Nexus Grandmaster

Qinlingjun City

By the time Fang Yu thought to this point, about eighty percent of his Source Space had already been assimilated by the expanding nebula. However, he did not panic and rapidly exerted all his psyche power to manifest an apparition from the recess of his subconscious.

It was a miniature celestial system consisting of one star, nine orbiting planets and their moons. Overall, it was a rough replica of the solar system of his home world from his past life, Earth.

The nebula closed in, shrinking Fang Yu's psyche and his atavistic solar system into a singularity point. For quite a while, the balance held, but just as Fang Yu's psyche began to relax ever so slightly as if to celebrate that his spur-of-the-moment idea actually turned out to be feasible, the expansion of the nebula chaos cloud quickened out of the blue and the fragile solar system model was cleanly devoured. Fang Yu's thoughts abruptly sank into nothingness.

*****

'I'm.... I'm still alive?'

Fang Yu's psyche seemed to be transported to a dreamy dimension where time stretched infinitely.

In hazy lucidity, he witnessed a massive amount of grandmist chaos energy from a nebula cloud rearrange into a three-dimensional Taiji diagram which seemed to contain all the mysteries and intricate rules of the Dao. At the same time, it was rapidly gobbled up by a flaming star which had several illusionary celestial bodies in separate orbits around it.

The more grandmist chaos consumed, the more 'perfect' the star became. Eventually, the Taiji diagram was completely absorbed and a couple of final, qualitative transformations took place within its core.

At this point, Fang Yu started to become more aware of himself. After an unknown amount of time passed, his psyche finally coalesced and he regained full lucidity. He opened his eyes.

"Hehe, you're finally awake?" A voice chimed somewhere to his right. Fang Yu's eyes shot towards the direction of the speaker in instinctive alarm.

"I'm not an enemy," the speaker spoke quickly as if trying to allay Fang Yu's worry. Fang Yu frowned.

For some reason, he found the young lady in front of him somewhat familiar. However, her bright countenance and the friendly smile plastered on her face also felt alien, creating a weird contrast.

Fang Yu's gaze left her face to take in the surroundings and realized that he wasn't in the grand hall of Master Gao's divine plane residence anymore. Instead, he was in a dilapidated, plain room that had dim lighting and no windows.

"Are you alright?" the young lady asked, noticing Fang Yu's distrustful gaze. Fang Yu didn't respond; he was trying hard to recall some memories.

Getting rid of the members of the hunting team, meeting Master Gao and his new fellow disciples......his thoughts abruptly broke off as a missing piece finally clicked.

"You're....Pei Xue?" The surprise in Fang Yu's voice was palpable.

After all, the Pei Xue that Fang Yu knew of was cold and had a particularly stoic temperament. The Pei Xue in front of him at the moment gave off an entirely foreign vibe.

Her 'dead' vibe was gone, replaced by a vibrant yet enigmatic aura. Above all, the extra quirk of her eyebrows and the mischief in her eyes spoke volumes. Fang Yu's attention was instantly piqued.

'It can't be that Pei Xue was possessed when she assimilated with her Godshard, right?' The thought appeared in Fang Yu's mind and he instantly became wary. 'That's right, I might actually have been possessed myself too when I was integrating with a godshard too."

Fang Yu remembered he had only been a hair breadth away from being totally assimilated not long ago and had experienced the feeling of his psyche get devoured. Now that his consciousness was strangely still present, the question remained whether or not it had been tampered with or corrupted to some degree.

'I'll examine my condition later,' he thought to himself. 'But taking myself as an example, it's very likely that Pei Xue, Yue Ruhuo and Ting Lanyue had similar experiences as myself. I'll assume by default that their original consciousness didn't make it and that they've been replaced.'

Unknown to Fang Yu, his minute facial reactions were being carefully observed by Pei Xue. She shook her head and secretly came to a decision.

"Shortly after the godshard integration ritual, Master was captured. However, he managed to send us all off to different locations he arranged prior. I regained consciousness earlier and brought you along with me to escape some pursuers," Pei Xue said all these words in one breath and only stopped when she noticed Fang Yu's expression turn strange.

"The people who captured Master are on our trail?" He asked.

"No," Pei Xue replied. For context, she gave more information. "There was a local recruitment tournament going on right where Master teleported us to. Naturally, some cultivators present instantly tried to capture us, possibly to get to the bottom of our identities and random appearance. I played some tricks to narrowly escape with you, and we've been on the run since then."

Fang Yu slowly got to his feet and stretched his back which was aching terribly. He asked suspiciously, "Did you use me as a meat shield while you were on the run? I feel sore all over."

"Of course not!" Pei Xue smiled innocently. Secretly, she chuckled. She had actually used his body weight not just as a meatshield, but also as a handy weapon to smash some of the cultivators that had tried to block her path.

"So, where are we right now?" Fang Yu's eyes settled on the door which was a couple of metres away. Pei Xue noticed his gaze and spoke.

"We're in a random merchant inn. Qinlingjun City does a lot of trade; nobody will think of looking for us here. We'll just lay low for a while."

The words had barely left her lips when a violent explosion suddenly rocked the inn they were staying in.

Boom!

In a flash, Pei Xue grabbed Fang Yu and flung him across her shoulders as if he weighed less than a bag of lightfoam. Before the walls of the room collapsed, she employed a movement technique and vanished from the scene.