At first, Li Xiao Bai treated every loss as a price paid for survival.
Loss had always been part of cultivation. Tools broke. Methods burned out. Even the most precious pieces could vanish in a single mistake. He had accepted that long ago, not as philosophy, but as math.
But this was not loss from battle.
This was decay.
Silent. Constant. Predictable.
He noticed it after leaving the dead moon behind, when the emptiness stopped feeling like a path and started feeling like a grinder.
The first sign was small.
A rank three Gu, a common utility insect he had carried for years, began to weaken.
Not from hunger.
Not from damage.
Not from exhaustion.
It started to rot.
He felt it through the thin thread of connection. Its aura thinned. Its instinct dulled. Its response lagged by a fraction, then another fraction, as if something kept sanding down the edges of its function.
A month.
That was all it took.
A Gu that should have lasted years died in a month.
No struggle. No collapse. No final convulsion.
It simply failed to remain itself.
He did not panic.
He observed.
He recorded.
He tested.
The second Gu followed, then the third. Different paths. Different feeding cycles. Different natures.
Same ending.
Sealing them inside storage methods slowed it. It did not stop it. The moment a Gu circulated, touched his essence, and interacted with the surrounding environment, a countdown began.
He did not know the mechanism yet.
But he recognized the taste.
Foreign dao marks.
Not stable inscriptions that sat quietly in matter. Not rules that stayed obedient when left alone.
These marks moved.
They behaved like corrosion.
They clung to essence flow the way dust clung to oil, thin at first, then stubborn. They did not spread violently. They did not erupt.
They simply remained.
And their presence was damage.
Li Xiao Bai drifted onward with concealment wrapped tight and his mind narrowed into procedure.
Step one: confirm the pattern.
He used his information methods as lightly as possible. One heartbeat of activation, then withdrawal. Touch and retreat, the way a cautious hand touched a blade's edge.
The result confirmed his suspicion.
The instant he circulated Gu, faint traces of foreign dao marks attached to the flow. It was not poison. It was not a curse.
It was environment.
Then he discovered what he did not want to find.
The corrosion was not only touching his Gu.
It was beginning to touch him.
He had blamed fatigue on wounds and deprivation. Now he understood the deeper cause.
He was being eroded.
He activated a mirror method for one breath. Just long enough to see.
A translucent image formed in front of him, suspended in emptiness like glass.
Not flesh and bone.
A map.
Essence pathways. Aperture outline. Protective layers around the spiritual core.
At first glance it looked clean.
Then his focus sharpened.
A small region along his side, no larger than a palm, looked wrong.
Not injured.
Not bruised.
Removed.
The boundary around it was uneven, like paper burned at the edges. A faint grey haze clung there, and within that haze, tiny foreign dao marks drifted slowly, patient and hungry.
He shut the method down immediately and sealed his essence.
For several breaths he did nothing but float.
The silence outside was normal.
The silence inside his chest was not.
That portion of his body was being eaten.
Not his soul. The core remained stable. Whenever his attention brushed too close to the edge of danger, the restraint around his spirit tightened, drawing a hard line that the corrosion could not cross.
It was not kindness.
It was limitation.
The message was clear.
The spirit was protected. The rest was negotiable.
His flesh could be filed down.
His essence could be dirtied.
His tools could fail.
As long as the core stayed defined, the restraint considered its duty complete.
That was not comfort. It was a rule.
Li Xiao Bai reviewed the outcome without emotion.
If his body eroded too far, he would lose control. If his Gu decayed too quickly, concealment would fail. If concealment failed for even a breath, something would notice, not with malice, but with appetite.
He had survived by caution so far. By choosing small risks, by retreating when the math did not favor him.
Courage was irrelevant.
Efficiency kept him alive.
Yet even efficiency had a timer now.
Move slowly and conserve tools, and the environment would grind him down over time.
Move quickly and spend tools, and the tools would grind down faster.
Either way, the bill would be paid.
Only the timing could be chosen.
Li Xiao Bai exhaled slowly.
Then decided.
He would shorten exposure.
He would spend resources to reduce time spent in this place, even if spending accelerated decay. A longer journey meant more total erosion. A faster journey meant more immediate cost but fewer hours of contact.
Same principle as burning a bridge to escape a fire.
The bridge would be lost either way.
He adjusted concealment first.
Thin overlapping veils.
Aura suppression.
Misdirection meant to make him uninteresting rather than invisible.
Perfect stealth was fantasy.
He needed to be ignored.
Then he selected a movement Gu.
Rank four. Ordinary once. Precious now.
He fed it controlled essence and activated it.
Drift became motion.
The environment offered no wind, yet he felt resistance like invisible grit, a friction against the edges of his existence whenever he pushed too hard.
Minutes became hours.
Each activation scraped him a little more. Not pain yet. Loss.
He checked once with the mirror method, brief as a blink.
The erased patch had widened by a finger's breadth.
Slow.
Not slow enough.
He increased speed again, aggressive but controlled.
The movement Gu began to weaken. A slight delay in response. A dimming instinct.
He ignored it.
When it died, he would replace it. If replacement killed the next one, he would replace that too.
Then a pressure brushed his senses.
Different from the careless weight of distant giants.
This felt like attention.
Li Xiao Bai froze instantly.
He shut down every active layer. Withdrew Gu. Sealed essence. Flattened his presence until he felt like dead debris.
The pressure lingered.
Then passed.
He remained still longer than necessary, not from fear, but to confirm the rule.
This place was not empty.
It was a sea full of things that reacted to ripples.
Speed was necessary.
Speed had to be controlled.
He accepted the compromise and moved again, quieter than before, concealment layered, activations spaced, direction held steady.
His body was being eaten.
His Gu were dying.
His options were narrowing.
Yet his will did not bend.
He drifted onward faster than before, careful as a thief crossing a roof in darkness.
He did not intend to give the void another easy bite.