Ruan Xing was blocked by Will.

Will didn't intend to attack him, or rather, he did not intend to attack his body. He knew that even if the body died, it would not count as Ruan Xing's true death.

For a mage, the destruction of the soul was the real annihilation.

"Ruan Xing," Will said, voice almost cordial, "I hope we can have a proper conversation."

His tone was friendly, but he couldn't control his expression well. His features carried mixed emotions. His eyes were friendly, but the corners of his mouth were pulled down. His brows were also knitted together, and the muscles in his face twitched.

The disharmony in his soul was already affecting his body.

"A clash of ideas between two worlds can lead to mutual benefit. You don't want to keep living under pollution, do you?"

At those words, Ruan Xing smirked with mockery. "You made the mess yourself, and now you want someone else to clean it up for you? How convenient."

After seeing Will in person, his suspicions were confirmed.

In this world's power system, the soul didn't truly 'exist.'

If Will wanted to study souls, he had to borrow from the magic side's power system. That meant he had to first create magic, and in the process, countless test subjects were needed.

Pollution was a by-product of the world's energy being unsuccessfully converted into magical energy.

Pollutants were creatures tainted by that failed energy.

The essence of pollution was disorder and chaos. Something between magic power and world energy, but unusable.

Ruan Xing had discovered traces of magical power within pollution, especially in the sources of pollution, where the chaotic energy was even more apparent.

Unlike Will, he could sort these energies into usable magic through magic circuits.

Every mage was born with the ability to process magic power, converting the free-floating energy in the air into magic they could use like plants turning sunlight into nutrients.

This kind of instinctive ability was never recorded in his notebooks or grimoires.

Lacking that crucial conversion step, Will's experiments were doomed to fail.

Or rather, the experiment to turn it into a magic power would never succeed.

However, it's clear that this man had taken a shortcut by other means and still achieved his goal. His metallic skin, that massive hunk of flesh, and his split soul were the strongest evidence.

"Thanks to the idea you gave me, I was able to think of this approach. It may not become magic, but it works the same for using world energy. Sometimes there's no need to be trapped in fixed thinking," Will said.

"If you can't use fine control, then solve the problem in the crudest way possible." Will sighed. "You have an admirable starting point and luck, but you lack the courage."

"I simply see no need," Ruan Xing replied.

The average mage's lifespan was several centuries long, which was already unimaginable in this world.

That was exactly what Will wanted but could never have.

Like Yin Zhu, he feared the arrival of death.

With too many chaotic souls crammed into his body, Will's expression was no longer calm. His facial twitches worsened, like a balloon ready to burst at any moment.

He raised an arm that had somehow turned purplish-red. It was covered in dense, intertwining tumors like snail eggs. Eyeballs growing among them, half-hanging from his arm, on the verge of opening.

"I'm so envious… envious enough to want to kill you," Will said, his voice now strange, like multiple voices overlapping.

Before the words had fully faded, a loud detonation rang out from Fu Zhi's side.

The stomach-like mass of flesh was shattered beneath Fu Zhi's blade.

The funnel-shaped head was sliced off like a melon, falling aside in convulsions.

The rest of the heavy body let out a creak, like a melting cake collapsing. The tubes that had extended upward from below now thrashed aimlessly in the air like roaring snakes, their transmission endpoint gone.

Blood covered Fu Zhi's cheek. He closed his eyes briefly, then looked this way.

"Killing that thing is useless," Will said.

"That lump of flesh was your original body, wasn't it? Now you have turned it into something that absorbs world energy," Ruan Xing said.

Will's silver pupils gleamed with approval. "Unfortunately, there is no prize for guessing correctly."

The feather-like blades in the air had vanished at some point. The lump of flesh groaned and collapsed, but its bloated body shed no red blood, only a transparent liquid.

The wound on Will's back, where the flesh tubes had pierced, stopped taking in sustenance. The flesh wriggled and smoothed over into unbroken skin.

Will stared at Fu Zhi. "After all these years, you really have disappointed me."

Fu Zhi pushed off with his right foot, appearing instantly before him. Blood droplets arced in the air.

It was clear that Fu Zhi wasn't sad. If anything, he seemed ready to kill Will just to make Ruan Xing happy.

