Chapter 109: The Illusion of Obsession

“You’re still singing The Peony Pavilion? Take this!”

Yan Luo summoned strength through all four limbs and leapt into the air. Gripping the staff with both hands, he drove every muscle in his body to its limit and struck with a blow called “Cleave the Eight Wastelands.” The old man’s skull burst open beneath it, his brains scattering as hot blood sprayed across the ground like peach blossoms unfolding petal by petal.

The moment the old man died, the surrounding scenery twisted and transformed once more.

Standing on the mountain path, Yan Luo found that the clothes he had removed were back on his body. Even the sweat that had poured from him while practicing the staff technique had vanished.

When he returned to the Mountain God Temple, the old man was sitting beside the brazier.

“Forget it. I’m done playing.”

This time, Yan Luo quietly waited until the old man had finished lamenting, sung a passage from The Peony Pavilion, and thrown the puppet girl into the fire. Only then did he act. He did not use the thousand-year lightning-struck peachwood sword to shatter the wooden puppet, nor did Olympic holy fire surge from his outstretched hand.

He simply reached out and caught the puppet as the old man cast her toward the flames.

Though the girl was plainly made of wood, the sensation in his hands seemed to possess the softness of human skin.

“This should do it.”

Yan Luo spoke with certainty. In truth, after testing the situation several times, he had already found the key to breaking through the illusion. The puppet was thrown into the fire; the old man regretted it and wept bitterly; the puppet was reduced to ashes. The crucial point in this tragedy lay in that single act of throwing.

At first, he had taken the wrong direction. This was a supernatural world, and the many ghost stories and horror films he had seen had influenced his subconscious. He had assumed that either the puppet or the old man was the monster, and that, as in those films, he merely had to eliminate the enemy like a boss.

A peachwood sword was capable of restraining ghosts and monsters, while the Olympic holy flame was an even greater energy containing sacred power.

In theory, there should have been no ghost he could not destroy. After all, this was only a Level One supernatural world. But why, then, did he keep returning to the mountain path?

Was it a rollback? This was not a game. A complete restart of the world would be absurd. There was only one conclusion: everything before him was an illusion.

Each time he entered the Mountain God Temple, even after killing the old man and destroying the puppet, the original scenery would reappear. In a mere Level One supernatural world, if this was not an illusion or a dream, what else could it be?

“In the scene I witnessed, the puppet finally stood upright and bowed, signifying that she had gained a spirit. She became firewood and burned until dawn, while the old man lost the only companion he had left and was plunged into unbearable grief. Therefore, the key to breaking the illusion must be preventing the puppet from being burned.”

“My initial line of thought was wrong. The answer was not destruction and slaughter, but salvation. Though, considering that my alignment is absolutely neutral, why didn’t I think of that from the beginning? Hmm... It must have been that single point of soul pollution interfering with me, causing my subconscious actions to become evil.”

The moment Yan Luo caught the puppet, the scenery before him twisted and transformed violently once again.

But this time, it was no longer the mountain path.

“As expected. It is an illusion.”

Yan Luo gazed at the scene before him.

A handsome young man with bright eyes and elegant brows smiled as he looked at the crudely fashioned puppet girl resting in his hands. Only the vague outline of a girl could be made out.

“I am Xia Sheng, and you are the puppet I made with my own hands.”

“I want to give you a name. What should it be?”

“There is a line in the poem ‘Gathering Ferns’: ‘When I set forth, the willows clung to the breeze.’ You were made from willow wood, so I’ll call you Yiyi.”

“Yiyi, my dream is to become a puppeteer. My parents are opposed to it, of course. They want me to study, but what could studying possibly have that is more fun than puppet theater? I have already taken the elder as my master and begun learning the art. From today onward, you and I will always be together.”

The images came in fragments, flashing past one after another.

The young man abandoned the proper path embodied in the saying, “Of all pursuits, study is supreme,” and immersed himself in the skills of actors and puppeteers, an occupation regarded in that age as the lowest of the low. His parents were furious yet helpless, but he had no regrets. He devoted his entire heart to the puppet theater inherited from his master, practicing his singing day after day and refining his control of the puppets.

