Mutual benefit had always been the foundation of a healthy partnership.
As someone who didn't seek empty fame, Fu Qian had no interest in the Spirit Ash Institute's pursuit of rivalry for the sake of pride.
Besides enlightening foolish students and helping the Spirit Ash Institute overcome its mental block, he needed to gain something real for himself from this trip.
So it wasn't too much to borrow everyone's brainwaves, was it?
Though the voltage seemed a little high...
In the silence, a thunderclap. When the Return Edict activated, Professor Lisha was indeed struck by a brief confusion, but in the blink of an eye, she was no longer the one reacting most strongly.
Her discomfort came from the sudden intensification of the spiraling explosion. But besides that, which everyone could feel, the members of the Spirit Ash Institute were undoubtedly experiencing something else: emptiness.
The essence of the Return Edict was to directly purify the accumulated filth, something that had become as natural as air to them.
Over the long years, they had grown accustomed to savoring it, breathing it in and out, and immersing themselves in it, gaining a pleasant sense of satisfaction from the experience.
In a sense, it might even have been one of the things that sustained the Spirit Ash Institute's proud bearing.
And as the Return Edict's purifying effect swept through the Golden Spiral, which was now in complete disarray, the wisps of void erosion mixed into it clearly affected Lisha and the others differently.
For the former, it was like being lucky enough to find a breath of pure air. For the latter, it triggered withdrawal symptoms—and fear of those symptoms.
For a moment, no one spoke, but their breathing stopped almost in unison. More than one person who had been sitting with