"How have you been lately?"
"Pretty good."
"How so?"
"My cultivation, coursework, and project are all going smoothly... Uh, is something wrong?"
Acolyte Priest Yuan Ju was perceptive. Priest Yan Chen had never shown this much interest in how he was doing. Then he remembered the priests who had accompanied them: they had come to this Quiet Room one by one to speak with Shan Long High Priest and Priest Yan Chen. The more he answered, the less certain he felt. His eyes widened, and the six finlike ears along his cheeks twitched twice.
Yan Chen did not hide it from him. "We aren't sure there's a problem, but we need to be cautious."
He told Yuan Ju about the "traces of abnormal rule power at work," then added, "For now, we're checking what everyone has experienced."
Yuan Ju had never encountered anything like this. He could not help growing nervous. "So have I been affected?"
"What do you think?"
"Me?" Yuan Ju tried to think back, but his mind was a mess. He could only stare, at a loss for words.
Beside him, Shan Long High Priest chuckled. "No need to be nervous. We've been in this star region doing our daily studies, adjusting and revising our Form and Spirit Frameworks. Of course we've been affected, myself included. The only question is how much. When something changes, we have to consider its severity and urgency. We can't treat every outside influence as a dire threat."
"Oh," Yuan Ju said, though he was still nervous.
Shan Long High Priest smiled again. "Think of it as the Rule Difference interference often encountered during Hyperspace Navigation. It can be strong or weak, harmful or beneficial. Harmful effects include struggling to adapt, falling gravely ill, stalled cultivation, and a distorted framework. But there