"Did you seem to have lost something very important?" A smiling voice sounded from the depths of his mind.
Qi Si's vision blurred, and the scenery spun one hundred and eighty degrees in a single second.
Somehow, he had come down from the high-backed chair and was now seated before the bronze table, with a little stool that had appeared out of thin air beneath him.
The murals on the temple dome turned into a bloody waterfall that poured down, condensing on the high-backed chair into a red-clad, red-eyed figure. Crimson beams of varying intensity drifted through the void, stirring the space until it was thin one moment and viscous the next.
A surging tide of whispers murmured endlessly beside his ears, awakening terror from the depths of his soul. Every particle that composed his Spirit and Flesh trembled, ready to scatter across the ground and flee in all directions.
Qi Si breathed rapidly, his expression changing slightly. "I remember throwing away the [Humanoid Evil Spirit] card... So there really are plenty of under-the-table tricks beneath The Rules. You can't even be bothered to hide them?"
"This was probably the last time I would come to find you of my own accord." The entity let out a long sigh. "It is clear that you still have many misunderstandings about me. In truth, you can completely trust that my interests are absolutely aligned with yours."
"You may also rest assured that, aside from me, no other entity can enter this place without your permission. I appear here as your hallucination—or, rather, as a personality split from your mind."
"Everything I tell you next cannot be learned by any other entity."
Qi Si noticed that this time, the entity was not directly transmitting information into his mind. Instead, the entity had gone