Will tugged at the corner of his mouth, showing a twisted smile.

Ruan Xing noticed Will's silver pupils suddenly multiply in their sockets, spinning around like tiny steel balls. It was impossible to tell where he was looking.

A wave of feverish, chaotic energy began leaking from his body. The tumors on his arms instantly spread across his whole form, making it look like he was encased in lumps of flesh.

Then, Will unfolded his body.

Yes. Unfolded.

Like unwrapping paper, the blond man ripped apart all his skin and limbs, flattening himself from a three-dimensional person into a two-dimensional sheet. Muscles, fascia, bones, and tumors all became part of that flat layer.

From this 'human blueprint,' a huge, translucent figure squeezed out.

Fu Gui, watching the three-way standoff, shoved the mycelium into his feathers and tucked his wings tightly. "Be careful. If you go out there, you'll die!"

He steadied his breathing and pressed himself against the edge of the glass dome. This spot wouldn't be hit by the fighting force, but even so, when that giant, transparent, game-CG-like figure appeared, Fu Gui's mind went blank with a loud buzz.

Its appearance was like the descent of some extra-dimensional being.

Everyone's gaze was drawn toward it involuntarily. Fu Gui felt his thoughts hollow out, with nothing left but that translucent figure.

It didn't look human. It was more like some unknown existence.

Fu Gui didn't know what it was, but that didn't stop the deep fear that welled up in him. The fear of the unknown, of a higher-dimensional existence.

His eyes followed it. He wanted to approach, and he felt his body become lighter.

As if he were turning into a balloon.

Looking down, he saw that he had floated up without realizing it. Arms and legs sprouted from his body, and he was now drifting toward that figure as if guided by his innermost will.

To merge with such an existence, wouldn't that be wonderful?

All troubles would vanish, for with absolute strength, nothing could harm it.

Look. Ruan Xing and Fu Zhi were floating too.

…Wait.

Humans are not supposed to float.

And he's a bird, right? Why did he have arms and legs?

Fu Gui stared wide-eyed at his naked form, holding up his fingers as if seeing himself for the first time.

This was… a soul?!

He looked up at Ruan Xing and Fu Zhi. They were also floating under this power's influence, but unlike him...

Ruan Xing was wearing an exquisitely made mage robe, and Fu Zhi was a shapeless ball of light.

Why was he the only one naked?!

Fu Gui's expression twisted.

Ruan Xing didn't know what Fu Gui was thinking. Otherwise, he would surely have asked him about his priorities.

He stared at his original mage form with a solemn face.

His thought that Will was like a balloon about to burst, but he was wrong.

A massive soul, stuffed with the souls of countless hosts and other random things, crammed into such a small body, how could that not cause problems?

The result was a patchwork abomination of unknown nature.

Like a powerful magnet, it was drawing the souls of everyone present straight toward it.

He, Fu Zhi, and Fu Gui were all in bodies that were not their original, with less-than-solid anchoring. Therefore, their souls were easily pulled out.

Once separated from their bodies, he couldn't use magic, and Fu Zhi couldn't use his abilities.

They would have to rely solely on raw soul power.

Will's soul had fused with that of over a hundred others and been modified by world energy. No matter how strong Ruan Xing was, he could not match the raw force of this world's energy.

Things had become troublesome.

Fu Zhi's soul-light shot toward Ruan Xing first.

A tall young man with long black hair and green eyes, wearing a finely made mage robe, held a ball of light in his hands. The light illuminated him, making his entire soul form gleam brilliantly.

The translucent figure was like a creature not of this place.

Will lunged at them with his tentacles.

Ruan Xing quickly rose upward, passing straight through the glass dome.

The sun was just peeking over the horizon. For souls, sunlight was a death accelerator.

In full light, it could even be fatal.

But Will stayed inside the dome, untouched by the sun.

He spoke, his voice echoing endlessly as if in a vast empty chamber.

"Look. This is the result of my research."

Male and female, young and old, countless voices overlapped, and even three or four seconds after the sentence ended, the echoes lingered.

"World energy is only useful when harnessed. My research path is not about how to use magic, but how to harness the world's energy."

"With such power, I am the God of this world."

