Unknown Existence

A remnant soul.

Had been eaten.

The mountain forest after the rain carried the bone-piercing chill of late autumn. A beam of light squeezed through the gaps in the wooden window and into the room. Qin Yi lay collapsed on the ground from the pain, turning over the information he had obtained in his mind.

Going by what that voice in his skull meant,

Meng Peijiu had originally intended to give him a portable old grandpa today?

What had her purpose been?

Had she simply not known there was already something in his head and wanted to give him a teacher to aid his growth?

Or had she specifically wanted to activate the thing in his mind?

As he pondered these questions, Qin Yi braced both hands against the icy floor and tried to climb to his feet.

A gust of cold wind brushed past, and that ethereal, majestic voice rang out once more:

[Did I permit you to stand?]

"..."

Qin Yi instantly sucked in a sharp breath, his features twisting into a knot.

This time, the pain came directly from his knees. It felt as though some blunt weapon had smashed them to pieces. Yet his body remained uninjured, and when he looked inward, the meridians within were intact as ever.

Realizing this, Qin Yi simply lay back down on the floor. Thoughts whirred through his mind like interlocking gears.

Bad-tempered and arrogantly overbearing. Judging by the way it spoke, the other party was probably some emperor—or perhaps the sort of person who could be called a tyrant.

At that thought, Qin Yi suddenly felt fortunate that he had sent Ruan Su out to practice her blade first. Otherwise, he would have needed to spare attention to soothe her right now.

Too much remained unclear. He would play along with it for now, observe the situation, then make his judgment.

[Restoring the original text of Nine Songs—did you deliberately do that for me to see?]

"...Yes."

Qin Yi lay prostrate on the floor, his voice trembling and hoarse, steeped in fear.

Even as he answered, he focused his mind inward.

Cultivation had its fundamental principles. Transmitting information required a medium. He carefully sensed the minute ripples that appeared in his inner meridians whenever the other party spoke.

The sensation resembled the pulses generated when it inflicted pain upon him, but the frequency and wavelength appeared different, and the amplitude was smaller as well.

It was fascinating, and strange.

If he observed the "wriggling" pattern by which that crimson mass parasitizing his skull generated pulses, he should be able to learn it.

Qin Yi had a powerful premonition of this.

There was neither fear nor joy—only an urge to deconstruct this unknown power.

The voice seemed very satisfied with Qin Yi's attitude, humble as dirt beneath its feet, and spoke with lofty, amused interest:

[You did this... to prove your value to me?]

"Yes."

That was indeed the case.

Though he did not know the voice's origins, based on Qin Yi's brief experience since stepping onto the path of cultivation, the other party had to be some existence of an extremely high station.

At the very least, lodging one's consciousness in another person's brain was not something he could accomplish anytime soon.

When the other party's attitude remained wholly unknown, proving that he possessed value worth using was never the wrong choice.

Upon hearing this, the voice considered for a moment, then suddenly burst into uninhibited laughter, the sound so loud that Qin Yi found it somewhat grating:

[Hahahahaha! Interesting little brat. Stand up. I permit it.]

Qin Yi immediately felt as though he had been granted a pardon. He rose slowly and carefully, as if afraid that any movement might provoke the thing in his skull again.

Once he had fully stood in the somewhat dim room, the voice came carrying the pressure of a superior being.

It asked a question.

[Little brat, what year is it now?]

"The eleventh year of Jinghong," Qin Yi answered truthfully.

[Jinghong... What sort of era name is that? Heh... I remember now. It seems you humans all enjoy using your own country's emperor's name to mark the years.]

"You're not human?"

Qin Yi caught the key point and tested the waters, but in the next instant, it felt as if his legs had been severed by an invisible blade. The excruciating pain surged like a tidal wave, even robbing him directly of control over his legs.

The boy's thin body lost control, and with a heavy thud, he dropped hard to his knees.

[It seems you prefer speaking on your knees to speaking while standing.]

The voice sighed softly, carrying the helplessness and pity one might feel toward an ant:

[Since this is your first offense, I shall repeat myself. I do not much like others asking questions. I like it even less when others interrupt while I am speaking, especially lowly things like you.]

[Do you understand?]

Silence fell after those words. Only the autumn wind outside swept fallen leaves across the ground with a rustle.

"...I understand."

Qin Yi replied shakily. His dark eyes lowered to his legs, whose sensation was gradually returning. He remained silently kneeling and did not rise.

There were still no injuries in sight.

Neither his body nor his spirit channels had suffered damage, yet he had temporarily lost all sensation. Did that mean that beyond the physical body, beyond the Spirit Resonance field of vision, there was another dimension to the path of cultivation?

He recalled the voice mentioning a remnant soul...

So,

Was that dimension the soul?

Upon realizing this, Qin Yi suddenly felt that the voice which had appeared in his head was actually rather good to him.

At the very least, it was better than Meng Peijiu and her cryptic riddles.

It had appeared only a quarter of an hour ago, yet it had already taught him so many things related to cultivation through both word and deed.

[How long has it been since the Black Sun tore through the sky?]

The voice changed its question, showing no intention whatsoever of letting Qin Yi stand again.

Silently committing "Black Sun" to memory, Qin Yi remained kneeling on the floor and answered crisply in a trembling voice:

"I... don't know what Black Sun you mean."

[Of course. You do not look like someone with a systematic inheritance. Let me put it another way: how long has it been since Ji Minghao died? Hmm... His era name seems to have been Pingwu.]

"I'm sorry, but I don't know this person either."

Qin Yi was not lying. He truly did not know him.

[...]

A suffocating silence suddenly descended.

Then,

A faint rustling sensation came from his arm. Qin Yi glanced back, only to see that for the first time, the flow of Spirit Resonance through the meridians of his right hand had reacted. Its speed was increasing because of pulses from the crimson mass in his skull.

Gradually, that rustling sensation turned into heart-rending agony. The fingers were linked to the heart; his entire arm felt as though some terrifying monstrous force had seized it, snapping it segment by segment and twisting it inch by inch. The pain spread swiftly through his body like venom!

Qin Yi's breathing began to tremble. Pain made his gaunt cheeks twitch, and his body tipped forward at just the right angle, collapsing onto the ground like a heap of mud, his cheek pressed against the cold rammed-earth floor.

The voice had shed its arrogance, but it now carried a thread of chilling killing intent:

[Who gave a lowly breed like you the right to deceive me?]

[You understand poetry and songs, know the level and oblique tones, the clear and the muddy, yet you do not know the era name of a great nation's ruler... Hahahaha, interesting, interesting...]

[...It seems the lesson earlier was still not enough.]

"..."

As he endured the boundless pain coursing through every part of his body, Qin Yi made no sound. He had discovered that the flow of Spirit Resonance within him was gradually becoming chaotic.

This pain had given him the most important clue he had received since beginning cultivation.

Just as the body could interfere with the meridians on a physical level and construct entirely new spirit-channel circuits, once the "pulses" on the level of the "soul" reached a certain degree, they seemed able to influence the spirit channels in turn.

Following that line of reasoning,

The body, spirit channels, and soul should all be able to interfere with one another.