Chapter 60 Visualization

"How did you do that?"

While running, Shen Chang'an suddenly broke the silence.

"What?" Li Qingqing replied quickly.

"Raising their hands." Shen Chang'an frowned. He could barely sense any fluctuations of spiritual power, yet those people's actions of raising their hands had looked entirely genuine.

Li Qingqing pulled two cloth dolls from her robe and tossed them over. Shen Chang'an caught them and took a look. "Puppet magic?"

This was not the mechanism-based puppetry, but a form of puppet sorcery that allowed one to control living people as if they were marionettes.

Among the thirty-six heavenly arts, there was a similar divine supernatural power known as the Seven-Arrow Book with Nailed Head.

That art required setting up a camp with an altar inside, placing a straw effigy inscribed with the enemy's name, and lighting a lamp at its head and another at its feet. The practitioner would then pace out the Big Dipper steps, recite spells, burn talismans, and bow to the effigy three times a day. By the noon of the twenty-first day, the enemy's three souls and seven mortal spirits would be scattered by the bows. At that moment, shooting an arrow into the straw effigy would have the same effect as piercing the enemy's physical body, causing both the effigy and the target to spew blood.

While the Seven-Arrow Book was powerful enough to nail a formidable deity like Zhao Gongming to death and naturally far surpassed ordinary puppet magic, the underlying principles were quite similar.

"When you asked me to spare those two people earlier, was it so you could plant the puppet spell on them?" Shen Chang'an inquired.

Li Qingqing nodded and said, "Although time was tight and I only managed to acquire some of their hair, making the two of them raise their hands was still well within my ability."

Under normal circumstances, puppet magic required obtaining the target's hair, vital blood, birth date, and full name to unleash its maximum potency. However, even with only a few strands of hair as Li Qingqing had done, it could still exert a minor effect.

Granted, that effect was merely enough to make someone raise their hand while completely off guard.

"That's not right. Aside from those two, I clearly saw others raising their hands, and quite a few people were moving about."

"The ones who raised their hands were simply the people I manipulated with the puppet spell—six in total."

Shen Chang'an nodded slightly. It seemed that while he was drawing away the others, Li Qingqing had not been idle either.

"And what about the rest of the people who started fighting?"

Li Qingqing chuckled softly. "Naturally, they moved of their own accord."

Shen Chang'an was instantly consumed by curiosity. "Did someone actually still remain loyal to you?"

Li Qingqing shook her head. "Of course not. In fact, it was quite the opposite of what you might think. They weren't loyal to me at all; rather, they had thoroughly betrayed me. Precisely because of that guilt, the moment I commanded them to raise their hands, they would subconsciously..."

"...lower their hands."

Shen Chang'an suddenly understood. Those people had never made a gesture of raising their hands; they had simply subconsciously lowered hands that were already raised. Yet, with so many people gathered in the confusion, who could possibly tell at a glance whether someone was raising their hand and then lowering it, or simply intending to lower it in the first place?

Guided by Li Qingqing's setup, and coupled with the fact that a few people genuinely had raised their hands, suspicion was instantly cast upon the crowd.

Moreover, the voice that suddenly shouted out shortly after had also been a phantom-sound illusion cast by Li Qingqing.

Given the circumstances, the crowd had far too little time to think. Before they could figure out what was happening, chaos had already erupted into violence.

This incident gave Shen Chang'an a completely new perspective on Li Qingqing. To be able to so effortlessly manipulate such a large crowd, her wisdom and tactical acumen were definitely not to be underestimated.

The two continued running forward and soon spotted Jiang Yunyi waiting not far ahead.

"Daoist Priest Shen!"

Catching sight of Shen Chang'an from afar, Jiang Yunyi waved eagerly.

As Shen Chang'an and Li Qingqing approached, they noticed a towering stone tablet standing directly behind Jiang Yunyi.

"Yuyang..."

The inscription on the tablet had weathered and rusted to a blur, making it impossible to read clearly. Faint ripples of baleful and malevolent energy radiated from it, subtly corrupting the minds of those nearby.

Fortunately, none of the three were ordinary mortals, so this minor influence had a negligible impact on them.

Yet, this was merely a leftover stele from the ancient city of Yuyang, and it already exuded such eerie malice before they even set foot inside. Once they truly entered the city, there was no telling what horrors awaited them.

"Let's go."

Having come this far, turning back was out of the question. The three of them stepped forward together and passed the boundary.

The moment he crossed the stone tablet, Shen Chang'an felt a sudden prickling sensation over his entire body as a wisp of foul, malevolent energy began to cling to his skin, causing deep discomfort.

After a brief moment of thought, he visualized a flood dragon winding around his body in his mind's eye. A surge of spiritual power instantly answered the call, circulating around his physical form and forming a faint, translucent phantom of a dragon that forcefully repelled all the baleful thoughts trying to creep in.

"Visualization... It hasn't been long since we last met, yet Daoist Priest Shen's cultivation has progressed remarkably fast. Your visualization technique has already attained a fair degree of mastery," Li Qingqing praised with genuine admiration.

Shen Chang'an gave a light snort and said, "No need to flatter me. I know my own level well enough."

His visualization still required deep concentration, using conscious thought to sketch the image within his mind before a supernatural power could finally manifest. Even then, the manifestation remained imperfect, existing only as a hazy phantom.

This meant his visualization technique was far from polished, representing merely a preliminary grasp rather than true mastery.

Even if he had mastered it, such a slow visualization process rendered the technique completely useless in the heat of combat.

Unlike the divine abilities recorded in the ancient animal-skin tome—which represented supreme arts and boundless powers that, once comprehended, became second nature and were never forgotten—abilities that one had to learn and cultivate independently were far more demanding.

To cultivate a defensive visualization like the Flood Dragon Incarnation, Shen Chang'an had to continuously refine and perfect it, committing every single detail of the dragon to memory until he could outline its flawless form within the theater of his mind.

Only when he reached that stage could a single shift of thought instantly complete the mental blueprint and unleash the supernatural power.

Even so, each activation would cause the deeply etched mental image to grow slightly dimmer, preventing continuous, back-to-back usage. Naturally, the higher one's cultivation realm, the stronger their mental focus and cognitive capacity, allowing them to reconstruct the visualization chart at a much faster pace.

If one's mental agility became fast and powerful enough, they could even reach a state of transcendence beyond ordinary thought.

At that juncture, memory would no longer matter; with a mere flicker of intent, all supernatural abilities would present themselves instantly, ready to be deployed at will without the slightest hindrance.

However, achieving such a realm of cultivation was practically unimaginable for ordinary practitioners. Even with decades of arduous effort, someone like Shen Chang'an might not even catch a glimpse of such a lofty state.