"If I say there shall be life, then there shall be life."

He chuckled, and Ruan Xing heard a sound behind him. It was the body they had killed earlier. Half its head hanging off, drenched in blood, but still walking toward them with determination.

There was no stiffness of a corpse at all.

The body had no soul, but could it be called dead?

Will Wouldn't.

He looked at his creation with satisfaction.

"With power, I can control the whole world. If I say someone exists, they exist. If I say someone dies, they die."

Floating in the air, Ruan Xing looked down at the puppet-like, senseless body. It was moving toward his own unconscious body lying to the side.

He showed pity. "A monster controlled by power… how pitiful, to not even know who you are anymore."

He was unaffected by Will's state. Though his frail human body limited him, his soul's power could still face such an existence head-on.

The ball of light in his arms poked its head out from his robe, wanting to attack Will again.

Ruan Xing held its head down while lightly dodging Will's lunging tentacle.

Denied by its prey, the thing let out an impatient cry that echoed again and again. "I am Will!"

The hem of Ruan Xing's mage robe swayed in the breeze.

"What gave you the illusion that you are Will?"

The huge transparent figure swung its equally transparent tentacles, visible only through the refraction of light.

It was a soul aggregate. Formed when Will absorbed the scattered fragments of his soul throughout the Tower. But each fragment had already become a complete soul in itself, each wanting to return to where it belonged.

As a result, Will's soul no longer had a human form.

"I am special. I alone have understood and mastered this power system, and even reshaped this world into what it is now. How am I not Will?"

Will's mind was truly unstable now. Freed from his body's control, the confusion was even harder to suppress.

Ruan Xing remained calm. "Is that so? Then which fragment of Will's soul holds the world's energy?"

"All of them," Will said after a pause.

Ruan Xing smiled.

"When you split your soul, were all the pieces the same size? Did they all think the same thoughts as the original? Can you be sure that after being separated and merged with other souls, and even with world energy, they are still you?"

Will hesitated. His last shred of reason told him not to listen, but another part, his human instinct, told him to hear it out.

This was a question of 'Who am I?' Since ancient times, how many could resist exploring it?

Will was no exception. He withdrew his tentacles for now, but ordered the puppet to guard their bodies, ready to destroy them at any moment.

Without bodies, their souls would be burned to nothing by the sunlight, turning them into his nourishment.

"Have you ever heard this story?" Ruan Xing asked gently. As if speaking to a disobedient child rather than a monster that could devour him whole.

"A ship sails the sea. One day, a plank rots, and the sailors replace it. Then another plank, then another. By the end, every plank has been replaced. Tell me, when that happens, is it still the same ship?"

If every fragment of your soul had merged with others, was the new being still you?

"Admit it. Your experiment was a failure from the start. Otherwise, how do you explain the echo in your voice every time you speak?"

"Take my word for it. You went down the wrong path. Those echoes are the proof that you haven't fused your souls!"

"Every soul you merged with is no longer you! Think about it. What was your original goal? And what have you become now? Is this really what you wanted?"

It was a simple story with an equally simple answer. If you believe it is still the same ship, you're right. Its design and purpose haven't changed. If you believe it's not, you are also right. The original ship no longer exists.

But now wasn't a philosophical puzzle. It was a direct question to the soul. And the one who was being asked, muddled in mind, didn't realize it was a trap.

"Impossible! I am me!"

The transparent monster's roar shook the entire sky.

The vibration reached the people at the base of the Tower. They couldn't see what was above, but they could feel something was there.

"What's that?"

A little boy pointed at the clouds, where something like a physical tornado was forming despite the weather forecast predicting a clear day.

His father had already noticed the unusual atmosphere.

The people who had been sitting quietly around the Tower had vanished without anyone noticing, and plainclothes men with stern faces were moving about, clearly on guard.

Seeing the father and son still watching, some of the plainclothes were already walking toward them.

The father quickly pulled his child away, telling him, "It's a special weather phenomenon. Dad has only seen it online before…"

The man in the black suit was in plainclothes today. After settling those people, he had come straight here.

Things weren't going as planned. They hadn't received any message from the Tower.

Was the operation really going smoothly?

And that massive energy reaction gathering in the sky... what was it?