The little wooden puppet beside him gradually changed. What had begun as a crude figure was slowly carved into something exquisite.

Day after day.

Year after year...

Thus time passed, peaceful yet monotonous. The boy became a handsome young man. Matchmakers gradually began visiting the surrounding villages, but his eyes held only the puppet that belonged to him.

“Yiyi, your makeup has grown old and faded in places. Let me paint your face anew.”

“Yiyi, the young master who watched our performance today rewarded us with a piece of scarlet brocade. I’m going to make you a beautiful dress. Aren’t you happy?”

Then came the day when his parents died.

Xia Sheng, who had passed from youth into middle age, wept bitterly before their graves and berated himself for having been an unfilial son. He clutched the wooden puppet tightly in his hands.

“Yiyi, from today onward, only you and I will have each other.”

Though he was merely middle-aged, strands of white had already appeared at his temples.

After completing the three years of mourning, Xia Sheng was regarded by others as an unfilial son with neither wife nor children, a strange man obsessed with a puppet toy. One morning, as maple leaves drifted through the air, he shouldered a small wooden trunk and left his homeland.

He wandered from place to place, earning his living by performing puppet theater. Carrying his little puppet and stage across mountains and rivers, Xia Sheng’s skill grew ever more polished. In village after village, he brought laughter to countless children. And whenever he performed The Peony Pavilion, the depth of feeling in his singing moved audiences so deeply that he brought tears to their eyes time and again.

The white hair on Xia Sheng’s head and the wrinkles on his brow grew more numerous. Gradually, he became a stooped old man in the twilight of his life.

Yet the wooden puppet at his side never aged. Through repeated carving, her body shrank until she was no larger than a palm, while her features became ever more vivid and beautiful.

One man, one lifetime—his deepest feelings poured into a single object with all his heart. The puppet he had nurtured had, in truth, developed a consciousness of her own.

When plants and trees awaken to sentience, they may become spirits. But this puppet girl, who possessed a soul and awareness, was merely a weak little spirit. She could not speak, nor could she affect the material world. She was like a phantom, a shadow of something unreal.

But she had feelings of her own.

The mortal old man could not see her. As he wandered without a home, whenever he traveled through the night and fell asleep beside a fire, a phantom girl would appear above the three-foot red stage beside him. She watched him with tender affection. Sometimes, receiving no response, she would weep silent tears. Sometimes, she would dance with abandon. Sometimes, she simply gazed at the sleeping face of the old man, smiling faintly as she revealed a beauty capable of captivating the world.

Do you not see me dance with graceful steps?

Do you not see me play the zither in lingering melodies?

Do you not see me smile, my radiant face enough to intoxicate the heart?

Do you not see my beauty fade as drunkenness leaves me?

Do you not see my tears fall in endless streams?

Do you not see a strand of dark hair, a single sigh...

The chaotic, broken images vanished.

As though he had been a spectator, Yan Luo had witnessed every scene. As a man without emotion, he was not moved by the story. But now, he understood everything.

“What is it that you regret? Or what is the obsession you cannot release? Your body was burned, yet your obsession remained, forming this illusion. It seems I was ensnared the moment I entered this world... Fortunately, this is only a Level One supernatural world. If I had encountered a ghost king like Freddy, I would already be dead.”

“No matter what, I can fulfill your obsession.”

Yan Luo raised the puppet in his hands before his face. In a trance, he seemed to overlap with everything he had seen within the illusion. He was Xia Sheng. He was the puppeteer who had spent an entire lifetime beside his puppet, only to cast the thing he loved into the brazier with his own hands before being consumed by grief.

The raised hands were withered and covered in folds, like the claws of a chicken. He too had become a ragged, white-haired old man in the twilight of life.

Yan Luo sat beside the brazier as cold wind swept snowflakes into the Mountain God Temple. Amid the bitter chill and the dim glow of the fire, he lifted the puppet girl in both hands. He held the enchanting, breathtakingly beautiful figure as though he were holding the only purpose of his entire life.

Gazing at the puppet, a trace of tenderness appeared in his eyes.

“I will never leave you for as long as I live.”

“I love you.”