A year had now passed since Jiang Mang's arrival at the Zither palace. He had trained and lived in seclusion for an entire year, accompanied only by his masters, two newly gained sisters, and Xiao Liu. Xiao Lu, who had followed Jiang Mang for many years had been gone the entire year. He was undergoing training with grandpa Fang, and his progress was unknown.
Jiang Mang had changed significantly over the year. His dao foundations had been perfected, while his mastery over his techniques had become polished. He had also gained some new techniques, which reached the proficiënt level.
He has reached the second realm in his three charm methods. He has reached the second realm of controlling sounds to become swords. His abilities in illusions have risen exponentially.
He has created five types of mental illusions. Three are illusion realms created through the first method, while two were created through the second method. The first illusion realm is the most basic illusion maze but is also the hardest to escape.
The second illusion realm was inspired by the Reincarnation paradise technique and is called the reincarnation realm. The target will experience one hundred reincarnations in one hour. The first life will be their current life copied and continued using their memories, which will be temporarily wiped out after their first 'death' experience. The one hundred lifetimes of experiences will be fused into their souls, which will make most people crazy.
The third illusion realm is a hell, where the target will experience different tortures. The fourth illusion is called desire heaven, as the target will be indulged inside it with all his desires. The fifth illusion is called the fear world, which is the world where the target will continuously experience his fears.
The first, second, and third illusion realms are effective on everyone with a soul equally as strong or weaker than him. The effect of the second and third realm depends on the target's tenacity and willpower.
The fourth and fifth illusion can only be used against those with a soul weaker than him, and the result depends on their hearts.
He has also created three physical illusions. Two illusions are for trapping and one for misleading. The first illusion is an inescapable room, while the second is an endless forest. The third illusion creates clones of himself to attack or escape or clones of his hidden weapons.
At last, he created two combination illusion. The first is a trapping illusion that makes the target move in a circle through the physical illusion, while a mental illusion realm is used to copy the surroundings to create a second reality. This illusion is named: the second world.
The second illusion is of the trapping and attacking type. The physical illusion disrupts the target's sense of direction while the qi song soundless killing is to attack the target in combination with Illusion paradise. The qi song is also used as a base to create a mental illusion with the Illusion song technique. This mental illusion gives the target the sense that they are getting tired and have to sleep. Jiang Mang named the illusion: sleepy death.
The first five mental illusions use the Illusion eyes technique. The next three physical illusions use Illusion song or simple qi disruption.
The last two combination type illusions require Jiang Mang to perform Illusion song for the mental illusion and qi disruption for the physical illusion. The qi song soundless killing is used to perform the Illusion song technique and allows him to control the sound more easily. Immortal paradise is also required for sleepy death but is used through the qi disruption for the physical illusion.
He has also named the first five mental illusions into different types of eyes namely abyss eyes, samsara eyes, netherworld eyes, heaven eyes, and nightmare eyes.
His intents have also increased substantially with now having perfected charm, illusion, heart, poison, speed, and claw intent. His growth and absorption intents have reached the peak of the great accomplishment realm. He has also comprehended two new intents over the last six months, which are the sound and sword intent. He learned the sound intent through the qi song and the sword intent after practicing and mastering all the basics of the sword. They have both reached the great accomplishment realm.
His master Jiu didn't impart him a sword technique but helped him transform his thirteen movements of emotions and desires to become usable as a sword technique too. His master Zhu then taught him how to perform a sword dance with his new technique combined with Charm dance. His self created technique is now both usable for hand-to-hand combat and the sword.
Jiang Mang has also been working on his hidden weapons mastery and poisons and managed to create an improved version of poison daggers, which can accompany him to the emperor realm due to his fusion with Gu Hei.
His Fox claw and Fox dance techniques are now kept in reserve for when he needs to use his bloodline. He has improved upon the old hidden moon traversal technique after using the incomplete technique he acquired during the recruitment test of the Moon empire. His masters had evaluated the technique to have the same potential as his thirteen movements technique.
The new hidden moon traversal used charm, illusion, and speed intent. This made the technique elegant, simple, and elusive. It wasn't suitable for combat, but for escaping. It consisted of nine steps, with each step being one step closer to the moon.
He used his thirteen movements combined with Charm dance to fight in close combat and used hidden moon traversal to escape and journey.
Xiao Liu had also gotten the required beast king core and had broken through to become a low-rank beast king and his bloodline had further awakened and provided him stronger techniques. He was also capable of taking human form, and it resembled Jiang Mang but an older and more mature version. Beast kings didn't have domains but could use their beastly qi outside their bodies, unlike saint beasts.
His two sisters had also become stronger. They had reached the mid-saint realm, the same as Jiang Mang. Their charm intent had reached great accomplishment while their soft intent reached small accomplishment. They were capable of using the soul-changing method to transform parts of their souls to become tiny parasites and had thoroughly mastered the lust seed method. They had also learned some other methods from the palace that increased their versatility. Their body tempering technique was also completed and their bodies had been thoroughly transformed to resemble succubi.