Dark tendrils began to emerge from Wei Lin's spiritual manifestation.

  They were like living shadows, reaching forward to bind me.

  I quickly activated Blink Step, using red sun energy to instantly move thirty meters to the left.

  As I did, the tendrils shot through the empty air where I'd previously stood, leaving behind a trail of corruption in the crystal chamber's spiritual atmosphere.

  "You can’t run forever, Ke Yin," Wei Lin called out. "This is exactly what I've been waiting for. A chance to test my new abilities against someone who will challenge me to my limits."

  I didn't reply. I instead scattered more seeds from my storage ring, creating new anchor points throughout the chamber.

  The moment the seeds hit the ground, I activated Verduring Step, green light swirling around me as I transmitted my consciousness through dimensional space, materializing behind one of the largest crystal formations in the chamber.

  Wei Lin didn’t seem to care that he’d missed.

  The marketplace stalls around his spiritual manifestation flared to life, each stall radiating its own color of energy. There was fire, water, earth, wind, lightning, void, and the ominous black-market stall that pulsed with demonic qi. But now I could see two new additions which made my stomach drop.

  A stall that glowed with a red light.

  And another stall that glowed with a blue light.

  Wei Lin had already completed the stalls for the two sun energies!

  "You want to know something funny?" Wei Lin asked, his head turned to follow my movement even though I was still hidden behind the crystal formation. "Creating a new stall for your energies has been the easiest thing I've ever done. Normally, establishing a new stall takes weeks of carefully calibrating the energy-type and establishing the correct exchange rate for the energies."

  As he spoke, tendrils shot out of the black-market stall much quicker than before.

  I teleported once again, and this time appeared closer to the entrance of the chamber.

  But the tendrils anticipated my next movement, and several of them were already shooting towards my new location.

  "But your red and blue energies?" Wei Lin laughed, "They practically begged to be integrated. It only took me a few hours, not weeks!”

  I winced and dodged another tendril by dropping flat to the ground.

  Wei Lin had absolutely no idea how right he was.

  Not only were the two sun energies compatible with his marketplace system, but they were probably also actively working with it. In my experience, both energies had a very unsettling tendency to incorporate themselves into any cultivation system they encountered with the goal of reforming and optimising those systems to better serve their purpose.

  The physical power the red sun provided didn’t come free.

  It made its users more aggressive and competitive.

  And the blue sun didn’t just boost mental acuity and healing; it slowly programmed its user toward specific behavioral patterns.

  Together, the red and blue energies formed a positive feedback loop that could transform even the most rational person into a creature acting upon impulses that couldn’t be understood.

  "But stalls are not enough," Wei Lin continued, his spiritual pressure increasing. "I need more. I need the source."

  I slid to the side as another tendril struck the ground where my head had been, leaving a spider web of cracks in the polished surface of the crystal.

  I couldn’t continue like this for much longer.

  I needed to stop this before Wei Lin did something that would get him killed.

  From my storage ring, I retrieved a handful of qi-enhanced seeds and scattered them in a careful pattern around Wei Lin's position. The placement of the seeds wasn’t random; I was setting up a Qi Disruption Array - the exact same formation I used against Ming Yue in the Infinite Ocean Realm.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  The seeds started to sprout immediately, their growth accelerated by the spiritual energy that I poured into them. Vines erupted from the crystal floor and developed in a predetermined manner that would generate interference in any spiritual technique. If I could disrupt Wei Lin's marketplace long enough to break his focus, I might be able to talk some sense into him, or if that didn’t work, then knock him out.

  "Clever," Wei Lin murmured, watching the vines grow around him. "But not clever enough."

  His fire stall erupted to life; flames exploded in a perfectly circular motion around his body.

  The heat was intense enough that I could feel it from thirty meters away.

  The vines shriveled and burned, and the carefully constructed formation collapsed as the plants anchoring the vines were incinerated.

  But I’d expected that.

  The array’s real purpose hadn’t been to trap him.

  No, it was to get an idea on how his enhanced abilities worked.

  And from what I’d just seen, it confirmed my worst fears.

  Wei Lin's techniques were functioning at levels that should have been unattainable for someone at Qi Condensation Realm, even at the 10th stage. The precision of his fire control, the speed of his void stall activation, and the sheer magnitude of his spiritual pressure were all indicative that the sun energies weren’t just improving his existing abilities. The sun energies were fundamentally altering his cultivation base to operate on principles from a higher plane of existence.

  That was the insidious nature of corruption from the Two Suns world.

