Chương 557: Chapter 552: Malicious Intent

I remembered my encounter with the Eldest Tree back in the Two Suns world. When I placed my hand on its bark and used the Genesis Seed to form a connection with it, the giant tree had begun waking up from its long dormancy. It showed me visions of the world's history and explained what happened during the Sundering, and it started the process of healing itself. If Elder Thorn hadn't interrupted me, I might have been able to help the Eldest Tree fully awaken.

Between using the Genesis Seed and the tree's own natural defenses, we could have fought against the corruption together. Maybe we couldn't have eliminated it, but we could have at least stabilized things enough so we could give that world a real fighting chance. The same approach would probably work here too. The Genesis Seed specialized in connecting with and supporting plant life, and a Realm Stabilizing Tree was a large and incredibly powerful treasure.

If I could establish a connection between the Seed and this tree, I could probably help it fight off the blue sun corruption. The problem with that was obvious and ridiculously frustrating. I was only here as a spiritual projection that came through a Dream Gate, so I didn't have access to my inner world at all. The Genesis Seed was with my physical body, which was sitting in meditation somewhere in the tournament arena over at the Azure Peak Sect.

I couldn't magically summon it here or establish a spiritual connection across that kind of dimensional distance. Which meant I couldn't purify the corruption now. But, and this was the important part, I could do it later. The key word here was later.

Since I had finally found the source, and I understood the mechanism behind it, I knew what needed to be done, and all I needed to do was find a way to return back to the Realm of the Chosen while keeping my cultivation abilities intact, instead of being a weakened spiritual projection. The big question was how I was supposed to accomplish that return visit. The Genesis Seed never formed a connection with this realm.

During my first visit here, I was a full spiritual manifestation, and I was possessing Du Yanze's body and using his cultivation to do things. I hadn't tried to establish a permanent link because I was focused on other priorities, like winning the tournament round and trying to not get killed by Yuan Zhen.

But the more important thing was that Sect Master Yuan had specifically warned me against allowing the Genesis Seed to form connections to multiple worlds, and since I knew the Sect Master cultivated the Dao of Karma, I was inclined to believe him and act on the more cautious side of things. Unfortunately, doing that meant I couldn't world walk back here at will like I could do with the Rouqi world or the Two Suns world. But maybe there were some other options for me.

Maybe Sect Master Yuan would grant me permission to return? He already knew about the time loop, or he would figure it out soon enough anyway. A Civilization Realm cultivator who was following the Dao of Karma would definitely end up noticing such a massive distortion sitting in causality. If I explained the situation to him and asked him for help, Yuan might be able to send me back into this inner world the same way he did for the tournament. Or maybe Azure might be able to help me out.

He already proved he was good at adapting different cultivation techniques. Dream Gates operated on the principles of spiritual connection and dimensional traversal. If Azure could analyze how those gates were created, maybe we could somehow modify the technique to let me enter the Realm of the Chosen specifically whenever we were back in the Cultivation World. Either approach would honestly work. Both of them had their own advantages.

Sect Master Yuan's method would probably be faster and a lot more reliable, but it would require me to not only explain the situation to him, which I was planning to do already anyway, but it would also mean I had to rely on his help. And while the Sect Master might seem like a good person, it was always difficult to predict the thoughts and actions of elder cultivators.

As for Azure's method, doing that would take more time and a lot more research, but it would give me independent access without needing me to rely on the Sect Master's continued cooperation at all. If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. But none of that mattered right now, I could figure out the specifics of it all later. The most important thing was that the situation wasn't hopeless now. I had a real path forward.

When I finally returned back to this realm with the Genesis Seed, I could connect with the Realm Stabilizing Tree and help it purge the blue sun corruption. Doing that would heal the root cause of all the realm's problems, which would stabilize the Xuan Yi and hopefully reduce everyone's delusional convictions down to more manageable levels. It would also end the time loop. Du Yanze had spent hundreds of cycles trapped inside here, being alone and aware while everyone else reset.

He had been driven nearly mad by all the isolation, fighting off dream walkers who only saw his world as a convenient resource for them to exploit, and protecting people who would never remember his efforts at all. The time loop had originally been my brilliant solution to pause the corruption's spread, but it had turned into a terrible prison for the person who remembered anything. If I could purify the tree and eliminate the corruption's actual source, the loop wouldn't be necessary to have anymore.

