Lu Changsheng returned to the Northern Region Heavenly Sect and headed straight for the Mission Hall to declare the completion of his mission. He handed the demonic essence blood to the elder in charge.

The elder examined it briefly, then gave a satisfied nod. "Not bad. You completed the mission in less than a month. As a scion disciple, your rewards are doubled. You've earned twenty thousand contribution points."

With that, Lu Changsheng's total rose to 28,000 contribution points, enough to exchange for two more Dao Comprehension Pills. But instead of redeeming them immediately, he wanted to first return to his courtyard and review everything he had gained from this trip.

Back in his courtyard, Lu Changsheng sat and tallied what the trip had yielded. In total, he had obtained four Dao Comprehension Pills, though one had already been consumed in Qing City, along with the artifact Faces of All Beings and 20,000 contribution points.

Lu Changsheng was extremely satisfied. The rewards were exceptional, but opportunities like this did not come often. This time, luck had clearly favored him.

Now came the more difficult question of how to use the remaining three Dao Comprehension Pills. He had four Domains but only three pills. Should I use all of them on a single Domain and push it to Perfection, or distribute them evenly and strengthen all four?

Lu Changsheng pondered on the question, but did not rush to make a decision. Instead, he thought back to his recent battles. Each time he deployed his Domain, it always felt just a step short. Stronger opponents often broke it apart with ease. Most of the time, he had only managed to hold his ground by relying on the sheer number of Domains rather than their individual power.

After weighing it carefully, he came to a decision. I'll focus on the Starry Sky Domain first and see how far I can push it.

With three Dao Comprehension Pills already in hand and enough contribution points to exchange for two more, he had five in total to work with. That should be enough to raise the Starry Sky Domain to a very high level.

That night, Lu Changsheng waited until darkness settled over the sect. Once everything was quiet, he sat down in his courtyard, took out a Dao Comprehension Pill, and began to contemplate the Starry Sky Domain.

Three days passed in that stillness. By the time he finished, all three pills were spent, and the Domain's progress had climbed to roughly fifty-seven percent.

Crossing the halfway mark had already made the Starry Sky Domain meaningfully stronger, but Lu Changsheng wasn't satisfied with fifty-seven, so he spent 20,000 contribution points on two more Dao Comprehension Pills. After taking them, he entered another two days of focused cultivation, forcing the Starry Sky Domain forward until it reached seventy-five percent.

It was only then that Lu Changsheng noticed something worth paying attention to. The rate of his Domain progression did not slow down, as though there was no bottleneck. Under ordinary circumstances, the closer a Domain came to Perfection, the harder it became to advance. Progress should have slowed to a crawl, but for him, that friction simply did not exist. Every pill still pushed the Starry Sky Domain forward by eight to ten percent, as steadily as the first.

He quickly realized why that was: Perception. It was high enough that the usual bottlenecks posed no real resistance, even with Perfection in sight.

He did not know what would happen once he achieved Perfection of a Domain yet, but he could find out by exchanging 30,000 contribution points for three more Dao Comprehension Pills.

At the moment, Lu Changsheng only had 8,000 contribution points. He could take on more missions, though there was no particular urgency.

Strengthening his Domains was important, as it directly increased his combat power. However, he had not forgotten the true foundation of the Divine Fortification Realm: heart force. Only when his heart scale reached one hundred could he open the Mind Space and step into the Divine Treasury Realm.

Up to this point, he had relied on his Domains to contemplate the world and gradually temper his heart force. Now, however, he had another method. He could use Faces of All Beings to enter illusions, allowing him to experience the lives of countless beings, and through that, strengthen his heart force.

He took out Faces of All Beings and unrolled it slowly. Written across it were lines of warning. Once activated, the artifact would pull its user into an illusion where their memories faded, allowing them to fully live out someone else's life. As for what kind of life it would be, what insights could be gained, and whether it would truly strengthen the heart force, nothing was certain.

In essence, it was a gamble, though one with reasonable odds. Most practitioners who used Faces of All Beings came out of it with their heart force measurably stronger.

Lu Changsheng moved to his room and settled into position, legs crossed, the scroll resting across his hands. The illusion should last about three days in reality. I'll need to go into seclusion and avoid any disturbance. Otherwise, the effect will be ruined. And this artifact only has one use left. I can't afford to waste it.

Three days without food or water was no hardship for a cultivator at his level, and the artifact asked nothing more complicated of him than attention. As long as he concentrated, it would naturally take effect and draw him into the illusion.

He placed the scroll before him and stared without blinking. Time stretched in a way he could not measure. Gradually, the image began to shift, turning into a swirling vortex that grew larger and larger until it swallowed him whole. 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

Lu Changsheng's consciousness sank into darkness, and in that same instant, without knowing it, he entered the illusion of Faces of All Beings and began living out an entire life within it.

