After confirming that the once-gullible little food-scrap, slop bucket had already undergone sixty-four full cycles in the illusion realm and possessed a mental maturity far beyond her age, Chen Kuang immediately adjusted his mindset.
He no longer regarded her as a helpless child, but rather as a fully independent individual.
"We are currently inside the Great Void Illusion Realm formed by the Demon Sword. Do you remember how you entered it?"
As he spoke, Chen Kuang squatted down and stripped the clothing from the corpse on the ground, putting it on himself.
He didn't know when Chu Wenruo might wake up, nor whether she would believe that he wasn't actually dead.
For now, he had to pretend to be the person lying dead on the floor. Otherwise, he risked repeating the ending where Li Hongling struck him down on the spot.
To be honest, staring at your own corpse up close was... a rather bizarre experience.
Very few in this world had likely ever done such a thing.
Yet Chen Kuang didn't feel afraid, nor did he shy away.
Instead, he felt a strange intuition.
He could tell that this corpse wasn't him.
Which was odd, because Chen Kuang had long accepted his identity in this world. There shouldn't have been such a dissonance.
His eyes flickered. He looked down and, sure enough, saw that the corpse had no shadow.
No shadow. What did that signify?
A glitch in the illusion realm? Or part of the sword's interpretation of reality?
"I remember."
The strange longsword in her hand, the eerie female corpse...
The little princess nodded faintly and solemnly said, "Actually, I should thank that corpse of yours. Every time the loop resets, it reminds me, otherwise I would've long forgotten how I got here."
Even now, thinking back on it sent chills down her spine.
Without that constant reminder, after so many years, she would've inevitably lost herself, mistaking the dream for reality.
And once returned to the real world, she'd struggle to accept that everything she had lived through was no more than a fantasy.
Chen Kuang raised an eyebrow and smiled. "Then I shall shamelessly claim that credit."
Judging by her presence now, the princess had clearly achieved much during her time in this illusion. Perhaps even without him, she and her mother could have escaped successfully.
In a way, it also proved that his original choice to cling to her leg for safety hadn't been a bad one...
Though the outcome had shifted somewhat, he had ended up as the backbone instead.
He dragged the now partially rotted corpse over to the straw pile, not to hide it, but to help sell the illusion to Chu Wenruo.
Unless there was too much noise that alerted the mortal jailers, Li Hongling shouldn't take action. With Qingcuo present, they could handle most things.
The two exchanged what information they had.
Only then did Chen Kuang realize that the Confucian scholar he had "executed as an example" had actually been a critical figure...
But... was the senior disciple of Liberty Mountain truly so easy to kill?
Back then, Chen Kuang was only at the Innate Realm.
According to the princess, Zhang Zhizhou had at least reached Grandmaster level, he must have faked his death!
Chen Kuang raised a brow and suddenly thought of another disciple of Liberty Mountain.
Lin Eryou and Zhang Zhizhou, two individuals with one thing in common:
Both were close to royal heirs.
Clearly... Liberty Mountain had significant ambitions.
The princess's next words directly confirmed this.
Sixty-four cycles. She didn't explain each in detail but summarized the crucial events and what was still usable.
Especially the detail about Su Yu's corpse also lacking a shadow.
Chen Kuang frowned. His own corpse also lacked one. Was this the same bug?
Or did it have to do with that mysterious Elixir of Immortality that had somehow entered his stomach?
Su Yu had sought immortality, and that immortality now resided in Chen Kuang.
Immortality... might be the only link between them.
Could it be that Su Yu had given the elixir to the original Chen Kuang?
But why?
Did he know that Chen Kuang had been planted into the palace by Xi Mengquan...?
Too many questions, too few answers.
Everything was a tangled mess.
Lacking any evidence, Chen Kuang could only shelve it for now.
What caught his attention most was that, by this point in the loop, the little princess, whom he had once smuggled out of the palace, had become the newly enthroned Empress of Liang.
The entire political landscape of the realm, even the entire Cangyuan continent, had shifted dramatically.
Just thinking about it made Chen Kuang's scalp tingle.
If the loops continued, how many more lives would be affected?
And when this dream finally ended, "sun and moon in the same sky, a new world exchanged for the old", what kind of purgatory would be left?
This Demon Sword... truly is a curse upon the world!
Finally, the princess asked, "You said the Demon Sword's host wakes after seven days. What day is it now?"
"Today is the third," Chen Kuang sighed.
"Your mother hasn't left your side. She doesn't eat or drink and weeps constantly."
The princess fell silent, then turned toward the lightly sleeping Chu Wenruo.
Right on cue, Chu Wenruo stirred awake again.
This time, prepared in advance, the princess cooperated with Chen Kuang to stage a little play, pretending he had simply been too weak before, not dead.
Chu Wenruo was half-convinced. But seeing her usually distant daughter so well-behaved and unusually close with this musician, her guard began to soften.
After briefly reassuring her, Chen Kuang suddenly squatted beside the princess and slyly asked:
"By the way, in all your loops, what happened to your mother?"
The princess fell silent.
She had nearly forgotten what she saw in those early cycles... and nearly forgotten that this guy had been rather... ambiguous with her mother.
