The aftermath of the Grey Rot plague was a somber, laborious affair. Elder Lihua and a humbled Sun Ling led the relief effort in the Azure Province, overseeing the careful distribution of the silver "solvent" Wei had created. The results were exactly as he had predicted, and precisely as he had designed. The shimmering liquid, when applied, did not restore life. Instead, it reversed the petrification, dissolving the hard, grey stone and leaving behind the still, silent bodies of the victims.
It was a grim, heartbreaking task, but for the families of the afflicted, it was a mercy. It allowed for funerals, for burials, for a sense of closure that the silent, stone statues had denied them. The name of Elder Wei was spoken in hushed, reverent tones throughout the province. He was not a savior in the traditional sense, but a bringer of a final, necessary peace, a figure whose mastery over death had allowed them to reclaim their dead. The narrative was perfect.
Wei, however, took no part in the cleanup. The moment he had handed over the vials of the solvent, he had turned his back on the entire affair. The problem was solved, his objectives had been achieved, and the tedious logistics of dealing with the aftermath held no interest for him. He returned to the Verdant Serpent Sect and, to the surprise of many, immediately declared his intention to enter another period of deep seclusion.
His reasoning, presented to the First Elder, was flawless. "The battle with the Bone Sage and the subsequent creation of the solvent have pushed my understanding of my Dao to its absolute limit," he had explained, his face a mask of feigned exhaustion. "I stand at the precipice of a breakthrough, but my foundation is unstable. I must consolidate my insights, or I risk a catastrophic cultivation deviation."
No one questioned him. The new elders, though wary of his rapidly growing influence, could not argue with such a classic and understandable reason. To deny a hero the chance to secure his cultivation base would be a grave insult. The First Elder granted his request immediately, ordering that Silent Bloom Peak be placed under the highest level of protection, ensuring no one would disturb him.
With the entire sect acting as his unwitting guards, Wei sealed the entrance to his pagoda. The world outside, with its politics and celebrations, faded away once more. He finally had what he craved: absolute solitude and a treasure trove of new materials to play with.
His first priority was his inner world. He focused his consciousness into his spiritual sea, where the Lesser World Tree now stood on its small island of reality. The tree was healthy, but its growth had stagnated. It craved higher-quality energy.
Wei did not hesitate. From his storage ring, he retrieved the portion of the True Dragon's Blood he had secretly siphoned off. It was a swirling, golden liquid, pulsing with a life force so potent it seemed to be a living creature in its own right. He carefully poured a single drop onto the roots of the Lesser World Tree.
The effect was explosive. The tree, which had been shimmering with a gentle, silver light, was suddenly engulfed in a radiant, golden flame. It began to grow at a visible rate, its branches stretching, its trunk thickening. The island of reality around it expanded dramatically, the small courtyard-sized space growing to encompass an area as large as a small mountain valley. The air within the inner world became thick with a rich, pristine spiritual energy, a perfect environment for growing any spiritual plant. He felt a brief pang of regret as he realized the world's laws were too new and unstable to support his own cultivation; its purpose was purely for horticulture. The time acceleration effect, however, had increased dramatically. A year on the outside would now be two hundred years of growth within his world.
This was the foundation he needed. A secure, private laboratory with an accelerated time scale.
Next, he turned his attention to the pulsating, black pearl he had condensed from the Grey Rot curse—the Heart of the Curse. It was a thing of pure, refined necrotic law. He also brought out the inheritance he had absorbed from the Bone Sage, the profound knowledge of necrotic arts and the conduit to the Netherworld.
For the next five years of his seclusion, he did not focus on his own cultivation. He dedicated himself entirely to his research. He was a Spirit Emperor now, and his understanding of the world's laws was on a completely different level. He began a project that would have been unthinkable before: the creation of a poison that did not just affect the body or the soul, but the very fabric of space itself.
He used the Ethereal Void Crystal he had acquired, studying its spatial laws. He combined its essence with the refined necrotic energy of the Heart of the Curse. His goal was to create a 'Spatial Toxin', a poison that could destabilize a teleportation array, corrode the walls of a storage ring from the inside out, or even create a small, localized tear in reality. It was a concept so heretical that it would have gotten him branded as a demon by the orthodox cultivation world. To Wei, it was the next logical step in his art.
The process was one of endless, fascinating failure. His first attempts were catastrophic, creating unstable spatial fissures within his inner world that devoured entire patches of his newly grown herb garden before he could collapse them. But with each failure, he learned. He used the Bone Sage's knowledge of arrays to create containment fields, and his own profound understanding of toxicology to find the delicate balance between the chaotic nature of void energy and the corrosive nature of necrotic law.
While he was engrossed in his research, the sect outside continued to change. The new elders, no longer cowed by the immediate crisis, began to assert their influence. Factions formed. The stern elder from the Soaring Sword Peak, a man named Jian Feng, began to quietly question the "official" story of the Blackwood Sect's downfall and the Grey Rot plague. It was all too neat, too perfect. He could not find a flaw in the narrative, but his instincts told him that Elder Wei's role in these events was far more significant than was being publicly acknowledged. He began to gather a following of younger, more ambitious deacons, forming a faction that valued martial prowess and direct action over what they saw as the "unorthodox" methods of the Poison Elder.
Wei's friends, Jin, Mei, and Guan, formed a bulwark of support around Silent Bloom Peak, defending his reputation and ensuring his seclusion was honored. The sect, while prosperous on the surface, was slowly being divided by the long shadow Wei had cast.
Ten years into his seclusion, Wei finally had his breakthrough. He stood before his Cauldron of Myriad Venoms in his inner world. He had succeeded in creating a single, stable drop of his new creation. He called it 'Void-Bane'. It was a liquid that looked like a perfect sphere of absolute blackness, absorbing all light.
To test it, he took out a low-grade spiritual sword he had looted from the Blackwood Sect. He placed a single, microscopic particle of Void-Bane on the blade.
There was no sizzle, no corrosion. Instead, the space occupied by the sword simply ceased to exist. The weapon vanished from reality with a faint, popping sound, leaving no trace it had ever been there. It was not destroyed; it was erased.
A slow, deeply satisfied smile touched Wei's lips. This was his new masterpiece.
It was at this moment of quiet triumph that a summons pierced through the heavy formations of his pagoda. It was not a normal communication jade. It was a blood-red talisman that flared to life in his sealed chamber—a direct, emergency summons from the reclusive Sect Master himself. Such a summons had not been issued in over two hundred years.
Wei's smile faded, replaced by a look of cold, analytical curiosity. For the Sect Master to break his seclusion, the matter had to be of the utmost, world-shaking importance.
He stood up, his ten-year project complete, his cultivation as a Spirit Emperor now fully consolidated and hidden. He dissolved the seals on his pagoda and stepped out into the world once more. The air of Silent Bloom Peak was the same, but the world beyond it was not. A new, far more interesting challenge had just presented itself.