“We were just getting to the best part… What a shame~…” Mo Zhouquan said, licking her lips.

“I’m sure that it is,” Wei Yi nodded as she looked at the extreme differences between the two sides of the room. On one, everything was reasonably clean and sensible, with the biggest problem being the somewhat excessive clutter of different tools, devices and arrays to influence them, but on the corrupted woman’s side, every loose piece of furniture had been covered in the same corruption that overtook the bed, causing the entire half of the room to be filled with an unpleasant amount of moisture.

It made her rather glad that the bedroom they slept in didn’t have more random furniture or items near her side of the room, as that would have allowed Mo Zhouquan to corrupt them as well and would have flooded the bedroom with the same unbearable stench that she was currently able to smell here.

Fortunately, out of all the things to greatly improve from her breakthrough in physique energy, her sense of smell was affected the least, likely due to how many unpleasant things she had encountered a short time before the brief cultivation session. As a result, she wasn’t entirely incapacitated by the mist created by the many corrupted objects, although she was tempted to seal any sensory capabilities within her nose and just pretend that she was enduring it normally.

“Well~, since I cannot play with her, I will instead get to know you much~ better…” the corrupted woman turned to her with hungry eyes, grinning eerily, “Do you have any preferences, darling~?”

“Being as far away from this side of the room as possible would be a good start. How do you even manage to influence everything like this? Do you have to lick everything here, or is it more of a passive phenomenon?”

“You do have curiosity regarding corruption~… good~… If you wish, I can set you onto the right path, of the wonderful miasma of corruption, and bring great changes to your life and body…” Mo Zhouquan said as she got closer, either disregarding or not hearing the actual intention of Wei Yi’s words, “Imagine a body that can recover even if it separated into a thousand pieces… the ability to shift your form according to your desire… the ability to hear the delicious~ whispers of corruption within your head at every single moment of the day…”

“One of those is not like the other, just so you know. Just finish whatever you wanted to do and let me go.”

That did not seem to faze the black-blooded woman, nor diminish her enthusiasm, as she took Wei Yi’s hand and pulled her over to a chair covered in the fleshy, breathing matter of corruption, forcing her to sit down on it despite the wet squelch that it produced, and the amount of sickly moisture that instantly seeped into her robes, almost threatening to dispel the dense threads of energy woven into them simply through the concentration of the miasma.

‘I truly hope that physique energy will be enough to wash all of this away the moment that I am done with this. Also, if that ability to hear whispers isn’t some joke on her part, then I can see why she is so… insane? No, obsessed would be a more suitable word in this case,’ Wei Yi thought while Mo Zhouquan walked back and forth saying vague things about her favourite topic, ‘This does make me wonder what her original state was like, and whether this seed of corruption that she loves to go on about was planted in her and the rest with a malicious intent, or if she and the rest of her organisation are keen to listen to some mad ravings from some unknown source constantly.’

The latter option seemed rather impossible until a number of other cults, organisations and individuals out in the world was considered, as something as simple as constant whispers paled in comparison to some of the strange things that people do. For instance, the Mirror Plane Aberrations were constantly praising a maddened, murderous otherworldly demon while gladly taking in his malevolent yin, the Blood-tinged Church frequently experimented with bloodlines and made countless people drink the blood of ancient entities, if Chao Jianhong was any indication of their typical activities, and then there were the mystical group called the Preservers of Eternity.

It wasn’t known whether they were even real, but the rumours about them was that they were so committed to preserving history and not making their mark unless absolutely necessary, that they cultivated techniques to erase all traces of themselves from the past and that prevent them for making a mark in the present, ensuring that they wouldn’t affect the future.

In their eyes, they were not relevant to history, and thus they could be erased, but any other who interferes has to be stopped.

That didn’t make much sense to her, nor to many people that criticised the supposed myth of the Preservers, but it would also be inaccurate to claim that every single group out there was founded on an entirely reasonable premise, or that their intent couldn’t be twisted over time. Perhaps they were originally a group that simply made sure to store scrolls and books carefully so that they wouldn’t be damaged by natural causes, and their ambitions slowly grew and mutated – much like the corruption, in fact.

