35: Chapter 35: A Square Dance That Collapses with Broken Logic, and a Saintess's "First Love" Experience
Within the Sea of Consciousness illusion...
Saintess Su Qianqian was experiencing the most absurd, bizarre, and inconceivable moment of her nineteen-year life.
She was straddling a precarious, flying wooden stick.
In her hand, she clutched a dry twig called a 'wand'.
Before her was a ferocious, three-headed giant dog, drool flying everywhere.
And she was loudly reciting the *Analects of Confucius* at this monstrous creature.
'The benevolent loves others!'
Her pronunciation was precise, her tone righteous, and a vast, righteous Qi surged forth.
Yet, far from being reformed, the giant dog's six eyes all lit up, and it excitedly rolled on the ground.
The next second, it actually pulled out a deck of... playing cards from a fold in its belly.
"Woof woof woof!" (Let's play Dou Dizhu!)
"What in the world is this place?!"
"And what is the underlying logic of this kind of 'Dao method'?!"
For the first time, Su Qianqian's clear eyes revealed confusion and collapse. In her understanding, Confucian cultivation emphasized words becoming law, order and structure. But here, cats flew, trees danced, and a boy named Harry Potter rode a broomstick, competing with a noseless strange snake for a golden ball.
Everything was chaotic. Absurd.
What drove her most mad was that her prized 'Exquisite Dao Heart' was currently leaping with frantic joy.
A Dao Heart is like a person.
It was like someone who had drunk plain water their whole life suddenly being force-fed an entire bottle of strong, carbonated liquor—iced and filled with popping candy.
Stimulating.
Nauseating.
Yet, damnably, they couldn't help but want another sip.
"Saintess Su, don't just stand there. That's Hagrid's pet. It wants you to teach it how to pass the imperial exams."
Li Mo's Soul projection leaned against the doorframe of 'Hagrid's Hut', holding a bottle of Butterbeer, his smile reaching new heights of shamelessness.
"If you can't grasp the logic of this place, this knowledge-action seal will truly become your 'knowledge-action prison'."
"You... the things written in your book are all fallacies!" Su Qianqian glared at him, both embarrassed and annoyed. "But why... why do I feel this unreasonable logic has a strange kind of... beauty?"
"That's called 'imagination,' Saintess." Li Mo shook the bottle. "Welcome to the world of non-linear narrative."
Back in the real world, on the white jade cloud platform, the atmosphere had grown so bizarre it felt frozen.
The knowledge-action seal had sunk into his brow.
The one undergoing the trial should appear solemn and dignified, or be struggling in pain.
Yet Li Mo on the platform, eyes closed, wore an utterly unrestrained smile at the corner of his mouth, and his body began to sway involuntarily.
"Left hand, draw a dragon with me..."
"Right hand, draw a rainbow..."
Under the gaze of thousands of Cultivators, various great experts, and Sect Master and Dugu Yun, whose eyes were nearly popping out of their sockets, Servant Li Mo began moving with demonic dance steps.
His hands traced bizarre yet rhythmic arcs in the air.
His hips followed, twisting so fast they left afterimages.
"What is he doing?!" Zhao Wuji's eyeballs were about to launch from their sockets. "Is he... performing a shamanic dance inside the 'knowledge-action seal'?!"
Dugu Yun's old face flushed a liver-red color. Covering his forehead, he growled, "Abomination! This kid's brain is broken! What in the blazes kind of 'body technique' is this?!"
The watching Loose Cultivators were utterly dumbfounded.
In their eyes, Li Mo's movements were utterly ridiculous, yet they faintly resonated with some indescribable rhythm of heaven and earth.
Every time his hip twist reached its extreme angle, the surrounding air emitted a faint crackling sound.
Space itself seemed to tremble slightly, unable to bear this kind of 'flamboyant operation'.
"Look! The heart-questioning mirror!"
A startled cry drew everyone's gaze skyward.
That solemn, ancient bronze mirror was now emitting a mournful 'humming' sound.
On its surface, the Saint's memorial archway and the river of Sword Intent had vanished without a trace.
In their place was a kaleidoscope of wildly flickering, multicolored blocks. Faintly, even the heavy bass beat of a 'dun-tsi-da-tsi' rhythm could be heard.
The heart-questioning mirror had crashed.
Its logic formation, inherited over tens of thousands of years, had finally burned out its core while trying to parse thoughts of 'square dance mixed with cyberpunk'.
"Enough! Stop this!"
Within the Sea of Consciousness illusion, Su Qianqian finally couldn't withstand the impact of this worldview-shattering experience.
Screaming, she threw away the wand. Her entire form transformed into a stream of pure light, forcibly crashing through the logical barrier constructed by *Harry Potter*, and fled back to reality in disarray.
On the cloud platform, Li Mo, who had been dancing with gusto, stiffened.
*Crack!*
A crisp sound.
That 'knowledge-action seal' flew out from between his brows, shattered in mid-air, and transformed into countless sparkling points of light that scattered across the ground.
