Beside Fang Yu, Pei Xue grimaced as she stared at the blood Avatar. The latter was looking at her disapprovingly.
"Master, I thought.....Pei Xue told me you were captured?" Fang Yu expressed his surprise.
"As you should be able to tell, this is just an Avatar of mine!" Of course, the blood avatar was not actually speaking but manipulated the air around him to create sound waves. His gaze left Pei Xue and he continued. "I secretly left this on you as a contingency against malicious situations."
Fang Yu secretly breathed a sigh of relief. For a while now, he had been on tenterhooks with Pei Xue around him. The presence of Gao Weiguang, although only a clone, was a relief.
Pei Xue opened her mouth to speak but Gao Weiguang simply waved her hand, sending a rune flying into her body and freezing her in place. Afterwards, he turned his attention back to Fang Yu.
"An Immobilization Rune to keep her docile," he explained adding, "Be careful around your Junior Sister. As you can tell–"
"–she's not the same person. Got it!" Fang Yu grimaced. "I have a lot of questions."
"I'm sure you do. As a matter of fact, I have a lot of questions myself," Gao Weiguang gazed at the surroundings and suddenly shook his head. "This place is not very safe."
With these words, he placed a hand on both Fang Yu and Pei Xue and activated a mysterious technique. In a flash, their figures vanished from the spot.
* * * *
Fang Yu was openly awed at he looked at Gao Weiguang. His intense stare made the blood clone uncomfortable.
"What's so surprising? You've been ogling me openly since we got here."
"It's nothing, I'm just surprised that you can teleport us away and scan the surroundings to find a safe spot despite only being...a blood Avatar?"
Gao Weiguang chuckled, "There's nothing surprising about that. It's just a divine cloning skill, that's all. Besides, it won't last long."
Fang Yu's heart skipped a beat. He cast a surreptitious glance at Pei Xue whose entire body was frozen on the spot and frowned.
"I don't think she has bad intentions. If anything, she should be more curious than murderous," Gao Weiguang noticed the caution on Fang Yu face. "As a matter of fact, I am too."
"How so?"
"The Godshard Integration should have ended a particular way. From what I can sense, your present condition is the complete opposite."
"You mean the way I managed to retain my consciousness?" Fang Yu's expression turned cold. "So, the original expectation was for me to turn out like...her?" His head made a little jerk in Pei Xue's direction.
"Yes, that was the original intention," Gao Weiguang did not mince words. "The ideal situation."
Fang Yu frowned.
"There are only two possible outcomes from a crazy plan to have a mortal integrate with something as noble and mysterious as a Dao Fruit; certain death or possession. I knew that from the very start, which is why I devised an alternate method.
Ideally, with this method, the mortal soul is corroded and the divine god's consciousness in the Godshard takes over. But there's a catch; while they recover their cultivation base and abilities, the mortal soul they possessed will be in a symbiotic state with them, latent but present. In this condition, they'll be able to access all of the possessor's memories, secrets, thoughts, everything. The symbiotic fusion will also slowly strengthen the mortal soul to divine status."
By now, Fang Yu's reaction was obviously different from before. His entire attention was captured as Gao Weiguang continued.
"By the time the god consciousness is ready to recondense their Dao Fruit, the mortal consciousness should have been sufficiently strengthened to some extent, gaining fighting qualifications to wrest back control of their physical body," Gao Weiguang finished. "This is the opportunity I hinted to the four of you about."
Fang Yu was in deep thoughts for a while before he asked, "It's not really that simple, is it? There's some extra catch somewhere."
"You're right," Gao Weiguang smiled. "At the end of the day, the possessor is a god consciousness, so there's only so much that can be done. The point is, they will be aware of the symbiotic mortal consciousness from the start and try hard to refine it to eliminate the latent threat. If the mortal consciousness cannot resist, then...." He left his words hanging.
Fang Yu's expression darkened. He remembered Gao Weiguang earlier words and asked, "You told me earlier that the greatest merit of my choice to integrate with a Godshard was the access I'd have to information and situations beyond my qualifications. Is this what you really meant? A death trap?"
"Yes, but no," Gao Weiguang replied. "There was no question at all that a mortal consciousness cannot survive getting refined by a god. But, the deeper the symbiotic fusion of the mortal and god consciousnesses, the more impossible it is for the latter to eliminate the former.
During the integration, some runes should have merged with the soul to grant it a very temporary protection. I arranged it that way so that it should take about three months after the possession before the god consciousness can attempt to refine the mortal soul. That should be good enough time to initiate symbiosis and leverage a safe balance."
As he spoke, Fang Yu remembered the runes that had randomly appeared to form a puppet body around him during his Godshard Integration. This train of thought made him remember that he should be more concerned about how and why his situation was abnormal compared to the process his Master outlined.
Gao Weiguang seemed to be thinking the same thing too as he said next, "Clearly, you didn't have the same exact experience. Describe your fusion process without skipping any detail, I'll try to deduce what went wrong."
"Can't you just send some qi into my mind to find out?" Fang Yu asked ignorantly.
"Your mind? That's not how it works," Gao Weiguang chuckled. "Besides, I'm only a clone formed from a single wisp of Qi and some of your blood. After teleporting you two to this hideout, I don't have much power left."
Fang Yu nodded slowly and then recounted his integration process, only skipping a particular detail. This tiny bit did not go unnoticed by Gao Weiguang who questioned him about it almost immediately.
"You said you simulated an object. Which one?"
'There's no way I can mention that I simulated a universe without revealing my status as a transmigrator,' Fang Yu thought to himself. He had been in this world for four years and knew that the average mortal knew nothing about other universes. As far as they were concerned, they lived on this planet and that was it. He even suspected that most cultivators had no idea about such concepts either.
"I simulated a sun," Fang Yu finally said. Since he couldn't spill about the universe, he settled for the next best thing. Anyways, a flaming sun was actually the center of his planetary system, although he had a feeling that the crux of the visualization were the planets themselves and not the solar body.
It was Gao Weiguang's turn to fall into thoughts. When he eventually spoke, his voice was sombre.
"You don't know it, but you accidentally rediscovered the way of ancient cultivation."