To break the "Dream of Millet" formation, there are two paths, the orthodox way and the unorthodox one.
The orthodox method is to use sheer strength to overcome trickery.
Because while "Dream of Millet" is a formation of time and illusion, and easy to fall into, its rank isn't actually that high. It doesn't even compare to the Reversal Wave Array that Gu Fangchen had modified and set up earlier.
As long as one's Divine Path cultivation is high enough, it can naturally be broken with ease.
However, for Gu Fangchen, the orthodox way was definitely out of the question.
The unorthodox way was much simpler.
It had only three requirements.
First, at least ninth-rank Divine Path cultivation.
Second, find the formation's core.
Third, destroy the core.
And the reason this method is called unorthodox is precisely because it requires almost no technique, not even a real understanding of formations.
Because "Dream of Millet" has two cores.
The first is a fixed, external core, hidden within the spiritual patterns of the formation, which one must find manually.
But for an illusion formation, that visible core is concealed within countless people, events, and objects. Even someone like Gu Fangchen would hardly be able to find it.
After all, in a game, you'd at least get clues to solve the puzzle.
But now, in this formless illusion, what appears isn't something Gu Fangchen can control. To play "spot the difference" for decades inside this mess, that's like climbing to heaven.
And the second core is a mechanism core, it's the entrant himself.
As long as the person trapped in the formation dies, and their divine sense is extinguished for an instant, the formation collapses on its own.
That's why the Divine Path cultivation is required.
The first realm of the Divine Path is called Meditation.
Those who enter Meditation gain a naturally steady mind, unshaken by external forces. Their consciousness remains calm and firm, symbolizing willpower far beyond that of ordinary people.
If one likens human consciousness to a flame, then entering Meditation is like placing a glass cover over it.
From then on, no wind can extinguish it.
Of course, unless the wind is so strong it blows away the cover as well!
Just like when Gu Fangchen faked Gu Yuye's death through the puppet soldier earlier, that trick almost shattered Gu Yuandao's heart of the Dao completely.
This unorthodox method of breaking formations requires dying within the illusion, while firmly believing you have not died.
Truly evil upon evil.
Ordinary people could never do such a thing. After all, one only has a single life; who could be certain that dying here wouldn't mean dying for real?
Only a player could ever find such a loophole.
In the game, when a player kills themselves, they have to pass a Will Check.
As long as their Divine Path cultivation is at ninth-rank Meditation Realm, they can clear it.
In the twenty-second year within the illusion, Gu Fangchen finally encountered the opportunity for enlightenment.
Perhaps because he had thought about the legends of Princess Prajna before falling into the illusion, the dream he entered turned out to be that long-destroyed desert kingdom: Garuda.
In the game, all information about Garuda was contained only within the secret records of the Tara Sect, serving as background lore.
And that was all.
There was no Garuda map in Mirror in the Dust, nor had any player ever triggered a related side quest. Everything about that fallen kingdom remained a mystery.
In the main Tara Sect storyline, "Fire of the Mortal World," the last survivor of Garuda, Princess Prajna, dies in the flames, driven to despair by the player's own hand.
Yes.
Though Princess Prajna was extremely popular among players for her beauty, she was in fact a villain.
That was one of the reasons Gu Fangchen didn't want to meet her too early.
And her death buried all remaining information about Garuda for good.
Gu Fangchen had always felt that the game contained much content yet to be uncovered, not that the developers hadn't made it.
After achieving the sixth ending, "Six Dusts Return to Purity," his conviction in this reached its peak.
He thought perhaps he'd find the answer in the next playthrough.
He didn't expect the game company would throw him into the real thing.
In short—
Seeing that the illusion turned out to be Garuda, Gu Fangchen was actually quite pleased.
This desert nation was poor in resources, its people fierce and warlike, surviving by conquest and plunder of surrounding lands. Gu Fangchen basically served as a soldier there for twenty-two years.
And soldiering, well, that wasn't his strong suit.
Naturally, his priority was survival. If he could run, he ran. If he could hide, he hid.
His main theme: avoid battle.
After twenty-two years, he only rose to a ten-man squad leader.
