Jing Yuan explained his predicament.
He knew Chu Mu wanted to kill Phantylia, but as a heliobus and an Emanator of Destruction, she was practically immortal.
Unwilling to give up, Chu Mu asked:
"Is there really no way at all?"
"Let me explain the nature of heliobi. Once you understand that, you'll know why I say she can't be killed," Jing Yuan said patiently. "A heliobus is essentially a mass of energy. You can think of it as a flame. These flames can merge, with countless small heliobi combining into one large heliobus.
"A large heliobus absorbs smaller ones. The more it absorbs, the more energy it commands. That's why the weaker members of their kind fear approaching the stronger ones. For example, the moment Phantylia appeared, every sealed heliobus on the Xianzhou trembled in fear.
"According to our observations, a heliobus only develops consciousness later on. So Phantylia's consciousness wasn't innate. Some mass of heliobus energy simply awakened one day and became Phantylia.
"You could say that heliobi don't actually possess individual consciousnesses.
"Xianzhou natives deal with powerful heliobi by breaking them apart. The more pieces they're split into, the weaker they become, and the fainter their consciousness grows. Eventually, they almost return to an unconscious state, becoming mindless and muddled.
"But if those flames merge again, a unified consciousness may emerge once more.
"There is no fundamental difference between heliobi. Only the personalities of their awakened consciousnesses differ.
"Humans cannot extinguish these flames. We can only keep dividing them to weaken their consciousness.
"Even if we captured Phantylia and split her into an Illusory Pig and an Illusory Dog, we still couldn't kill her, no matter how small the fragments became. All she might need is to merge again, and she would be restored."
Chu Mu more or