I walked back into the tournament area carrying an unconscious Wei Lin in my arms.

  The portal’s energy dissipated behind me, but my thoughts were focused on the weight of what had just happened between us.

  My best friend had almost destroyed himself, trying to take something he couldn’t understand.

  Fortunately for him, the Genesis Seed was more merciful than I had feared it would be.

  Even then, I still felt bad for being forced to harm him to save him.

  But the crowd didn’t seem to share my opinion.

  "Finally, someone put that arrogant merchant in his place."

  "Did you see how he tortured that poor cultivator in the quarter finals? He deserves this for being so cruel."

  “He’s lucky he didn’t face me; I would have loved slapping that cocky smirk off his face.”

  The comments made my jaw clench.

  These people didn’t know what they were talking about.

  Sure, the Wei Lin they had seen draining opponents with sadistic pleasure was a monster.

  But that wasn’t my friend.

  That was the corruption eating away at his personality and turning him into something he didn’t want to be.

  Unfortunately, it wasn’t like I could explain that to the crowd.

  But at least I wasn’t the only one who felt bad for Wei Lin.

  Lin Mei came rushing down from the Core Disciple viewing area with tears streaming down her face. The poor girl was moving with the urgent desperation of a woman whose entire world was collapsing.

  "Wei Lin!" She reached us just as I was adjusting my hold on his limp body. Her hands danced across his face, checking for injuries, feeling for a pulse. "Will he . . . Will he be okay?"

  I looked down at Wei Lin's pale features. He was breathing steadily, but shallowly, and there was a tightness surrounding his eyes that suggested he was still in a great deal of pain despite being unconscious.

  The damage caused by forcefully separating our spiritual connection would take time and a lot of very expensive treasures to heal.

  "The healers will be able to help him," I said, which was true enough. What I didn't say was that the actual problem, the corruption caused by the red and blue sun energies, was still present, although temporarily suppressed by the shock of losing most of his stolen power.

  "I'm sorry, Lin Mei," I said softly. "I didn't want to hurt him, but he was trying to do something that would have . . ."

  "No," Lin Mei said firmly, despite her tears. She looked up at me with red rimmed eyes that displayed a determination I hadn't seen in her before. "You don't owe me an apology. I've seen what he was becoming over the last few days. The way he looked at others, like they were just resources to harvest. That wasn't the Wei Lin I fell in love with."

  She reached up and gently brushed a strand of hair off Wei Lin's forehead. "Whatever was happening to him, whatever was changing him; you saved him from becoming a monster. I saw it in his eyes during the battle, for a moment, right before he collapsed, he looked like himself again. Thank you, Ke Yin, thank you for saving my Wei Lin."

  I nodded silently, not trusting my voice. I didn't want to tell her that the corruption was only suppressed, not cured. That without proper treatment, it would inevitably begin to assert itself again, and his two sun energy stalls would slowly recover. She deserved this moment of hope, even if it might be short-lived.

  I just hoped I could solve the corruption once and for all before it returned.

  The medical team arrived with their floating stretcher, and I carefully transferred Wei Lin to their care. I watched as they began their preliminary diagnostic techniques. Their spiritual energy probes would identify the surface damage to Wei Lin's internal organs, but they wouldn’t recognize the deep corruption within.

  "We'll take good care of him," the lead healer reassured Lin Mei. "Spiritual backlash injuries such as this are serious, but recoverable with proper treatment and rest."

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  Lin Mei nodded in gratitude, then turned back to me. "Good luck in the finals, Ke Yin. I know you'll make us proud." A watery smile appeared on her face before she followed the healers into the medical pavilion.

  I stayed in the arena for a few moments longer, watching them disappear into the pavilion.

  The arena around me was rapidly focusing on the upcoming final match preparations. However, my mind was still stuck on what had led to this moment. The chain of events that had brought us here seemed both inevitable and preventable at the same time.

  "Azure," I said mentally, needing to verbalize the thoughts that had been eating at me. "The timeline in the Fallen Realm; we battled the mimic, then it exploded with red and blue sun energy, and it was only after that that I told Wei Lin of the dangers of corruption caused by the energies, right?"

  "Yes," Azure replied. "The absorption happened before your conversation about the energies’ corrupting influence."