Of course, the biggest regret was that the timing of his entry into the illusion seemed unfortunate, he didn't encounter any key characters.
Not to mention the princess; he didn't even have the qualifications to meet a priest or general of Garuda.
This illusion had basically been a waste.
But for that reason, when Gu Fangchen killed himself in the end, he didn't hesitate or feel any regret.
"What a pity..."
"Finally got to play a life-simulation route, and I didn't even raise my daughter properly."
Gu Fangchen raised his head, eyes flashing with resolve, and thrust his sword straight into the enemy soldier's throat.
"Splurt!"
Blood sprayed, splashing across his face.
Time had shifted in the illusion, he was now over forty, his appearance that of a middle-aged man.
Wind and sand had worn him dark and rough; stubble shadowed his face, his aura steady and grounded, far closer to the player Gu Fangchen, rather than the foppish Gu Fangchen.
He didn't draw out the sword. Instead, he pressed it against the soldier's throat and roared, using the corpse as a shield to push forward.
The soldiers behind were briefly blocked at the doorway, but then countless spears pierced through the corpse, impaling Gu Fangchen through the chest.
Until the very last moment of death, Gu Fangchen continued bracing against the door, unyielding.
When the soldiers outside finally withdrew, his eyes had already gone dim.
No one knew how much time passed.
The illusion began to collapse.
In the room he had died defending, a twelve or thirteen-year-old black-haired girl crawled out from the cellar.
The girl was thin and frail, her face delicate, her turquoise eyes as clear as glass, beautiful to the extreme.
She stared blankly at Gu Fangchen's corpse, reached out, and tugged lightly at his sleeve.
"Father..."
...
Gu Fangchen suddenly opened his eyes, and saw that his heart was being held, literally, in the grasp of a breathtakingly beautiful woman.
The sight was as terrifying as it was shocking.
"Uh... Princess Prajna, could you... maybe pull that out?"
Wait, why did that sound so wrong?
The veiled beauty before him froze slightly, then her expression turned cold.
Her five fingers tightened, crushing Gu Fangchen's heart harder, almost to bursting.
The Heart-Poison Mark teetered on the brink of rampage, and the other two poisons stirred wildly in response. The pain was unbearable, but Gu Fangchen endured it.
No way, the mysterious, unfathomable persona he'd painstakingly built up before Old Man Ding could not collapse now.
The head may fall, blood may flow, but the persona must stand!
Otherwise, all the effort he'd spent intimidating Ding Xingfeng would be wasted.
Ding Xingfeng hadn't fully believed him, he was still observing. If Gu Fangchen failed to escape intact now, the old man would surely suspect he had no true backing.
Besides, if before he'd had eighty percent confidence that Princess Prajna wouldn't dare to kill him for fear of Ding Xingfeng, now he was one hundred percent sure she wouldn't.
In fact, she was enraged precisely because she couldn't.
Which meant that, while Gu Fangchen was trapped in the illusion, he must have revealed some crucial piece of information.
Information that now gave him leverage over Princess Prajna.
Judging by the timing and by the reason she had sought him out, Gu Fangchen could guess what it was.
He must have mentioned something about the Tara Sect's key main-quest artifact, Lotus Concealed in the Womb.
However, his awakening must have interrupted the crucial part.
That explained Princess Prajna's current fury.
In the game, the player only received this quest two years later.
Had she not missed Xu Fu's assistance this time, the rest would never have happened.
Lightning flashed through Gu Fangchen's mind as he conceived a counter.
He forced a wry smile, raised his hand, and caught Princess Prajna's smooth, pale wrist.
Princess Prajna's voice was cold.
"You're not afraid I'll kill you?"
"No."
Gu Fangchen met the unseen face beneath the veil of the Tara Sect's saint, smiling slightly.
"First, I'm the most beloved personal disciple of the Martial Saint himself. The old man's waiting for me right down the mountain."
That was absolutely true, the discipleship was fresh, and the old man really was waiting below.
"Second, Gu Yuye still wants to condemn me properly and pave a smooth road to glory for his precious son."
