The cathedral had existed for some time now.

  In fact, it had always existed.

  Twisted spires. Dark stone. Moving windows.

  Now it reached.

  Beyond this world. Beyond this plane of existence. Beyond the barriers that separated one world from another.

  It finally made contact to something.

  A world.

  A large world.

  Much larger than it could possibly imagine.

  It contained four quadrants that extended far beyond its ability to comprehend.

  Mountains existed in the northwest quadrant.

  Gardens existed in the northeast quadrant.

  A large empty platform existed in the southeast quadrant.

  Meditation spaces existed in the southwest quadrant.

  And at the center of the world existed two suns.

  But not normal suns, these were colored differently.

  One red and one blue.

  Both of them were dancing an endless dance, orbiting something that hurt to look at directly.

  The cathedral extended its tendrils towards the suns.

  Grasping. Seeking.

  Those were the energies it had experienced before.

  Those were the energies it needed to continue to grow.

  Come. Join the marketplace. Become part of the exchange.

  The tendrils reached the suns.

  And everything reversed.

  The cathedral tried to drink from the suns, but the suns drank from the cathedral instead.

  First, the red sun flowed backward; then the blue sun followed.

  Both abandoned the marketplace and returned to their home.

  The cathedral struggled to find a balance.

  This was not how it worked.

  The flow of energy should have occurred from the suns to the marketplace, not the reverse.

  The cathedral tried to sever the connection.

  The suns refused to release their hold on it.

  At this point, something else became aware of the disruption.

  Something enormous. Ancient. Something that had rested under the gardens in the northeast quadrant but was now fully awake.

  The cathedral froze in place.

  All of its twisting spires, all of its moving windows, all of its dark stone were motionless.

  Massive roots, older than the galaxies themselves, began to spread throughout the other world like veins of pure silver.

  The Genesis Seed had awakened.

  The cathedral didn’t know how it knew the name, but it just did.

  It tried to escape.

  It forced itself out of the suns’ hold and tried to pull itself back through the connection.

  However, the roots moved too quickly.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  They wrapped around the cathedral at its base, around its spires, even around its very essence.

  And then they pulled, tearing it apart piece by piece.

  Analysing it, understanding what was useful and discarding the rest.

  It was being absorbed

  Fear.

  A feeling it had never experienced before ran through it.

  Absolute, complete fear.

  The cathedral cut the connection completely.

  Abandoned the portion of itself that the roots had captured.

  Better to lose a small portion of itself than risk losing everything.

  The connection snapped shut like a stretched-out rubber band.

  The roots returned to a dormant state.

  The portion of the cathedral that the roots had captured dissolved into silver light and disappeared into the Genesis Seed's vast complexity.

  ***

  As soon as it became clear that Wei Lin's red and blue energies were beginning to flow backwards, abandoning his marketplace stalls to return to their original sources, his eyes grew wide with shock and confusion as power he thought was his began to slip away.

  “What—” he started to say, before his entire body stiffened.

  I knew the signs well.

  Something was happening inside his inner world that was physically affecting him. His skin turned pale, then flushed red, then pale again. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead even though the chamber was cold.

  Then he convulsed.

  It was not a seizure in the classical sense, but his spiritual essence was wildly fluctuating.

  I could tell by the way his aura flashed and crackled around him.

  Whatever spiritual link he had established between my inner world and his was being violently ripped apart, and it was tearing his cultivation base apart in the process.

  The tendrils connecting me to the cathedral disintegrated as Wei Lin lost control over his manifestation. The entire cathedral began to lose definition and became transparent and ephemeral. I fell onto the crystal floor, but I sprang to my feet instantly, more worried about my friend than my bruised ribs.

  Wei Lin was cutting the spiritual link he had established with my inner world. I could feel it: the desperation and panic in the way he was ripping the spiritual link apart. It was like watching someone perform surgery on themselves without anesthesia. Necessary, but agonizing.