Inside the illusion, he was born as Luo Shan, in a remote mountain village in Luo Kingdom. The villagers lived by hunting and farming, and from an early age, Luoshan was strong and capable, following the village elders into the mountains and absorbing everything they taught him. By eleven or twelve, he was already the best hunter among them.

When Luo Shan turned sixteen, the world fell into chaos. War spread across the land, and his village was caught in the tide of violence. Soldiers swept through his village without mercy, killing indiscriminately. His parents, his younger brother, and his younger sister all died that day. The entire village was wiped out. Only Luoshan and a handful of hunters survived, spared simply by chance. They had been deep in the mountains, safe from all the bloodshed.

Fury consumed Luo Shan, and he swore he would avenge his family. Together with the remaining hunters, he tracked the soldiers who had destroyed their home. There were hundreds of them, so Luo Shan knew not to confront them blindly. Instead, he hunted them the way he had always hunted prey. He stalked them through the wilderness, laid traps along their path, and eliminated them one by one.

At first, the soldiers dismissed the deaths as misfortune, men falling into traps left behind by villagers. But as the days passed and more of them died, they realized something was wrong. They investigated, and eventually Luo Shan's companions were discovered, captured, and killed. Only Luo Shan escaped. He was left wounded and alone in the dark.

Grief weighed heavily on him, but it did not stop him. He became like a shadow that lingered at the edge of their vision. Even with his wounds, he continued to set traps and carry out assassinations. For six months, he hunted hundreds of them without rest, until the last soldier was dead.

After that, Luo Shan joined a rebel army. He threw himself into battle after battle, tempering himself in the flames of war until he rose to become a renowned general.

By that time, the Luo Kingdom had collapsed, and the land fractured into countless warring factions. Amid the chaos, Luo Shan married the daughter of the rebel leader, the woman he loved above all others, and when her father died in battle, he took command of the army.

With no one left to restrain him, his ambitions grew. He led his forces across the land, winning battle after battle. His reputation spread, and his power expanded until he stood among the handful of men who might yet rule the world.

But war never grants victory without a price. In a crucial battle, facing an enemy with ten times his numbers, Luo Shan lost. As the defeated, Luo Shan should have been killed, but the victor recognized his ability and took him in rather than executing him. From that day on, Luo Shan fought under a new lord, campaigning across the land until, at last, the world was unified and the long war came to an end.

He had given half his life to the battlefield, but when peace finally arrived, all that was presented to him was a cup of poisoned wine. His accomplishments were too great, his reputation too large; a man whose merit overshadowed his lord's could not be allowed to live.

Still, the lord was not entirely without mercy. The lord made one concession—Luo Shan's son would inherit his title. So with that, he accepted the terms, drank the wine, and died quietly, carrying his sorrow with him to the end.

"Gha!"

Lu Changsheng jolted awake, as though waking from a nightmare. His breath was ragged, his mind still half-submerged in the other life.

"Wha... I am... Lu Changsheng?"

His eyes were wide open. The memories sat in his mind with the full weight of something lived rather than dreamed, every detail sharp and vivid. This had not been an illusion in the usual sense, but an entire lifetime he had personally experienced.

He steadied himself and looked down at the scroll still resting in his hands. "Faces of All Beings... So this is what it does. A terrifying artifact indeed."

Luo Shan's experiences had already begun to influence Lu Changsheng in subtle ways, though the effect remained limited. As a martial artist in the Divine Fortification Realm, his heart and will had already been tempered to an extraordinary degree, so experiencing life as an ordinary man could not truly change who he was as a person.

After calming himself, he carefully reviewed his memories as Luo Shan. He thought about how he lost his entire family to soldiers as a teenager and spent half a year hunting hundreds of men to their deaths through patience and sheer will, laying down traps and striking from the shadows. He then climbed from nothing to the rank of general, fought his way to the threshold of ruling the world, and even in defeat had found a worthy lord to serve, helping finally bring peace to a fractured realm.

In the end, his achievements had made him a threat in his lord's eyes. His loyalty was ultimately rewarded with a cup of poisoned wine. He accepted his fate. He drank the wine, knowing his son would inherit his title. And just like that, Luo Shan died with his grief held quietly inside him.

Though he had been an ordinary man, Luo Shan's life was anything but ordinary. It was full, intense, and complete, and Lu Changsheng had been fortunate to experience it, as Faces of All Beings did not always grant illusions of such depth. The richer the life, the greater the potential growth in heart force, and the artifact had allowed him to experience both the mortal realm and life-and-death combat within a single lifetime. But unfortunately, this had been its final use.