  "But the corruption would have been minor at that point. Barely noticeable." I ran my hand through my hair, feeling the weight of missed opportunities. "He could have told me. When I explained how dangerous those energies were, he could have mentioned that he had accidentally already absorbed them."

  "You're feeling betrayed because he kept it to himself?" Azure asked quietly, understanding where my thoughts were headed.

  "Not really betrayed," I clarified. "I get why cultivators keep their techniques a secret. Everyone has secrets they don't share, and I am not totally transparent about all of my abilities. But this was different."

  I thought back to our conversation, remembering how quickly he agreed to my request not to absorb the sun energies during combat. At the time, I was impressed by how quickly he had accepted my warning. I now understood he had probably been considering whether to reveal his accidental absorption of the energies.

  “After I specifically warned him about the dangers of the energies' corruption, after I explained the dangers of those energies; he decided not to trust me enough to admit he was already corrupted. Maybe if he’d revealed to me the small amount of corruption he had absorbed, we could have worked on it together and found a way to remove it before it got worse.

  I was frustrated. Not anger at Wei Lin personally, but disappointed with how things had played out.

  "I don't have a cure for the corruption but at least I would have known what was happening. I could have tracked the changes he was undergoing, tried different methods, done something besides watching my friend gradually become a monster."

  "Maybe he was afraid," Azure offered gently.

  "Maybe," I said as I watched the medical team disappeared into the pavilion. "Or maybe the corruption was affecting his ability to think clearly, making him more secretive, and more calculating about his relationships with others."

  That realization was unsettling. If the corruption had been affecting Wei Lin's decision making from the start, then how much of his original personality was even left?

  "Regardless of his reasons," I continued. "I still have to find a way to help him. The tournament might be ending, but this problem isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.”

  Throughout the semi-final battle, I’d been thinking about this. Once I use the Elemental Chamber, assuming I win the finals, I would have to travel to the Two Suns World again. It was the only place where I could find answers to help cure the corruption. The thought of returning to that world made my soul ache with pain and fear, but what choice did I have?

  "You know," I said mentally, a spark of hope forming in my thoughts. "Maybe this time I won't have to face that world alone. Kal is still in his time loop, right? If I can find a way to work with him, we might actually be able to fix things."

  "It's possible, Master. Kal certainly has far more knowledge about the specific energies of the Two Suns World than anyone else we know."

  "And if we could find a way to purify or nullify the corruption at its origin, it wouldn't just help Wei Lin. It would also save the Realm of the Chosen as well as Du Yanze and everyone else that is trapped in that mess."

  The scope of what I was contemplating was enormous, but it felt like the next logical step.

  I became aware that I had been standing in the same spot for several minutes, lost in thought while the arena was filled with people preparing for the final match tomorrow. Tournament staff were setting up the arena, and I could see Wu Kangming meditating across from me, sitting with that unusual stillness he’d mastered.

  The crowd was settling back into their seats, their bloodlust satiated by the drama of the semi-finals. Tomorrow would bring the championship bout, and with it, access to the Elemental Chamber. That cultivation opportunity was too valuable to pass up, especially if I was going to need every advantage I could get for what comes after.

  But first, I needed to figure out what had happened during my battle with Wei Lin. The connection between our inner worlds, as brief as it was, left me with a nagging feeling that something had changed. Something beyond just the damage to Wei Lin's cultivation base.

  "Azure," I said, retreating into a more private area of the arena to avoid appearing suspicious, "what exactly happened during the battle when the Genesis Seed responded to Wei Lin's attempt to steal energy from the red and blue suns? I felt an echo of it, but I was focused on the battle.”

  "The Genesis Seed recognized that someone was trying to connect directly to the red and blue suns," Azure explained. "Its defense mechanism was quite thorough. It didn’t only defend against the intrusion; it consumed a fragment of whatever was trying to create the connection."

  “Consumed?” That sounded more significant than I’d first thought. “What kind of fragment?”

  "A piece of Wei Lin's black market cathedral construct," Azure paused and I sensed concern in his voice. "Master, it appears that there is a new development in your inner world that demands your attention."

  My heart sank. Developments in an inner world were rarely simple and given what had just happened with Wei Lin's corruption, I was already nervous about anything involving foreign spiritual constructs.

  "What type of development?" I asked, even though a part of me already knew the answer.

  "It looks like a cathedral."

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