Chapter 344
Gale moved over as Erin floated closer to Xinyi who twitched back instinctvely pulling back from the approaching bluey. Even without Qi, her physical strength was probably still intact. That's what he thought anyways about the awakened of Jiuling, but somehow, she didn't look like she had any strength left.
"Calm down, child," Erin said.
"Child?" Xinyi muttered, eyes glancing over to Gale's direction.
Gale nodded. "For science."
That's probably what Erin was doing anyways. Erin wasn't an evil floating bluey that did things without reason.
Reaching a hand towards Xinyi's ear, Erin's finger closed in around a small Fraedium gem earpiece. She pulled it out, and Xinyi's body started trembling immediately.
Her arms wrapped around herself, hugging her torso to try to hold herself together. Her eyes widened, pupils dilated, breathe grew ragged, and her head turned at places where there was nothing. Her reaction seemed to show that there was something there.
"It's back," she muttered. "The whispers are back. It's back. It's back. It's back."
Her hand shot toward Erin's arm, trying to grab the Fraedium gem. Erin caught her arm, preventing her from reaching the earpiece.
"Give it back," Xinyi whimpered. "Please. Give it back."
What little blood Qi remained in Xinyi that had recovered started convulsing around her body. Red crescents spiked out from the air, spinning wildly. Multiple threads sliced at Erin's arm and body as she was the closest.
Erin didn't even blink nor flinch as if she didn't experience the pain at all.
Blue ice chains conjured around Xinyi, wrapping around her arms, torso, legs, and neck in an instant. Erin hovered over her, as if watching a specimen with those clinical eyes.
Once the blood Qi rampage dialed down, something else took its place. A smoky miasma seeped out from Xinyi's chest, coiling around her body like a snake. It wasn't Qi or any native energy of the universe.
Gale recognized it right away. The miasma smoke from the corruption that the tainted people of Kair had. Presence Between touched the miasma, feeling the greasiness feeding him the scent of both smoke and viscous vomit at the same time.
"Give it back!" Xinyi screamed, thrashing against the chains. "Give back the gem! I want the whispers gone! Please! Please! PLEASE!"
Erin drew closer to her face as a single spell circle faded into existence in front of her right eye. "The whispers tell you of the world and its truths, does it not? Tell us."
"It's louder than usual!" Xinyi gasped. "It's telling me to kill everyone! Submit to... submit to..."
"Submit to who?" Erin asked.
"The Mohrusy?" Xinyi said, her head dropping back. A laugh formed in her core, not a normal laugh. Her mouth opened wide, to let out a full bellied manic laugh. Her eyes rolled back, showing only whites as her body continued to thrash against the frozen chains.
Gale looked between Xinyi and Erin. From what the tendrils fed to him, she wasn't fully tainted just yet. Her body still fought against the foreign thing inside her.
Turning from Xinyi to him, Erin asked, "Do you truly wish to save this human?"
Not sure why she's asking him. If a person can be saved, then of course Gale would want to save a person, especially if they were good and liked children.
"I do." Looking to Rachel, Gale said, "why not? She didn't even want us to kill the disciples. She threw herself at a divine beast to save a bunch of kids. She must be a good person."
"Erin," Rachel said, stepping forward. "What exactly is happening with her?"
"Make haste, provide me with the shard," Erin said to Gale.
Materializing one of the Origin shards he collected, the floating orb like crystal in between 3 different states yet solid appeared on his palm. The orb immediately floated towards Erin without him giving it to her.
A spell circle appeared on the top of Erin's palm. Complex asymmetrical patterns formed within it that refracted into billions of tiny patterns inwards.
Suddenly, the shard shattered into billions of tiny grains. For a moment, they floated in the air like the stars in the night sky except now it was swirling around them. Slowly, they moved and swirled toward Xinyi's body before entering her chest.
At the same time it entered her body, a massive spell circle as tall as Xinyi appeared between her and Erin. Parts of the circle rotated clockwise and some counter clockwise.
One of the patterns caught Gale's attention. There were two hooks that caught his eye. One upright, the other one upside down. They looked simple at first, just curved lines within the blooming fractals of the circle, but the longer he stared at them, the more a headache formed behind his left eye.
What looked like a 2-dimensional glyph held a 3 dimensional output to his visuals on closer inspection. He could see depth, layers upon layers of folding into themselves into non sensical ways. Yet in reality, the 3 dimensions were a projection to his own mind while his eyes captured a flat 2 dimensional image.
