to leave from the inside, unable to ascend, and eventually the spiritual energy will be exhausted, and the cultivators will be the first to die.

Nobody wants to die.

When the sun and moon disappear, the last connection between people and the Way of Heaven also vanishes, leaving only the pure suppression of rules.

So the high-level cultivators joined forces and tried many methods to open the dimensional gate, but to no avail.

The final, desperate struggle is a sacrifice.

They sacrificed those whose cultivation was not high enough to be among the first to die, gathering their spiritual and soul power and transferring it to the 217 highest-level cultivators in the entire world.

When their cultivation level instantly surpasses the suppression level of this world, it might force the small world to send them out.

However, the Heavenly Dao rules of the collapsed small world were no longer complete, and they failed.

The enraged world unleashed its strongest sandstorm ever, completely engulfing and burying the city of Lance.

Two hundred and seventeen high-level cultivators were thus concealed.

The accumulation of resentment over a thousand years has quietly caused changes in the great formation.

After reading the story the ghost had told him, Lin Du paused for a moment, then laughed. "At a time like this, to still need three parts truth and seven parts falsehood—who are you trying to fool?"

Every word and sentence is a desperate struggle, but does anyone care about the tens of thousands of humble lives lost?

These words might fool minor cultivators like Jin Xuan and Yuan Ye, but they couldn't fool her at all.

The formation was layered upon layered. She only needed to walk into the city to find out how many layers of formations were stacked together and what their backup plan was.

"You're not being honest," Lin Du said, tightening his grip.

Another click.

The ghost let out a resentful roar in the air before being shattered by Ni Jinxuan's powerful whip.

Lin Du casually raised his eyes, "This is Lance City. A natural disaster buried it, but most of the things are still here. Go and take what you need."

The onlookers hesitated to move. "You...you guys go first?"

Lin Du shook his head and placed his hand on the other skull. "I haven't finished asking yet."

The onlookers exchanged glances: Was the question not finished? Or was it not completely broken?

"Yan Qing, you come too."

Yan Qing's face remained calm and composed, but his heart was in turmoil.

He remembered that after the spirit-summoning technique was performed, it was necessary to reason with the spirit and appeal to its emotions. Only if the spirit was willing to speak could the spirit-summoning be successful.

What kind of junior uncle would threaten people like that? The fact that the ghosts would listen to her can only be attributed to her coercion.

Yan Qing raised his hand and cast a spell to approach, but immediately his soul felt the fierce spirit tearing at him. He quickly kicked it, and then drew the large sword from his back, splitting the white bone in half with one stroke.

"Possession of another's body damages one's virtue; senior, please take heed of this."

The blade's energy was extremely fierce, even leaving a mark on the ground of the altar.

Several cultivators took a step back in unison. They had previously thought that Yan Qing was the most normal-looking of the four disciples of the Supreme Sect, so they were closest to him. The sword energy almost hit their toes.

Now they've realized that none of them in their Supreme Sect are normal, and we should stay away from them.

More and more people arrived, landing one after another.

The people who had arrived earlier stood timidly in a corner of the altar, amidst a pile of white bones. Four disciples of the Supreme Sect, one wielding a knife, another a whip, and the last holding a zither, were playing a requiem. The music was mournful and chilling, enough to send shivers down one's spine.

The last one, who looked incredibly thin and disappointed everyone, was the number one in talent, who crushed a skull with his bare hands.

Then, the pretty female cultivator in a pink dress who was holding a whip lashed out with it.

"Holy crap, what are these disciples of the Supreme Sect doing? Crushing bones and whipping corpses??? What kind of grudge is this?"

The scene was so bizarre that no one noticed someone in the corner suddenly clutching their head and letting out a silent scream of pain.

Lin Du finally got the answer she wanted.

According to this ghost, the more than two hundred cultivators made two preparations back then.

If the sacrificial power is insufficient, then the Yin-Gathering and Evil-Nourishing Array will be activated to prevent the souls of the dead from dissipating. Ordinary people's three souls and seven spirits will completely dissipate in forty-nine days, and since the small world has already collapsed, it is impossible to reincarnate. Therefore, we can only wait for the power outside the small world to open the boundary gate so that the small world can see the light of day again.

The red willow was an accident, but not entirely an accident.

From the moment the red willow transformed into a demon, the person who set up the formation came up with a better idea. The red willow was growing right at the eye of the formation, and as long as they continuously nourished it with the resentment of yin spirits, the red willow could cultivate into a great demon.

Possessing another's body is not easy and can easily lead to more mutations, such as one body with two souls, or a cultivator risking their life to self-destruct.

However, if the red willow branches transform into their original human form after consuming people, their spirits can enter the willow branches, use their power to cut themselves off from the red willow, and take back the original human identity. When the time for training in the secret realm is up, and the outside world opens the gate to the small world, they can blend into the crowd and reach the new world intact.

"The cannibalism is Liu's doing; what does it have to do with us?"

The eerie spirit chuckled, "If we could get out, who would want to be trapped and die in this place?"

"After all, the ones who truly killed those 197 cultivators weren't us, but you outsiders who opened Pandora's Box, weren't you?"

Lin Du smiled. "No, of course it's wrong."

She looked up, then crushed the ghost's skull with her hand. "Of course not."

"You were wrong from the moment you sacrificed all the innocent low-level cultivators and even civilians."

If it weren't for the tens of thousands of unsuspecting civilians who were sacrificed, this red willow wouldn't have become a demon.

The resentment of just 217 cultivators cannot nurture a great demon.

"Your escape was made possible by the blood and hatred of countless living people."

Lin Du doesn't consider herself a righteous person. She doesn't think her values ​​are particularly upright. She only knows that she will never involve innocent people in her affairs.

"They're all going to die anyway! If they die early and are sacrificed, at least their deaths have some value!"

Lin Du blinked. "According to you, you have no value now, so you should die."

"Jinxuan, the whip."

The whip whistled through the air, and the struggling ghost, trying to escape, let out a mournful howl, gradually appearing as a gray-black phantom in the air.

Just then, a person in the corner tilted their head, grabbed the neck of the person next to them, and threw them directly into the altar.

The dark figure then crashed straight into the body of the cultivator who had been thrown out.