She answered coolly: "Nothing much. Once she saw what I had achieved, she was satisfied. As a mere mortal, she felt no need to meddle further. Every time, she entered a convent for quiet meditation. All sixty-four times. Never changed."
Chen Kuang blinked. Sixty-four times with prayer beads and incense?
Though Chu Wenruo appeared delicate, she had been an empress. Raised in luxury, her body soft and refined.
He hadn't expected her, even when her daughter became an empress waging war on Zhou, to reject all wealth and privilege, choosing instead a life of solitude and reflection.
Though it puzzled him, he also acknowledged that her outward gentleness hid a certain inner steel.
And some people... really did have a connection to the Buddha.
Pushing those thoughts aside, he shared his next plan:
"In short, our goal is to recreate the events of reality as closely as possible, locate Tie Baiyuan, and acquire the Langhuan sword fragment from him again, activating it to reopen the illusion and then use that illusion-within-an-illusion to return to reality. Understood?"
Normally, to escape the illusion, one must meet the Demon Sword's requirements, that is, the illusion must diverge significantly from reality.
Only then would it release the host's consciousness.
But along with it, countless affected people within the illusion would have their minds dragged back into the real world as well.
"Sun and moon in the same sky" meant reality and illusion merging and flipping.
That other world would instantly overwrite this one.
A true Wujian Purgatory...
Thus, everything had to remain the same, to prevent the illusion from gaining more influence.
Ordinarily, this meant never escaping.
But because of Tie Baiyuan, a manual way existed.
Another Tie Baiyuan existed in this illusion realm, and he too held a Langhuan fragment.
If they could obtain that fragment here...
Then use the one in reality as a key to flip the realms, they could return.
The princess inhaled deeply. "I understand."
Yet she still felt reluctant...
Sixty-four loops. Endless suffering. So much learned. A path to save Liang found through blood and tears..
She had stood on the peaks of power, tasted ambition and glory.
But reality felt like a trap from the start.
Because Zhang Zhizhou, the one who was supposed to support her, hadn't chosen her.
He'd been killed by Chen Kuang with a single stroke of his Zither.
Suddenly, she realized... she had nearly resented Chen Kuang for this.
But calming down, she saw the truth.
In reality, it hadn't been Chen Kuang's fault.
What mattered was the riddle posed by Huo Hengxuan.
She hadn't understood it then. That's why she was passed over.
In her first illusionary cycle, she'd known the answer, and answered calmly.
Zhang Zhizhou took notice.
Some might think it unfair to test a four-year-old with a question most adults couldn't solve.
But the princess had seen clearly through the loops, Zhang Zhizhou was mad.
He truly judged whether a four-year-old was worthy to be emperor.
Back in reality, when she gave a childish arithmetic answer, she was disqualified.
Later, his behavior showed he was seeking death, to shed that identity.
"This illusion really is terrifying," she thought. "I almost couldn't tell real from false..."
But, that raised another question:
If Zhang Zhizhou was Grandmaster level... had he been listening the whole time?
"Is... is it true? That we're inside a dream?"
The middle-aged Confucian in a nearby cell, who'd been eavesdropping all along, finally spoke.
Chen Kuang and the princess both froze, then exchanged a glance.
"Ah... it's true," Chen Kuang sighed bitterly.
He raised his voice and shouted: "Li Hongling, I fu-"
Before he could finish, a bolt of lightning flashed before his eyes.
...
Back in the same familiar prison.
Chen Kuang raised an eyebrow at the princess's speechless expression, then chuckled:
"Can't lie, that actually works."
At least Li Hongling had some use.
This time, they kept their mouths shut and quietly repeated the predetermined sequence.
In this awkward silence, a subtle understanding bloomed.
Especially from the princess's side, she now knew Chen Kuang inside and out.
His earlier attempts at bluffing looked painfully amateurish now... almost funny.
And she, having to pretend to be the naive child again, nearly broke character herself.
When it came to feeding porridge...
Now that she remembered everything, opening her mouth to accept a spoonful of hot gruel made her flush with shame.
Then there was the time on horseback...
Those two soft things on her head...
How could she have asked him to hold her mother's-!
"What the hell kind of dumb stuff did I do when I was little?!"
And so, in mutual embarrassment, they leaned on each other, and, after three failed attempts, finally escaped the capital again.
Chen Kuang, carrying the princess under one arm, strode ahead.
Behind them, the palace burned.
Fire and frost collided in the air, freedom always tasted a little like this..
"By the way, Your Highness..."
Chen Kuang suddenly asked, "I still don't know your real name."
Calling her "little slop bucket" in his head no longer felt appropriate.
The princess hesitated. "A girl's name is private. You're not supposed to ask, didn't you know?"
Name-asking was part of marriage customs.
Chen Kuang blinked. "Oh. Right. Guess I'll keep calling you Your Highness, then."
He'd forgotten yet another ancient custom.
But somehow... her tone just now was a little off...
A while passed.
As they prepared to part ways, the small figure under his arm suddenly said:
"Su Huaiying."
"To let you know the name of your future empress."