Ultimate Scheming System

"What?"

"That’s... Is that the ancient mythical beast— the phoenix?"

"How... How’s that possible? How could there be a phoenix here?"

At this point, everyone was thrown into a wave of confusion and panic as they screamed out in fear.

...

Xu Que was standing at the side as he operated the amulet, laughing out loud. "Idiot. Come, all of you come here!" Let me give you lot some education. This is called a vermillion sparrow. How can you call yourselves immortal cultivators if you don’t even know that! You bunch of unsophiscated bumpkins, you can’t even differentiate between a vermillion sparrow and a phoenix. If I were your sect leader, I would expel every single one of you from my sect. So damn embarrassing..."

Xu Que looked extremely contented as he wanted to continue his flurry of insults and verbal abuses. However, nobody seemed to care about him right now. The several elders who were present were all extremely fearful as they saw the appearance of the vermillion sparrow and were trying their hardest to flee.

"Not good, let’s flee!"

"Go back and find Celestial Sect. This matter is beyond our control and no longer our fight!"

"Hurry, retreat!"

Under the command, everyone around summoned their flying sword and floated into the air as they attempted to escape.

Not far off, three additional beams of light materialized from the sky.

The roars of several other beasts rang out in the sky. A large green dragon flew over from afar as it slithered majestically around in mid air. It was so enormous that it almost seemed to block out the entire sky from view.

A muscular and huge framed white tiger sped through the forest at the speed of light and stopped beside Xu Que. The tiger glared vehemently at the group of immortal cultivators.

In the next moment, a mountain seemed to be moving towards them. When they looked up, they realized that it was a huge black turtle.

In that instant, they were surrounded by huge mythical beasts.

Everyone was stumped.

"Ancient... The four ancient mythical beasts..."

"My god. How is this possible?"

"There were ancient records of such creatures in existence once before. But haven’t they flown over to the spiritual realm from here? How could they appear here now?"

Everyone was horrified by the sight that had greeted them. The skies and ground were blocked off by these gargantuan beasts and there was nowhere for them to escape.

Just a single vermillion sparrow was enough to break their courage and scare them off. It was needless to emphasize how afraid they were after seeing three more powerful, legendary beasts make an appearance.

Their might and powers were as wide as the heavens and swept across both the skies and lands. These cultivators had nowhere to run as they were cornered by the four beasts.

Xu Que stood atop the mountain confidently as he glimpsed down upon Elder Liu and laughed, "Now... Do you still think this spell can be broken through?"

"Impossible! Impossible! Absolutely impossible! With your level of cultivation, how could you have conjured such a mighty spell?" Elder Liu was scared beyond measure.

Elder Liu had achieved recognition within the realm of spells as one of the most experienced practitioners. Yet he had never heard of anyone who was able to summon these legendary beasts to his side. How could he ever bring himself to believe that a mere insect like Xu Que, who hasn’t even broken past the Core bearing Stage be able to conjure such powerful spells?

Right at this moment, a disciple pointed up into the sky at the green dragon and shouted out, "That’s not right. Elders, take a look. The body of the dragon seems more like a phantom than an actual dragon."

The minute he spoke out, everyone seemed to be startled.

Their eyes all fell upon the dragon and noticed that it was giving off light.

"That’s right, the other three beasts are exactly the same. Their bodies are not solid."

"They’re made out of light."

"That means to say, that these aren’t the actual four legendary beasts?"

Elder Liu craned his neck to take a look, his expression was one of exuberrance as he gave out a loud laughter.

"Hahaha! I understand. Not bad, you little bastard. Not a bad plan at all. You used deception to trick us once again."

"It’s now obvious that your spell is just a spell of deception. You created the phantoms of these four legendary beasts to scare us away. Thankfully we realized your plans. If not, we’d have truly fallen for your trickery."

The more Elder Liu spoke, the more agitated he became. As if he was starting to realize that he was going to make it out of here alive after all.

Gradually, his expression turned into one of mockery as he laughed coldly at Xu Que, "Come, I shall stand here. Command your four legendary beasts to attack me."

Right now, Elder Liu had no fear on his face which he had shown earlier. Instead, he looked confident and all assuming.

Standing in the middle of the four beasts as they converged on him, he was calm and composed. He felt extremely formidable and mighty.

All the other disciples and elders recognized the situation and finally understood the "truth". Hence, none of them were afraid any longer as they smiled mockingly and shouted over to Xu Que.

"That’s very funny. A mere worm like yourself wants to trick us into leaving?"

"Come on, we’re standing here and we shan’t move as well. Command your beasts to attack us."

"That’s right. Come, I shan’t budge an inch. If I were to move, I shall call you my grandpa."

...

"? ? ?"

Looking at the group of cultivators down below acting like this, Xu Que looked extremely uncertain as many question marks formed in his head!

What’s the situation now?

Have the group of immortals gone retarded?

They would stand still and allow the four legendary beasts to attack them?

Fine, I shall do that then. What a bunch of cocky cultivators, their courage is astonishing.

It was just the old fogey acting tough the entire time. I didn’t expect the entire lot of you to start acting tough and pretending to be courageous as well!

"Sure then. Since you’ve requested for the beasts to attack you, I shall happily accede to your request."

Xu Que then laughed out loud as he tapped the amulet in his hands and turned the dial from a defensive stance to an attacking one!

Boom!

In that instant, the four beasts let out a huge roar and fixed their targets upon the sect elder and their disciples.

Soon after, the beasts started roaring and screeching in loud noises as killing intents radiated from their bodies. They charged towards the group of cultivators on the peak of the mountain.

Elder Liu and the rest of the cultivators still had the look of mockery on their faces as they glared at the four beasts. They handled the situation with extreme calmness and really stood still, unmoving.

"They’re just an illusion, phantoms. Even if they were real, they cannot deceive me."

"Kid, I have to admit that your deceptive tools were done up very well without any flaws. The only thing you did wrong here was to underestimate Elder Liu’s perception and ability to see through deception.

"Watch how I destroy your joke of an illusion!"

A disciple was anxious about showing off and impressing the elders. He summoned his flying sword and charged straight at the oncoming vermillion sparrow.

Although the vermillion sparrow was indeed made out light and thus had no corporeal body, the flames on its body were actually real.

Those were the flames of the vermillion sparrow!

Even if the flames were not actually as powerful as those of an actual vermillion sparrow, it was still definitely not something this little cultivator can handle.

Just as the disciple was flying up to meet the sparrow, he could feel a strange sensation of heat spread across his body. The arrogant expression on his face froze.

"Not right. That’s... That’s not an illusion... Ah!!!"

Even before he could finish screaming, the disciple was completely engulfed by the flames of the vermillion sparrow.

After his last shriek sounded out, he was immediately reduced to a pile of ashes.

A gentle breeze blew across, scattering the ashes of the disciple all over the ground below!

The ashes fell onto the cultivators who were standing below. All of them were stupefied by the sight and time seemed to have frozen as of the moment.

"Ding! Congratulations to host ‘Xu Que’ for killing a cultivator in the Core Bearing Stage. The reward is 1,000 experience points."

The system beeped out in Xu Que’s head!

"..."

There was a deathly silence all around as nobody moved an inch!

All the cultivators were shocked beyond measure as their faces turned to looks of dread.

Didn’t we say that it was just an illusion?

Didn’t we say that it was all fake?

Then... Then why... How did it become real?