The dulling throb behind his left eye reach its peak. Information flowed into his head
Information flowed into his head just as the same way he learned the glyph of plasma and access.
[Construct]
The upright hook. The glyph constructs a defined function or sequence and outputs it into reality. Its main purpose was to emulate multiple combination of resources into one seamless compilation.
[Deconstruct]
The upside-down hook. The glyph that breaks the bonds of a construction, unravelling the threads and glue of a defined function or sequence. Its output is to destroy the energy structures that form the construct of a spell, essentially decompiling what was written into reality.
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Two sides of the same coin.
Gale resisted the urge to look away. For a moment, it intensified until it settled back down, imprinted into his brain. He understood what the glyphs mean, yet also the vast endless applications of it.
William's light temporal light spells. It used the image of light. On touch, it would trigger the effect of what was supposed to be a slow down. Except, all it would have done was construct the viscosity of air around the target to induce the effect of a temporal slow.
That's why Gale felt it was an imitation. It wasn't t rue.
If it was Annett's true slow, then it would've slowed him down. He would've seen the world speed up while he was slowed.
The possibility of these two glyphs were… endless.
Xinyi's laughter began to fade, snapping Gale out of his trance. Her shoulders stopped trembling as well as her resistance against the frozen chains.
The miasma stopped pouring from her chest as the smoke completely faded from existence. Her eyes rolled back down along with her pupils dilating back to normal.
The spells faded one by one as Erin finally let Xinyi loose from her chains. Xinyi slumped forward, barely catching herself on her hands before her face hit the ground.
Once the spells containing Xinyi faded, Gale felt the sudden change in Xinyi's signature. Before, she was a Late-Harmonic, empty of Qi. The Origin shard allowed her to breakthrough the stage bottle neck to Early-Mystic.
But that difference wasn't everything. Her Qi felt different, specifically the blood Qi that emanated from her. It was paradoxically a clean and pure blood Qi, different from the other disciples they had fought before.
Yet Xinyi's blood Qi felt like the opposite of that now.
"What the hell was that about?" Rachel asked.
"Children, have a sit around," Erin said, floating down to a flat rock that jutted out from the canyon wall.
"Is this going to be a lecture?" Kyle groaned. "I might fall asleep."
"I have snacks ready," Clyde said, pulling out a bag of chips from somewhere and ripping it open.
Gale extended his hand as a bowl towards Clyde who immediately poured out some chips for him.
Sitting down in front of Erin, crossing his legs, everyone else followed. Taking a chip from his hands, he extended one to Rachel who reluctantly sat down beside him while grumbling about being treated like a child. Lily settled down next to her with a small smile as did, Kyle, Clyde, and then lastly, Xinyi who pushed herself up to a sitting position.
"It's kinda fun," Lily commented. "Like a campfire story."
"Except she's an annoying stupid!" Rachel shouted.
"Silence, female child of fire," Erin said.
Rachel dropped her head down, the temperature slightly spiked before coming back down.
"Why did you help me like that?" Xinyi asked.
"Hush and listen, young children," Erin said. "Your questions shall all be answered."
Gale raised his hand. "Can I have some water?"
Erin conjured up 6 sets of glass cups and poured in water into them. Each one floated to all of them individually.
Drinking from the cup, Gale let out a refreshing sigh. Pure water from Erin always tasted good.
Rachel slammed hers down onto the rock, surprisingly, it didn't break. "Now explain!"
"The child of fire is indeed impatient. However, I shall make haste with the great lecture," Erin said, turning to each of their eyes. "The corruption that invaded the young woman's body, designated as Xinyi Zhou, originates from outside our universe. Beyond the boundaries of known reality, there exist entities that seek to consume and convert all that exists into extensions of their territory."
Clyde somehow managed to pull out an artificial sweetener from his pocket which earned him an elbow from Lily. Still, he poured the artificial sweetener into his glass cup and swirled the water inside with ether.
"Rifts such as this one are not natural phenomenon. They are intrusion points. Worlds where the foreign entities are attempting to breach into our reality. The whispers that the young woman experienced. Promises of power, glory, and the likes, all spoken by the source of the corruption, the Mohrusy. These are the signs of the corruption's influence," Erin said. "Natives of planets colloquially have designated the Mohrusy as 'the Tide'. It spreads like water as a never ending tide of taint that devours land and sky."
