"Some people are corrupted by money, some by ideals, and others by familial love. Though these can be given the lofty and righteous names of hope, dreams, and love, they ultimately change who a person originally was."
"Corruption is not simply deterioration. It is making a target change in the direction one desires. In a sense, it can also be seen as a more brutal, more self-serving form of 'cultivation.'"
"Different people have different demands, so the methods of corruption differ as well. Grasping the key within them is the focus of corruption."
At the border between West Backlund and Empress Borough, in a modest two-story building, Sno held an exquisite sapphire-blue steel pen and wrote down the Acting Principles he had summarized in Chinese.
Thanks to the fact that he now held the fates of countless little people in his hands, his acting as the Baron of Corruption had gone quite smoothly. Even if he stopped teasing Klein, he was confident he could fully digest the Baron of Corruption before Klein advanced to Faceless.
But that did not mean he could soon become Sequence V. He had not even begun preparing the ritual required for advancing to Sequence V, because his acting as his original Zeno Turtle had made virtually no progress.
If Donkey of Buridan required overcoming difficulty in making choices, Pavlov's Dog required mastering conditioned reflexes, and Zhuang Zhou's Fish required understanding empathy, then Zeno's Turtle's side effects truly offered not the slightest hint.
Or rather, his current state was like skipping class.
Why?
Because his soul had been split far too finely.
So finely that it could barely carry a complete Mind Body.
In other words, if he continued leaving his primary consciousness in one fragment of his soul, then over time, the consciousness that could