The mercury was an invasive chill that sought to seep into the very soul.
As Mo Jue's fingertips broke the surface of the silver pool, the Scent Weaver Phantoms reacted. In the spiritual vision of his third eye, he saw three translucent, spindly shapes skitter across the surface.
They were horrific things, looking like bloated spiders with oversized, human-like ears that twitched in frantic synchronization with his heartbeat.
They latched onto his pulse, their needle legs vibrating as they began to filter the rhythm of his blood, the chemical composition of his sweat, and the fluctuations of his mood.
Mo Tian, leaned so far over that his shadow swallowed the silver bowl. The white bolts of essence arcing off his shoulders crackled. His grief was a raw and jagged, looking for a target to punch.
"Watch him," Mo Tian hissed, his voice a was suppressed. "Watch the liquid. If his heart skips a single beat when I say my son's name, the weavers will know.
Mo Jue's expression didn't flicker. He looked directly into the silver pool, seeing his own reflection distorted by the heavy metal.
Internally, he didn't even need to exert effort to suppress his guilt; he had none. To a man who had seen the rise and fall of entire civilizations over two millennia, the death of a petty bully in a backwater village was less than a footnote in history.
However, he did have to manage his Phantoms.
The Howling Shadow was a creature of malice. It sensed Mo Tian's hostility and wanted to roar back.
Subtly, Mo Jue reached into the absolute center of his Reliquary, past the Shadow and the Heart. He brushed against the Aeon Erosion Seed.
He didn't draw upon its active power; to do so would have turned the entire academy into a graveyard. Instead, he simply leaned into the Seed's inherent nature: Absolute Stillness.
The Seed's aura acted as a dampening field. To the Scent Weavers, Mo Jue's soul didn't feel innocent or pure. It felt like a vacuum.
Minutes passed in agonizing silence. The courtyard was so silent that the distant sound seemed to thunder in the background. Two hundred students watched, their breaths hitching in their chests.
They expected the mercury to boil, to turn black, to explode with the evidence of Mo Jue's crime.
But the silver liquid remained as bright and reflective as a polished mirror.
The Scent Weavers stopped skittering. Their ears drooped, and they huddled together in the center of the bowl, looking confused. They could find no rhythm to track, no heat to taste, no guilt to devour.
"Nothing," the Academy Elder whispered. His voice was carrying a mixture of relief and genuine bafflement. "The mercury remains untainted. The weavers find no trace of Mo Lin's essence on his skin, nor any ripple of deception in his pulse."
"Impossible!" Mo Tian's roar was like a physical blow. He slammed his fist onto the stone railing and cracks bloomed instantly. "He was the last one to interact with my son! They had a public altercation! The motive is clear as day!"
Mo Jue slowly withdrew his hand from the bowl. The mercury dripped off his skin. He looked up at Mo Tian. He allowed a sliver of coldness to shine through his eyes.
"Motives do not create corpses, Branch Head," Mo Jue said. His voice was a calm. "Skill does. Do you truly believe a Rank 1 student has the capability to erase someone of the same realm in a single night without leaving a trace?"
The argument was a masterpiece. It relied on Mo Tian's own arrogance.
Mo Tian loved his son, but he also worshipped the hierarchy of the Mo Clan. To admit that Mo Jue could have killed Mo Lin was to admit that his son was so weak he wasn't even able to whimper loud enough before vanishing.
The Elder stood up, his heavy silk robes fluttering in the morning breeze. "Mo Tian, enough. It does not lie. If Mo Jue were involved in your son's disappearance, the Scent Weavers would be howling for his blood. We are wasting the Golden Hour of tracking. Every second we spend hovering over this bowl, the trail grows colder."
Mo Tian's face contorted, his teeth grinding with a sound like crushing stone. He looked as if he wanted to tear Mo Jue apart with his bare hands, but the laws of the clan and the evidence of the mercury stayed his hand.
"Expand the search!" Mo Tian screamed, turning his back on the students to bark orders at the elite guards. "If he isn't in the village, then check the forbidden zones. If I find that a wild Phantom has touched a single hair on his head, I will burn that to the ground!"
The guards scrambled, and the lockdown was partially lifted. The heavy iron gates groaned open to allow the search parties to head out.
---------------
As the crowd of students began to disperse, the Academy Elder Mo Zhi signaled for Mo Jue to remain. The old man waited until the courtyard was mostly empty.
