The False World

The false world is an extremely powerful formation. Typically only someone at the immortal step would be able to set it up.

The false world created an entirely new world, complete with qi, life, and land. The important thing was that at first look it would look identical to the real world, but there were significant repetition and patterns inherent in its creation. After all, no matter how much one tried, a virtual world could only be created with limited resources. Thus it was easier to repeat creations rather than make them from the start to save them.

The false world created huge illusions over huge swaths of land. And these illusions could turn real. But the cost of turning an illusion real was extremely high. Thus usually only the immediate surrounding of a person would be turned into reality. If a person was sitting on a tree, then to save energy, only the tree would be real and the rest of the world that the person sees would be illusionary. Then, if than person jumped from one tree to another, the tree jumped from would turn illusionary, into a virtual tree, and the tree he jumped to would become real.

Another terrifying fact about the false world was its ability to bend space. It could twist space around as you moved so that you would feel like you have run in a straight line, but could be simply running in circles instead. Thus it was difficult to see where you truly were. The people who seemed to be standing right next to you could in truth be miles away. And even if two people were very close to each other, they could be seeing very different things.

Another annoying ability of the false world was to overwhelm the senses of people and make them see very different things.

The power of the false world could change depending on the power of the person and the core of the formation. The core of the formation was what it gave the power to function. If it was powerful enough, even immortals could be trapped in false worlds without their knowledge.

And the reason there were twisting bridges in the world was so that no one would recognize the twisting of the space and realize that they were in the same plane all along, just seeing different things.

And this also explained why the Grootlsang was so slow. It took time to render the illusion. The Grootlsang could not move too fast as then the rendering of the illusion would not be able to keep up with the Grootlsang's speed. This was also why the Grootlsang slowed down when they split up. After all, with the group splitting up the false world had to make a much larger part of the illusion into reality, taking up more resources. Thus it could only render the Grootlsang slower. And it was easy to create stationary things like rocks and trees rather than moving things like the Grootlsang. That was why there was no wind in the world so that there was no movement from the trees or grass.

Once Bai Yun realize that, he knew that there was a chance at escape. It was not like the danger became less. After all, if you get caught by a rendering of the Grootlsang in the false world, it was the same as if they gat caught by a Grootlsang in real life. There was no difference at their cultivation levels anyway.

But there was a way out. A way to destroy the false world itself.

"Hey!" Bai Yun shouted out.

It had taken Bai Yun only less than a second to realize that the small world was in fact a false world and come up with a countermeasure. Thus he had not taken much time since they had split up. So all of them were still close to each other, within hearing distances. So they all heard Ba Yun's shout and turned to look at him.

"If you guys want to survive, do exactly as I say." Bai Yun shouted.

When they heard this, the rest of the group looked surprised and hopeful. Bai Yun had proven his capability in the path that they had taken here, so they were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. They had nothing to lose anyway.

"Grab a piece of rock or a twig or something. Then tie a piece of your cloth to it and throw them as far as you can. Make sure that they all land as far away from each other as possible." Bai Yun shouted. While shouting, he did as he told. He picked up a piece of rock on the ground ad then tied a piece of his cloth around it and threw it far away.

The rest of the group stared at him in confusion. They had no idea why he would suggest something like this. But seeing the seriousness with which Bai Yun followed his words, they decided to follow his actions. When you are at the very end of despair, you would hold onto anything that promised even a bit of hope. Even if it made no sense.

It was not without reason that Bai Yun asked them to do this. The piece of clothing that they carried with them was a piece of reality. The place around that piece of reality had to be made into a real place from an illusion. At the very least the place the cloth fell on would have to be turned into reality. Else the cloth would simply fall through the floor, creating an anomaly. Complicated false worlds all had their own ways to solve this problem. But from Bai Yun's quick look, it didn't look that way.

And the reason he asked them to tie the cloth to a rock was that clothes don't fly very far on their own. And the piece of rock would be forced to materialize so that it could further add to the formations resource needs.

A few moments after Bai Yun suggested this, the effects were quite apparent. The Grootlsang, which was already too slow, slowed down even further. This gave the group hope for survival. They picked up the pace and started to throw things even further and faster.

And in this time, the Grootlsang slowly crawled closer to shadow forty four. Even though it had slowed down, it was still faster than anyone in the group. Slowly it reached shadow forty four and with a single bite, it ripped him in two. Then it slowly swallowed the body of shadow forty four and then turned around again.

