Yet Wei Zhao looked as though he had a plan already assured. The Sleeping Lotus Guardian had treated him with contempt, while his own manner now was that of a man certain he had his opponent cornered. That expression left even the Sleeping Lotus Guardian puzzled—where on earth did this human get such confidence?

"Before that, let me say something beside the point. The sleeping lotus is one of the many plants in this world, is it not? So what, then, separates Your Excellency from those spirit herbs?" Wei Zhao asked suddenly.

The Sleeping Lotus Guardian was baffled at first, then burst into laughter. "Very good, very good, haha. If I had not, through some stroke of fortune, cultivated to the stage I stand at today, then indeed I could only be counted a spirit herb. Why else would I have gone to such lengths to contrive a Hundred Herbs Garden? Those are all of my own kind. Given sufficient fortune, the next me might well arise from among them."

"Ah, then I am relieved," Wei Zhao said with a faint smile.

"Relieved? Relieved about what?" Not only the Sleeping Lotus Guardian but even Duanmu Yu wore an expression of utter incomprehension. What kind of medicine was Wei Zhao peddling in that gourd of his?

The result: Wei Zhao raised a hand and swept it through the air, and then—nothing happened at all.

"Playing the mystic!" The Sleeping Lotus Guardian sneered. Duanmu Yu, meanwhile, stared at Wei Zhao, at a loss for what to say. Since he had seemed so utterly assured, she had assumed he must be about to unleash some trump card, something at least far more powerful than the true-qi pill-fire bomb of a moment ago—how else could he possibly deal with the Sleeping Lotus Guardian?

Never in her wildest dreams had she expected that Wei Zhao, who had worn that light, airy, effortless air from beginning to end, and had laid the posturing on so thick it was about to swell up, would produce a result with not so much as a fart's worth of commotion. How was anyone supposed to react to that?

Yet Wei Zhao showed not the slightest trace of embarrassment. His expression remained serene as ever. "You really think I did nothing?"

Only then did Duanmu Yu suddenly react, an involuntary cry escaping her: "How did I turn into a primordial spirit?"

Mirror Flower, Water Moon was an illusion through and through, but what it trapped was their true bodies. Never before had there been any talk of drawing out the primordial spirit on its own—until just now. Duanmu Yu had been perfectly fine, and then in the blink of an eye she had become a primordial spirit!

"My apologies. For the sake of letting you watch a good show, I took it upon myself to pull you in as well. Don't worry, nothing will happen," Wei Zhao said, turning his head to explain with an apologetic air.

"Oh, that's fine." Duanmu Yu still did not quite understand what was going on, but since Wei Zhao was the one doing it, there was nothing for her to worry about. Unbeknownst to her, Wei Zhao had already built up a rather reliable impression in her mind. People who could make her trust them this instinctively were truly rare.

Meanwhile, on the other side, the Sleeping Lotus Guardian was utterly struck dumb, unable to speak a single word for a long while.

Duanmu Yu merely sensed that something formidable had happened without grasping what; the Guardian, by contrast, had clearly perceived the root of the trouble. It was different from Duanmu Yu, of course—she was now a primordial spirit, while it remained in its true body.

"You... what exactly did you do? Why can I no longer sense the other mirror worlds?" At last the Sleeping Lotus Guardian's face showed alarm. For the first time, it had lost its confidence in mastering everything. What Wei Zhao had done before had indeed surprised it, but none of it had changed the situation in essence—like Sun Wukong, who could caper however he liked and still never escape the Buddha's palm. But this time was different: the Buddha was beginning to feel he could not quite cover it anymore.

The mirror world was still that mirror world; by feel, nothing seemed to have changed at all. But the crux was this: this mirror world had been isolated on its own into another stretch of space, and its creator could do nothing about it.

"That's simple enough. Because I shattered your Mirror Flower, Water Moon," Wei Zhao said with an unfathomable smile.

"Impossible! Absolutely impossible!" The Sleeping Lotus Guardian refused to believe it. To break the technique and to shatter it differed by a single word, and their meanings were extremely close—but in the present circumstances they were two entirely different concepts.

To break Mirror Flower, Water Moon meant only that one needed to discover its operating principle and its flaw. That was extremely difficult, but not wholly impossible—one needed only sufficient insight. But to shatter Mirror Flower, Water Moon?

Never mind that such a thing was flatly impossible—there had once been one being who had accomplished it. But that was the one and only such case to this day, and that being was the one who stood above it, the Sleeping Lotus Guardian, and the Brain-Eating Worm, and all the other spirit beasts great and small—that lord!

Apart from that lord, it truly could not imagine anyone else capable of such a thing—not even this human before it, for all his endless schemes. It was utterly impossible. After all, the gulf in their levels of power was simply too vast; this was not a matter that could be managed by cleverness.

But if this was not shattering, then how was any of this to be explained?

"It doesn't matter if you don't believe it. Still, as the host, I ought to extend a greeting. Welcome to my world," Wei Zhao said, bowing with polished courtesy.

"Your world?" This time the Sleeping Lotus Guardian and Duanmu Yu spoke almost in unison. What was going on? This was plainly still the mirror world of a moment ago—how had it inexplicably become his world?

But they understood soon enough, for in an instant the mirror world was torn limb from limb, shattered into fragments, and came crashing down with a roar.

"What was it you said earlier? That within your mirror world you were the one and only master. Sorry to borrow it—it's my world now, and I am the sole master here!" Wei Zhao said with a chuckle.

The words were terribly boastful, outdoing even the Sleeping Lotus Guardian's earlier display. But set against that earth-shaking spectacle, neither Duanmu Yu nor the Sleeping Lotus Guardian felt for an instant that he was boasting; on the contrary, it seemed to them plain truth.

The Sleeping Lotus Guardian especially—its alarm now far surpassed Duanmu Yu's. After all, even if Mirror Flower, Water Moon had been shattered, the remaining mirror world was still quite real, and because its true body resided there, this was the mirror world over which it held the strongest command.

And yet this most dependable of mirror worlds had collapsed in an instant before its very eyes, without its being able to offer the slightest resistance. The shock and dread of it were simply beyond compare.

"You... what manner of being are you?" The Sleeping Lotus Guardian was thoroughly shaken. The look it now bent on Wei Zhao was no longer the condescending disdain of before, but filled with a wariness it had never known.

"I am myself," Wei Zhao replied.

"And then?" the Sleeping Lotus Guardian pressed.

"Hmm..." Wei Zhao tilted his head and thought, then suddenly came out with: "A firework of a different color?"

"..." An awkward silence fell. The Sleeping Lotus Guardian and Duanmu Yu were both struck dumb—the former a spirit beast native to the Primeval Trial Grounds, the latter a cultivator of the Primeval Little Jianghu. Neither of them could make head or tail of the reference. (To be continued.)