"Meet you? Are you still alive?"
"Not exactly, you will understand when you get here. Enter the portal."
"Fine."
Ken was curious to meet with the voice that kept him company ever since he was pulled into the secret realm. Stepping into the portal, he found himself inside a stone building with a large metal door in front of him. The door handles had chains on them, and he could easily perceive it was blocked by a few sophisticated formations.
"Ah, are you inside the room?"
"I am. Come inside."
"I can't, the room is locked with formations. Are you perhaps a prisoner here?"
Ken didn't want to get himself into the mess of someone who was captured by seven immortals. He preferred walking away.
"It might take you a while to solve those formations, but I'm sure you can break them. I want you to open those formations and bring me out of the secret realm with you."
Ken pondered on the voice's words for a moment, and he understood there was something weird about the situation.
"Didn't you say you were a better formation master than Galen? How can I undo a formation that imprisons a grandmaster of formations?"
"It's not that simple. I'm locked inside a coffin created by Galen. It's a ninth-grade tool, and I can't break out of it, which is why I can't use enough Runic Qi to probe and destroy the formation. I've been working on it for 2,000 years now, and I barely destroyed a few of the formation's nodes, and they regenerate faster than I can break them."
The voice explained its full plight to Ken. Although it was in serious trouble, Ken wasn't the empathetic type.
"What's your name? Now that I know you aren't just a voice, it gets weird to refer to you as 'the voice' in my mind."
"I'm Edmund, a grand elder of the Infinite Wisdom Sect, eighth-stage cultivator, and eighth-rank formation grandmaster."
The voice, which Ken could refer to as Edmund now, declared his identity proudly, almost as if he was expecting Ken to kneel after learning of his status.
"I see. Well, tough luck, Edmund, but I'm just a new fifth-rank formation master. I'm afraid I can't be of any help to you. However, the secret realm will be gone in 6 days and you will be freed, what's the rush?"
The freedom Ken mentioned was death, but he didn't mind coating his words with sugar.
"The rush is that I will be stuck forever in this coffin within the collapsed space. It would take me thousands of years to finally destroy the formation, and I still wouldn't be able to deal with the main problem – my cage."
The elder elaborated on his problem, convincing Ken further that nothing will happen to him if he just refuses the request.
"All right, but as I said, I can't help you, so I will be going now."
"Let me tell you something. The reason I serve the supreme elders and follow their instructions is that I have on my neck the same Slavery Collar you placed on the pretty girl from the Four Seasons Sect, but of the eighth grade. If I find any inconsistency or danger to the elders' plans, I must contact one of the strands of consciousness they have left behind and report the problem."
Ken's expression froze and he asked the elder with a cold tone.
"And then what?"
"And then they would tell me how to deal with it, and I would be obligated to obey."
"What are you trying to say?"
"Nothing, just that I found a loophole in this rule. If I don't investigate a problem enough to find indisputable evidence, I can just remain unaware of the problem and not report it. If you can't help me, I will be bored."
Ken was pretty sure he was on the same page as Edmund, but he wanted to double-check. He was wary of falling into a situation where he unintentionally revealed information due to presuming the other side was already privy to it.
"What are you getting at?"
"That I might have overlooked something by accident in the Residence of a Buddha and a Demon. If you don't help me, I will send my consciousness to look into the blood you've shed there, I think it might have had a… negative effect on the formation."
"Fine, I will help you. It's going to take me all six days, and I can't do anything about the coffin."
"You must finish 5 hours before the secret realm collapses or I'm taking you down with me. I already know you're a liar and a manipulator, so unfortunately I must do it this way. Don't worry about the coffin, you can just open it from outside."
Ken sighed and started working on the formation. He was caught between a rock and a hard place. Edmund was onto him; during the Challenge of Mind Tenacity, he had used his fingernails to cut through his own palms.
The blood was full of his Bloodlust Qi and Runic Qi, and Ken used it to mess with the formation he was inside, weakening it and causing the corrosion that tried to enter his mind to be much weaker.
Although the thoughts of serving the elders still pervaded his mind, he could go against them by being aware of their origins.
Furthermore, the pills he took before entering the challenge also helped him to resist all the marks that were imprinted on his body and brain.
While his sixth-grade pills weren't as strong as the pills he was being fed, they were good enough to destroy the Alchemical Qi that entered his body. He didn't overpower the pill's effect with his own; his pills simply affected the foreign pills while they were still in his system and ruined their medicinal effects.
He was confident of being able to completely deter all the negative effects that managed to remain in his brain and body by the time he becomes a sixth-stage cultivator and strengthens his mind.
'Let's work on opening the door. I can't let those supreme elders know about my little stunt.'
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