Inner Demons

"The old man is a person of this world," the old man said with a smile. At the same time, he picked up the piece of meat that Li Yunxin had previously placed on the stone slab and brought it back to him. "It's gone cold, the taste won't be good. If you haven't eaten this before, you really don't know what the ultimate delicacy is."

The meat was indeed cold. A layer of white fat had solidified on the surface of the dark brown muscle, trapping the original char-grilled aroma.

Li Yunxin looked at the meat, reached out, and took it. After a moment of hesitation, he sat back down by the campfire and placed the meat over the fire.

"Was what I just saw an illusion?"

"Some of it was, and some of it wasn't." Only now did Li Yunxin realize that the old man didn't actually look that old, and his movements weren't that slow. He should have been a spry old man. The old man looked at Li Yunxin. "But the news is not wrong. The three people are currently a hundred miles outside of Weicheng, staying in that temple. That girl, well, she won't die for a while."

Li Yunxin thought for a moment: "So, the facts are true. But the scenes and details I saw were all illusions—you just recreated them for me."

The old man smiled: "A clever young man."

"But how did you know what they would say or do? The illusion you created was so lifelike, I couldn't find a single flaw."

"The old man doesn't know now. And the old man doesn't have the divine ability to create an illusion." The old man said with a smile. He seemed to enjoy seeing Li Yunxin's puzzled expression, as it made him feel happy and amused, and it was also a novel experience. "This folding fan in your hand, there's a good painting on the fan's surface. You record the things you've seen and the things you've thought about on it—what you just saw was just what was in your own mind, not the old man's doing."