Lei Ting snapped his head up, golden radiance erupting from his eyes. It swept across the darkness before him, illuminating everything in sight.
He sat within a completely enclosed rectangular space, roughly three by three by five meters. To him, it was practically cramped, possessing the oppressive air of a coffin. In the center of this dark sarcophagus stood a heavy, high-backed chair.
Lei Ting sat upon this chair, his posture rigid, his brow furrowed, and his breathing heavy.
*Crack.*
A sound like shattering glass echoed from the depths of his mind. Mottled cracks spread across the section of 'Spiritual Thought' he had deliberately partitioned off, and a murky, dark mist surged within them.
An explosion of agony, sharp enough to drive any normal person insane, radiated from the depths of his brain. The physical sensation of being torn apart made it nearly impossible to remain calm, yet Lei Ting’s gaze remained clear.
Thirteen years had passed. The 'Spiritual Thought' he had carved out to 'feed' that bronze slip had been completely eroded.
There, he had nursed a monster into existence—a 'Heteromorph' that remained nameless even now, yet was already extremely dangerous.
Yes, he had successfully manufactured a Heteromorph.
The raw materials were his own spiritual thoughts and even a portion of his human emotions. Throughout this process, he had forced his reason to override his pain. In every moment spent alone, feeling his 'Spiritual Thought' being ripped away, he allowed his primary consciousness to observe the pollution of that part of himself from a completely objective standpoint.
Through this, Lei Ting had thoroughly deciphered the process of 'Degeneration.'
In short, 'Degeneration' was a cycle of 'erosion, shredding, filtering, and restructuring.' First came the erosion, then the shredding of the eroded parts. Fragments that did not belong to the 'Heteromorph' collective were filtered out, and finally, a specious entity was restructured from what remained.
This entire process, until it reached the 'restructuring' stage, existed solely within one's 'Spiritual Thought.'
By the time it reached restructuring and began to affect the host, the mutation became utterly irreversible.
The 'Star' civilization had truly been onto something to have created such an abomination.
Lei Ting narrowed his eyes.
At the peak of the agony, he habitually sank his consciousness to observe the internal changes, only to be suddenly stunned.
Evenheiler was gone.
Evenheiler, who had been residing in his surface consciousness and undergoing a long-term... 'treatment,' had vanished!
Lei Ting bolted upright. He closed his eyes, withdrew the majority of his redundant thoughts, and dove headlong into the depths of the darkness.
In this moment, his choice and behavior could even be described as 'impatient.' It was an impatience that ran directly counter to his 'Immovable' nature.
***
When he first broke free from that illusion, at the boundary where the light met the darkness, Evenheiler had caught a blurry glimpse of a pair of eyes.
The base of those eyes was emerald green, with a sharp but not terrifying crimson glowing deep within the pupils. The gaze fixed upon him was gentle and reassuring.
Simultaneously, a faint voice rose from the depths of his heart: "Xing Liu..."
"...?"
Evenheiler’s heart skipped a beat. He frowned, feeling as though the word was familiar... but who was 'Xing Liu'? What was 'Xing Liu'?
No, think again... he wouldn't forget this word, even at such a depth of thought—
That person, the one who certainly existed, the master of the illusion...
The green-and-red eyes quietly dissipated, replaced by a scene that seemed as though it had never occurred before.
[A handsome young man with black hair sat leaning back on a sofa with his legs crossed. His jacket was tossed aside, revealing a sturdy, powerful physique under the light. He was munching on a piece of fruit while looking down at a data pad in his hand. Beneath his calm, sword-like brows, his deep black eyes reflected a soft light.]
Then, the youth looked up and asked with a smile:
"Why do you keep looking at me, 'Uncle'?"
Evenheiler jerked backward, startled awake.
He found himself in a long descent. During this fall, he clearly sensed a heavy darkness, carrying a bone-deep, familiar pain—yet that pain seemed to be isolated by something...
He raised his hand and clearly saw a layer of golden light.
That warm golden radiance was like a discolored flame, or like beautiful sunlight.
He had seen this light before.
Many times.
In the illusions he had experienced, in every beam of light that fell through a window.
...And in someone's eyes.
There was no feedback of danger from his surroundings. The master of the illusion was mired in heavy longing and pain. Evenheiler observed his environment and discovered to his shock that he was falling toward a pitch-black rift.
In the darkness, a pair of dim golden eyes opened.
Then, the golden light contracted. A figure rapidly outlined itself with the eyes as the origin, emerging from the gloom.
The figure had semi-long black hair and eyes where even the whites were entirely pitch black, though two rings of smoldering, dim gold burned like fire where the irises should be.
It was another 'Lei Ting.'
