Decaying World

"Thirty roots... Just to come out this time, I spent fifteen million qian before even finding the truth."

"Brother."

Standing at the passageway entrance, just as Lin Hui was about to leave the Fine Food District, he suddenly heard a voice as faint as a mosquito's buzz drilling into his ear.

"Brother, over here." The voice seemed to come from below on the right.

Lin Hui followed the sound. He saw a Sparrow-man, only as tall as his calf, wearing a hat and peering up at him.

The Sparrow-man was round, covered in gray-brown feathers, with two black beady eyes, a dark yellow beak, dark yellow claws, and a satchel slung across his body.

"Brother, sorry, I didn't recognize you at first. Long Ji said you were coming. I looked everywhere but didn't see you. Turns out you're a whole size fatter than the portrait..." The Sparrow-man wiped his shiny, greasy beak, looking apologetic.

"...I wasn't like this half a day ago..." Lin Hui said, speechless.

"Is that so? Alright then... Seems you couldn't hold back and ate too much either." The Sparrow-man extended a wing. "Let me introduce myself. I am Tian Long."

"...Lin Hui." Lin Hui reached out and bumped fists with him. "Find a place to chat?" Tian Long said in a low voice.

"Okay." Lin Hui nodded.

The Sparrow-man took the lead. They left the Fine Food District and returned to the Fine Wine District. Outside a slightly more remote tavern, they found a street bench and sat down.

"Sigh, this place isn't really suitable for us non-human races to visit. But I just can't damn well resist. Sigh, this rotten beak..." Tian Long sighed and slapped his own beak.

"You have business with me? And where is this 'truth' you guys mentioned?" Lin Hui transmitted his voice as he sat side-by-side with him on the bench.

"The truth? Oh, you mean that. Since you've toured the Deep Domain, you must have doubts. Why would the Trueblood Nobles build such a place of hedonism? Right?" Tian Long said.

"Mm." Lin Hui nodded.

"You can only really understand that if you follow me. Come." Tian Long jumped off the bench, flapped his wings to fly up, and rushed toward the exterior of the Deep Domain.

Lin Hui followed closely behind.

They followed the driveway circling the inner wall where they had first entered, retracing their path. They exited the Deep Domain and left the silver water surface.

Tian Long did not stop; instead, he led Lin Hui in a small circle around the Moon Tower. Soon, he found an inconspicuous crack in the tower's structure and squeezed into it.

Lin Hui looked at the Undying Guard patrolling the stone bridge in the distance and hesitated for a moment.

"Come in quickly. I put a layer of Camouflage Confounding Incense on you; they can't see you for the time being." Tian Long's voice came from inside the crack.

Lin Hui circulated his Internal Force, sized up the crack, and leaped in after him.

The crack was over two meters high and one meter wide. As soon as he entered, the gap rapidly shrank, becoming thin and narrow, nearly disappearing. It was pitch-black inside, with only Tian Long's satchel emitting a faint white fluorescence ahead.

"Follow me. I worked here for thirteen years, so I'm very familiar with this place," Tian Long transmitted.

"What is this place?" Lin Hui asked vigilantly.

"Didn't you want to see the truth? This is the passage leading to it." Tian Long smiled.

Lin Hui fell silent and stepped forward to follow. He was confident that even if there was a problem, he could escape quickly with his superb speed.

They walked in the darkness, one after the other, for a few minutes. Gradually, a crashing sound came from ahead. The sound was like a sharp blade cutting through large chunks of pork—a crisp, tearing noise.

Lin Hui's footsteps paused. "What's ahead?"

"Part of the truth. You'll know when you see it." Tian Long spread his wings. "To be honest, I don't understand why Long Ji values you so highly. But since he asked me, I'll take you for a tour. Many die-hards, after seeing the truth, actually become even firmer in the opposite direction. Consider this an ideological education class."

Lin Hui watched him continue walking, not worried in the slightest that Lin Hui would run. Thinking for a moment, he followed.

The crack ahead slowly began to narrow, and the sound of cutting flesh grew louder and louder.

Gradually, a pale halo lit up ahead.

At first, it was the size of a bean, then quickly a fist, and immediately after, a basin. Finally, it turned into an oval hole the size of a bathtub. That white light was shining in from outside the hole.

"Come, look from my side. Look at the truth of this Moon Tower, the core of everything." Tian Long stuck his fat butt in the air, lying prone at the hole. He patted the ground beside him with his wing, signaling Lin Hui to lie down like him.

Lin Hui didn't understand why, but he bent his waist, lay on the ground, shimmied over, poked his head out of the hole, and looked outside.

Outside was a massive dark cavern.

In the center stood a giant dark-red circular wheel, resembling a Ferris wheel. The wheel was composed entirely of countless masses of flesh and blood. Half was sunk underground, and the other half stood askew in the open air.

The surface of the wheel was covered with countless pieces of dark-red flesh, pulsating and squirming continuously like hearts. Looking carefully, dense clusters of tiny black mouths grew on the flesh. The scene was bizarre and absurd.

Below the giant wheel, dense crowds of Undying Guards were holding long sabers, slicing the flesh off the wheel. These guards, who were at least 1.8 meters tall, looked like piles of tiny white ants beside an aircraft carrier beneath the giant wheel—extremely minute and inconspicuous.