The Elder stepped down, his eyes narrowing as he looked at Mo Jue. There was a lingering doubt in the old man's gaze, the curiosity of a scholar.
"You are remarkably calm for a boy whose life was just placed on a chopping block," the Elder noted.
"My heart does not falter for the unremarkable, Elder" Mo Jue replied, his voice maintaining its respectful tone. "I knew I hadn't seen Mo Lin since the training grounds. Why should my heart skip?"
"The truth is a fickle thing," Elder Mo Zhi said with a conspiratorial whisper. "Mo Tian is a man driven by rage. He is dangerous when he is grieving. He will not stop looking for a scapegoat, and you are a target for his resentment"
Mo Jue remained silent, letting the Elder fill the space.
"For your own safety," the Elder continued, "I am removing you from the general rotation. You should not go out of my protection. Mo Tian is influential."
Mo Jue tilted his head slightly. "And my assignment, Elder?"
"The Archive of Refinement," the Elder said. "The clan needs a meticulous record of Phantoms and essences sighted during this search. You refined Eye Shard will assist the archivists in documenting the data. This will keep you under my eye"
Mo Jue bowed deeply. "I am a humble servant of the clan. I will do my best to record the truth."
Inside, dark amusement bubbled. The Archive of Refinement was exactly where he needed to be. It was the central nervous system of the Mo Clan's knowledge. It was where they kept the maps of the deeper ridges, the logs of their failed experiments, and the original research notes on the Blight Walker.
---------------
Mo Jue walked away from the courtyard. He headed toward the northern wing of the academy.
It is a massive structure built into the side of the cliff.
As he entered the cool, dim hallways of the Archive, the smell of old parchment and preserving wax permeated. He was led to a private desk in a secluded corner, piled high with scrolls and ink stones.
The archivists were busy with the emergency.
Finally, alone, Mo Jue leaned back against the cold stone wall and closed his eyes.
He didn't start the archive work. Instead, he reached into the spatial pocket. He pulled out the Blight Scripture.
The tanned skin scroll felt rough. He unrolled it slowly.
The Blight Scripture: Volume One — Calcification of Essence.
The runes were ancient, written in a dialect that had been dead for a long time. To Mo Jue, it was as clear as a child's note. He scanned the first few stanzas, his third eye wide open.
"The marrow is the seat of the soul. To refine the world, one must first turn the marrow into stone. Let the miasma enter not as a guest, but as a sculptor. In the stillness of the bone, the Great Erosion begins..."
This was the secret of the Blight Walker. He hadn't just used Phantoms; he had used his own biological structure as a medium to refine Soul Pale. He had turned his body into a living factory for the resource he needs.
Mo Jue realized that his current cultivation method was vastly different. The Mo Clan's technique only filtered the surface level essence of the atmosphere.
The Blight Scripture, however, utilized the miasma.
He took the chunk of raw Soul Pale he had taken from the vault.
Holding it, he felt a surge of energy. The air around the crystal turned white and crystallized into frost.
Mo Jue began to circulate his essence according to the Scripture's first movement.
He didn't push the essence outward. He drew it deep into his bones. He used the Shapeshifter's Heart to expand the space within his own marrow, creating tiny Micro Reliquaries in his skeletal structure. Then, he drew the chilling aura of the Soul Pale into those spaces.
Pain.
It felt as though he was being injected with magma. His bones groaned under the weight of the mineralization. But the Vitality attribute of the Heart worked in perfect tandem, repairing the micro-fractures as soon as they appeared.
As the first cycle of the Scripture completed, Mo Jue felt a profound change. His Rank 1 Peak-Stage foundation was becoming denser.
If a normal Rank 1 felt like a ripple in a pond, his was starting to feel like an elephant stepped into the pond. Heavy.
He opened his eyes. The chunk of Soul Pale in his hand had shrunk by a fraction, its energy absorbed into his bones.
"In seven days," Mo Jue whispered, "I will consolidate my peak Rank 1 state"
He tucked the scripture and the crystal back into his spatial pocket. He picked up a quill and began to document the first set of reports from the search parties.
Report Log 01 "No trace of the subject found at the southern pass. High concentrations of wild grass worm Phantoms detected. Recommend expanding search"
He wrote with a steady hand, a ghost of a smile on his face.