Without a second thought, I began to take several steps backwards.

  Every instinct I had developed during my time in the Cultivation World screamed at me to do one thing, which was to run, but I knew just how pointless that would be.

  Whatever this woman was; whatever powers she commanded, even a thousand steps wouldn’t make a difference to her. If she wanted to, she could probably reach me from the opposite side of a continent.

  "Who are you?" I asked trying to keep my voice steady as my heart pounded against my chest.

  The woman’s smile widened slightly, and I caught a glimpse of perfectly white teeth that somehow only made her even more unnerving. There was something too calculated about her beauty, too deliberate. Each facial feature was designed to inspire admiration and trust, which made my instinctive fear of her feel all the more justified.

  "My name is Xu Ruomei," she said, her voice possessed that same strange resonance I’d noticed before.

  I simply stared at her. The name meant nothing to me. I’d never heard it mentioned in any of the sect’s gossip or any historical documents I’d researched. To be a cultivator at the level of the Civilization Realm and remain unknown was far more terrifying than being a notorious figure. It was always the hidden cultivators that had the worst intentions.

  When she noticed my confusion, her expression grew more amused. "I see you have not heard of me. How refreshing. Most cultivators would at least recognize the name." She paused, studying my face with those unsettling golden eyes. "I am Wu Lihua's master."

  My entire body went rigid.

  This was her.

  This was the mysterious elder who had taken Wu Kangming's childhood friend, his former betrothed, and twisted her into something cold and manipulative.

  And right now, she was standing in front of me just smiling innocently like she wasn’t a demoness.

  “Ah, I see you've heard of me," Xu Ruomei said, her smile brightening as she observed my reaction. "All good things, I hope."

  There was no point in pretending ignorance now, and lying to someone of her cultivation level seemed like an excellent way to make an already dangerous situation worse.

  "What do you want from me?" I asked, forcing myself to speak despite the way my mouth had gone dry, but inwardly, I cursed this entire cultivation world and its obvious love for dramatic confrontations. Every time I believed I had reached some level of stability and could finally cultivate in peace, another incredibly powerful cultivator would show up with mysterious intentions.

  Didn’t these thousand-year-old monsters have better things to do than interfere with the lives of junior disciples who’d barely been cultivating for a year. Surely someone of her level had continents to rule, ancient enemies to battle, enlightenment to seek, or whatever it was that they did with their time?

  What could a Pseudo-Elemental Realm cultivator offer that would attract someone capable of reshaping reality with her mind?

  “Straight to the point,” she said, laughing as if she enjoyed seeing me squirm. “I do enjoy conversational efficiency. Well then. I’ve noticed your friend, Wei Lin, has experienced some…trouble. I believe I can help him.”

  At that, my frown deepened. In every cultivation novel I had ever read, in every story Elder Chen Yong told me about the politics of the Cultivation World, there existed one constant: No one helped anyone for the sake of helping. Especially not someone as beautiful and powerful as this lady. There was always an ulterior motive. Always something they wanted in exchange. And it was never good.

  “What is it that you want in return?” I asked.

  Her smile never wavered. "I want you to accept me as your master."

  “You want to take me as a disciple?” My eyes widened.

  That was definitely not what I was expecting.

  She nodded as though it was the most obvious thing in the world.

  The look on her face was that of someone who had never been refused anything.

  “Most cultivators would give their lives to be in your position, Ke Yin. The opportunity to learn from someone of my stature, to have access to techniques and resources that go far beyond your present comprehension."

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  As nice as that might sound, being the disciple of a Civilization Realm expert, I would do anything to escape this predicament. The last thing I wanted was to become like Wu Lihua, re-programmed by my new master to be a completely different person, a puppet. I had seen what Xu Ruomei had done to one of the most promising young cultivators in the sect. The idea of undergoing a similar transformation sent shivers down my spine.

  But instead of instantly rejecting her offer, I forced myself to think of the bigger picture.

  Wei Lin was still struggling with the corruption of the red and blue sun energies. Even if I successfully won the tournament and gained entry to the Elemental Chamber, even if I eventually returned to the Two Suns World, I had no guarantee that I could find a solution. And meanwhile, my closest friend was slowly being consumed by forces he could neither understand nor control.

  "How can you help Wei Lin?" I asked, genuinely curious.

  I seriously doubted whether she could actually help, but it wouldn’t hurt to hear her out.

