Corruption

Channing Lu's body and Primordial Spirit continually dissolved in the clear, radiant sunlight, only to be constantly repaired under the nurturing spiritual power of the Lightning Pool. Like a piece of ore, he grew purer with each strike of the hammer, purging impurities. The agony endured throughout this process was enough to drive even a Dominator into mental collapse. Yet this was the price that had to be paid; to cleanse the corruption deep within his soul, he had to be broken before he could be remade. Shrill, agonized screams echoed across the Lightning Pool, at times drowned out by muffled thunder, at other times ringing out with piercing clarity. Under the relentless purification, Channing Lu's endurance soon reached its limit. His screams turned into pleas for mercy: "Kill me, kill me! Let me return to the Spirit Realm, let me return to the Spirit Realm..." The Crimson Sun Executioner maintained the golden pillar of light, letting the purifying power continuously wash over the fallen Dominator. He listened to the pleas with a cold, majestic expression, devoid of even a shred of pity. To his mind, if such a fallen one could not be purified, dying was no loss. "Thunder God!" Channing Lu, currently in the form of an elemental creature, suddenly bellowed toward the depths of the Lightning Pool: "Why should a single word from you decide my future? Why should a single word from you make years of my hard work wash into the sea like the waters of the Dessen River, never to be seen or touched again?! Why?! "Years ago by the edge of this Lightning Pool, I swore a secret oath: one day, I would drag you down from your altar, grind you into the mud, and let you taste what it feels like to have your fate ruled by someone else!" The bellowing turned into wild, manic laughter. In the next second, the elemental creature Channing Lu had transformed into detonated. The resulting electromagnetic pulse scattered the surrounding plasma and dark clouds. A failure? The Crimson Sun Executioner drew back the golden pillar of light and narrowed his eyes to look. In the vacuum blown open by the electromagnetic pulse, Channing Lu's Primordial Spirit appeared. The Dominator's Primordial Spirit had been damaged in the explosion just now, left fragmented and incomplete. The Crimson Sun Executioner sighed. He knew the purification had failed; with his physical body annihilated and his soul incomplete, there was no longer any hope of salvaging him. The soul of a fallen one had no reason to exist. Just as he was about to strike and purify this Primordial Spirit, Channing Lu's Primordial Spirit suddenly inflated. It swelled like a ball pumped full of air, its facial features blurring under the expansion. Sinister, occult symbols surfaced on the ethereal body of the Primordial Spirit, spreading across it like black vines. Immediately after, a one-eyed, single-horned head pushed its way out from Channing Lu's bulging chest and abdomen, followed by hands, torso, and feet. As the cyclopean monster climbed out, Channing Lu's Primordial Spirit rapidly shriveled away until nothing remained but an empty husk, its soul fluctuations completely extinguished. The one-eyed, horned monster was short and squat. Though humanoid, its skin was tough and rough, a deep purple hue, tipped with keratinous claws. Of course, it was also a spirit body, translucent and ethereal. It stood there quietly, exuding an aura of supreme darkness and evil. Although its facial features were hideous, the single eye on its forehead held neither viciousness nor chilling malice, but rather the blank, hollow vacuity of a newborn infant. As the First Elder of the Taiyi Sect and one of the world's preeminent Day Wanderers, the Crimson Sun Executioner instantly realized this wraith was extraordinary: it had been birthed from Channing Lu's Primordial Spirit. A unique wraith spawned using the soul of this level 8 Dominator as nourishment. Even he had never mastered such dreadful soul sorcery. Aside from the Lord of Taiyin, he could think of no one in the world capable of it. Moreover, the Crimson Sun Executioner sensed a terrifying corruption lurking within the one-eyed wraith—the power of the Aberrant class. What are Ling Tuo and the Biological Alchemy Society up to? The Crimson Sun Executioner frowned. Though perplexed, he would not allow this wraith to exist. He promptly spread his arms and summoned a golden pillar of light. The pure, radiant divine power of the sun descended, enveloping the one-horned, one-eyed humanoid wraith. "Waaah, waaah..." The humanoid wraith let out shrill wails, its body dissolving rapidly beneath the glare of the sun's divine power. Splat, splat... Chunks of its flesh sloughed off piece by piece, splashing deep purple fluid in all directions. Instead of being purified by the divine power of the sun, the fluid bled outward, coming into contact with the plasma and dark clouds surging in to fill the void. In an instant, the bright blue plasma turned deep purple, and the dark clouds shifted into purple clouds, resembling the toxic fumes spewed by an Aberrant. The deep purple corruption spread rapidly. Everywhere it passed, the plasma and dark clouds were stained purple. Before the Crimson Sun Executioner could react, the entire Lightning Pool had turned into a glowing expanse of violet. The Crimson Sun Executioner's heart sank. A corruption that even the divine power of the sun could not cleanse had to be demigod-tier, or even higher. And if even the divine power of the sun could not purify it, how could lightning? From the depths of the Lightning Pool came low, guttural roars, part human, part beast. Layers of purple clouds surged and roiled like boiling water. Evidently, the Chief Prosecutor at the bottom of the Lightning Pool was being corrupted. Golden flowing fire surged across the Crimson Sun Executioner's body, blocking the toxic fumes wafting out of the Lightning Pool. He asked urgently, "Thunder God, do you require assistance?" Roars continued echoing from the bottom of the pool without ceasing. Receiving no answer, the Crimson Sun Executioner made an immediate decision. He spread his arms and lit up the solar mark upon his forehead, projecting beam after beam of clear, radiant golden light into the Lightning Pool. *Sssss...