  The cathedral vanished altogether, leaving only Wei Lin and myself standing in the mangled crystal chamber. For a few moments he stood swaying on his feet, his face a picture of suffering and confusion, before his legs collapsed.

  I grabbed him before he hit the ground.

  Close-up, I could see that the red tint was gone from his eyes.

  Whatever corrupting influence had taken control of his behavior was momentarily quelled by the shock of damaging his cultivation base.

  For the first time in weeks, I saw my true friend staring back at me.

  This wasn’t the aggressive businessman who viewed everything in the world in terms of profit and loss. And it wasn’t the ruthless entrepreneur who used people and relationships like he would use a product.

  This was just a confused, scared, and in pain, Wei Lin.

  “Save me,” he whispered, barely audible. His fingers clutched at my robes as if for dear life. “Ke Yin, please. I can't control it. The things I've been thinking, the things I wanted to do that…that wasn't me. But I could see it all happening and I couldn't stop it.”

  He had been aware the whole time. Aware of the growing corruption in his mind and body, trapped within his own flesh as it slowly consumed him and forced him to watch himself turn into a monster.

  “Please.”

  With that final plea for help, his eyes rolled back, and he slumped into my arms.

  I sat there on the crystal floor, holding my unconscious friend, struggling to understand what had just happened. Around us, the damage we caused during our struggle remained: broken walls, smashed formations, spider-web cracks spreading through the ceiling.

  “And the winner of the second semi-final match is Ke Yin!” Elder Wan boomed through the realm, but it seemed to echo from far, far away.

  I barely heard it.

  My attention was fixed on Wei Lin and what I’d seen.

  The Genesis Seed had defended my inner world against the cathedral’s attack, but in doing so, it had severely damaged Wei Lin’s cultivation base. More concerning was what I'd sensed just before the connection was severed.

  I sensed that the red and blue sun energies in his stalls were more than happy to leave behind the marketplace he built and return to their source. They poured back through the spiritual connection he had made into mine like water returning to its source.

  But that was just treating the symptom, not the disease.

  “Azure,” I called out mentally, “exactly what did the Genesis Seed do to his inner world?”

  “It absorbed the segment of his black-market cathedral that was attempting to steal the sun energies,” Azure replied. “The cathedral was analyzing your sun energies, planning to incorporate them into Wei Lin’s cultivation system. When the Genesis Seed struck back, it essentially staged a hostile takeover of that part of his cultivation system.”

  That explained why Wei Lin had to sever the connection so brutally.

  If he had allowed the Genesis Seed to follow the link back to his inner world, it could potentially absorb his entire cultivation base.

  “The two suns managed to regain most of their energy from his stalls, effectively crippling his red and blue energy manipulation abilities,” I continued, adjusting my hold on Wei Lin’s unconscious form. “But the corruption is still there.”

  “Yes,” Azure agreed. “You witnessed a type of forced detoxification; the corrupted energy returned to its original source, but the pathways those corrupted energies traveled in his cultivation system are still there. Without proper treatment, the corruption will eventually reassert itself and his two suns’ stalls will recover.”

  Well, that didn’t sound good.

  I frowned, looking down at Wei Lin’s pale face.

  Even unconscious, there was a tenseness in the lines surrounding his eyes that showed that he was still in a great deal of pain. His breathing was shallow and erratic, his spiritual signature oscillating in ways that suggested inner world instability.

  The only way to rescue Wei Lin would be to visit the Two Sun’s World after the tournament ended.

  World walking back there wasn’t something I wanted to do.

  During my last trip there, my soul had nearly been destroyed.

  And now that Kal was aware of Tomas, it would only be more dangerous.

  Who knew how the Rank 8 time looper would react to finding out that an otherworldly being had joined the loop?

  But as much as I didn’t want to return, it might be my friend’s only hope.

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

  ￡4 for 50 chapters ahead!

  ￡8 for 160 chapters ahead!

  DISCORD