‘In much the same way, perhaps her organisation had been started to study the corruption, then they attempted to use it for themselves, and then they ended up in this situation. Perhaps it had been the action of a single person tricking the rest, or maybe it was an agreed change in their plans, but-’

“The Corruptor’s Enclave is the name of my organisation, and we study the path of corruption. You sit on the chair of whispers, a simple conduit for the corruption’s whispers. Listen to it, learn to love the slithering words burying themselves within your ears, burrowing deeper and deeper into your mind as they feel up your mind~!” Mo Zhouquan exclaimed with absolute ecstasy, her cheeks burning with excitement, “Oh, what I wouldn’t give to hear its words as I did at first!”

As she laughed more and more loudly, it forced Wei Yi to reconsider her earlier assessment of her.

‘Perhaps she is insane. This is far beyond mere obsession, especially that insane laugh. I would hate to hear something like that in the night, in a dark room or in the forest…’ she looked away from Mo Zhouquan as to not encourage her while trying to remain as still as possible on the corrupted chair as to not let any more of her body come into contact with the living matter, ‘While I’m here, perhaps I should attempt to listen to these whispers. I don’t know what secrets they hold, but I may benefit from them if I am careful.’

As Wei Yi was very keen to keep her mind intact, she called upon Yi Shi Ming to keep an eye on her while also focusing her killing will upon her mind, placing her mind within the Ascendant’s Library as a form of protection from any outside influences.

Then, and only then, did she attempt to listen to the faint whispers that she was hearing from the corruption beneath her, which seemed to have partially shaped itself to fit her firm behind in the time that she had spent upon it, ready to distance herself from it at any moment and even tear it apart if it became too dangerous, since even attracting the attention of a Great Family might be less dangerous than letting her mind be influenced and corrupted by this strange force.

After all, the Greats might just kill her, but if her very purpose was corrupted by some outside force, she could spend countless years pursuing something entirely antithetical to her without realising it.

Something like that would be absolutely terrible, especially if a part of her came to understand this and then tried to stop herself, only to realise that her body had been overtaken by this mysterious force and that she could do little but watch as she went further and further in the wrong direction, slowly changing to be some avatar of the corruption…

‘Unnerving myself like this is not a good idea at all,’ Wei Yi stopped herself the moment that she noticed this getting out of hand, taking a deep breath to settle herself and recover before focusing on the whispers.

For a moment, she wasn’t certain whether she had actually heard them, as they did not appear to get any louder or clearer no matter how she attempted to listen to them, as if it was just an illusion within her mind that had been created after hearing Mo Zhouquan’s claims about the corruption and its effects, but she did not permit herself to lower her guard no matter what she or the chair beneath her – which had begun to squirm a little as if attempting to encompass more of her body’s surface without needing to actually grow – as she continued to focus.

Then, the world around her suddenly went quiet. All sound, all light and all matter vanished.

All that surrounded her was the dense fog of corruption, trying to flood into her body in whichever way it could, clouding her every sense with that unpleasant scent that surrounded every one of Mo Zhouquan’s things.

Before her, a vague figure of a woman came into view, seeming almost ordinary at first, but it only took a single moment for Wei Yi to realise that she was the source of the miasma that currently surrounded her. As if in response to that, the woman giggled, a grin appearing on her face, showing strange black teeth that clearly didn’t belong in a human, or any creature of this world. The woman’s body, which she now realised was entirely naked, should have been an appealing sight, but with the slight movement of her breasts and belly during her laugh, it was as if her body had come undone, showing the truth beneath.

She was not one solid mass of flesh and bone, as humans were, but instead a great congregation of tendrils and chunks of inhuman matter, interlinked and coiled around one another in the attempt to create a facsimile of humanity. The moment that she moved, all of those carefully arranged pieces broke apart, ruining the illusion so significantly that Wei Yi couldn’t even attempt to see her as a woman.

The illusion of the absolute entrapment suddenly shattered, with the last thing that she saw being a glow of dawn and moonlight, but it did not feel like it had ended fully.

