The shadow waved a hand and created a glowing, fluid seal in the empty air where the ceiling used to be, which seemed to block out the oncoming waves of lightning. Surge after surge of red streaks hit the top of the small seal, as if attracted by it.
"This will buy us a minute, at most," the shadow said in a strangled tone.
Zhanxian and Tun Shi Tian also had no idea what exactly was going on here. Xuhan had had to convince them that it really was him inside Fang Xie's body by calling Zhanxian a neutered dog lusting after swan meat.
The salvaged materials from the remains of the prior formation were barely enough to restart another exchange of souls. But the humanoid shadow, whoever he was, surprised both Xuhan and Fang Xie by producing similar materials out of thin air.
When asked about the source of these materials, the shadow replied, "Stole them from this sect's treasury just now."
Han Xuhan found himself unable to retort. There was little time to do this.
With each of them standing at each end, the formation was re-enacted. The blood essence of their sacrifices hadn't yet been depleted. Han Xuhan used the Plan-B contract paper he had hidden in the front room of the cabin just in case his first contract attempt with Fang Xie didn't work out.
Once the sentient contract provided by Qian Yun was marked by the blood of both participants, this time willingly, they fell unconscious again, finding themselves back inside the realm of spiritual bodies.
The familiar series of sensations came and went, like locks and keys falling into their proper fitting place. And soon, Han Xuhan opened his eyes to see an empty sky overhead. Gone were the streaks of red crisscrossing the sky, taking with them their thunderous roars. Gone was the power saturated in his muscles, ready to explode with destructive force beyond his wildest fantasies.
Instead, it was just the old him, weakened, injured, and pushed to the point of utter helplessness.
Even as waves of physical pain attacked his brain, he endured it all silently by the sheer merit of the emotional grief he was experiencing. All that planning, so many resources spent, so much sacrificed, and for what?
He was back to square one, and he would very soon be back outside the game when his meridians broke down. His naive self in the past might have believed that being reduced to a mere mortal's position wasn't too bad, but his current self had learned firsthand how deep the water ran in the world of cultivation, and how filthy, murky, and powerful the current was.
Hearing Fang Xie beginning to recover and curse everything in existence was the straw that put him back to his feet. With shaking limbs, he stood up and surveyed the room.
"I suppose I should take my leave. Deal with the mess, you two," he said faintly. "Unless the Elders of the Stardust Sect are blind, deaf, and crippled, they surely have noticed that the situation here on the outer ring island isn't exactly a play-fighting scenario. As for these... 'sacrificial lambs'," he said, pointing at the fourteen bodies lying on the floor of the cabin, "Do you have any methods of making them forget their recent memories?"
Fang Xie looked at the shadow, obviously hoping to rely on him to get things done. The pitch-black person, however, was more interested in something else.
"Why would WE clean up a mess you've made, young man?" he said, sounding disgruntled.
Han Xuhan pulled out one of the scrolls from his pouch. Both Fang Xie and the shadow recognized this manifestation of law-type cultivation techniques, specifically, a sentient contract.
"Because your partner in crime is bound by the contract paper he signed on. Do you think I planned so much violence without planning for somebody else to take the blame? Deal with it yourselves. Goodbye!"
As Han Xuhan left the cabin, limping his way to the edge of the island, the two awake individuals behind him looked at each other with what seemed to be part awkwardness and part helplessness.
"Did you isolate this whole area before making yourself known?" Fang Xie asked in concern after a moment.
The shadow laughed silently. "Looks like the incident has really rattled your soul, Inspector Xie! Just because you're prone to making rookie mistakes doesn't mean we all succumb to the vice of irrational decisions."
Fang Xie squinted at the shadow, as if trying to figure out his true identity behind the mask of darkness.
"For a mere scout of the Nocturna Vanguard, your cultivation is a bit too high, Master Mo. The number of people on this planet who can do the task you're so nonchalant about shouldn't exceed a dozen."