A young Lei Ting, appearing to be about seventeen or eighteen years old.
After he—or 'it'—emerged, it immediately looked up. From this position, the 'sky' was an expanse of infinite darkness, but within that darkness were rifts radiating a terrifying golden glow.
Those were the cracks in the soul of this place's master, the points where the light of destruction shone through.
For the longest time, there had only been a monotonous, empty golden radiance...
But now, within that gold, something new had fallen: a handful of fine starlight.
The Heteromorph gave a light chuckle. It closed its eyes and soared up from the darkness, drifting toward the figure in the starlight as if unconscious.
Since its birth, it knew it was merely bait, a captive monster... For over a decade, it had remained silent in this darkness. The few times it had tried to probe outward, it had been ruthlessly crushed.
But even so, it had never been discouraged.
Strictly speaking, it was a portion of 'Lei Ting' that had been alienated, and alienation could not completely twist a person's character, nor could it erase their obsessions.
On the contrary, an alienated soul would find its personality traits and individual obsessions extremely and radically reinforced.
And this reinforcement, following the connection between it and the main body, Lei Ting, had in turn influenced the other.
Unfortunately, the existence of 'Immovable' rendered all of this almost useless, barely counting as a subtle interference in Lei Ting's choices when facing events...
...Perhaps.
In truth, even now, it could not distinguish how many of the choices its powerful and terrifying main body had made since its birth were due to its interference.
Perhaps all of them, or perhaps none at all. Having inherited many of the main body's 'past' traits, it also inherited the 'difficulty in recognizing oneself'...
Thus, its insight—which was naturally high due to being 'born from a Limit-Breaker'—would fail whenever it involved the main body.
Forget further enticing degeneration... it couldn't even manage to use the connection between them to read his thoughts.
The first Heteromorph in history that didn't even know what its host was thinking had been born just like that.
And it knew... none of this was a coincidence. It was a result produced under the main body's control.
Because it knew clearly that the external situations it had been fortunate enough to learn about through flickering images over the years—such as 'the war,' 'the completion of the Federation's restructuring,' 'advancements in research technology,' and 'the increasing number of people protesting against the main body'—were, without exception, things its divinely capable main body had deliberately allowed it to see.
Between the domain it occupied and the main body's portion, there existed an area where the isolation between inside and outside was extremely thin.
Through that area, signals from the depths of the mind could interfere with a place called the 'Bottom of Spirit.'
Its birth was founded upon a 'seed' from an outsider, so it naturally transmitted information outward.
Its main body needed to use it to transmit certain fragments of undeniable truth into the hands of a specific target. These messages would outline a draft of the situation for the other party that was ninety percent true. Only it and the main body knew that the ten percent hidden in the mist was what truly mattered.
In this process, the sender viewed it as a mere tool, and the receiver had never even revealed their existence. If it hadn't inherited a portion of the main body's reason and wisdom, allowing it to deduce the truth of all this on its own, it might still be oblivious to this hidden layer.
But it didn't matter. Now that it knew, it could lie in wait, biding its time for a turning point.
As long as it could begin to truly interfere with the main body's thoughts and merge with him, one day, it could use its own methods to dictate the war and peace of the Federation and the galaxy!
Given a single chance, it would surely achieve its goals in its own way—this was the greatest strength it had inherited from the man named 'Lei Ting'!
And now, the turning point it had been waiting for had finally arrived!
Within the starlight, the handsome blonde man opened his clear blue eyes, scanning the darkness. Soon, he discovered the figure drifting through the gloom.
Startled, he quickly dove down, coming to a stop not far from the youth and staring at that serious, handsome face.
...Who was this?
Why did he feel... somewhat familiar? As if this face shouldn't... uh, have such long hair?
Evenheiler’s brow furrowed, his gaze flickering. He didn't know why he instinctively had an issue with the other's hair, but he could feel his mood instantly plummeting to rock bottom.
Yet, at the same time, there was a strange sense of 'relief'...
Was it an acquaintance?
Could this be the target he needed to find when he came to this illusion?
Evenheiler twitched his fingers. In the end, he didn't reach out, but instead flicked a tiny spark of starlight from a distance, which gently struck the other's furrowed brow.
The moment it was attacked, those eyes snapped open. The hollow darkness within and the golden rings that made the gaze appear extremely sharp instantly locked onto his position.
A sense of inhuman dread rose in Evenheiler’s heart. In the next instant, the other lunged forward, crossing the distance between them in a flash, reaching out to grab him!
Simultaneously, a powerful arm appeared beside Evenheiler. Without a word, it hooked around his waist and hauled him back, pulling him into a hard, nearly scalding embrace!