Du Yanze could finally move forward. The realm could heal itself. Everything could finally start getting better instead of being frozen in place forever. The thought made me feel a lot lighter despite the oppressive atmosphere of corrupted energy floating around the shrine. I needed to make sure I survived this tournament first, and then I could figure out all the logistics of returning here properly equipped.

"Senior Hou?" Lu Chenyang's voice suddenly pulled me out of my thoughts.

"You have been staring at that tree location for several minutes now. Have you found something?"

"A solution," I said to him.

"It isn't one I can implement now, but it is a way forward. This realm can be saved." The old man looked relieved when I said that.

"That is good news. So, what do we do now? If we can't purify the source immediately, should we retreat and regroup?" That was probably the smart move to make. We finally found what we came looking for. We understood the corruption's structure and its origin point now. Trying to do any more without having proper preparation would end up being reckless. But I couldn't stop thinking about Du Yanze.

The poor man had been trapped inside this loop for who knows how many cycles, sitting there watching everyone around him live and die and forget while he alone remembered everything that happened. Every day was the same conversations, and the same events, and the crushing isolation. How many times had he tried to fix things himself? How many times had he failed and had to sit there and watch the reset happen all over again?

If there was anything I could do now to improve his situation, even a little bit, I wanted to try to do it.

"Let me think about it for a moment," I said.

"There might be something we can—" I stopped in the middle of my sentence. Lu Chenyang's expression had changed. His eyes had gone unfocused, and he was staring at nothing. His face was blank and empty of all the wariness and exhaustion that had marked it a few moments ago. His hands started moving around slowly, and dream qi was beginning to gather around his fingers in those distinctive spiral patterns.

"Senior Lu?" I called out to him.

"What are you doing?" He didn't respond. He didn't acknowledge that I'd spoken to him at all. He kept continuing to gather his dream qi, and the silvery energy kept growing brighter and more concentrated. His movements were mechanical and deliberate, acting like someone who was following instructions from a source I couldn't see. Huge alarm bells immediately went off inside my head. This wasn't normal. Lu Chenyang was an experienced dream walker with three hundred years of practice behind him.

He didn't start channeling techniques without giving any explanation, and especially not in the middle of a dangerous area.

"Lu Chenyang," I said a lot more forcefully.

"Stop whatever you are doing now. That's not safe." There was no reaction at all. His dream qi continued to build up, forming these ridiculously complex patterns that I didn't recognise. He was obviously constructing something, some kind of sophisticated spiritual formation that would take time and energy to complete. Whatever it was; I couldn't let him finish it. I moved quickly, channeling my Xuan Yi straight through Du Yanze's cultivation.

The golden energy responded while I wrote a simple phrase in the air with my finger: "Distance separates us." The calligraphy blazed with life and an invisible hand grabbed onto Lu Chenyang's body and pulled him backward, dragging him away from the shrine and all the corrupted blue sun energy. Lu Chenyang stumbled as he landed several feet away, and all his mechanical movements were disrupted by the sudden displacement.

He caught himself against a large boulder, shaking his head around violently as if he was trying to clear away cobwebs. I made sure to keep myself between him and the shrine, ready to intervene again if it becomes necessary. The dream qi sitting around his hands was already dissipating away, and the technique he had been building was falling apart.

"Senior Lu," I said carefully.

"What just happened there?" The old man finally looked up at me, and I saw genuine terror in his eyes. His hands were trembling, and it definitely was not from any physical exertion. This was the trembling of someone who had experienced something that shook them to their core.

"I don't know," Lu Chenyang said to me. His voice came out shaky, lacking all of its usual confidence.

"I honestly don't know. One moment I was standing there, watching you examine the corruption, but the next moment, my hands were moving on their own." He held up those still-trembling hands of his, staring at them as if they belonged to someone else.

"I felt this overwhelming compulsion. This certainty that I needed to create a dream gate. And not to any normal realm I had visited before, but specifically to the world where that blue energy originated from." While getting the confirmation that dream gates could be created was pretty reassuring to hear, the real intent behind it made my blood run cold. The blue sun energy had tried to force Lu Chenyang into opening a direct connection straight to the Two Suns World.