* The purple clouds quickly dissolved. Once the corruption was diluted, the purifying power of the sun's divine energy was able to take effect. Yet the Crimson Sun Executioner looked exceptionally grave, because the purification was far too slow. He was a peak Dominator specializing in the Sun pathway; his divine power of the sun was the bane of all corruption. Yet against these purple clouds, his normally invincible divine power of the sun failed to achieve the desired effect. This reminded him of the Fallen Holy Grail. The corruption of that item was something even Day Wanderers could not cleanse. The purple clouds shared similar properties with the power of the Fallen Holy Grail; this was very likely a corruption transcending the demigod level. *** In the Grand Marshal's study. "Heaven's Punishment has serious problems?" Fu Qingxuan put down the copy of *One Hundred Years of Solitude* in her hand. Her gaze deepened as she stared at the demigod of the Void class, her tone turning grave. "What's going on?" The President took a sip of the crimson liquid in his stemmed glass. "Do you remember the assassination of Heaven's Punishment's Chief Prosecutor, the Thunder God, ten years ago?" "Of course I do." Fu Qingxuan opened her desk drawer and took out a box of chocolate beans and a bottle of cola. "Back then, I was still grinding dungeon strategy guides for the Transcendent stage back in the Fu family. After the Thunder God was attacked, Heaven's Punishment dispatched commissioners to the Fu family, asking the elders to assist in investigating the case, as they needed the tracking, observation, and analysis of Scouts." "Then you should know how the Thunder God escaped pursuit back then," the President said. Fu Qingxuan unhurriedly unwrapped a chocolate, pinched it between her fingertips, and popped it into her mouth, her cheeks bulging slightly. "The vice president of your guild saved him. If I recall, his Spirit Realm ID was Pansey Edison." Whenever she thought, she had to eat sweets. "Correct." The President nodded. "The Thunder God was handling a classified matter at the time. Both his whereabouts and his mission were strictly confidential, yet the evil faction ambushed him with pinpoint accuracy and nearly succeeded." "So you suspect there's a mole within Heaven's Punishment," Fu Qingxuan said, popping another chocolate bean into her mouth. The President scoffed. "Isn't it completely normal for Heaven's Punishment to have moles? That includes your Five Elements Alliance, as well as every major orthodox organization in the world—which one hasn't been riddled with leaks like a sieve? If it were just that, I wouldn't even bother mentioning it to you." Fu Qingxuan said coldly, "Then what are you trying to say?" The President's tone suddenly turned low and somber. "Many years later, Pansey Edison told me that he had been 'watched' back then. No matter how he fled, he could not shake off that gaze. He teleported repeatedly with the Thunder God, hopping all over the globe, yet that condescending, overarching gaze was ever-present. "Only when he entered the Thunder God Palace and delivered the Thunder God into the Lightning Pool did that sensation of being watched finally vanish." At this point, the gaze behind his mask turned piercing, staring intently at Fu Qingxuan's exquisitely beautiful, aloof face. "Grand Marshal, does anything come to mind?" Fu Qingxuan's pupils contracted sharply. Then, she practically leapt from her high-backed chair. "What are you implying?! Are you telling me that the one colluding with the evil faction is Heaven's Punishment's Chief Executive Boreas—that one of the strongest demigods in the orthodox faction is a fallen one?!" It was no wonder Fu Qingxuan had such an exaggerated reaction; anyone hearing such an implication would jump out of their skin. How was this any different from questioning why His Majesty would rebel? Unless that Chief Executive had already been corrupted into a fallen one. But in theory, demigods were exceptionally difficult to corrupt. Even legendary gods would find it exceedingly hard to thoroughly corrupt a demigod, because every demigod held a portion of administrator privileges—the highest-tier items in the Spirit Realm. For a demigod, being corrupted was more akin to being "poisoned." They could detect it themselves, resist it, seek help, or even recover on their own. They would not end up like ordinary Spirit Realm walkers, having their cognition completely distorted without ever realizing anything was wrong with the change. If that Chief Executive had suffered corruption, how could they have hidden it from the other Chief who shared oversight? To date, the only example of an orthodox demigod being corrupted was Ling Tuo, and Ling Tuo had been corrupted before becoming the Lord of Taiyin. "I never said she was a fallen one." The President gently swirled his wine glass, taking an unhurried sip. "You could really cut down on the nonsense and useless mannerisms." Veins throbbed on Fu Qingxuan's smooth forehead. "Stop playing games with me. Speak—what basis do you have?" Setting down the glass, the President still did not get straight to the point, turning instead to another past event: "You know about the March Peak collapse incident, don't you? It happened back in '07. The Marshall family, a renowned Spirit Realm clan of the Free Confederation, sent invitations in the name of the federal government to the major factions of the Second District, claiming to have uncovered a secret capable of overturning the global order, which they intended to reveal at the conference." Fu Qingxuan suppressed the urge to stab him a hundred times with a sword. "Yet before it could be announced, March Peak collapsed, burying every attendee deep underground with no survivors. Over the following year and more, the surviving members of the Marshall family died one after another, and the entire clan was wiped out. To this day, none of us know what that secret claimed by the Marshall family was." Having stood for quite a while, the President braced one hand on the desk and hopped his rear onto it, saying: "What no one knows is that back then, a direct descendant of the Marshall family happened to be inside a Spirit Realm dungeon. Thus, he was fortunate enough to avoid the collapse of March Mountain, as well as the subsequent silencing."