A thousand voices sounded out all around Hui, voices he’d heard before, voices he hadn’t. He looked around, peering into the mass of glowing light. Human-ish shapes bobbled in the light, indistinguishable from one another, blurring together.

Hui tilted is head. “Can you… cultivate in here?”

Voices sounded, all talking over one another. Hui winced and took a step back, overwhelmed. “Seniors, your voices… please.”

The Sect Master cleared his throat, voice cutting above the babble. “It isn’t easy, but we aren’t dead. We can continue to cultivate. There’s even a source of qi in this formation. I hesitate to contemplate where it came from, but…”

Sect Master did end up in here! Good, good, Hui thought, nodding to himself.

“Ah? Are you people doubting your Patriarch once more? After everything I’ve done for you…”

Hui turned. Chen Wuya stood beside him, red robe flying from his shoulders, arms crossed, ragged hair flapping on a breeze no one else felt. “Chen Wuya?”

“Why are you surprised I’m in here? You know I built this array,” Chen Wuya replied.

“Patriarch?”

“Who’s that?”

“Chen Wuya? Isn’t he an ancient demonic cultivator? Why’s he calling himself our Patriarch?”

The Sect Master appeared before Xiao Hui, assuming human form the same as Hui and Chen Wuya. He bowed deeply to Chen Wuya. “Patriarch, accept my apologies. After All-Heavens Sect rose to ascendance, we had no choice but to repress knowledge of you. Their grudge against you… against us, was too much to bear with the sect… as it is.”

“Fallen to the level that a mere seventh-stage cultivator is the Sect Master?” Chen Wuya asked mockingly.

Sect Master Lan said nothing, instead choosing to silently continue to bow.

“Ah, I understand. Well, you also understand me not helping the sect much,” Chen Wuya replied.

Still silence. He maintained his bow, exuding respect and regret at once.

Chen Wuya huffed and tossed his hair. “Say something. This is making me uncomfortable.”

Hui cut his eyes at Chen Wuya. Hmm, could it be? Is this a way to deal with Senior? This small cultivator has learned!

“Don’t go learning useless skills,” Chen Wuya shot back under his breath. Louder, he said. “Alright, alright. Straighten up. You fools diligently cultivate in here. Our Xiao Hui will have you out in no time.”

Hui looked at Chen Wuya, suddenly hopeful. Maybe Senior is feeling generous now that the sect acknowledges him, and will tell me how to—

Chen Wuya rolled his eyes. “Stop being ridiculous. I didn’t create this formation to store souls in the first place. The souls it did store coincidentally were meant to be trapped forever, not released. There isn’t a way to do it built in. If you want to do it, you’ll have to build your own method from scratch.”

Right, I came in here to investigate the formation, not to reminisce! Hui sat down in the lotus pose and closed his eyes, reaching out with his mental energy.

Chen Wuya glanced around, then scoffed and settled into a lazy stand beside Hui, arms still crossed. In the distance, the black corrupted souls scurried even further away.

Sect Master Lan straightened up at last and looked at Chen Wuya. All around, the other souls stood silently, watching with bated breaths. “Patriarch… I can only apologize for leading this sect to its fall.”

“Ah, that’s right. If not for that Xiao Hui you tried your best to kill and repress, you’d all be dead right now, right? Even that precious son of yours.” He flicked his sleeve at the Sect Master’s right sleeve, where a fuzzy ball of light trembled, incomplete.

“Patriarch is correct. It’s all due to my negligence,” Sect Master Lan replied.

“Let’s not exaggerate. I’m sure there was something else. Or should I say, someone else? The person who used this array before… he must have been very precious to you. After all, you let him use it three times, and he still draws breath to this day,” Chen Wuya said, bored.

Sect Master Lan drew a short breath. “That child, the one who used the array… he is beloved of Heaven.”

Chen Wuya’s eyes widened. His robe flapped, and his eyes glowed a brilliant red. The souls of Starbound Sect staggered back, blown away by his aura. A fierce grin stretched across his face, entirely humorless. “Oh? You know, every time I hear that phrase, my blood boils.”

Sect Master Lan pressed his lips together and said no more.

Chen Wuya let out a cawing laugh. His eyes widened further, and he shook his head. “It is like that, then. Understood, understood. Ha! It seems this Xiao Hui shares more fate with me than I thought.” He looked at Hui, who sat there with his eyes closed, focused on his task. Quietly, he whispered, “You, too, have drawn Heaven’s ire.”

“Or desire,” Sect Master Lan murmured.

“The two are fundamentally the same,” Chen Wuya replied. “To be desired by Heaven is diametrically opposed to being beloved of Heaven. Do you understand?”

Sect Master Lan hesitated, then bowed his head. “This cultivator is not worthy of hearing Patriarch’s words.”

Chen Wuya clicked his tongue and turned away. “Che. Ah, oh well. You’ll all learn in time.”

Caught up in his contemplation, Hui heard none of their conversation. Instead, he focused on the souls inside the formation. He reached out to one of the glowing ones and tried to draw it apart from the others. It moved, but so did the rest of them. All the souls had no weight, and all were completely stuck to one another. Untangling one simply couldn’t be done.

He grit his teeth. If I unraveled the formation, then the souls would untangle. But then the souls would immediately start to dissipate and enter the cycle of reincarnation. I’m confident I could guide the souls back to their bodies one-by-one, but without some kind of array or formation, I don’t think I could handle re-homing them all at once.

There’s the option of talking to the person who repaired the soul transferal formation last time, but… that’s Yunxu, isn’t it? He’s an outright demonic cultivator. If I hand him the soul transferal formation full of everyone’s souls, wouldn’t he immediately use it to do something horrible and nefarious, like… I don’t know, try to congeal a Ghost General by putting them all in a ghost flag, or… or, I guess, just repair the soul transferal array and use it again to transmigrate someone, or worse! No, no. I absolutely cannot go to Yunxu. I might as well walk straight to Gui Delun instead. He’d kill everyone, but at least he would do it in an upright and righteous way!

Going to Yunxu is no good. What else?

I could try to raise my cultivation to the level I can handle the transferal, but again, I’m not Master. I’m not confident I could reach a level where I could do such a thing in a mere ten years. True, I’m close to my fifth stage ascension already, but… cultivation only becomes more difficult once one passes the fifth stage. It’s only Master who can do something as ludicrous as skipping the last three stages. And I don’t know at what stage I could accurately transfer so many souls into their proper bodies without any assistance.

No good, no good. I need something better.

What if I made a formation of my own? A talisman…

The entire world shuddered. Pain slammed into Hui, and his cultivation and heartrate both spiked. His eyes opened, and he stared around, startled.

Sect Master Lan waved his hands at him desperately. “Go, get out of here! The formation… and your body, are both under attack!”

“Yeah, go on, scram,” Chen Wuya said, scoffing. He hopped up. Red and black swirled, and a crow momentarily appeared in the formation before he disappeared entirely.

“Then, I’ll go first,” Hui said. He bowed once to Sect Master and everyone else, then retracted himself from the formation. Hey! Who’s attacking my helpless body? Eh, does it not look dead enough?