162 - Last Remains Trapped on the Page

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Qin Yun sat on the ground, book in hand, as all around him, massive pieces of purplish grey flesh wriggled and sublimated into a fog, only to quickly reform again, awaiting more to join them.

The bizarre grey flowers that once littered the endless plains were gone in a radius of a few miles, while dark clouds, akin to a swarm of locusts, could be seen rushing toward their position, bloating out most of the dim light produced by the distant flowers.

The once flat ground was now littered with countless craters and small mounds of dust, upon one of which Qin Yun was currently seated. He was absorbed into the book, one of the many he had acquired within the mansion, completely ignoring the oncoming storm.

“How interesting,” Qin Yun muttered. “So it’s as I thought.”

Contrary to what one might expect, the book didn't contain words but something much more profound. From just a mere look, Qin Yun saw many images flash into his mind. They did so with such intensity that he felt his sanity slowly being eroded away. Despite his mental fortitude, strengthened over countless lifetimes, he could barely stand to absorb the content for a few moments before he had to close the book again.

He sighed, feeling sweat drip from his pores as he desperately tried to assimilate what he had witnessed. Yet the images lingered for but a few moments more before dissipating back into the ether, leaving nothing but a shadow in his memory.

This is no book but a record of someone's life, he thought, watching the dark fog begin to congregate onto the pieces of grey flesh scattered upon the scorched battlefield. It's almost akin to a psychic copy of an individual's consciousness-given physical form. Question is: was that individual dead or alive when the process occurred?

Still, this explained why the book disintegrated when he tried to open one in the isolated mansion lost on this plane. From what he saw in this book, the mansion was used as a research institute to battle Corruption, either to eliminate it or to reverse its effects. In the process, they designed a mechanism to keep it at bay, which still holds on to this day, namely the shimmering barrier enveloping it in a bubble.

The consciousness trapped in this book was once an inhabitant of this world. He was neither important enough to be remembered by history books nor possessed something special that elevated him from the crowd. He was as common as one could find.

Even before Corruption took hold of this continent, the man lived a peaceful life among those of his clan. Back then, the world was lush with greenery. Countless peaks rose high into the sky, almost touching the heavens. Many lakes littered the land, each deeper than the next and filled with even more life, with magnificent forests covering the rest of the land.

Qi was everywhere, almost as dense as it currently was in the Western Domain, filling the countless species that shared this land with untold strength, as it also did for the man in question.

“It’s to be expected,” Qin Yun muttered as he pondered the memories he had been granted. “Back then, the World Lotus—or whatever its name was—was thriving with life, and as such, so was the Well of Souls. It's understandable that with so much recyclable material, the world would be filled with qi. Considering this world's distance from the core, it's only reasonable to be comparable to the Western Domain."

As he knew this leaf was one of the furthest, Qin Yun could hardly conceive of what the four Cardinal Domains looked like in their prime before Corruption's advent. No wonder many Immortals once walked the land, only to vanish into the endless flow of time.

The world simply couldn’t sustain their existence. Some probably fell in battle against Corruption, while others turned against the Heavenly Dao in a last act of defiance. Maybe some succeeded in doing so, breaking the bounds chaining them to this world, but Qin Yun knew that almost all of them perished in doing so, their strength recycled by the Well of Souls, only to be redistributed for the sake of the common good.

I wonder which fate befell my ancestor. Did he succeed in escaping his fate, or did he become a martyr in this endless war for survival?

Qin Yun had no way to know, for none of the records of the Qin Clan dated back to before the beginning of the hostilities. While the Western Domain was one of the last to be afflicted by Corruption, he knew that the war had been waged for eons before that and that most of it had been concealed from those of little strength.

After all, there was no such thing as strength in numbers against Corruption. Unless one had achieved the First Transformation, taking part in that war would be nothing else other than foolish. Qin Yun couldn't help but agree with their assessment. He estimated that over half of the World Lotus's petals had already been lost by the point his ancestor disappeared. The truth would have caused only panic to spread.

As for the memories contained in the tome, Qin Yun judged the individual to not be human—at least, not entirely. He seemed to be a dragon-human hybrid, possessing a human shape but with scales instead of skin and claws instead of fingers. He also possessed a long, slender tail that could be used as a third arm, able to nimbly wrap around the most delicate of objects, but also possessing enough strength to easily crush meter-wide trees instantly.

His scales were a deep red—the colour of blood—except for the tip of his tail being a dark black. While the red scales were flexible, allowing this dragonoid an extensive range of movement, they could also harden themselves, creating a shield that most weapons couldn't penetrate. Surprisingly, the scarce black scales were even more potent, allowing him to break through massive boulders with a simple tail swipe.