Rachel raised her hand. "What's this got to do with Xinyi specifically? She drank some tea and now she's hearing whispers?"
"The tea that the young lamb ingested contained a grain of the taint," Erin said. "A minuscule fragment of the Mohrusy's 'medicine', likely through a vector of infection. Over time, this grain would have grown within her, feeding on her signature, converting her stage into something else entirely."
"Something else?" Rachel asked.
"A Pestilent."
"Oh shit." Kyle said. "Wasn't Abel going to become one of those things?"
"The loud one is commended for remembering such detail," Erin said.
Gale clapped for Kyle. Truly, the twins were always so smart.
Kyle facepalmed. "I'm not that dumb, you know."
"Debatable," Clyde said through a mouthful of chips.
"The young woman's signature was being converted into a Pestilent," Erin continued. "If left untreated, she would have returned to Earth as a fully formed Pestilent and caused havoc in the surrounding area. Hundreds would have died, herself becoming a vector for the tide while those she killed become cauldrons to cultivate grains of the Mohrusy."
"So it was either kill me or heal me?" Xinyi asked.
"Correct. The shard had given you another chance at life whilst also increasing your signature. Though its effects were mostly used to sanitize your pathways, it has taken you to Early-Mystic, on the cusp of becoming Mid-Mystic."
Gale clapped for Xinyi. Rachel sighed but didn't say anything. From the look of Xinyi's face of complete confusion, she'd get along with everyone just fine as the maid.
"Young lamb," Erin said, drawing Gale's attention back. "Can you sense any tainted signatures within the vicinity?"
Extending Presence Between outwards, Gale let his tendrils spread across the canyon and beyond. They slipped through rock and sand, touching signatures, cataloging them. The Blood Blade disciples in the caves, all around Attuned and Resonants. The wormlings burrowed deep in the sand, just normal awakened that had no taint. Then, his tendrils touched the Late-Mystic divine beast still swimming around in the sand dunes just within the 10km radius he extended his tendrils to.
"No tainted signatures," Gale reported. "But the sandworm is still nearby. It's circling the canyon."
"A strange effort for a divine beast," Erin said. "Divine beasts are typically solitary creatures, preferring to avoid conflict wherever."
"Then why was it so aggressive even when we entered a month ago?" Xinyi asked.
"The wormlings also exhibit unusual behaviour. They are offspring of the divine beast, yet cast themselves into suicide against entities they are no match for," Erin said. "The answer to your question is yet to be known. It is for this reason, we must stop the corruption."
"Could it be the corruption is somehow whispering to the divine beast?" Gale asked. "Like it was whispering to Xinyi?"
"A possibility," Erin said. "If the corruption has established a foothold within this rift, it may be influencing the native creatures, directing them toward its goals. We have yet to encounter any tainted variants of the monsters, which suggests the corruption is operating through subtler means."
Rachel held up her hand again. "Hold on a minute. If rifts are intrusion points for these... entities... then are rifts themselves caused by the Mohrusy? Or the Tide? Whatever you want to call it?"
"That is correct."
"Why?" Rachel asked.
"Does it warrant further explanation when a world spirit calls for help? The answer is simple. Eliminate the source of corruption. Close all the rifts that lead to the rift's world. Save reality from being consumed." Erin said. "As children of the stars, that is the mission you're given."
"Does that count Xinyi now too?"
"She has yet to become a child of the stars, however, she posses remarkable talent that matches that of the loud one's in a different subset."
"Ugh, sure, use me as an example," Kyle muttered.
Clyde whistled, long and low. "Damn. So every rift we've ever done is basically just against the corruption thingy magick?"
"You've understood correctly," Erin said.
"And the faction heads know about this?" Clyde asked.
"Probably not. Even I didn't know about it… maybe grandma knew. UGH." Rachel said.
"So what do we do now?" Xinyi asked.
"Well, first of all, we look at what's inside the western tunnel thing you called. You've put down sutras on there so I can't literally look into it with my spidey senses," Gale said, taking a chip from Clyde's potato chip bag. "But first, you need to make your disciples back down. If they attack us, we can't be held liable for their lives."
Xinyi clenched her fist. "I shall do my best to have them back down. However, may I ask the Ann Heiress to save them with the green fire?"
Rachel looked to Gale's eyes. Some how, she leaned back at his stare before she finally snapped herself out of it. "Fine. But you treat me to lunch when we go back."
"Ok! Deal!" Gale said. He knew just the perfect place. Taco Bell.