  Corruption didn’t just make you stronger. It made you stronger in ways that felt natural and justified, while gradually modifying your entire spiritual foundation to serve purposes you weren’t consciously aware of.

  The remaining tendrils from Wei Lin's black-market stall suddenly came at me from multiple directions, cutting off my exit routes and forcing me to retreat towards the center of the chamber.

  I activated Verduring Step once again, but this time Wei Lin was prepared for it.

  The moment I began to teleport, Wei Lin's void stall erupted, creating a spatial distortion that disrupted my ability to complete the teleportation.

  I materialized partially, my body fluctuating between being solid and being translucent as the technique struggled to complete the movement.

  That brief moment of vulnerability was all that Wei Lin needed.

  The tendrils bound my arms and legs; their touch felt cold and burning at the same time.

  I immediately activated the Titan's Crest symbol located on the back of my left hand, doubling my physical strength as the three interlocking triangles blazed with silver light.

  I tried to pull against the restraints with everything I had.

  But the tendrils held fast, absorbing the kinetic energy generated by my struggles, and feeding it into the black-market stall.

  This was bad.

  The more I struggled, the stronger the bindings became.

  "Wei Lin, stop," I called out, switching tactics.

  The Shockwave Rune was specifically designed to release a controlled burst of energy that could shatter spiritual constructs.

  Maybe it could free me from these bindings.

  I channeled as much energy as possible into the series of concentric circles etched onto my left palm.

  A powerful shockwave erupted outward.

  Just as I thought it would be enough to escape, the tendrils simply absorbed it.

  The dark energy that comprised them appeared to feed off of any type of resistance, not just physical.

  "You can’t escape using brute force," Wei Lin explained. "The black market feeds on struggle. Each technique you use just makes the bindings stronger."

  With those words, Wei Lin sent the tendrils into my body, into my cultivation base.

  But they weren’t looking for qi.

  They were looking for something else.

  They were looking for the red and blue sun energies.

  "You don’t understand what you’re doing. Those energies weren’t meant to be exchanged or transferred!" I shouted, no longer trying to struggle against the restraints, it was useless anyways, but maybe I could reach whatever remained of my friend beneath all the corruption. "Those energies will ruin your cultivation base if you try to absorb them directly."

  But my words didn’t faze him.

  The red tint in his eyes appeared again, stronger this time.

  The blue sun’s influence was visible too.

  The combination created a strange purple glow that made his features appear sharp and feral.

  "I’m not trying to absorb them," Wei Lin explained. "I’m trying to connect with their source. The marketplace can accommodate any amount of energy as long as I can establish the proper exchange rates. But first, I need to understand where they’re coming from."

  My heart fell as I realized what he was trying to do.

  Wei Lin wasn’t just trying to steal my sun energies.

  He was trying to establish a direct connection between his inner world and mine.

  The tendrils were conduit-like structures designed to create a spiritual bond that would allow him to identify the source of the energies - the Two Sun's World.

  "You’ll destroy yourself!"

  "Destroy myself?" Wei Lin laughed, and the sound resonated eerily in the crystal chamber. "Finally, I will become what I was always supposed to be. No more trailing behind you. No more watching you surpass everything I achieve. These energies, this power; they show me things I never thought possible."

  More tendrils emerged from the cathedral, encasing my upper torso and shoulders. I could feel them probing, seeking out the pathways leading to my inner world. The sensation was intrusive and uncomfortably intimate, like having someone rummaging through your most private thoughts.

  But I wasn’t worried about myself.

  The Genesis Seed's protective mechanisms would prevent any unauthorized entry into my inner world. What frightened me was what would happen to Wei Lin when those defences activated.

  "Please," I said, looking into his eyes. "You’re my friend. I don’t want to see you hurt. Just let me help you find another way.”

  Wei Lin's facial expression flickered for a moment, and the red hue in his eyes diminished slightly. For an instant, I saw the actual Wei Lin: a calculating individual, but one that was ultimately a good person, a person I’d come to care for during the months we spent together as friends.

  Just as I thought I’d gotten through to him, the corruption asserted itself once again, and his grin widened.

  "Help me?" he screamed. "The only help I need is access to the source of those beautiful energies. And I’m about to take it right now!”

  With that, Wei Lin’s inner world made direct contact with mine.

  Join for 2 chapters daily M-F, we're 160+ chapters ahead!

  ￡4 for 50 chapters ahead!

  ￡8 for 160 chapters ahead!

  DISCORD