The Fragile Flame

Deep in his heart, a voice seemed to whisper to him without end:

“Because this is your destiny.”

He had no idea where the voice came from. He desperately searched for its source, but it was as though something had covered his eyes. No matter how hard he tried, he could never see what lay ahead.

His world held nothing but endless chaos.

It felt as though a very, very long time had passed.

At last, within the chaos before him, a shapeless mass of pitch-black darkness slowly began to take form.

Then he heard an ethereal voice worm its way into his mind:

“You did nothing wrong. This is simply the way the world is.”

“Do you want to change it?”

“Then go and change it.”

“Destruction and annihilation are what’s right.”

“Look—all life, in the end, exists only to march toward death, does it not?”

“Come with me, and you will see an entirely new world…”

The voice was like cold ice spikes driving one after another into Tong Jialiang’s mind. Each stab struck his heart like the heavy blow of a muffled drum, leaving him in unbearable pain.

He clutched his head in agony and curled up on the ground.

“Shut up…!”

But the voice refused to relent.

“Surrender to annihilation. Annihilation is eternal.”

“Shut up…”

“Destruction is the eternal power…”

Within the chaos, the mass of darkness spun ceaselessly, absorbing everything around it as it grew larger and larger.

The tiny figure crouched on the ground, meanwhile, seemed to grow smaller and smaller before it.

“Shut up…”

Until he became no more than a tiny speck, like a fragile flame in an endless night—one that could be snuffed out completely by the slightest breeze.

By this point, the number of people on the Path of Inquiry had dwindled considerably.

When Liu Yunan and the others arrived beneath the Ten-Mile Peach Blossom Tree, they saw that the people undergoing the trial on the Path of Inquiry were all surrounded by faint wisps of black energy.

Every one of them wore a tightly furrowed brow. Some even had savage expressions on their faces, as though they were enduring an extremely harrowing ordeal.

The dreamlike experiences generated by the Path of Inquiry were exceptionally real due to its unique nature.

And precisely because it pursued the utmost realism, the consciousnesses within the dream had only the faintest connection to their bodies in reality.

Otherwise, it would be far too easy for them to awaken from the dream.

Yet the sensations these people were experiencing in their dreams had clearly become so intense that they were visibly affecting their bodies in the real world.

Seeing this, everyone grew anxious, but no one dared to act rashly. After all, they had never encountered anything like this before.

Only Lin Xiao knew the Path of Inquiry’s exact circumstances, and he had yet to emerge from seclusion.

Thus, everyone turned to look at Liu Yunan.

Liu Yunan glanced at the identity token hanging from his waist. Seeing that it showed no reaction, he said to the others, “I’ll go check the control room. Keep watch here. If the situation becomes critical, send me a message, and I’ll force the Path of Inquiry to shut down!”

With that, he turned and sped toward the control room.

Under Qin Jianghe’s arrangements, the others immediately entered the Path of Inquiry and began examining each person’s physical condition one by one.

After checking a portion of the people from the beginning of the path, the worry in everyone’s hearts eased slightly.

For now, it appeared that the black energy had not affected their bodies.

But they could not afford to let down their guard. They still had to keep monitoring everyone at all times.

Suddenly, Qin Jianghe’s voice rang out from the middle of the mountain path:

“Yigao! Come take a look!”

At the sound of his call, Sun Yigao moved his feet, and in the space of a breath, he had arrived beside him.

Those nearby who had been examining the others also hurried over when they heard the shout.

When everyone reached Qin Jianghe’s side, they saw that the person in front of him was none other than Tong Jialiang, whom Sun Yigao had been treating for the past several years.

With a single glance, they understood why Qin Jianghe had summoned Sun Yigao.

At that moment, Tong Jialiang was wrapped in black energy from head to toe, almost as though he were being swallowed by it. He was completely different from the others, who were surrounded by only faint traces of blackness.

That was not all.

After carefully identifying the source of the black energy, everyone discovered that it was actually leaking from Tong Jialiang’s eyes, ears, mouth, nose, glabella, and heart.

At first, the black energy coiled tightly around him. As more and more of it emerged and grew increasingly dense, it gradually began to spread outward.

Yet the black energy did not stop around Qin Jianghe and the others. Whenever it passed through them, it simply pierced straight through their bodies, and none of them felt the slightest sensation.

Then they saw strand after strand of black energy spreading onto the other people who were undergoing the trial on the Path of Inquiry.

The others reached out and tried touching the black energy. They also attempted to block it with their spiritual power.

But all their efforts came to nothing.

The black energy seemed to exist in a different space from them. No matter what they did, they could neither touch it nor hinder it in the slightest.

Someone could not help asking, “What’s going on?”

Sun Yigao hurriedly seized Tong Jialiang’s wrist and sent his spiritual power inside to examine him carefully.

Yet nothing appeared to be wrong within his body.

After checking him repeatedly several times, Sun Yigao finally raised his head and shook it gravely at the others.

“I can’t find anything wrong…”

Then the only possibility was that the problem lay in his mind—in his dream…

Jiang Youfu stepped closer and observed him carefully. He gave a slight twitch of his nostrils as he took a sniff, then said, “The way he looks isn’t the same as a cultivator suffering qi deviation. He smells different too.”

As he spoke, he saw Sun Yigao cast the third-stage purification spell, Cleansing the Heart, on Tong Jialiang.

Yet the black energy did not diminish in the slightest.

In truth, Sun Yigao had expected this result.

Ever since he learned that Lin Xiao and the others had successfully used Cleansing the Heart to purify the inner demon of the Yuan family’s Nascent Soul Patriarch while they were in the cultivation world, he had tried using it on Tong Jialiang several times as well.

But perhaps because Tong Jialiang’s symptoms were different, the Cleansing the Heart spell—which even worked on a Nascent Soul cultivator—had no effect on him whatsoever.

Still, with everyone at a loss for any other solution, he had merely wanted to try once more.

Jiang Youfu had lost his appetite for roasted beans as well. He looked worriedly at the people engulfed by the black energy.

“What are we supposed to do? We don’t even know when Brother Xiao will emerge from seclusion.”

If Brother Xiao were here, he would surely have a way to solve this.

Faced with the situation, everyone had no choice but to stand guard nearby, using their spiritual power to monitor each person’s physical condition.

That way, they could notify Liu Yunan immediately if anything went wrong.

Meanwhile, in the control room…

The moment Liu Yunan entered, he immediately followed the instructions Lin Xiao had given him. At the main console, he tapped open the control options for the Path of Inquiry.

Only after confirming that the [Shut Down Path of Inquiry] button was operational did he finally breathe a small sigh of relief and begin studying the other options.

That way, even if something truly went wrong in the end, he could shut down the Path of Inquiry at any time.

However, Liu Yunan searched through everything and still found no way to resolve the current condition of the Path of Inquiry.