These creatures lived in small communities, no more than a few dozen. With their sturdy bodies, they easily brought down the massive creatures living on the peaks nearing the deep valley where their tribe resided.

They were far from the apex predators of this area, yet had carved themselves a comfortable niche through their superior intellect and the inborn deadly poison they exuded from the tips of their fangs.

They lived in harmony with their surroundings, with only the occasional conflict with the neighbouring tribe—some sort of aquatic species resembling sea serpents that dwelled in a nearby lake. That was until the advent of Corruption.

It came like a flood, a wave of pestilence engulfing everything in its wake. The tribe tried to fight back, eventually allying with all species in this mountain range. Yet all it amounted to was only further casualties as they fell prey to the corrosion one by one, becoming part of this perpetual wave of destruction.

Time after time, that individual saw acquaintances fall prey to the devastation, becoming infected through the most minute of injuries. The more they fought against it, the quicker the infection spread. It was like a plague, indiscriminately affecting all irrespective of species or strength, eventually turning all into its thralls.

Not even death was an escape from its eternal torment, as countless times, that individual saw loved ones rise from their tomb after having fallen in battle, only to need to be put down again. Not even long-dead ancestors were spared from it.

That tribe had a long tradition of burying their dead, allowing their flesh to return to the endless cycle and nourishing the soil from which all life sprouted. However, even those traditions were destroyed by the endless flood; they soon resorted to cleansing flames, but even that proved to be a pointless measure, for Corruption needn't care. It was superior to such pitiful strength.

That young Dragonoid saw all that it cared for become but memories through the endless flames of war. His tribe shattered, while the valley they were born in became ravaged and barren, host to Corruption. Nothing seemed able to push back the endless tides, no matter what they tried, so they left, leaving all they ever knew behind.

In the exodus, many more fell, usually the older ones, holding back what they could to give but the slightest chances of survival to the rest of their species, that individual’s mate being one among them.

Through what could only be attributed to bad luck, one of her limbs grew infected. They promptly cut the limb off, yet Corruption back then was cunning. A part of it remained within her flesh, slowly digging toward her heart, and only manifested itself once it was too late.

Corrupted tendrils sprouted from the gaps in her scales, but also all her orifices, latching on to those nearby, trying to infect them. She was swiftly put down and cleansed by the burning flames, yet the damage had already been done. Many became victims of this infection, including her mate, the one closest to her.

He could feel Corruption deep in his core. It was a force none could resist, primal in its wants. Somehow, Qin Yun felt a deep hunger from those memories, much more intense than the Corruption he was familiar with.

Imagine a starving beast drooling at the feast presented before it, yet just out of sight compared to one almost fully satiated on the verge of dormancy. Qin Yun once believed he had been exposed to the former, yet only now knew this was not the case. The current Corruption's corrosion was but a shadow of its former self. It lacked much of its edge.

Not wishing to cull more of their own, those infected were merely left behind, while the clean ones quickly escaped. Some chose to take their own lives, destroying their entire bodies, leaving nothing behind for Corruption to twist to its own designs, yet the young dragon was too much of a coward to do so. A tiny ember of hope still burned in his heart that he might one day escape its clutches and prevail against this force invading his being. It was but a foolish hope.

While on the verge of death, the last remaining one of those left behind, the young one saw something he could barely believe. Amidst the Corruption filling the land stood a man sporting an attire foreign to this land. The young man could hardly describe it, for his vision had grown hazy, and his mind was almost taken over, but in his last moment, the man's features remained seared in his mind, so much so that countless eons later, Qin Yun saw the image of this man as if he was there himself.

"A modern suit," he mumbled. "It's just so out of place, just like this mansion. For the memory of this young creature to find itself in one of those books, there's no way that man and that mansion aren't related."

While Qin Yun didn't recognize the man, he felt strangely familiar. It was a feeling rising from deep within his guts, even deeper still, maybe reaching as deep as his soul. He knew this man to be the owner of this mansion, with the young creature being just one of his countless experimental subjects in his research into Corruption.

Qin Yun had no idea about the result of said research or the man's current whereabouts. He didn't even know whether the man had succumbed to Corruption just as the rest of this world had, yet he doubted it. The fact that the mansion remained after all this time pointed to the opposite.

"No use thinking about it," Qin Yun said as he rose to his feet just as the remains of the dark grey fog materialized into the large, deformed creature. "We are bound to meet if we are fated to."

Unlike the Kai Qin Yun was familiar with, this creature easily towered over him, reaching up to over ten meters tall, possessing countless limbs that flailed in many directions. After numerous cycles of death and regeneration, the creature had thrown away its human form, becoming something monstrous to slay Qin Yun. Yet, he still stood before it with a slight smile and a brown, illusory lotus hovering over his head, possessing one single lush leaf and a second one on the verge of blooming.

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