Something was trapped within her throat, but she did not have the time to confirm what it was, nor when it had even appeared. All she could understand at that moment was that she had to get rid of it, as soon as possible.

Fortunately, while her experience with communing with corruption was clearly insufficient, every single muscle in her body was more than sufficient to force out that object, allowing her to spit it out as she rose from the moist and fleshy chair, unwilling to spend any longer upon it than she absolutely had to.

It landed on the ground with a moist squelch. Looking upon it, she saw a large chunk of flesh that was very similar to the body of the woman in the vision and bore even greater similarity to the many corrupted objects that occupied this half of the room. A thin mist of unpleasant moisture quickly gathered around it, prompting her to take a step away from it before it had any chance to move towards her, influence her, or otherwise leave any more of a mark upon her than it had already done.

Before she could analyse it with her spiritual perception, Mo Zhouquan suddenly leapt to the ground, picked up the chunk of matter and placed it in her mouth, swallowing it with a loud gulp.

“E-Even if you reject the seed,” she coughed, clearly having acted in too great of a rush, “do not treat it so irresponsibly! The corruption blessed you and you must treat it with reverence, not get rid of it without consideration!”

Before speaking, Wei Yi made sure to circulate her physique energy throughout her body several times until no traces of that vile mass, or any of the miasma that she had been in close proximity to, could possibly remain within her, then looked at Mo Zhouquan with the most powerful gaze she could produce, “I don’t care what you think of this, but in my eyes, everything here is insane. I’ll be going.”

“No, you still need to follow my instruction! The vice-leader-”

“I don’t really give a fuck about that. I don’t know exactly what that was, nor why you seem to be getting even more unpleasant every time I see you, but I am not continuing, especially when no-one’s around to stop you,” she interrupted her, getting even further away from all of the corruption, “If you want, complain to Luo Lia Kun, but only after showing her all of this. I’m sure that she will have some questions first.”

Wei Yi tied to walk away, but the corrupted woman continued talking.

“The corruption, it spoke to you, it bestowed its seed upon you, and yet I have sought to hear its fantastic voice, its moist and slimy touch, for so long! Please-”

“No. This is insane, nonsensical, and not something that I will participate in. If you want to pursue this corruption of yours, go ahead. If you can convince somebody else to go along with this, sure. However, if you try to force any more strange things onto me, I will not hesitate to destroy all of your corruption. Is that clear, Mo Zhouquan?”

The red and white-haired woman appeared utterly devastated by this as she froze on the ground, one hand outstretched while the other supported her stance. Her eyes, a mixture of black and violet, released a dark liquid that slowly flowed down her cheeks, staining them in its colour.

She clearly wanted to beg Wei Yi to stay, but she wouldn’t remain there for another second, having already turned around and reached the door by the time Mo Zhouquan managed to open her mouth to say something. By the time an idea regarding which words to actually use came about, Wei Yi was already gone, loudly shutting the door behind her, also catching the attention of Zhi Qiu Ya and Long Huang, who were in the middle of some experiment of their own, interrupting them for only a moment before the latter continued with whatever it was that she was doing.

Once she distanced herself from the room sufficiently, Wei Yi stopped and brought her mind into the prison realm, where Yi Shi Ming was already waiting for her.

“How do I look?”

“Hm… You appear to not have changed your mental image of yourself, and I don’t sense any of the same aura from you as from any of those corrupted items. Furthermore, your physique energy is typically sufficient to destroy any unwanted intrusion, so I hope that you will be safe.”

“So do I, of course. Pay close attention to my library for the next few days, and if anything strange occurs, inform me immediately. That should be where any changes manifest, given that it is the manifestation of my mind given form,” Wei Yi said, sighing shortly afterward, “I can still taste that disgusting thing in my mouth… Do you have any idea what might be responsible for something like that, or what takes the form of a woman made of tentacles?”

