The Decaying World

Heart Source Demon Palace.

Lin Hui sat cross-legged before the Demon Palace's gate, gazing silently at the purple mist that permeated the air outside.

He had been sitting there for a long time, and the refinement of the star energy within his body had reached its limit.

Fusheng didn't know what he was thinking. He had also been observing him for a long time and could no longer contain his curiosity.

"Didn't you go to that new world? Why do you keep coming back here when you have nothing to do? Cultivating or just spacing out would be more convenient over there, wouldn't it? I recall that place has a high Energy Level, making all sorts of powers very easy to obtain."

"That place is merely a foothold for me to acquire resources," Lin Hui said faintly.

If he had invested a great deal of emotion in his first life, immersing himself completely and seeing his family as his own kin, then in his second life, that feeling had faded considerably. Family was still family, but they were nowhere near as close as in his first life.

Now, in his third life, family felt more like friends. The space for kin in his heart had long been filled by the previous two lives.

So now, he approached things with a calm, detached perspective, observing his other self on Red Pattern Star from on high.

"That makes sense. You've reached that stage," Fusheng said. He'd had similar experiences himself and understood Lin Hui's situation perfectly. "Indeed, the heart can only carry so much weight. If you give a piece to one, what's left for the others is inevitably diminished."

"Senior, were you once like this as well?" Lin Hui asked.

"Mm, for Cultivators like us, with countless years in a single lifetime, how could we possibly have only one identity? In my day, I, this old one, also experienced dozens of different identities, roles, and lives. I grew weary of the mortal world long ago. Otherwise, why would I have gone looking for trouble, exploring everywhere, only to end up falling headfirst into a hellhole like this?" Fusheng sighed.

"Then how did you handle it, Senior? Back then?" Lin Hui asked again.

"It's simple. Just use the identity temporarily. After leaving, I would directly erase all memories and traces I left behind. It's better for everyone that way," Fusheng stated succinctly.

Lin Hui fell silent.

Although his feelings for his current family had grown distant, he still couldn't bring himself to do something like erasing their memories.

Memories were a taboo in his mind. It was one thing for others, but for those close to him, meddling with their memories would surely open Pandora's Box.

He was afraid he would indulge his own preferences and lock himself in a cage of his own woven lies.

"Just hurry up, get the resources, and leave. In your current state, you don't really need to stick to the old model anymore," Fusheng advised.

"I agree." That was Lin Hui's plan as well.

However, the new world's Energy Level was extremely high. For now, he wasn't strong enough to roam freely and plunder its resources.

So, for the time being, he had to wait.

He hadn't forgotten that his purpose in going to the new world was to acquire a massive amount of resources needed for his Blood Seal's evolution. He would use them to iterate quickly and, through the Blood Seal, find a path to survival for the Fusion Sect's future.

It was better than being doomed to become a monster of the Calamity.

Standing up, Lin Hui let out a soft sigh.

'It's time to move on to the next phase of the plan.'

"What are you planning to do?" Fusheng asked from behind him.

"If I want to know where my true strength lies, I'll naturally have to spar with outsiders more often," Lin Hui replied.

"You..." Before Fusheng could finish, he watched as Lin Hui dug out his own two eyeballs with his bare hands. He tossed them into the Heart Source Demon Palace, where an invisible heavenly demon leaped out to catch them.

"Look after these for me." Lin Hui's voice drifted over eerily as his figure vanished.

Fusheng's skull-head glanced at the gouged-out eyeballs.

"What the hell? What's the point of gouging out your own eyes before a fight?"

*

*

*

Time flowed by, day after day.

On Red Pattern Star, after rescuing Lin Yuexiu, Lin Hui hadn't found another candidate like her.

This led him to simply focus his attention on Lin Yuexiu with peace of mind.

After his classes each day, he would instruct her to focus on her sword practice.

But after only a month, he noticed that Lin Yuexiu was gradually growing more and more agitated.

He didn't pay it much mind, however. It was rare for someone to remain mentally stable after suffering a great disaster.

'As long as the golden aura is still being produced, it's fine.'

Indeed, every day, the girl produced a variable amount of one to five wisps of golden aura.

On average, over a month of thirty days, Lin Hui shortened the time needed for his Blood Seal by a little over one hundred years from what he gathered from her.

It was incredibly efficient.

However, his research into the golden aura had yet to yield any clues. Lin Hui didn't know what it was exactly. After testing many of its properties and conducting numerous experiments where he tried to make it interact with other powers, he could only confirm that nothing could touch it except for Disaster Energy.

The fact that the Blood Seal could absorb it showed that the Seal itself was similar to, or perhaps of an even higher order than, Disaster Energy.

Lin Hui had originally thought he would probably just live out this life in peace and quiet until his resource gathering was complete, at which point he would naturally depart.

But just half a year later, a new incident shattered his plans.

BOOM!!

A colossal, black, flaming monster slammed down onto the school's field, causing the ground to collapse and explode, sending fragments of concrete flying everywhere.

The teachers and students in their classrooms were stunned for a moment, then scrambled from their seats, sprinting out of the rooms to escape.

Aside from a few occasional screams, almost everyone was calm.

They evacuated quickly and skillfully, following the procedures from their regular safety drills.

For everyone here, while monster attacks like this weren't exactly a daily occurrence, they had seen or learned enough about them to know what to do.

Lin Hui and his deskmate, Gao Junqiang, hurried downstairs with the crowd, heading for the safe zone.

