He threw his own qi down beside the death qi and swirled it around, gathering up the scraps of the gold qi. With his own qi, a bit of phoenix qi, death qi, and the remnants of the gold qi, Hui reformed the character from memory.

The other characters paused. The glow dulled, then faded entirely. Hui’s cobbled-together character flickered a little, not quite stable, but with the other characters backing off, it managed to hold itself together. Hui let out a slow breath, afraid to accidentally jostle it. A foothold. Now, to capitalize on my initial success!

Outside of the barrier, the drama continued. Hui peeked at it, dividing his attention just enough to make sure he had the right expression on. A moment later, he rolled his eyes at himself. Why am I bothering to split my attention when I have mental clones?

Quickly splitting off a mental clone to run his facial expressions and pay attention to the drama, Hui immersed himself back in the barrier.

“Jun Ke. What is your purpose in coming here?” Sa Zhangli demanded.

Jun Ke gave her a look. “You know my purpose.”

She rolled her eyes. “Are you still trying to ‘rescue’ me? I chose this life. I’d rather be on the winning side than the losing side. Ha! You even lost your post as the brothel’s owner, didn’t you? To that weird boy-girl thing.”

“Their name is Bai Xue, and they’re my spouse,” Hui interjected firmly.

Sa Zhangli startled. “You married that?”

Hui looked at Jun Ke. “What do you like about this woman? I can’t understand it.”

Jun Ke met his eyes. “Her body.”

Hui nodded slowly. Ah. Like I said, no accounting for taste.

“My body? You truly see me as so little?” Sa Zhangli snarled.

“I’m starting to see you as that little,” Hui muttered to himself.

“Excuse me?” Sa Zhangli whirled at him, her eyes narrowed.

Hey. Mental clone. No need for spicy takes right now. Let’s stay quiet and out of the argument, okay? I’m busy breaking the barriers, I don’t need someone to notice!

She’s attacking our spouse!

I know, I know, but… yeah, okay. Just… let her be after this, okay? I’m busy!

“Sa Zhangli, come with me. Please. We can make a new life for ourselves. We’ll figure out a way to break you out of the Golden Immortal’s hold,” Jun Ke said earnestly.

“I don’t need it. Leave me out or your mad plans. I’m on the winning side,” Sa Zhangli returned.

In the barrier, Hui looked over his unstable character. Out of all the characters that made up the barrier, only his flickered. Even as it flickered, smaller characters swam between the lines of large characters, full of healing energy.

Huh. The barrier repairs itself, huh? What an interesting barrier! I should copy some of these techniques for my own barriers.

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

The self-repairing is going to make it hard to corrupt… unless. Hui grinned slowly, looking at the tiny characters as they glommed onto the big one. Unless I hijack those small characters! They’re so small, so they’re probably easier to take over than the big ones. And if I’ve hijacked the self-repairing feature, won’t I essentially own a way to ‘repair’ the whole barrier into my barrier?

Excellent, excellent. Hui sent more death qi into the character through the corrupted parts of it. As the self-repairing small characters glommed onto it, he coursed the death qi into them. They glowed, fighting it off, then quickly faded. Again, Hui gathered his qi around the small characters and reformed them from the scraps of gold qi and bits of phoenix qi and death qi until all the small characters flickered, as corrupted as the large character he’d attacked.

The small characters stopped trying to repair the large flickering character. Instead, they turned to the nearest whole, ordinary character and latched on to it, sending their corrupted qi into the heart of the character. The small characters flickered even more strongly, on the verge of going out. Hurriedly, Hui fed the small characters more death qi and phoenix qi, and they recovered. Phew! I didn’t expect it, but I should have. It looks like the small characters are meant to die out after they repair a character, which makes sense! It would also prevent my plan from working. In other words, if I corrupted the characters without being nearby to feed them more qi, the barrier wouldn’t self-destruct. One large character would get destroyed, but the rest of the large characters would survive. But since I’m here to keep the corrupted characters alive, I can have the self-repair characters fully destroy the barrier!

One at a time, the self-repair characters attacked each of the individual large characters. Hui fed them death qi and phoenix qi the whole time, keeping them alive. When a him-sized selection of characters under his feet all flickered, he slowed the pace of the self-repair characters. I don’t want to draw too much attention to the barrier’s decay. All I need is enough decay to break away from this room. I don’t need to collapse the whole barrier.

It would be fun, though…

He shook his head at himself. No, no. Now isn’t the time. I still need to do things in this loop. I can’t blow the whole loop destroying the barrier and getting chased by Inspectors.

Sending his divine sense through the hole in the barrier, Hui peered around on the far side of the hole. I’d hate to burst through the barrier, only to find myself in another room with the same exact barrier. I don’t know why they’d put a barrier this complex on the wall of an internal room, but who knows? Sometimes cultivators are a little over-the-top.

On the far side of the barrier and the wall, Hui found himself in a bustling tea shop, where cultivators ate sweets and drank tea, sharing gossip back and forth. He pursed his lips, a little bit startled. The Inspectors’ office is on top of a tea shop? Shouldn’t they have a building of their own?

Well, on the other hand, it’s not like they use the office much. They’re cultivators. They can do paperwork anywhere, if there’s even paperwork to do!

Hmm… gossip clone, is it a good time to slip out?

Gossip Clone? What? Ugh, whatever. Yeah… Jun Ke and Sa Zhangli are still going at it. I think they’ll be going at it all day.

Recalling the mental clone, Hui put his hands behind his back and put on a placid smile. He shed a snakeskin, adding one for Zhubi and Tian Lan, as well, then compressed his body down. With a wiggle, he escaped through the bottom of the snakeskin’s foot and directly through the floor beneath. The two dragons followed his lead, snaking along after him with a natural quietude. Coming out on the other side, he crawled along the ceiling, up high where no one was looking, then quickly slipped through the door. Outside, he quickly flew away, making a beeline through the city. I don’t have long before they notice. I might end up locked in prison for the rest of the loop, and in the best case, I’ll still be unable to return to the city until the next loop. In fact, I might be unable to return to the city again in the future…

But that’s fine. I can’t do this indefinitely. I don’t know if I’m deteriorating. I might be missing loops, or—

You are. Even I’m…

Right. We’re deteriorating. We need to end this, soon. The Golden Immortal wins the battle of attrition.

But the Elusive Ghost…

After this. There’s something important we need to do first.

Right.

Hui flew around the corner and dropped down in front of a small, dingy room. He returned to his ordinary size as he landed and took a deep breath. “Li Xiang?”