Gen rose to his feet, walking unsteadily to the edge of the now-dry water basin. Liang and Kang Mao got closer, their faces etched with worry.
"What happened?" Liang asked, his voice thin.
Gen didn't explain. He simply shook his head, a gesture meant to reassure. "I am fine." He dressed quickly, the simple motion helping to ground him. He was ready.
Shelia, her form slightly less substantial than before, simply said, "I will go out and visit the Sky Ocean for now. In the meantime, it will be safe to stay here. This place is a good deterrent for most Milky Beasts." Before they could ask any more questions, she was gone, vanished to parts unknown.
Gen turned to his friends. "How do you feel?"
Liang took a careful breath. "The poison has indeed slowed. But it is as Shelia said. We will need to kill the three-tailed Sky Demon before I am fully healed."
Gen fell silent. The worry was a cold stone in his gut. At their current level, hunting the three-tailed Sky Demon was suicide. It was far too risky. Yet moving out of this place with Liang still poisoned was also a gamble with death.
Kang Mao, ever pragmatic, broke the silence. "It will be wise to stay here for some time. Rest. Train. Once we are almost at our optimum, we will leave this place."
Gen nodded. It was the only logical path. The trio all assumed the lotus position in the quiet chamber and began to train.
Gen circulated his Qi, focusing first on his **Root Acupoint**, the foundation of his **Jingdao**, then guiding it to his **Sea Acupoint** for **Shidow**. But there was something new in his body now. A subtle, pervasive presence that was not his own—Shelia's essence. It acted as a catalyst, making his Qi denser, more aggressive, and far more present in the space around him. The scene created by Gen's working caused both Liang and Kang Mao to stare faintly in his direction, feeling the shift in the air.
In his heart, Liang bit his lip. *Gen is getting even stronger.* The thought was a quiet sting. He did not want to be left behind. He had to work harder. This poison could not be his last stop. He had to push through.
***
Days blinked by within the ancient building. Time in the Sky Ocean was mysterious, passing either too fast or agonizingly slow. But Gen was certain about one thing: they had already spent a good amount of it here.
Later, Gen stood up from his meditation, leaving Liang and Kang Mao to their work. He decided to look deeper into the building. Mainly because, thanks to Shelia's essence within him, his perception had grown beyond what it already was. He hadn't told Liang, but he could faintly feel the presence of a strange plant several kilometers to the east of the building, out in the golden void. He wasn't sure if it was the Zenith Sky-Root, but he had a clue. Telling Liang would only put more pressure on his friend, and in his poisoned state, he might do something reckless. Gen planned to let them "stumble" on it once they left.
In the meantime, he had also felt something different within the building itself. That was the reason for his exploration now.
In the lower part of the structure, he found another hall. This one was different. At its center stood another statue, this one covered in a creeping, silvery moss. From a distance, Gen couldn't tell what it was. As he got closer, his eyes twinkled with excitement. It was another statue of Master Yujin's puzzle. This one was **The Fool**, shaped like a humanoid figure in a carefree, leaning pose.
But just as Gen stepped into the hall's center, the space suddenly illuminated. Complex geometric lines of light etched themselves across the floor and walls. An incredibly dense pressure bore down on him, a weight that felt both physical and spiritual.
***THUD.***
It forced him to a single knee.
*Huh?* Gen was startled. He tried to rise, pushing with his legs, but it was like trying to lift a mountain. He tried to unleash his **Jingdao**, to reinforce his body against the weight.
Nothing happened.
Panic, cold and sharp, lanced through him. *Why can't I use my Jingdao? Or Shidow?* It was as if he had been stripped of his abilities. Even worse, he could not step backward. An invisible barrier held him in place.
At the same time, blades of condensed, razor-sharp Qi materialized from the glowing lines on the walls. They fanned out, humming with lethal intent, and began moving in complex, interweaving patterns—up, down, diagonally—a grid of death trying to cut him into pieces from every possible angle.
Gen's face darkened. He did the only thing he could still do. He slammed his palms onto the stone floor.
**Swords of Infinity.**
A beam of annihilating light flashed from the diagram beneath him, clashing with the nearest Qi blades. The collision slowed them, causing them to sizzle and vanish. Gen let out a shaky breath.
But more blades appeared. And more. Annoyed, he used the Swords of Infinity again and again, destroying them in bursts of light. But he slowly noticed a terrible pattern: the more he destroyed, the more appeared to take their place, and each new wave was harder, denser. At one point, his Swords of Infinity beams could no longer destroy them outright, only deflect them for a fraction of a second.
However, it had bought enough time for Gen to get used to the crushing pressure of the space. He gently sidestepped as a blade whistled past his face, the wind of its passage cutting a lock of his hair. His heart drummed a frantic rhythm against his ribs. He kept moving forward, evading the sword blades to the best of his ability, but he was not perfect. A few left searing lines on his arms, his chest, his jaw. At this rate, he would be carved apart before he could even reach the statue.
The only thing he could use was the Swords of Infinity, but it was as the three-tailed Sky Demon had said: it was *cool*, but it had just so much power. It was incomplete.
Gen frowned as the truth crystallized. Back when he first understood the Swords of Infinity, he could only use **Shidow** to manipulate Qi and give his understanding a crude form. It was still incomplete without the **Wheel of Creation**.
This was because, unlike Duo Yi who used the **Doom Dragon** with Manipulation, her spell had immense power because she went beyond simple manipulation. She touched on the manipulation of *concept and intent*—the concept of *doom* itself—allowing her to outclass many Creation spells in raw power alone.
But for Gen to use the full power of the Swords of Infinity, he needed to *create* infinity, not just manipulate a shadow of it. He needed the **Wheel of Creation**.
*This is it. The key I am missing.*
Gen focused his Qi inward, ignoring the singing blades that grazed his skin. He tried to sense the gate of his **Creation Acupoint**—the **Heart**. It was still fully locked, a door of smooth, unyielding stone. But he could vaguely *sense* it now, a potential warmth in the center of his chest. It was the same as Liang, who could use **Shidow** even when his **Sea Acupoint** was still closed—because he could *sense* it more than most people. Gen was doing the exact same thing now. Sensing the gate of Creation.
With a single, focused thought, he managed to lift his leg against the immense pressure. He tapped his foot gently onto the stone floor.
This time, the circle that spread out was different.
It did not come from the ambient energy. It came from his *very being*.
It was infinity, given form.
For a single, shattering fraction of a second, Gen Jiang touched the **Wheel of Creation**.
As the next wave of Qi blades appeared, Gen didn't summon a diagram. He simply flicked his arm.
The beam of sword-light that came was not a beam. It was a *line* of absolute division, sharper and more compressed than anything he had made before. It tore through the space with such silent, annihilating force that it didn't just destroy the Qi blades. It passed *through* them, through the glowing formation lines on the floor, and landed squarely on the far wall, digging a sword-length hole deep into the petrified wood.
By the time Gen arrived, breathless and bleeding, before the moss-covered statue, the hall had fallen silent. The pressure was gone.
The statue came to life, shaking off the silvery moss. It looked at Gen, its carved face assessing his figure.
"**One,**" it muttered, its voice the sound of dry leaves skittering over stone.
Gen swallowed, wiping blood from his chin. "Did I pass the test?"
The Fool smiled at him—a genuine, exaggerated, almost manic grin that was hard to decipher. Then, without another word, it melted back into nothingness, just like the Queen had.
Its final words echoed in the now-dark hall as it disappeared. "**Find the others. And everything shall become clear.**"