Su Qianqian slowly opened her eyes. Her delicate frame swayed slightly. On her perpetually aloof and composed beautiful face, a flush akin to drunkenness now appeared. Her breathing was rapid, her gaze incomparably complex.
"Saintess Su, you..." Sect Master asked cautiously.
Su Qianqian ignored him.
She stared fixedly at Li Mo. Under the astonished gazes of the entire assembly, she suddenly strode forward and grabbed Li Mo's hand—the one still suspended mid-air, ready to 'draw a rainbow'.
Her voice carried a slight tremble, her tone filled with the unique urgency and desperation of a reader waiting for the next update:
"In that 'book' of yours... did that red-haired boy named Ron end up with Hermione or not?!"
"And! That Voldemort... did he really just... die from a Disarming Charm?!"
Dead silence filled the arena.
Zhao Wuji, the Grand Tutor of the Crown Prince of the Great Zhou Dynasty, felt his jaw 'clang' as it hit the top of his foot.
The demonic Cultivators from the Ten Thousand Demon Valley and the assassins from the Shadow Sect collectively turned into stone statues.
They had envisioned countless outcomes.
Li Mo being suppressed and killed.
Li Mo exposing his true cultivation and triggering a bloody battle.
But they had never, in their wildest dreams, imagined that Su Qianqian, the Saintess of Jixia Academy hailed as a 'Saint in the flesh', would, at aThe highly anticipated Daoist conference, grab the hand of a Servant and publicly... demand spoilers?
"Uh, Fairy, public place, mind your manners." Li Mo tried awkwardly to pull his hand back. "Spoilers bring death upon one's family, that's the rule."
"The debate on the Dao is over."
Su Qianqian took a deep breath, forcefully suppressing her churning emotions.
She turned around, sweeping her gaze across the assembly with eyes that had regained their cool clarity, yet now held an added trace of resolve.
"The Heavenly River Sword Sect's 'Dao' is vast and profoundly bizarre, far surpassing anything this junior has witnessed."
"This round... this junior admits defeat."
"Junior Sister Su! What are you saying?!" Zhao Wuji shrieked. "He's just a Servant! He..."
"Silence."
Su Qianqian cast him a cold glance, her eyes containing an unprecedented hint of madness and threat.
"If you can last three breaths within this person's Sea of Consciousness without going mad, I will retract my words. Otherwise, get back on your mechanical bird and scram!"
Zhao Wuji shrank his neck, not daring to let out another peep.
"We won? We... won?!"
The Disciples of the Heavenly River Sword Sect erupted into a tsunami of rapturous cheers.
Dugu Yun let out a sigh of relief, looking at Li Mo as if he were a prehistoric behemoth wearing human skin.
However, Li Mo did not feel relieved.
He sensed it—the moment Su Qianqian announced the result, from behind the heart-questioning mirror still flickering with garbled code high in the sky, within the thick clouds, an extremely sinister, thicklydecay-smelling bloody light suddenly pierced through!
That bloody light did not belong to any faction present.
It was...
"Cousin, the sky is splitting open."
Chu Linger's voice sounded by Li Mo's ear, carrying a gravity he had never heard before.
Li Mo looked up.
In the clear sky, a massive black rift was torn open by an invisible force.
A terrifying aura, surpassing the understanding of this world, poured down like a heavenly river in reverse.
Deep within the rift, the faint silhouette of a gigantic figure wearing dragon robes, yet lacking a head, could be seen sitting.
"The Great Zhou Dynasty's... founding emperor, Ji Wushuang?!" Dugu Yun was so startled he dropped his wine bottle, shattering it. "Didn't he die on the God-Demon Battlefield ten thousand years ago?!"
The headless figure slowly extended a rotting, giant hand.
Its target wasn't Sect Master, nor was it Dugu Yun.
Instead, like an obstinate reader, it reached straight for the item in Li Mo's embrace—the *dragon vein heavenly book*.
A voice, heavy as ancient thunder, exploded within the Sea of Consciousness of every person present:
"That... is... my... thing."
Li Mo looked at the hand that blotted out the sky, feeling the majestic power of rules that even 【Absolute Negation】 seemed hard-pressed to suppress, and couldn't help but curse:
"Fuck, I just read a book, how did I manage to spawn the ancient final boss?!"
The next moment, Su Qianqian actually tightened her grip on his hand again, her gaze terrifyingly determined.
"Want to take him? First, ask if the 'Spring and Autumn Great Brush' of my Jixia Academy agrees!"
Amid her sharp cry, her plain white Confucian robes instantly transformed into resplendent golden battle armor. In her hand, a giant brush large enough to prop up the sky materialized out of thin air!
Li Mo looked at this Saintess who had fearlessly placed herself between him and danger, and felt utterly numb.
"Saintess, we're not that familiar yet, are we?"
"Haven't you... sort of got the script backwards?"
The giant hand in the sky pressed down with a thunderous force.
The ultimate collision concerning 'books' and 'fate' had only just begun.