But their movements were fast. They leaped high and low, using various blades to quickly slice off large chunks of flesh like small mountains, placing them onto large carts that had long been prepared.

"This is... Myriad Blessings Meat ?!" Lin Hui recalled the scene he saw outside the South Ninth Gate.

"Correct. Myriad Blessings Meat is produced right here. Look at the ceiling again," Tian Long reminded him.

Lin Hui quickly looked up at the space above the giant wheel.

Above was a circular cavern ceiling. Countless fine filaments of ghostly blue fluorescence hung down, as if transmitting something to the giant wheel.

These filaments resembled the aerial roots of a banyan tree, or countless glowing hairs. They did not connect directly to the flesh wheel but faded and vanished some distance away, as if merging into the space.

"What is that?" Lin Hui asked softly. His voice was hushed; he was unconsciously worried about alerting the Undying Guards and the giant wheel.

"Those are recycled Life Spirits." Tian Long yawned and explained. "Did you think Myriad Blessings Meat was given out for free? This meat can cure a hundred diseases and fill the stomach; it has many benefits. Why would the Inner City go to such lengths to transport it so far and deliver it everywhere for people to eat? Why wouldn’t they keep something this valuable for themselves instead of actively giving it away? Naturally, there’s a reason it has to be distributed."

"What reason?" Lin Hui faintly had some associations and guesses.

"Myriad Blessings Meat is actually part of the Longevity Wheel. Or rather, part of Tuyue, the Master of the Longevity Wheel," Tian Long said solemnly.

"What do you mean? This giant wheel is the Evil Weapon, the Longevity Wheel?!" Lin Hui was stunned, pointing at the flesh wheel that was over a hundred meters tall in surprise.

"Yes, this is the Longevity Wheel." Tian Long nodded.

"But shouldn't the Longevity Wheel be a weapon? Shouldn't it be metal or something hard..." Lin Hui stopped halfway through his sentence.

"It seems you've realized it, too. Who made the rule that the Evil Weapon Longevity Wheel must be a weapon you hold in your hand?" Tian Long smiled. "Tuyue, the owner of the Longevity Wheel, after years of research, came up with a method to resist Mist Corruption. That is to separate his own flesh and blood, merge it into the bodies of countless living beings, and then use special means to disperse the massive Mist Corruption to everyone who has eaten Myriad Blessings Meat, thereby maintaining his own state."

"Tuyue... The Master of Tuyue City?" Lin Hui asked.

"Correct. After creating this technique, Tuyue rapidly established Tuyue City. With continuous development and expansion, it finally became one of the many cities of the Taisu Alliance. This is the true origin of Tuyue City." Tian Long nodded.

"Mist Corruption—what is that?" Lin Hui gazed at the massive flesh wheel and asked again.

"All things eventually rot. And Mistborn face a much, much greater intensity of corruption than ordinary people. The nature of this world is just so. No matter who you are, you will eventually be corrupted, turning into a form similar to the Mist monsters. It's just that the Mistborn are unwilling, so they transfer their pressure to everyone else through the Myriad Blessings Meat." Tian Long explained.

"If you eat Myriad Blessings Meat, you automatically share in its corruption. If you don't eat it, you face various pressures, dangers, and turbulence, eventually disappearing mysteriously, becoming test subjects for certain major clans, or being captured by Trueblood Nobles as life-draining food, taken back to the Moon Tower to die of exhaustion. Even if you don't encounter any of those, many lunatics in the Inner City looking to vent their stress will choose you as their primary target. Accidents are a matter of sooner or later." Tian Long sighed and said, "Actually, you've already been targeted. We noticed you, and someone else noticed you too..."

"Who?" Lin Hui shivered and asked quickly.

"I don't know, but whenever we observed you, we always found another pair of eyes watching you." Tian Long whispered. "But rest assured, as long as you join us, we have plenty of experience with this kind of thing."

Looking at the massive flesh wheel inside the cavern, Lin Hui felt a bit confused. He wasn't sure if what the Benevolent Heart Sect said was completely true, but at least what he saw with his own eyes didn't look fake. And the other party was definitely speaking only of what was beneficial to them as much as possible.

Seeing his hesitation, Tian Long spoke again. "Let's go. We'll change places first. My ability won't last much longer; it will be trouble if we're discovered."

"Okay."

The two returned along the original path and soon arrived back at the entrance of the crack.

Sitting at the mouth of the crack, Tian Long looked at Lin Hui, whose expression was grave. "Think it over carefully. Our Benevolent Heart Sect was founded by people like you who woke up to reality. There are no mandatory constraints on anyone; we only grew because of a common goal and shared ambition."

"What if I join the Three Great Powers? Become part of the Inner City?" Lin Hui suddenly asked. "That way there wouldn't be any more danger, right?"

"You think the Three Great Powers are absolutely safe? Have you ever seen a Trueblood?" Tian Long laughed.

"I've seen one."

"Then you've seen too few." Tian Long stood up, patted the dust off his butt, and shook his feathers. "Come with me; I'll take you to see what a real Trueblood looks like."

He stepped forward and flew out of the crack.

[view Image: The Flesh of the Longevity Wheel]

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