After the pain came dizziness, making even standing up incredibly difficult. If someone had been watching, they would have seen her soul body flickering in and out of existence, as if it might disperse at any moment.

She knew this was because her spiritual consciousness couldn’t process so many messages simultaneously. It was only thanks to her years of refined study in soul techniques that she survived this experience—if someone else had undergone this, their soul body would likely have exploded and perished on the spot.

Feng Miaojun’s face was pale, sweat streaming down her forehead, yet she forced herself to relax.

After who knows how long, a light “crack” sounded in her mind, as if something had broken. Then the pain rapidly disappeared, and the voices echoing in her mind became increasingly clear.

More strangely, although they seemed chaotic and disorganized, she could hear and understand each statement immediately, without any obstacles to comprehension. These voices communicated without language as if existing in the form of thoughts. As soon as one had a thought, she naturally understood it.

One most fitting term emerged—inner voices.

What she heard were the inner voices of all the Heavenly Demons here.

For Feng Miaojun, this was an entirely new and bizarre experience. She didn’t even need to expend great effort to carefully distinguish them; she could naturally connect with each inner voice, categorizing them and prioritizing them according to urgency and importance.

It felt instinctive.

Standing there for just a few moments, she heard countless reports from Heavenly Demons in various positions about their attacks on the barrier, including analyses of the barrier, attempted methods of attack, military deployments in Yingshui City, formation arrangements, and city dynamics—all manner of information.

It felt as if everyone had opened a free voice channel—some reporting work, some analyzing situations, and even some cursing and venting emotions.

Indeed, these inner voices even contained strong personal emotional tendencies, appearing more direct and natural without requiring any linguistic rhetoric.

Before this, she had thought Heavenly Demons were cold and rational beings, like machines.

Feng Miaojun let out a gentle sigh.

This wasn’t her first encounter with Heavenly Demons; she had dealt with them in Yun Ya’s sea of consciousness. At that time, the Heavenly Demons had howled at her more than once, and they must have been communicating closely with each other, otherwise their actions couldn’t have been so unified.

Why couldn’t she hear their inner voices then? Feng Miaojun thought hard and remembered only one thing—the earlier headache felt familiar.

In Yun Ya’s sea of consciousness, when she carried little Yun Ya into the courtyard and turned back to close the door, the Heavenly Demons, unwilling to accept defeat, made one final, vicious push against the door, shrieking at her.

She and the Heavenly Demons were separated by just a door; that shriek was essentially right in her ear, piercing her as if struck by a heavy hammer, shaking her spirit. But at that critical life-or-death moment, she endured it without withdrawing her hands.

Her spirit had been severely injured as a result, and it took a long recovery period afterward to gradually heal.

Since then, she occasionally felt something strange in her spirit, as if a gap had been torn open in her heart, but detailed examinations never revealed any problems.

Could it be some sequela? But that shouldn’t be the case—with her expertise in soul techniques, such minor issues shouldn’t escape her magical eye.

After pondering for a long time without a reasonable explanation, Feng Miaojun simply stopped thinking about it.

When she had descended earlier, she had already sensed the abnormality around her. The Heavenly Demons here seemed countless, yet in her perception, there wasn’t even a single soul flame around.

In other words, these Heavenly Demons were merely illusions; they didn’t exist. That explained the brightly lit, bustling Yingshui City within the barrier.

Feng Miaojun crouched on the ground, staring blankly at the city scene for a while before gently exhaling.

So that was it.

Incredible, yet undeniable.

If she wasn’t mistaken, everything before her, including Yingshui City and the Heavenly Demons, existed in the “past,” not the “present.”

For some reason, after escaping from the stone chamber, she and the King of Yan hadn’t returned to the original dream but had fallen into this unknown space.

It was conceivable that the Heavenly Demons of that year had experienced the same.

So what she was now witnessing firsthand was the scene from over three hundred years ago, when the Heavenly Demons attacked the city. This night had been endlessly recounted in numerous unofficial histories and anecdotes, with later generations proposing all sorts of bizarre viewpoints. Yet how many in the world had the fortune to personally witness and verify it?

From now on, she would be one more.

Why had this scene been preserved? She didn’t know. But by entering this space and seeing Yingshui City, the barrier, and the Heavenly Demons, she had solved another age-old mystery: why did the Heavenly Demons attack Yingshui City?

When reading historical books in Yanhai Tower, she had wondered more than once: if the Heavenly Demons had indeed escaped from their sealed location, why didn’t they flee into the human world to recuperate, instead of forcefully attacking the capital of the Haoli Empire? Unless they were determined to destroy the Haoli Empire, this action offered them no benefit. The empire’s territory was vast, and aside from Yingshui City, no other city was said to have suffered a large-scale collective invasion by Heavenly Demons.

Attacking other cities would have been easier and less damaging.

Around this mystery, later generations developed dozens of theories and debates. It was only now, as Feng Miaojun stood here, that there was evidence to conclusively solve it—Yingshui City was blocking their path.

The person who originally sealed the Heavenly Demons must have prepared a contingency: first to seal them with the divine imprint, and if the Heavenly Demons broke the seal and escaped, they would be transported to this space.

This space probably contained nothing yet was endless, with the only exit located in Yingshui City. If the Heavenly Demons wanted to escape again, they first had to break through the barrier and enter Yingshui City.

From the Heavenly Demons’ perspective, Yingshui City was like a door blocking the emergency escape route, locked with iron chains. Without a key, the Heavenly Demons naturally had no choice but to force their way through.

A clear piece of evidence was that official historical records stated in black and white that after the Heavenly Demons were sealed, the Haoli Empire suppressed them with the nation’s fortune. Now, seeing the scene firsthand, Feng Miaojun finally understood what “suppression” meant.

Standing outside the barrier and observing this unprecedented Heavenly Demon City attack, Feng Miaojun could only describe it as “magnificent.” Countless red shadows patrolled the barrier’s surface, occasionally gathering together and striking like cannonballs.

The scene resembled a comet cluster striking the ground, with unlimited light burst effects. She had experienced so many human wars, yet all combined couldn’t match its grandeur and spectacular scale.

She stood quietly for a while longer, gathering more information, and learned that the barrier protecting Yingshui City was incredibly resilient, and impenetrable despite the Heavenly Demons’ attacks. Above, black and white lights flashed, and Feng Miaojun could see they had taken the form of flood dragons.