The shadow, named Mo, shrugged and replied, "A dozen capable enemies are still a respectable force for a planet so alienated. So we need to be careful about how we plant the seeds. I'm not the one cutting corners here, so you better get yourself together and speed up the mission."
While speaking to Fang Xie, the shadow continuously made strange gestures with his hands. Each gesture seemed capable of reversing time itself, although in Fang Xie's experienced eyes, it was a complex technique of using nature's energy to manipulate and restore order.
Broken furniture were rebuilt as countless pieces flew around in the air to place themselves where they originally belonged. The shattered chunks of the roof flew back up and sealed itself into a perfect replica of its past self.
But these parlor tricks wouldn't be suitable for living organisms, less so on cultivators... And they had thirteen of them to deal with.
Fang Xie produced some healing medicine from his sleeves and fed a pill each to the thirteen fallen disciples. The medicine wouldn't do much for their lost blood essence, but it could help them recover slightly faster, both physically and spiritually.
"Master Mo, I can't help insisting again that you take the matter in your hands from the start. As you can see, I'm not the best fit to play assassin with children," Fang Xie said despondently as he watched color return to their faces.
"Clearly. You couldn't even win in a spiritual battle either when the strange entity possessing the boy's body took over either." Master Mo nodded heavily in agreement, not caring at all how incensed Fang Xie was becoming.
"That was different! That...that thing, whatever it is, has to be beyond the Soul Reformation Realm in terms of spiritual aspects! Its mere presence was enough to overpower my control!" Fang Xie shuddered, recalling the memory of being used as a medium of communication.
"I wonder what deal the entity made with the boy..." The shadow said in a low tone. Meanwhile, Fang Xie, having recovered his bearings, restarted his petition.
"Think about it, if you hadn't sat back today doing almost nothing of value, we would be celebrating a grand success by now. All you did was jump out at the last second and talk with the boy, stating some facts that were obvious to everybody. Can't you do something to ensure that such situations don't occur?" He said, pointing at the piled bodies in the cabin.
The black silhouette snorted. "Oh yeah? Do you think the Heavenly Tribulation that found you two undergoing forbidden spiritual operations was run by some gentlemanly Celestial? The lightning strikes were really conveniently timed and placed, offering you two just enough time to strike up a new deal and rectify your mistake, all the while building up a sense of pressure by coming closer and closer every second! Since when have the Punishing Tribulations been so helpful, huh?"
"...." Fang Xie looked stunned for a second. "You mean that was an illusion? Impossible-!"
"It wasn't. The Heavenly Eye indeed found you two. But don't forget that this archipelago is a region severely affected by the Great Sundering incident. The space, the laws, and natural elements here are too fragile, volatile, and intimately connected to the Subspatial Void. Layer after layer of space has twisted themselves around the Subspace Gateways here. Even a tribulation cloud would be slowed down by the layered regions. I simply took the vision of the nascent tribulation forming in a distant region above and magnified it by tenfold so that the boy doesn't have a choice but to agree to the reversal of the Body Possession Technique. You're lucky that he's so young and inexperienced as a cultivator; otherwise, he would definitely have suspected the authenticity of that tribulation."
"....Killing that boy might have been the better choice, after all," Fang Xie muttered under his breath.
"Yeah, try doing that in front of your old buddy Xuan Zi's face. He already warned you once not to interfere with the development of his little sect. And now you're probably bound by those contracts too, completely neutered," the shadow said in an annoyed tone.
Shaking his head, Fang Xie walked over to Leng Qing's unconscious form and began to initiate a mental connection, just as he had wanted to in the first place.
The moment he dipped into his own dao tower, he realized that something was off.
The continuous decline of his cultivation level had reduced his dao tower to its early phase, just a bare hall filled with a dozen or so seats. At one end of the hall, a throne stood towering above the rest, reserved for his main cultivation technique.
But instead of the usual emblem of a crimson circle, the throne was occupied by an...old man.
"Hello, Grandson," the senior said, a mysterious smile playing on his lips.