His attention had just been focused on his main body, so he hadn't noticed a Nether-Energy monster appearing so close by.

During this time, he had been using the advantage of his main body's immortality—granted after he'd dug out his eyes—to raid and stir up trouble throughout the surrounding star systems.

His goal, of course, was to force truly powerful experts to come out and spar with him. Space is vast; around Red Pattern Star, even the nearest fixed star was over a hundred million kilometers away.

So there was more than enough room for him to unleash his full power and fight wantonly.

After he successively raided two small merchant fleets, experts from the Endless Divine Race finally emerged to fight him.

Soon, he had determined the approximate power level of his main body.

Ordinary members of the Divine Race were killed instantly. Higher-level elite Divine Race members, such as junior officers in the Divine Army, were a bit more troublesome, taking one to three seconds to deal with.

This was because many of these officers possessed ultra-high-speed regeneration or multiple death-substitution abilities. They couldn't be killed in a single blow.

Higher still were mid-level officers, comparable to Ring Level monsters. They were much more difficult, impossible to defeat without using the Star Breath Sword Manual.

The Ring Level itself was divided into six ranks, the Six Rings. Without using his Qingyuan Body or the Great Yin Yang Time Reversal Sword Technique, Lin Hui would start to struggle around the Third Ring, before even reaching the Fourth Ring.

This level was basically equivalent to planetary rulers, who, like him, could easily destroy a large planet.

After that, he tried going all out, directly activating his Sword Technique Body. He managed to severely injure a Fourth Ring Divine Race member, but his strength fell short after that.

As for the Five Rings, they were the strongest within the Ring Level, just a step below a Commander-in-Chief, experts who governed an entire Star Realm.

Lin Hui had never encountered one, but the Fourth Ring experts he had fought could already keep up with his speed and strength. Moreover, they had all sorts of bizarre abilities that, when used suddenly, could instantly cause him to suffer a major loss.

After investigating and learning that there was only one Five Rings expert for every several dozen planets, Lin Hui finally confirmed his own limits.

Somewhere between the Fourth and Fifth Rings.

He was a standard planet-destroying level expert.

This assessment should be accurate for this world. Just as his teacher, Qimei, had said, the experts here were very experienced in dealing with Disaster Energy Fusionists.

Having fought in space year-round, they were also very adept at handling super-high-speed opponents.

A speed of thousands of kilometers in an instant was not uncommon for them.

There were even masters faster than Lin Hui. They could cross a million kilometers in the instant they attacked, leaving him with nowhere to run, completely unable to escape their attack range. In the end, his main body was directly shattered.

In the end, he had to rely on his Destruction Eye to revive in the Heart Source Demon Palace.

His main body's constant death-seeking antics allowed Lin Hui to truly pinpoint his current power level, and he had settled down quite a bit.

But just as he settled down, another incident occurred.

This time, the monster had come straight to his school.

BOOM!

At that moment, another loud explosion shook him as he ran, causing him to stumble and nearly lose his footing.

Beside him, Gao Junqiang slammed his head into a metal handrail at the corner, letting out a dull THUD. He almost passed out on the spot.

Lin Hui grabbed him and helped him up, pulling him along with the flow of people.

Suddenly, he felt something watching him from a distance. The gaze quickly moved away, but its focus and certainty made it clear to him that this was no random glance—he was the primary target.

Lin Hui pretended not to notice anything and continued to lead the others out of the academic building and into the underground shelter.

"Is that him?" Far away, high in the sky, two members of the Divine Race, each with a wheel of white runic chains floating behind them, coldly watched Lin Hui running below.

"Yes. Ding Luo's younger brother in her mortal body. Based on several recent investigations, her psyche has shown signs of bias. Her sense of identification with her mortal family creates a small probability that she might act in a way that harms our race." The other Divine Race member nodded slightly.

"How should we handle it?"

"We'll see based on this containment test. We didn't intentionally place this Nether-Energy creature here; its attack on this location was random. We have deliberately delayed the report time for the nearest Guardians in the area. This is to observe Ding Luo. If her reaction matches our projections, then after three consecutive instances, we will initiate the potential-factor-elimination protocol."

"You mean... eliminate Ding Luo?"

"Yes."

"So, which time is this? The second?"

"No, the third. Another tester has already conducted one previously. She failed that one as well. I'm here to re-verify."

The two Divine Race members watched Lin Hui's movements below with calm, scrutinizing gazes.

Meanwhile, Ding Luo, who was at work, shot up from her desk and rushed outside.

"Ding Luo, where are you going??"

A colleague's question rang out from behind her.

"Family emergency! Cover for me and request some time off!" Ding Luo shouted back as she quickly departed.

Just as she rushed out of the office building, a message quickly transmitted from the divine sigil on her chest.

An important Divine Race resource archive point was under attack, ordering her to provide support.

Ding Luo took a deep breath.

'Here we go again...' She wasn't a fool. How could she not understand such an obvious ploy, such a blatant scheme? This was likely a test of her loyalty to the race.

But the danger to her little brother was real, tangible.

'What can I do? What should I do? It was all predetermined long ago.'

She had no other choice.

The thought of her little brother's perpetually dazed and wooden expression, his reactions always a beat too slow... if he were in real danger, she was afraid he'd be much slower to escape than everyone else.

The urgency in Ding Luo's heart grew.

Turning around, she jumped into a hovercar parked by the roadside. The car started and sped toward Lin Hui's school.

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