“Actually, I do recall one entity that had a close connection to corruption. As you certainly recall, my son had fought against the primordial gods during his efforts to build up Yi City, and while their numbers were small, each one had an immense degree of power in the eighth realm that proved to be quite a challenge. Some of them might not have been forgotten entirely, like Primordial Inferno, Primordial Earth, and so on, but one fits the image that you saw far more than any of the others – Primordial Corruption,” the mother of the Master of Yi City recalled, “Her body was nothing more than a set of tendrils united in the semblance of a human form, and while some found that imagery to be alluring, the first sight of the god’s true form tended to dissuade some thoughts – so long as they got away.”

“Does that mean that this Primordial Corruption had some connection with lust?”

“Perhaps. I had never fought with them myself, given that my realm in life had been incredibly low, but I do not believe that it was a specific power of any of the primordial gods. At most, she would be capable of corrupting that concept.”

“I see,” Wei Yi nodded as she considered the recent series of events, “They were all destroyed though, were they not?”

“No. The primordial gods cannot be fully slain, but they were all incapacitated and plunged into perpetual slumber on the precipice of this world and beyond. What we could be seeing with Mo Zhouquan and her Corruptor’s Enclave is a technique derived from the nature of the Primordial Corruption, most likely one that grew out of control and now has more dominance over them than they can control it,” Yi Shi Ming suggested, “However, I may be wrong.”

She pondered the matter on her own for a while but couldn’t arrive to any definitive solution just yet. At the moment, she knew too little about the Corruptor’s Enclave, the primordial deities and anything else of note, so beyond just making arbitrary assumptions based on information from a million years ago, Wei Yi was able to do little else. Additionally, if she did attempt to deal with the faction of corruption and then managed to catch the attention of Primordial Corruption, she would certainly be unable to deal with her, meaning that it would be far safer to avoid it and any of her servants until she had the ability to challenge her properly.

As such, she momentarily decided to let the extremely strange behaviour of Mo Zhouquan go, and not attempt to introduce her to the concept of common sense, nor did she want to figure out exactly who Long Huang was allied with, just in case they also followed the ancient path of some primordial gods with their study of blood.

Neither of them seem close to killing themselves or Zhi Qiu Ya, so it wasn’t something that she would need to rush even if she was keep to prevent her or another from suffering.

“So, what did you think about the bloodline test? Do you have any idea what the silver sprites could have represented?” Wei Yi asked after a while longer, after she had spent enough time debating whether or not to incinerate the bed that Mo Zhouquan slept on to avoid having any chance of the corruption getting close to her or someone else again, “I can guess why my bloodlines were so pronounced, given that I had practised a technique that focused on blood, but that particular image still doesn’t make any sense to me.”

“No, I am afraid not. Bloodlines were not studied much in the Yi City that I remember, and my son had limited interest in them as well, as he believed that one’s bloodline was not what defined them,” Yi Shi Ming replied, “The current system of servants, lower, middle and upper members of the family was derived from something that he created, but it also differed greatly from what he had wanted.”

“A shame. Out of interest, what was the initial system?”

“Everyone would be a citizen of the district after a short process, and they could join the ruling family by performing noteworthy deeds, rising through the ranks until they could compete in something called an ‘election’ at regular interval.”

“Hm… I can’t imagine any election continuing without a duel to the death, nor would any present patriarch permit their descendants to not succeed them afterward, so it would effectively become the current system after a really short while… Come to think of it, is that exactly what had happened after the Master of Yi City departed?”

“Essentially. Any newcomers were stopped from joining the ruling family, then existing citizens were stopped from doing this as well, then ascension through the ranks was stopped, then marriage outside of the family was heavily restricted… I think that Ah Shi Meng was aware that his dream was slightly unreasonable for this world, but he had hoped to make it last with his own long life,” Yi Shi Ming said, her voice getting a little quieter, “Since waking up, I have wondered what the world would be like if he had not left. Perhaps everything would have been peaceful, and the Great Families may have never risen to power…”

‘That… is exactly what I want to do, isn’t it? Create a system that cannot survive without me, and hope that I will be able to endure for long enough to figure out some way to deal with that issue…’

“Had he not been forced to run away that quickly, perhaps he would have had enough time to prepare something to handle this rather unfortunate outcome… It would have taken quite a lot of time for our continent to possibly accept such a different system, but even then, I think that most would begin to take advantage of any aspect of the system the moment that they were given the opportunity to do so.”