This time the target of the Grootlsang was shadow ten. Bai Yun was keeping a close eye on the formations, so he could easily see when it would be destroyed. And from the corner of his eyes, he started seeing some discrepancies in the formation. Seeing that their efforts were working, he urged them to go faster.

"Keep on doing what you are doing. We are almost out of the woods." Bai Yun shouted.

"What exactly are we doing?" Shadow ten asked. He was scared by the fact that the Grootlsang had chosen him next. He wasn't sure if whatever Bai Yun was trying was going to work.

"Just do it. I'll explain once we survive." Bai Yun shouted back while continuing to throw things once again.

The rest of the group followed his advice. The kept on throwing pieces of cloth while running. For a while, the land was filled with the woosh of flying things and the slow slithering of the Grootlsang. It even seemed to be too lazy to roar.

Slowly the Grootlsang came closer and closer to shadow ten. He finally dropped throwing things and just started to run as fast as he could, applying all of his strength and all the movement techniques that he knew. Unfortunately, the movement techniques that blood moon taught were made especially for assassinations and combat, thus they did not have much effect in running away.

Slowly the Grootlsang gained on him. Finally, it reached shadow ten and slowly raised its head high in the air, blood dripping from its mouth and tusks and then lunged down to bite at him. For a moment shadow ten, was frozen with fear. He could not even use his movement technique to dodge as he was paralyzed with fear.

And then the Grootlsang bit shadow ten. As he was bitten, he curled up and put his hands up in defense. But even as he braced for impact, the pain of being torn in half did not arrive. He slowly opened his eyes to see that he was inside the Grootlsang's mouth, and he could see its sharp teeth piercing his waist. But somehow it did not hurt him, almost as if the Grootlsang was only an illusion.

Bai Yun who was keeping a close eye on things finally stopped running. He turned around and looked at the Grootlsang, and sat down panting. He had a grin on his face, though it was hidden by his mask.

Slowly the others also recognized the problem with the beast and slowly came to a stop. As they watched, shadow ten slowly walked out of the Grootlsang's mouth. As they watched confused, the Grootlsang started to flicker.

The Grootlsang started to flicker in and out of existence. Not a single person understood what was happening. After a few moments, it finally stopped flickering.

Then the Grootlsang started to slowly disappear. In its place, a black outline of it was still left. It turned to be just lines, like a topological map of the beast.

As the group watched slack jawed at the scene, the lines that were once the Grootlsang shattered. Slowly the pieces of the Grootlsang turned into dust and then the dust disappeared into the air.

"What the -" Shadow ninety said. But before he could even finish his thought, a change occurred. Just like the Grootlsang, the entire landmass started to flicker. And then slowly, they also changed into lines. As the group watched, the sky followed suit right after, turning into a giant spherical cage.

And then, in front of them, it all shattered.

For the briefest of moments, there was utter blackness. No one could see anything in front of them. But before they started to panic, light returned.

With a start, they realize that they were standing on a bright white plane. The white plane extended to all they could see. Even the sky was white as if they were trapped in a hemispherical bowl. There were no obstructions on this field and they could see everything as far as they could see.

It was only then that they realized that the group was much closer together than they had thought before. The group had run away when they faced the Grootlsang, and they had run a quite good distance from each other. But they realized that they were standing not even a tenth of how far apart they had been before the illusion shattered.

It was then that they started to look around. The first thing that they saw was the corpse of shadow forty four. His corpse was lying there, ripped in two and bleeding all over the white plane.

The group then noticed another group quite a good distance from them, slowly looking around in confusion, just like them. They were also confused with nothing better to do.

And in the white plane, they could also see a few other objects in the distance. Even though it was not clear due to the great distance, it was obvious that they should be the other participants.

Bai Yun laughed when he saw this. A lethargic feeling settled onto his legs and he collapsed onto the plane. After a moment of silence, a great relief of having escaped certain death with no chance of survival settled on to him.

As he lay there, the rest of the group started to laugh or cry. They might be training to be ruthless assains, but they were still kids at heart nonetheless. Not a single was was exempt from this.

Bai Yun looked up at the ceiling, seeing the great white dome and grinned in satisfaction.

They had survived.

They had broken out of the false world.