Chapter 370: Predicament

Hallucinations and phantom limbs were inadequate to describe Li Qi's feelings at this moment.

It was similar to… another strange disease he had heard of in another world: "anton's syndrome."

People afflicted with this disease usually have their visual cortex completely destroyed, essentially losing all sight and becoming completely blind.

However, another area in their brain that processes visual information remains intact, continuing to perceive everything as normal and processing visual information as usual.

He was clearly blind, yet his brain was unaware of it; he still felt he could see, and in fact, he 'really' could see, it was just that what he saw did not match reality.

These patients are factually blind but believe their vision is fine and that they can see things.

Li Qi genuinely saw things, because what people usually see are images processed by the brain, not true reality.

The brain helps people filter and correct blind spots, the inversion of the retina, and many unclear or blurry areas outside of focus, and so on, which is why people have a 'normal field of vision,' or rather, a corrected field of vision.

Humans inherently see a 'corrected field of vision.'

The only difference is that, previously, the corrected field of vision involved the eyes collecting external information, transmitting it to the correction area, then correcting it, and finally sending it to the visual area to form what a person sees.

However, for patients with anton's syndrome, their eyes can no longer collect external information, but the brain's correction area still functions; they will work without any external sensory input, generating a host of arbitrary visuals, maintaining the illusion of 'still being able to see.'

And to the brain, there is no difference; the brain is merely processing information transmitted from the correction area all along, unable to discern whether this information is real external data or a jumble of arbitrary nonsense.

anton's syndrome arises from this.

Li Qi felt that his current situation was somewhat similar, although he no longer needed his brain to survive now.

It's just that he didn't have anton's syndrome, but Anton's All-Sense Syndrome.

Just as his own five aggregates were broken through by those demonic blood—

He lost all perception of the outside world.

Originally, his senses could only draw information from the five aggregates, just as a Mortal's brain only reads information from the correction area to form vision.

His senses simply couldn't bypass the five aggregates to perceive the outside world; they weren't designed for that purpose from their inception; they were only responsible for reading the five aggregates.

After the Five Aggregates Demonic Blood suppressed the five aggregates, Li Qi completely lost all perception, sinking into layers of illusions that were not illusions.

What does it mean, illusions that are not illusions?

It's just like anton's syndrome.

He couldn't see, but he felt he could see; chaotic external information formed everything he saw, except none of it matched the real world.

He also couldn't hear, but he felt he could hear, and indeed, sounds came from beside his ears.

Even touch and taste—all his senses failed, and they were operating randomly and chaotically.

It was extremely difficult for Li Qi to even stand up, because people need the sense of touch on their feet to maintain balance, and the cochlea in their ears to perceive gravity levels, in order to stand and walk.

But now, with his cochlea failing, he felt the entire world spinning, as if he were in a randomly operating tumble dryer, never at peace.

Endless illusions, like Reincarnation, kept appearing before his eyes, making it impossible for him to distinguish them, and he couldn't even close his eyes, because he was already blind.

Countless sounds rushed towards him, and he couldn't tell which words were real auditory perceptions and which were imagined by his brain.

His skin, from head to toe, felt as if it were being touched, caressed, torn, or bitten almost every moment—these were all illusions caused by chaotic information.

His sense of touch was completely dysfunctional, which not only led to external skin confusion but also affected his intestines and stomach.

How do intestines and stomach work? First, the skin inside the intestines and stomach also has sensitive touch receptors; upon sensing food, these organs begin to function. But now, all skin, all epithelial tissue, is in disarray, causing Li Qi's entire body to feel off. His intestines and stomach felt full at times, hungry at others, and nauseous at still others.

His sense of smell perceived different scents every moment—foul odors, fragrances, strange, indescribable smells, changing every second.

Including all five senses, none of these sensations were illusions, yet they plunged Li Qi into a state of confusion more terrifying than any hallucination.