"If I die here, Gu Yuye will have no way to explain himself to the court, and his grand plan will fall apart halfway. He'll have to come demanding justice."
That part was half true, half false.
Gu Yuye had intended to expose him and bring his real son back openly. But ever since Gu Fangchen had kept turning the tables, the man's composure had cracked, he was already ready to kill.
If Gu Fangchen truly died here, Gu Yuye would only thank Princess Prajna for doing it.
"And third..."
Gu Fangchen paused, blinked, and finally revealed his dagger hidden in words:
"Doesn't Your Highness want to know where the Lotus Concealed in the Womb is?"
Princess Prajna seemed to gaze at him through her veil. After a long silence, she let out a soft laugh, leaning close to his ear, her breath warm as orchids.
"I already know."
"Though you broke the formation faster than I expected, have you forgotten? Those caught in the illusion have their consciousness under my control."
"Whatever I asked, you answered, so obedient, just like a little dog I once kept."
As she spoke, her fingers slowly tightened.
Trying to shatter Gu Fangchen's psychological defense, to make him panic and expose himself.
But Gu Fangchen wasn't afraid in the slightest. He even curled his lip.
Sweet words, but by your character's setting, if you truly knew the answer, in this state of fury, you'd have already struck.
Princess Prajna had a habit: whenever she lacked confidence, she instinctively used her beauty to seduce and distract.
She knew how to play upon human desires with perfection.
And when you were distracted, that was when she struck the fatal blow.
That's why people say, the prettier the woman, the deadlier the lie.
Now, to make him speak, she naturally employed both threats and allure.
Death and beauty, both aimed to shake Gu Fangchen's will.
But sorry, the man standing before you was a player who had achieved every ending. He'd killed the boss, Princess Prajna, twelve times.
His heart had long gone cold.
Gu Fangchen shrugged. "Go ahead then. If I die beneath the peony, I'll still die a romantic ghost."
"A useless fop like me dying at Princess Prajna's hand, I'd say that's an honor."
"But I'll warn you, squeeze any harder, and in five seconds, you'll be kneeling on the ground begging me not to die."
As he said this, his eyes lifted, curious about the thin veil covering her eyes.
Come to think of it, even in the game, no player had ever seen Princess Prajna's true face.
This mysterious woman had always shown only half.
Yet even that half was beauty enough to overturn the world.
Players had always speculated about the unseen half.
Some guessed she was a skeleton on one side, echoing the Buddhist notion of "the beauty as a skeleton," matching the Tara Sect's creed.
After all, Princess Prajna was a member of the Tara Sect; if she healed others, she'd have to bear their transferred wounds.
If not on her body, then surely on the half she kept covered.
Others guessed she had sacrificed her eyes, that beneath the veil were two empty sockets.
Of course, most weren't that morbid.
They simply believed her eyes were closed, like a merciful Guanyin.
But all of these were mere player theories.
Thinking of this, Gu Fangchen felt an itch in his heart.
Or maybe it was physical, since his heart was literally being squeezed.
But right now, he had the chance.
He wasn't a player anymore; he was face to face with Princess Prajna herself.
What no player could do, he could.
Gu Fangchen had always been bold since transmigrating. Once he had the thought, he couldn't stop.
And since she already wanted to kill him but couldn't, he might as well take advantage of it to do something big.
He glanced upward again.
[Emperor (1 hour 4 minutes)]
Good. Though decades had passed in the illusion, his luck hadn't run out.
He could only hope this would work.
Princess Prajna was just about to laugh in fury at his shameless words, when suddenly, she saw him raise his free hand, lunging toward her face.
She could easily have blocked it, but because of his sudden movement, his fragile heart meridian finally gave out.
It burst.
And not only that, the Heart-Poison Mark on his body erupted into a cloud of blood mist.
Princess Prajna's expression changed.
Even she couldn't take that poison lightly. Her focus wavered, Gu Fangchen's eyes gleamed.
Good chance!
He reached out and ripped off the veil, only to be sent flying by a slap a heartbeat later.
Gu Fangchen froze for a moment.
In that fleeting instant, he had caught a glimpse beneath the veil, a shimmer of turquoise as beautiful as glazed crystal.