  The corruption caused by the two suns was a problem that couldn’t be resolved through regular cultivation methods or spiritual artifacts. It was a fundamental distortion of the essence of consciousness itself, a problem that would require either a specialized understanding of the red and blue sun energies or power on a magnitude that would allow the rewriting of reality greater than whatever caused it in the first place.

  But this was a cultivation world, after all.

  Who knows, maybe she had some ace that I couldn’t imagine.

  “I can see the skepticism in your eyes,” she laughed. “You don’t believe I can help him.”

  I didn’t reply.

  My silence was its own admission.

  “I guess that is understandable, considering the uniqueness of his condition." She moved closer to me, not walking exactly but appearing to glide across the polished floor. "You see, I have encountered these strange energies of yours before. The red and the blue. My cultivation technique is uniquely suited to address exactly this type of spiritual corruption."

  My eyes narrowed at her casual reference to the sun energies.

  This only confirmed what I’d suspected since she first appeared.

  This wasn’t some chance encounter, nor was it because she had a sudden interest in my potential, this woman knew about my abilities, about the true nature of my cultivation method.

  But what was more concerning was her claim that she had encountered these energies before.

  The most likely explanation I could think of was that this woman had some connection to whoever had previously wielded the World Tree Sutra, the reckless cultivator whose experiments had likely doomed the Realm of the Chosen to its current state of delusion and corruption, and eventual destruction.

  "Where did you encounter them?" I asked, trying to keep my voice nonchalant despite my racing pulse.

  "I once knew someone quite similar to yourself,” she replied, her smile became more enigmatic. “In fact, that's precisely why I know better than to fully manifest my inner world around you. The last time I made that mistake..." She stopped speaking and shook her head with what might have been genuine regret.

  Now that was interesting.

  This meant she really did have some understanding about the World Tree Sutra's properties, specifically our ability to stealthily enter and potentially annex the inner worlds of others. But it also raised more questions than it answered, like who was the previous World Tree Sutra practitioner and what had happened to them?

  "Who was this person?" I asked, not actually expecting her to answer.

  Cultivators, especially powerful ones, rarely gave out information for free.

  "That isn’t something I can share with you," she replied, her tone polite but entirely definitive. "Not yet, anyway. Maybe when you are my disciple, we can discuss the history of your cultivation method in more detail."

  The response was just as I expected, another attempt to convince me to become her disciple.

  I frowned but decided not to push the issue further.

  After all, I had no right to demand information from a Civilization Realm cultivator, and pressing her might provoke a reaction I couldn't handle.

  As for her offer, no matter how enticing it appeared, there was one fundamental problem that just couldn’t be ignored. I didn’t trust the woman, and I didn’t think I would ever be able to. How could anyone possibly trust a master who would mind control their own disciple?

  Even if she was being honest and could cure Wei Lin's corruption, what about the Realm of the Chosen?

  The whole world was trapped within a cycle of delusion and was being gradually prepared to be consumed by some otherworldly entity. Even if Wei Lin was cured, I would need to return to the Two Suns World anyways to find a way to save the Realm of the Chosen and free Du Yanze from the curse of being a time looper. And I felt a lot more comfortable trying to find a cure for the two suns’ corruption in a realm where I had a time loop for protection instead of making a shady deal with this suspicious, almost certainly malicious cultivator.

  All I could right now was find a way to politely reject her offer while praying she wouldn't decide to forcefully kidnap me or strike me down for my impudence.

  Before I could open my mouth, I got a strange feeling from the paintings surrounding us.

  It felt like they were alive.

  And I didn’t mean in the way I meant before, how realistic paintings sometimes felt like they were alive.

  Or how they were interacting with each other through some technique that animated them.

  These paintings actually seemed to be aware of us. I could’ve sworn I saw some of the figures actually leaning forward as if they were straining to listen more closely to our conversation.

  "Azure," I said mentally, "what is wrong with these paintings?"

  “The paintings aren’t just art anymore,” Azure responded. “They seem to be influenced by blue sun cultivation methods.”

  My face turned pale.

  A Civilization Realm cultivator using blue sun cultivation techniques?

  Or had this expert been corrupted without even realising it and was now ironically asking to free someone else of the same corruption?

  I wasn’t sure which option was more terrifying.

  If it was the former, then that would mean she had deliberately studied and adapted blue sun methods for her own purposes which made her calculating and dangerous. But if it was the latter, then that meant I was dealing with someone whose judgment and motivation had been fundamentally altered by the same forces that were gradually consuming Wei Lin.

  And it seemed like all of this was because of the actions of the previous World Tree Sutra practitioner.

  Just how many problems had my predecessor created for me?

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