He couldn't control himself, didn't know where he was, couldn't tell if he was standing or lying down, couldn't distinguish light from dark before his eyes, he didn't even know where his hands were placed.

Normally, a person needs touch and sight to determine where their hands are, but now Li Qi had no idea what posture he was in; he couldn't control his muscles, because any attempt to control them would bring back unknown feedback.

He tried to lift his hand, and then his arm felt obstructed, but the next second the feeling of obstruction disappeared again.

How can a person determine whether they have touched something or not? Is the sudden burning sensation in their hand from touching fire or an illusion? Is he lying on a bed or floating in the air?

He couldn't distinguish, everything was indistinguishable.

The entire world had turned into an illusion.

Li Qi was deeply mired in this illusionary swamp, struggling in intense pain.

Of course, such a struggle actually requires immense composure.

The writhing of a dying maggot is also a struggle, but it is futile. What Li Qi was doing, struggling to survive, required him to be calm.

First, he decisively cut off his control over his Physical Body, to prevent all the illusions from making him do strange things.

After severing body control, he relied entirely on muscle memory, and without depending on any senses, he straightened all his muscles, maintaining an upright posture, so at least he wouldn't end up in too dangerous a position.

But even so, Li Qi didn't know what his current situation was.

His 'heart,' or rather, the center of all his thoughts and activities, whether called Spirit Soul or True Spirit, in short, his spiritual entity had completely lost perception of the outside world.

His spiritual entity was completely disconnected from his physical entity.

What originally connected the two was the five aggregates; the five aggregates were the point of connection between the mind and the Physical Body. The mind understood the Physical Body through the five aggregates, and the Physical Body received instructions through the five aggregates, thus forming a person.

Of course, only Buddhism believes this; other Dao paths do not recognize the five aggregates. While they also acknowledge some kind of connection, they each have their own explanations.

Different interpretations of phenomena, explaining the world with one's own theories, are also a characteristic of different Dao paths.

There is no right or wrong; until the ultimate Dao is revealed, everything is unknown, and each Dao path merely encompasses this world in its own way.

However, regardless, Li Qi's five aggregates were indeed suppressed by the Five Aggregates Demonic Blood, which sufficiently proves that the concept of the five aggregates is not empty talk but has a solid foundation.

However, although this caused Li Qi immense pain and endless torment, he had not yet failed.

Yes, he did not give up.

In the endless illusions, he completely lost his sense of time; the absence of time perception made him completely unable to understand anything.

Under this torment and desperation, Li Qi sighed.

To be honest, he didn't know if his body sighed, but his spirit truly did.

He struggled for a long time, and in this desperate situation, he came up with many ways to find a way out.

Initially, he tried to use his heartbeat or pulse to keep time, maintaining a basic sense of time. The sense of time is the rule for human actions; it is because of the sense of time that there is a perception of speed, which then extends to other criteria for judging movement.

Losing the sense of time, a person will further lose the ability to move.

But Li Qi failed; his pulse, needless to say, his sense of touch was completely chaotic, and Li Qi also found that the heartbeat he felt was completely disordered.

With the five aggregates sealed, he couldn't even perceive his own heartbeat.

His heart was like a king imprisoned on a throne, desperately writing documents and issuing commands, sending these commands to every part of the kingdom.

But no place would send back a reply, nor would there be a response. The king didn't even know if the commands had taken effect, nor did he know what was happening in those places. Did those kingdoms truly still belong to him?

In reality, of course they did; it could be seen from Li Qi's occasional body twitches that the commands were taking effect. It was just that the body's replies to the mind were also gone, and the two sides were severed, leading to Li Qi suffering this torment.

Li Qi had to use the most clumsy method to keep time, which was to allocate a portion of his attention and start counting.

But this was almost useless, merely better than nothing, because he quickly found that his act of counting also had to be built on a sense of time. Without the guidance of a sense of time, his counting was sometimes fast, sometimes slow, completely deviating from the goal of keeping time.

