Star-Celestial Island, central medical room.
Xingli had been placed inside the most sophisticated Star-Celestial Treatment Pod. Pale silver healing fluid bathed her body, while countless starlight conduits as fine as hair connected to her acupoints and the star sigil on her forehead. They gently channeled pure star-celestial power into her, waging a tug-of-war against the corruptive energy entrenched in her heart and brain.
Sakura and Karin, together with the finest healers among the People of the Stars, had been working at full strength for hours, sweat beading on every forehead. The corruptive energy was extraordinarily tenacious and of an exceptionally high order. Conventional Medical Ninjutsu and purification seals had little effect, barely slowing its spread.
"The nature of this corruptive energy... is of an incredibly high order, far beyond any Ōtsutsuki we've encountered before, including Momoshiki." Karin rubbed her temples wearily. Her Uzumaki Rinnegan could clearly "see" the energy's structure. "It's more like... conceptual contamination, rather than merely the corruption of chakra or energy. It's slowly rewriting Miss Xingli's life information, and even trying to assimilate her precognitive abilities."
"Can you identify its source?" Lin Ye stood beside the treatment pod, analyzing it with his Jōgan as well. The dark energy felt vaguely familiar to him. It was not Momoshiki's savage greed, but a colder malice-deeper, older, and closer to the very nature of "rules."
"I can't determine it precisely, but it's definitely connected to the Ōtsutsuki, and to an extremely high-ranking being at that." Karin shook her head. "The 'great one' Elder Mochen mentioned is probably its source. The Wrath of the Stars that Miss Xingli used at the end seems to be a forbidden technique that exhausts the essence of her life and soul to forcibly draw upon some destructive stellar power in the universe. It temporarily drove