Chapter 2167: The Way of Evergreen

As the degree of Soul Solidification increased and his Perception capabilities continuously strengthened, Xia Duo was able to discover the vicious curse the illusionist Zhamu Dasi had placed upon him without needing any other means.

It was as easy and clear as looking at the lines on one's own palm!

Just as he had thought before, the moment the Mental Image World collapsed, Mohawi had transmitted a large amount of conscious information to him through the connection between their two consciousnesses.

Those pieces of conscious information were similar to computer viruses, belonging to the software level, yet they had truly and effectively affected his soul—the special hardware of the human body.

His current state of Soul Solidification was equivalent to changing the computer's hardware along with its compatible conscious software; thus, the "virus" originally parasitizing within it stood out due to compatibility issues.

Of course, since consciousness itself cannot execute a self-delete command, the virus within it could not be deleted either. Unless Xia Duo maintained his current state of Soul Solidification, he would sooner or later have to face that problem.

Therefore, he chose to strip away a portion of the hardware (Soul Fragment), thereby stripping away the virus locked within it as well.

From Xia Duo's current understanding, only his consciousness could represent the essence of a person, not the soul; however, these two were combined very tightly and were often in a state of mutual influence, making it almost impossible to separate them completely.

It was because Xia Duo could accurately position himself at the level of consciousness that he dared to strip away his own Soul Fragment; otherwise, the slightest carelessness could have resulted in a personality defect, or at the very least, memory loss.

Yet, before he could even begin to strip away the Soul Fragment, the main body of his soul, having solidified to a certain degree, naturally began to reject the parts that did not conform to the main body.

At the same time, Xia Duo also began corresponding operations at the level of consciousness, simultaneously scattering the gathering trend of Mohawi's consciousness while positioning all information of his own self.

"I really didn't expect this!"

Originally, these two steps needed to be performed separately, and Xia Duo had initially worried that doing them separately would lead to errors or omissions. Now, under the powerful Perception of his solidified soul, he could perform the cleanup at the level of consciousness while his soul automatically excluded the "lesion."

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……

Just like that, as the degree of Soul Solidification continuously increased, the progress of Xia Duo's self-healing also climbed continuously, soon reaching a critical point—

At the end of Soul Solidification, although the dark red threads entwining his soul were essentially derived from the soul itself, at this moment, driven by instinct, the main body of the soul did not recognize these alienated, minor parts of the soul.

Consequently, when Xia Duo's main soul body completely transformed into a small crystal figure, the twelve dark red threads originally linked to the surface of his soul were instantly torn off, or rather, rejected.

And at the level of consciousness, Xia Duo also stirred up a storm of conscious information, casting out all the sensory information he had received in the past when acting as others in the Projection Plane—information he had already abandoned and never interpreted.

Carrying the scattered consciousness of Mohawi, it was discarded the moment the Soul Fragment was stripped away.

At the same time, in the reality of the Laboratory, the Soul-Binding Gem that had been prepared long ago was immediately activated, imprisoning the Soul Fragment Xia Duo had stripped away.

When Xia Duo returned to reality, the first thing he did was look at the Soul-Binding Gem to the side, inside which a tangled mass of dark red threads was floating; this was his Soul Fragment.

It was just that he had deliberately injected a large amount of Elf sensory information into it just moments ago, and combined with the existing Mohawi consciousness, this Soul Fragment was now rapidly transforming toward a hybrid image bearing many Elf characteristics.

The human part within it, one would assume, originated from the self-cognition of Mohawi's own body.

Xia Duo observed it for a while, but the image did not ultimately stabilize; instead, it continuously twisted and changed, as if caught in a great cognitive disorder.

He was not sure if Mohawi's main body was already dead, but clearly, although the other party's consciousness had completed the "possession," it had also been polluted by the junk conscious information Xia Duo had discarded.

If he could find the method the other party used to make the chaotic information fragments automatically reorganize, he might be able to artificially create a few sub-personalities in his consciousness with the help of the conscious information received from the Projection Plane.

Next time he encountered such a "possession" situation, he would let the sub-personality handle it, and then use a large number of sub-personalities to assimilate the other party.

"Mohawi, do you still remember me?"

Xia Duo communicated with the other party through the psionic interference field. Speaking of which, he had to thank the other party for allowing him to harvest such an Equation Spell that was the culmination of the mental Domain.

But unfortunately, at this moment, Mohawi's consciousness was already chaotic, and even that mechanism for automatically reorganizing consciousness could not salvage this situation. When faced with Xia Duo's inquiry, only a near-instinctive counter-question remained:

"Who is Mohawi? Am I Mohawi? No! I am Brandon! No, I am Asuosi! No, I am Xilin! No, I am Lair Akalama, the Sole True King of Cormanthor!"

Just as Xia Duo felt disappointed and wanted to put away the Soul-Binding Gem, Mohawi's consciousness recovered its clarity for a very brief moment and clamored at Xia Duo:

"Lord Xia Duo? I didn't expect that everyone had underestimated you; hidden beneath your human appearance is actually the essence of an Elf! But don't think that just because of this you have won. I will haunt you forever! We are one; I am you! You are me! Hahaha!"

To this, Xia Duo just shook his head quite helplessly. Could this guy not even perceive his own situation? He did not want to contend with a mad consciousness, so he put away the Soul-Binding Gem just as the other party was about to fall into madness again.

Now, the value of this Soul-Binding Gem was not just that of Niya's family heirloom; it also had to include the experience and knowledge of a Psionic Master, and even many secrets of the Elf World.

Of course, if one counted his Soul Fragment, it was even more immeasurable, but he had no intention of selling it; instead, he prepared to study it carefully after returning from Evereska.

As for now, Xia Duo felt that the extraordinary Perception brought about by Soul Solidification was rapidly regressing, which also meant that the Soul Solidification had begun to reverse.

After all, it was not a complete Longevity Ritual; it lacked the most critical step of preserving the soul. Of course, Xia Duo did not feel regret, because Soul Solidification also meant that connections with the outside world would be interrupted one by one.

This included the link to his physical body.

If there were no step to preserve the soul, solidifying the soul would be equivalent to death; the moment the soul completely solidified, it would be attracted away by the Outer Planes.

However, in order to completely clear away the hidden danger of Mohawi's conscious invasion, Xia Duo had also paid a huge price; one of them was that he had to re-establish the link between his body and soul.

The body here refers to his main body. The conscious invasion did not just affect the soul Projection, because consciousness is singular; in reality, it was his main body's soul that was affected.

Otherwise, wouldn't it have been fine just to discard the avatar? How could the conscious invasion of a Psionic Master be resolved so simply?

Fortunately, Xia Duo had previously mastered the Resurrection Spell, which could rebuild the connection between the body and the soul; otherwise, he really wouldn't have dared to play like this. Moreover, he had made full preparations before performing the "Soul Surgery."