However, he still kept counting, even if it was futile, at least it could help him maintain his inner clarity.

This behavior was still useful, Li Qi just didn't know it himself.

It was this act of trying to stay clear-headed that allowed his Physical Body to retain its instincts.

This instinct and muscle memory allowed Li Qi's Physical Body to still react to external stimuli, albeit like an idiot. But at least when being helped to walk, he would move his feet, and when placed on a chair, his Physical Body would sit down on its own.

When asked questions, although he couldn't say anything logical or coherent, he could always blurt out a few words, albeit random, incomprehensible words.

Still, it was like an idiot.

After failing to gain a sense of time, Li Qi was forced to endure another layer of torment.

He didn't know how long he had been in a daze.

It might have been just a moment of blankness, but a long time had passed, or it might have felt like a long time to him, but in reality, it was only an instant.

This was a deeper torment for the mind; even if he wanted to do something, he would be greatly interfered with.

If it were an ordinary person, they would probably be dead by now.

Fortunately, Li Qi was already a Seventh-Rank, and his Physical Body was not so fragile; even without eating, drinking, or sleeping, he could at least remain lively for about a hundred years.

This led him to his second course of action.

He tried to reconstruct his senses, in a way other than the five aggregates.

Seriously, this was very, very difficult.

Li Qi had absolutely no understanding of anything beyond the five aggregates; he only realized this after attempting to act.

It turned out that the entire world was projected onto the five aggregates; his mind knew nothing beyond the five aggregates.

It was like the king mentioned before; this king had never visited the lands he ruled; he merely read reports and issued commands.

The king had never left the throne; the five aggregates, this loyal minister, would continuously send reliable reports to the king, allowing the king to know the situation of the entire kingdom without leaving the throne.

From beginning to end, his mind had only interacted with the five aggregates. Now that he was detached from the five aggregates, the difficulty of rebuilding his senses was too great.

But Li Qi still found a Breakthrough.

This king, besides the court minister five aggregates, also had another secret agent who probed external matters for him.

That was True Knowledge Dao Resonance.

True Knowledge Dao Resonance was Li Qi's sixth sense, as mentioned many times before. Every time he used True Knowledge Dao Resonance, he felt like a blind person suddenly grew eyes, or a deaf person suddenly grew ears. He would examine the world from a completely new, strange, and indescribable perspective, thereby gaining extraordinary observational abilities, and everything observed through this organ would be firmly imprinted in his mind, difficult to forget.

This was a benefit, allowing Li Qi to remember many things.

It was also a drawback; this level of information flow shock had nearly killed Li Qi several times. Fortunately, his mind was sharp, and he endured, now accustomed to this impact.

In other words, Li Qi wanted to know if True Knowledge Dao Resonance passed through the five aggregates?

After an unknown amount of time spent trying, he was frustrated to find that the information collected by True Knowledge Dao Resonance also had to be analyzed and broken down by the five aggregates before it could be perceived by the mind.

But it wasn't all bad news.

There was good news: True Knowledge Dao Resonance was not his sense; True Knowledge Dao Resonance was still active, and those massive information flows were still pouring into his head; it was just that without the five aggregates' analysis, he couldn't understand it.

This represented one thing.

Unlike the other five senses, which were already fixed on the five aggregates, True Knowledge Dao Resonance could be manipulated. He could manipulate True Knowledge Dao Resonance and then connect True Knowledge Dao Resonance directly to his mind.

To experience this world directly through True Knowledge Dao Resonance, without passing through the five aggregates.

Li Qi didn't know what the consequences would be, nor did he know if his mind could withstand it.

But this might be his only way out, as he couldn't possibly suppress the Five Aggregates Demonic Blood.

If he couldn't do this, he would try another plan.

To completely export his mind—abandon this Physical Body and activate a Demonic Clone to carry his mind.