"How do you know my na?" Du Yanze's voice dropped to sothing more dangerous. "What technique are you using? What mories did you steal?"
"I didn't steal anything. We've t before after your fight with Lu Wenjun." I tried to keep my voice calm even though my spiritual form was trembling from the pressure he was releasing. "Rember Ancient oak and Little Bloom."
That made him pause as his eyes widened in confusion.
"The divine being. But you don't look..." Du Yanze stepped closer, his bloodshot eyes scanning my ghostly form. "You're different, you look wrong."
"This is just another form I'm using," I explained.
The pressure around lessened slightly, not by much, but enough that I wasn't worried that my form would collapse any second.
Du Yanze looked between and the trapped old man.
I could see the recognition flickering in his eyes, I could tell that he wanted to believe , but the isolation and repeated loops had made him paranoid. He was struggling to accept that this was real, that this was really happening.
"Prove it," Du Yanze said, his voice hoarse like he'd been screaming for days. "Tell sothing that only the divine being would know. Sothing from our ti together that couldn't be picked up from the locals."
I understood his caution. If other dream walkers had been harassing him for who knows how long, so of them probably tried to impersonate his loved ones. They might have extracted information through spiritual techniques or by observing the ti loop. I needed to tell him sothing that only we could possibly know.
The answer was obvious.
"Mandelbrot recursion," I whispered.
That changed everything. The massive hand holding Lu Chenyang froze, the Xuan Yi construct aid at dispersed completely, and Du Yanze's face crumpled as tears began streaming down his cheeks.
"Divine Master," he said, his voice breaking as he dropped to his knees right there in the middle of the street. "Divine Master, you ca back. You really ca back."
The tears ca faster now, cutting clean tracks through the dirt on his face.
His whole body shook with the force of his crying.
I could understand why.
This was the raw, desperate sobbing of soone who had been holding themselves together for far too long and finally had permission to fall apart.
"I don't even know anymore," Du Yanze said between sobs. "I don't know how many loops. Has it been thousands yet? I don't know. I stopped counting after the first two hundred because the numbers stopped aning anything."
I wanted to reach out and comfort him, but that wasn't possible.
I was barely more substantial than air.
"Every day is the sa. Every conversation is the sa. Everyone around living their lives, forgetting, starting over, and I'm the only one who rembers." His hands clenched into fists. "Do you know what it's like to watch your friends die and then wake up the next day and see them alive again? To have the sa conversations over and over until you can recite everyone's exact words before they speak them? It's driving crazy."
My experience in the Two Suns' World ant that I did have an idea what that felt like, but this didn't feel like the right mont to ntion it, so I decided to stay silent and let him get it all out of his system.
As for Lu Chenyang, the old man was watching this scene with a look of shock. His eyes kept darting between Du Yanze's kneeling form and my translucent spiritual projection. I could practically see the calculations happening behind his eyes. This powerful cultivator who had killed him seventeen tis was on his knees, crying, calling Divine Master. Treating with the kind of reverence that cultivators only showed to those vastly above their station.
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The old man's face had gone pale.
Whatever theories he'd had about the situation were clearly being violently revised.
"I tried to help people at first," Du Yanze continued. "I thought if I could just save everyone, if I could make everything perfect, then maybe I could get rid of the otherworldly influence and the loop would no longer be needed, but nothing worked. I exposed corruption in the rchant guilds, defeated the tribunal, stopped a dozen different disasters, and nothing ever changed. The otherworldly being's corruption still remains!"
He looked up at , and the intensity of the exhaustion in his eyes nearly made take a step back. "Then the parasites started coming. Dream walkers, they call themselves. Treating my world like it's just a convenient place to practice their techniques. Stealing from people who can't rember being robbed. Hurting people who won't rember being hurt. And every ti I kill them, they just co back in the next loop, or a different one arrives to replace them."
That made feel guilty.
The only reason I had created this ti loop was to save the Realm of the Chosen from the otherworldly entity's corruption.
It was the only choice we had.
I had worried sothing like this would happen which is why I had even warned Du Yanze that he would feel trapped, alone and aware, while everyone else remained oblivious.
Even though I tried my best to prepare him for it, he was slowly falling apart.
"I haven't abandoned you," I said, careful with the words that I picked since I was aware that Lu Chenyang was listening to every word. "The ti difference between our worlds makes it feel longer than it actually is. For you, it's been hundreds of loops, but for , it's only been a short while."
That was technically true, though it left out so important details. I couldn't explain about the tournant or the Dream World or the complexities of my situation without revealing too much in front of the old man.
"I know you're suffering," I continued. "And I promise I'm working on a solution, but you need to be patient a little longer. Help is coming."
The help I was referring to was Sect Master Yuan; being a powerful Civilisation cultivator who followed the Dao of Karma, he was the only trustworthy senior I could turn to. And with the loop being pretty obvious, it was only a matter of ti before the sect master questioned about it.
"I can be patient, Divine Master. I've had a lot of practice." Du Yanze smiled, wiping his face with the sleeve of his wrinkled robe. The smile didn't reach his eyes. There was only pain there. But then his expression shifted to sothing colder as his gaze moved from to Lu Chenyang.
"Divine Master, we'll continue our conversation in a mont," Du Yanze said, his voice taking on a businesslike tone. "I just need to get rid of this parasite first."
The massive hand began radiating dangerous amounts of energy. I could see Xuan Yi amplifying its power and increasing the brightness and concentration of its golden illumination around Lu Chenyang's captured form.
"Wait!" the old man's voice cracked with panic. "Please, let go, I'll never co back!"
"You said that the last sixteen tis," Du Yanze said softly. "But you always return."
"This is different!" Lu Chenyang exclaid. "I know now! I know that soone is protecting this world! I'll never return! I swear on my cultivation, on my sect, on everything I consider sacred! Just let escape!"
The hand compressed further, and I could hear bones creaking.
"Please!" Lu Chenyang's eyes locked onto , desperate and terrified. "Young friend! Help ! I taught you techniques! I showed you the realm! I was kind to you! Please, ask him to spare !"
I looked at the trapped old man.
Blood was pooling out of his eyes and nose.
The terror in his eyes was real.
If I didn't do anything, his trip will be cut short here.
The truth was, Lu Chenyang had been kind to in his own way. He'd been arrogant and boastful, sure. And his casual attitude toward exploiting the ti loop made uncomfortable. But he'd also taken the ti to teach a junior dream walker about techniques and dangers. He could have just ignored or robbed of any knowledge I possessed. Instead, he'd offered guidance, even if it was partially motivated by his own ego.
That counted for sothing.
"Du Yanze," I said. "Release him."
"He stole from us," Du Yanze said quietly. "He experinted on people...treated everything like a playground because he believed there were no repercussions."
"I know," I said. "But I need you to let him go."
"Why?"
Du Yanze's confusion was palpable.
He could not understand why I would want to save soone that was an enemy.
"I'm not familiar with this current form yet," I said carefully. "My powers are reduced. The older guy possesses techniques related to dream-walking that might be helpful to while I'm here."
It wasn't a complete lie. Lu Chenyang did have techniques that I lacked, and my spiritual form was severely crippled compared to normal conditions.
Du Yanze considered this for a few monts then nodded slowly.
"For you Divine Master, I'll release him."
The enormous hand vanished and Lu Chenyang fell to the ground, panting and clasping his chest. His spiritual manifestation had suffered from that compression. He'll need ti and energy to heal, but he'd live.
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