"...Mmph..."
Winnie opened her mouth in pain, wanting to say something, but the agony acting directly on her soul forced the words back down her throat. What was even more absurd was that thin, delicate lines of blood appeared across the surface of her body, followed by an extremely faint cracking sound.
Shen Yi's gaze shifted. Although he could not directly perceive the tiniest details of the soul the way Hilat could, he could still clearly feel this violent turmoil originating from the essence of life itself.
Xilos exchanged a glance with him at that moment as well, her eyes filled with worry and horror.
That sound just now had clearly been an intense fluctuation on the level of the soul. Along with that faint cracking noise, Winnie's soul seemed to have suffered actual damage and fractures.
But before Shen Yi or Xilos could speak, Hilat's calm thought rang out first in their minds.
"The situation is more complicated than I expected, but it is also somewhat better now."
"Winnie's condition does indeed belong to a split soul. Furthermore, it was a separation carried out by her main body on its own initiative when facing a severe crisis, in the form of severing and cutting away."
"There is indeed a fundamental difference between her current soul essence and that of her main body. That is the basis for her being able to develop independent consciousness, and even derive different Authority traits."
Hilat's gray-white halo slowly flowed, as if she were interpreting the vast amount of information feeding back from the depths of Winnie's soul.
"However."
Her tone changed, becoming grave.
"Her original main body was extremely cautious—or rather, had a very strong desire for control. Even when she took the initiative to sever and exile this contaminated fragment, she did