But the Healing Heart Sutra had co to Lin Mu when he obtained the blessing of the Lotus Spirit… and the altar had reacted after.
"It's almost like… it accepted it."
As if the altar was a mirror, a judge, or perhaps even a gathering vessel for universal truths. Maybe it didn't create the sutras—it recognized them.
Each sutra ca from a different path, yet all were connected by the common thread of the Heart.
What would be the seventh?
Or the eighth… or the final ninth?
He stared at the six energies.
They pulsed in rhythm—six heartbeats echoing across cultivation paths. He wondered what the other sutras would be like.
He didn't know. Not yet.
Lin Mu shook his head and turned away for now.
"No answers here… not for that word."
—
He walked toward the library circle—a section of the ring space he had filled with shelves to house the hundreds of scrolls, books, and odd records he had collected over his journey.
Shelves of jade, wood, and crystal curved around a central reading platform, each one carefully inscribed with minor formations to prevent decay.
He reached out with his Immortal sense, scanning titles, summaries, and keywords.
"Let's see what you're hiding, old scrolls…"
Hours passed like minutes as Lin Mu flipped through ancient travelogues, philosophical treatises, and cultivator moirs. Most used the word "ephera" as part of poetry or illusion descriptions.
But no matter how much he searched, he didn't find what he sought.
What he did discover, however, were the different ways the word Ephera was written in Dao Script. Lin Mu wondered if all of them ant the sa thing, or if the aning changed depending on the context.
As he examined them more closely, one particular version caught his eye.
"Wait, this one…" Lin Mu narrowed his eyes. "Where have I seen this symbol before?" he wondered aloud.
With his mory as an Immortal, it was rare for anything to be forgotten. The mory was certainly sowhere in his mind—it was simply a matter of recalling it.
It took Lin Mu nearly an hour of concentration before it clicked.
"moirs of the Lost Immortal… Of course he would have seen sothing like this." Lin Mu let out a short chuckle. "It's been a while since I read them, but sohow, things always bring back to them," he muttered to himself before taking out the wooden slip and beginning to read.
The specific entry where that version of Ephera had appeared was one Lin Mu had seen almost ten years ago. The Lost Immortal had obtained a batch of Spatial Storage Rings from enemies he had slain.
The man hadn't had ti to examine their contents, as he was forced to flee shortly after. The entry had ended abruptly. He had taken only a montary glance at the items—and in that brief look, he'd seen the word.
But he hadn't paid much attention to it at the ti.
The record itself had focused more on how the Lost Immortal had fought off the n who ambushed him, prevailing despite overwhelming odds.
"Looks like I'll have to look deeper into it. He definitely would've looked through them later," Lin Mu reasoned and began reading further into the moir.
It took him hours of reading random stories, daily records, and musings of the Lost Immortal—entries that felt more like pages from a diary than battle accounts.
It wasn't until the next day that Lin Mu finally found what he was looking for.
The Lost Immortal had entered a rare period of peace and had begun sorting through the spoils he had left untouched for years. The contents had beco a disorganized ss—no rhy or rhythm to how the items were stored.
He started organizing them absentmindedly, until eventually, sothing caught his attention.
Tucked within a tattered scroll titled "Records of Forgotten Lands", he found an entry:
"...And within the valley that was said to never echo, I found them. They called it the Cult of Ephera, though others whispered it was not a na but a state of being. They wore no faces, only hoods surrounded by Crimson Roots, and their voices sounded like echoes in dreams.
They spoke of a place called the Thorned Eye, and claid it to be the gate to truth… but none who sought it ever returned with sanity intact."
Lin Mu froze.
Cult of Ephera.
Thorned Eye.
He recalled the vice captain's words—that strange flicker he saw in the madman's eyes. An eye surrounded by thorns.
This wasn't just taphor.
He rolled the scroll closed and stood in silence for a mont.
Whatever the Hollow Eye Sect truly was… whatever secrets lay hidden within Shadow Whisper Valley… the Cult of Ephera might be their true na, or at least their origin.
And the Thorned Eye…
It might be more than just a symbol.
It could be the source.
The gate.
Or the god they worshipped.
Lin Mu exhaled deeply, the air within the ring's space vibrating slightly around him in response.
"Now we're getting sowhere."
He looked up at the eternal abyss that was the twilight sky of the ring's inner realm.
And far away, within the cocoon of spatial threads, the pulse of Xukong's power grew a little stronger.
As if a storm was coming.
Having found a strong clue, Lin Mu was a lot more hopeful from before but also wary.
"Considering even the Lost Immortal only found an ancient record from the spoils, the Cult of Ephera or whatever they are must be very old." Lin Mu muttered to himself.
He looked at Xukong in the distance.
'He might've known more but disturbing him now is out of the question.' Lin Mu knew he had to rely on his own effort this ti.
He thought about how to find more information and wondered if the moirs of the Lost Immortal might contain more. But then he shook his head.
"The others might be waiting. I've been gone for a while now." He said to himself as he left the ring.
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