At first, Li Xiao Bai treated every loss as a price paid for survival.
In the Gu world, consumption was normal. Primeval essence was spent. Immortal essence was burned. Gu were fed and nurtured, then used until they broke. Even immortal Gu could be lost in a single exchange. One hidden move, one misjudged battlefield, and a lifetime of effort turned to dust.
But this was not a loss caused by battle.
It was decay.
Silent. Constant. Precise.
He noticed it after leaving the moon behind.
The first sign was small, small enough that most people would have dismissed it.
A rank three Gu, a common tool he had carried for years, began to weaken.
Not from hunger.
Not from damage.
Not from exhaustion.
It started to rot.
Li Xiao Bai felt it through the thin thread of connection. The Gu's aura thinned. Its instinct dulled. Its response lagged by a fraction, then another fraction.
A month.
That was all it took.
A rank three Gu that should have lasted years died in a month.
No struggle. No warning. No dramatic collapse.
It faded like a candle in a room with no air.
Li Xiao Bai did not waste a thought on panic.
He observed. He recorded. He tested.
The second Gu followed.
Then the third.
Different types. Different paths. Different feeding methods.
The same end.
Keeping them sealed inside storage methods slowed the decay, but did not stop it. The moment a Gu entered his circulation, touched his essence, and tasted the void, an invisible countdown began.
He did not know the cause yet.
But he recognized the flavor.
Dao marks.
Not the familiar dao marks of the Gu world, where heaven and earth acknowledged paths like rules carved into scripture. Not refinement, wisdom, time, or any ordered structure cultivators learned to exploit.
These dao marks were foreign.
They did not sit quietly inside matter.
They moved.
They behaved like corrosion.
Li Xiao Bai drifted through the void with concealment wrapped around him, thoughts cold and narrow.
If his Gu were being eaten, then something in this environment was feeding on them.
That realization tightened his chest.
Not because he feared losing rank three Gu.
Because he understood what came next.
Rank four would last longer, but still fall. Rank five might endure, but only temporarily. Immortal Gu would resist the longest, yet even immortal Gu had limits.
And without Gu, a Gu Master was nothing.
A mortal with a fancy name.
In the Gu world, that weakness could be avoided by resources, inheritance, and force.
Here, resources meant little. Inheritance was behind him. Force belonged to the things that could eat moons.
He did not stop moving. He could not afford to.
Instead, he used an information method as lightly as possible. A single heartbeat of activation, then immediate withdrawal, like touching heat just long enough to learn it could burn.
The result confirmed his suspicion.
The instant his Gu circulated, faint traces of foreign dao marks clung to the essence flow like dust that refused to be brushed off. They did not spread like poison. They did not invade violently.
They simply existed.
And their existence caused damage.
Then he discovered something worse.
The corrosion was not only attaching to his Gu.
It was beginning to touch him.
He had blamed the fatigue on wounds, depletion, and constant vigilance.
Now he suspected the real cause.
He was being eroded.
Li Xiao Bai chose a mirror method from information path, refined to reflect the state of the self. It relied on perception more than power.
He activated it for a single breath.
A faint translucent image formed in front of him, suspended in emptiness like a sheet of glass.
Not flesh and bone.
A map. His current vessel, the flow of essence, the outline of his aperture, the protective layers woven around his soul.
At first glance, it looked clean.
Then his eyes sharpened, and he saw the flaw.
A small region on his side, no larger than a palm, looked wrong.
Not injured.
Not torn.
Not bruised.
Removed.
Not cut out.
Erased.
The boundary between that region and the rest of his form was uneven, like paper burned at the edges. A faint grey haze clung there, and within the haze, tiny specks of foreign dao marks moved with slow, patient hunger.
Li Xiao Bai withdrew the mirror method immediately and sealed his essence.
For a moment, he only drifted.
The silence of the void was normal.
The silence inside his chest was not.
That region of his body was being eaten.
Not his soul.
His soul remained intact, because the chain tightened the instant his attention touched the danger. A cold pressure wrapped around his spiritual core and drew a hard line the erosion could not cross.
It was not comfort.
It was a constraint.
Li Xiao Bai understood.
The chain was not luck. Not decoration. Not a stray artifact clinging to him.
It was a Rule Path seal.
A lock.
A method written to preserve one thing: definition.
To keep his soul from being erased.
Everything else was negotiable.
His flesh could be damaged.
His essence could be dirtied.
His Gu could decay.
As long as his soul remained stable, the chain would consider its duty fulfilled.
In the Gu world, soul damage was a nightmare. Difficult to heal, easy to worsen. Many immortals feared it more than losing limbs.
Here, the chain protected the most precious part of him.
But the cost was becoming clear.
If his body eroded too far, his ability to act would collapse. If his Gu died too quickly, his concealment would fail. If his concealment failed for even a breath, something would notice.
He had survived so far by caution.
By retreat.
By choosing the smallest risks.
In the Gu world, some would call that cowardice.
Li Xiao Bai called it efficiency.
He did not fight what he did not need to fight. He did not waste strength proving pride. He did not gamble his life for a pointless victory.
He fled because fleeing kept him alive.
Yet now, even survival carried a timer.
Move slowly and conserve Gu, and the void would eat him over time.
Move quickly and spend Gu, and the void would eat his tools faster.
Either way, the bill would be paid.
Only the timing could be chosen.
Li Xiao Bai exhaled slowly.
Then decided.
He would accelerate.
He would spend resources to shorten the time spent in this environment. Using Gu would quicken decay, but a shorter journey meant fewer total hours of exposure.
It was the same logic as burning a bridge to escape a fire.
The bridge would be lost either way.
He adjusted concealment first.
Thin, overlapping veils.
Aura suppression.
A subtle misdirection that bent attention away and guided a gaze to the wrong point.
Perfect stealth was impossible.
He needed to be uninteresting.
Then he selected a movement Gu.
Rank four. Ordinary in the Gu world, precious here.
He fed it a controlled surge of essence and activated it.
Drift became motion. The void offered no wind, yet he felt resistance like invisible grit where foreign Rule Path residue brushed against the edges of his existence.
He accelerated toward the distant solar system.
Minutes became hours.
Each activation scraped him a little more. Not pain yet, only 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.
His movement Gu began to weaken. He felt it through the link. A slight delay. A dimming instinct.
He ignored it.
When it died, he would use another.
A faint pressure brushed his senses.
Li Xiao Bai froze instantly.
This pressure was different.
Not the careless weight of a giant drifting past.
This felt like attention.
He sealed his essence completely. He withdrew every active Gu. He pressed his aura down until even he could barely feel himself.
The pressure lingered.
Then passed.
Li Xiao Bai remained still long after it vanished.
Only then did he move again, slower and quieter, not out of fear, but because he had learned the rule.
The void was not empty.
It was a sea full of things that sensed ripples.
Acceleration was necessary.
Acceleration must be controlled.
He accepted the compromise and continued toward the solar system, concealment layered, thoughts sharp, soul held tight by the chain.
His body was being eaten.
His Gu were dying.
His options were narrowing.
Yet his will did not bend.
As long as he could still move forward, the path remained.
And as long as the path remained, immortality remained possible.
Li Xiao Bai drifted onward, faster than before, careful as a thief crossing a roof in the dark.
The void did not forgive mistakes.
He did not intend to make one.