Each thread resembled a secret stream, carrying vital soul energy toward some unseen abyss. Yet the cultivators remained rapt, convinced they were listening to esoteric wisdom. Serene smiles rested on their faces, as if wrapped in a pleasant dream.
“Using hypnosis to pull out their souls… That’s beyond cruel!” Flaxseed hissed. His fists clenched until the knuckles blanched, rage simmering like magma beneath cracked stone. Pictures of innocent cultivators having their spirits stripped flickered behind his eyes, stirring grief as sharp as his fury.
On the dais, Edison stiffened, his gaze sweeping the crowd before fastening on Jared and Flaxseed. A predator’s alertness flashed in those eyes, the way a leopard pauses when the wind shifts.
“Why do the two of you remain open-eyed? Do you doubt the depth of my teaching?” Edison boomed, a thread of menace coiled beneath the warmth. A jolt shot through Jared’s chest. He knew their probing had not gone unnoticed.
“My friend, your discourse is undoubtedly profound,” Jared answered with a calm smile. “We are newcomers to this method of guiding spiritual energy into one’s body. Before closing our eyes, we wished to clarify a few points.”
His words emerged as steady as moonlit water, impossible to read. The Edison narrowed his eyes and let them roam over the pair, searching for the smallest crack. The stare felt like twin blades scraping across Jared’s and Flaxseed’s skin.
“Oh? What troubles you, then? Speak, and I may dispel your doubts,” said, probing. Despite the cordial tone, the offer hung like bait on a barbed hook. Jared’s mind whirred. Letting suspicion fester any longer would ruin everything.
“Before one can draw the energy, it is said the heart must be cleared of every stray thought. Could you, sir, demonstrate the correct way to achieve that clarity?” Jared asked calmly.
Jared’s question had sounded harmless, just another query from an eager novice, but beneath its plain surface it slid like a well-oiled blade, slicing the gold-robed cultivator’s attention clean away from everything else.
“Purifying the mind,” Edison answered, his tone now satin-smooth, “Relies on banishing every stray thought until nothing but stillness remains. Sit, breathe, and let meditation ferry your heart back to perfect calm.”
The edge In his voice softened, a faint nod acknowledging that Jared’s inquiry had pleased him.
“Much obliged,” Jared said, bowing just enough to pass for reverence. “We will sit at once and follow your guidance.”
Jared tugged lightly on Flaxseed’s patched sleeve. Both men folded their legs, closed their eyes, and adopted the placid masks of seasoned meditators. Beneath that still surface, their spiritual senses stretched outward, nerves taut, mapping every flicker of movement inside the cavernous hall.
Seeing their apparent compliance, Edison’s eyes glimmered with approval before returned to his sermon.
His voice billowed through the incense-thick air, a rhythmic hum that pressed against the senses like a lullaby woven with hidden hooks.
All the while, pale soul threads kept drifting from the cultivators’ brows, drawn inexorably toward the shallow channels carved into the dais.
Minutes crawled by. Outwardly, Jared and Flaxseed appeared absorbed in holy doctrine, inwardly, they diagrammed the Celestial Palace’s unseen machinery, piece by sinister piece.
Beneath the platform, ebony runes pulsed like hungry organs, siphoning those threads and funneling their essence straight into the yawning mouth of the Soul Urn.
The urn, ancient and mottled, behaved like a bottomless well, swallowing each luminous strand without the faintest sign of reaching capacity.
“If this keeps up, who knows how many of us will be bled dry,” Flaxseed murmured, shaping the words so only Jared could hear. Concern trembled beneath his rough-hewn whisper.
“We have to break their apparatus soon, or the aftermath will be unthinkable,” Jared replied. a curt nod underscoring his resolve.
