Chaper 551: Source Detected

Cultivation is Creation

I walked up to the corrupted shrine slowly and every step I took ended up feeling way heavier than the last one did. Dark energy was rolling right off the ancient stone structure, but it created this pressure that was different from normal spiritual weight. It wasn't trying to crush me down or push me away, it was inviting me to come closer like it was a trap that was baited with something really appealing.

The shrine itself was honestly beautiful but in a terrible way.

It was carved completely out of white stone that had turned grey from age, and it showed Su Xuan having his supposed moment of enlightenment. The founder of this realm was sitting there in meditation with his stone face looking peaceful and serene. All around him, there was elaborate calligraphy that described his breakthrough to what I figured had to be the Civilisation Realm, and every single character radiated that heavenly belief that defined his cultivation path.

But underneath all of that golden glory, I could see what the real problem was.

Blue calligraphy.

It wasn't that warm gold color of Xuan Yi that permeated through this entire realm, and it wasn't the silver dream qi that me and Lu Chenyang carried around with us either. This was completely blue, and it was the exact same shade I had already seen way too many times before. It was the exact same energy I personally channeled myself plenty of times. The blue sun energy straight from the Two Suns world, and it was written out in a single character that made my stomach turn over.

"Life."

The kanji was just floating there right above the shrine's surface. It actually looked peaceful and even benevolent, exactly like something that promised you growth and vitality and all the good things that living beings naturally crave to have.

The character for life should have been comforting to see because it was a reminder of the fundamental force that animated all of existence. And it probably was comforting for most people who saw it, but it just made me want to throw up.

Because I knew exactly what that blue light really represented. I saw what it did to people back in the Two Suns world, and how it rewrote their thoughts without them even realizing it was happening. It turned rational cultivators into zealots who fully believed they were making their own free choices while they were actually just following programming they couldn't detect.

The blue sun energy was incredibly good at pretending to be helpful and it was excellent at masquerading around as something pure and beneficial. But in reality, it was pure corruption wearing a friendly face.

"Senior Hou," Lu Chenyang spoke up from behind me, his voice sounded uncertain. "What is that thing? I have never seen any spiritual energy that felt anything like that before."

I didn't bother turning around to look at him and kept my eyes locked right onto the blue character.

"It’s dangerous. And that’s all you need to know right now."

"But what kind of energy is it?" The old man actually started moving closer to it, because his curiosity was apparently overriding all his common sense and caution. "The structure doesn't match up with any cultivation system I have ever encountered before. It obviously isn't dream qi, and it isn't Xuan Yi either even though it is written out as calligraphy. The underlying principles seem foreign."

He was right about that part. Blue sun energy operated on fundamentally different rules compared to most normal cultivation systems. It worked entirely through consciousness manipulation and belief programming, which was somewhat similar to Xuan Yi in some ways, but its methods were far more insidious.

"I am being serious with you right now, Lu Chenyang," I said, finally glancing back over my shoulder at him. "Do not try to analyze it too closely and absolutely do not touch it. Don't even channel any of your spiritual energy toward it at all. This energy is more dangerous than any Nightmare Enforcer could ever be."

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The old man finally stopped advancing forward and his expression quickly shifted from being curious to showing real concern. He stood there studying the blue character with this new wariness, and he finally started treating it like the massive threat it actually was. "If even a small amount of this energy manages to corrupt a dream world that is this large, I can only imagine how devastating it would end up being if it was at full strength."

"You have no idea," I muttered, while turning back around to face the shrine.

The actual amount of blue sun energy present in this world was relatively minimal overall. It was maybe enough to fill up a large barrel if I had to guess. Yet that tiny quantity had somehow been enough to poison an entire realm's spiritual foundation over the course of a few centuries.

That fact alone told me something important about how the corruption was spreading around. It wasn't just the energy itself causing the problem. The blue sun energy was acting exactly like a catalyst to change something fundamental about how Xuan Yi operated inside this realm. Once that change finally took root, it propagated itself naturally through the existing energy system.

Back in the Two Suns world, the entity had used the original golden sun as its main entry point to do it.

So here, it had to be using something similar to that.

If I actually wanted to do something about stopping the corruption, I had to first figure out what exactly that medium was.

I carefully extended my spiritual senses out while making sure to avoid making direct contact with the blue energy while I examined the area around the shrine. The Xuan Yi sitting here was incredibly thick and potent, because it was saturated with centuries of belief from all the pilgrims who came to visit this sacred site. Every stone, blade of grass, and particle of air was vibrating with their misguided conviction.

But right beneath all that surface-level energy, I felt something else sitting there.

Something massive.

I knelt down on the ground and pressed my hand flat against the stone platform the shrine rested on. Making physical contact let me sense deeper, so I pushed my awareness down through all the layers of rock and earth.

There was a major spiritual formation sitting down here, some kind of natural energy concentration that must have been the reason why Su Xuan chose this specific location for his breakthrough.

No, wait, that wasn't quite right at all. It wasn't a formation. It was organic. It was a living thing.

I pushed my senses even deeper down and followed the flow of the spiritual energy while it moved right through the mountain. The patterns felt familiar because they were reminiscent of the circulation pathways inside a cultivator's body except, they were on a vastly larger scale. And right at the very center of all those pathways, providing the main foundation for everything else, was something that made my breath catch in my throat.

A tree.

It wasn't just some normal tree growing up on the surface.

This one was merged with the earth itself, and its roots spread out throughout the entire mountain range in a network that was so ridiculously extensive I couldn't even trace all of it. The trunk wasn't even visible anymore because it had long since fused right into the stone, so it just became a part of the mountain's actual structure. Only someone who was specifically looking for it using their spiritual senses would ever know it existed down there.

It was a Realm Stabilizing Tree.

It wasn't as massive as that Eldest Tree I encountered back in the Two Suns world. That ancient being had been so huge it honestly defied all comprehension. But this tree was still impressive, and it was probably similar in size to the ones I saw in the Rouqi world during my brief visit there.

And the blue sun energy was killing it.

I could easily see the infection spreading through the tree's structure like rot moving through old wood. The blue calligraphy sitting on the shrine acted as a constant source that just kept pumping corrupted energy straight into the Realm Stabilizing Tree. And since the tree was the foundation of this realm's spiritual ecosystem, it then spread that corruption throughout the entire world.

That was why everyone in this realm fully believed they were the chosen one. That was why their convictions had become so ridiculously rigid and delusional. The tree was supposed to be stabilizing their reality and providing a foundation for the realm's natural laws, but instead of doing that, it was distributing corruption that made everyone's beliefs extreme.

The entire system was brilliant but in a horrifying way.

And what was even more concerning about it all, was that the creator of this world didn’t even realise what they were doing to their own inner world. By accidentally corrupting the Realm Stabilizing Tree, they ensured the infection would spread to every single corner of this inner world. And because the tree was sitting underground, and was merged straight into the mountain, most cultivators would never realize it existed, let alone figure out that it was the source of all their problems.