“Alright, I’ll keep that in mind. For now, I shall focus on other matters, however.”

“Hm? Yes, I suppose learning from the mistakes of my son would be beneficial for you,” the mother of the Master of Yi City nodded, not quite making the connection that Wei Yi had but agreeing with it nonetheless, “I shall not bother you any further. Soon, you’ll have spent too much time in a daze.”

“Noted,” Wei Yi said, bringing her consciousness out of the prison realm and into reality, where she returned to her walking and headed back upstairs to speak with Luo Lia Kun, who had now concluded her earlier dialogue with some random people and was sitting by nervously, tapping her finger on her desk as she waited for something.

Whatever it was that she anticipated, Wei Yi decided to step in first, not bothering to knock since she was well aware that she would have no excuse to deny her entry.

“Hello, vice-leader.”

“Hello… Are you done with Mo Zhouquan already?” Luo Lia Kun questioned, unconsciously retreating just a little bit while one of her hands reached beneath the desk for one of the many talismans that were stored there, “Must say, I expected that to take far longer…”

“I left after she made me sit on the whispering chair. It was unpleasant, and if I wasn’t wearing my favourite robes, I’d have burned everything that came into contact with it, then taken a long, long bath.”

“That bad, huh? You’re probably going to ask why I wasn’t able to oversee these tests, but I can assure you that I was incredibly busy with handling a very important matter, both to the Brotherhood and the Remnants, so I trusted that you and Zhi Qiu Ya would be able to handle things down there. If needed, I can strictly reprimand both of them. Did they do anything particularly egregious to you?” she asked, still continuing to withdraw towards the back of her seat.

“Well, besides attempting to plant a seed of corruption into my throat, the most the chair did was attempt to grope my ass. I didn’t appreciate that in the slightest, but it didn’t do me much harm,” Wei Yi said, noticing how the vice-leader’s speed of retreat increased, “I got rid of that seed, by the way.”

“Right… Wait, what do you mean? How did you do that?”

“I threw it up and spat it out, if that’s what you’re asking. Have some other people struggled with this part?”

“Fortunately not, as I had made certain to inform her that, if she permits anyone to develop one of her seeds, she would suffer greatly for it, but I had only needed to say this in the first place as she had informed me that they are nigh impossible to remove once they form within one of the vital organs. You say that it occurred within your throat instead?”

“Yeah, and once I got rid of it, that woman swallowed it instead.”

“That… is unpleasant. Still, I am glad that I did not lose you to this, as you have completed as many tasks in a week as most do in a month.”

“You’re welcome, boss.”

“Now, since you are apparently fine,” Luo Lia Kun returned to her original position on the chair and then leaned forward, crossing her arms on the table, “What would you say about a proper task from the Remnants? You have not yet completed one, and-”

“Hm? Is that Chao Ru? Hold your explanation for just a moment.”

Before the vice-leader had a chance to stop her, Wei Yi rushed out of the room to greet the blonde, who was passing by with a tired expression.

Luo Lia Kun crashed back into her chair with a sigh, but she didn’t bother to consider reprimanding her as she thought that she understood Wei Yi’s nature quite well. In her eyes, this wasn’t some intentional slight or shirking of duty, but an honest difference in priorities and desire to get back together with a so-called friend, although they were closer than most.

Furthermore, a part of her felt almost glad that this particular task was delayed.

 

“We’ve both been busy, I know, but we should finally train together! I’ve wanted to see how you got this far ever since… well, you know,” Chao Ru said, still being a little shy about the events of that night due to how vivid the memories were within her mind, “Were you talking about something important with the vice-leader?”

“I don’t think so. Besides, even if she was about to get onto something vital, training is always important. I’m sure that, whatever it would have been, we’ll both be able to handle it better if we are prepared.”

“Yeah, that makes sense. Alright, give me a moment to pick up my staff, then let’s go!”