Li Wu learns the Hollow Lotus Tomb

The moss under Li Wu’s boots beats like a sick pulse. Black, tar-like seepage threads up between roots, and the forest’s calm qi shudders apart.

Li Wu feels the absorbed lattice answer the corruption, tugging at his meridians like a hook in deep water. The disturbed line beneath the moss brightens, then twists toward a darker rhythm.

Chen steps closer, careful, while Master Wei shifts into a guarded stance. The forest around them grows tense, as if every branch is listening.

Li Wu can either force the beacon down, or follow its trail back to the source. Somewhere beyond the split root channel, the Shadow Sect’s influence is already moving.

Li Wu lays one palm against the ancient trunk. The bark gives a slow, answering thrum, and the corrupt pulse in the roots slips sideways, as if listening.

He lets a thread of qi sink into the wood, not as force, but as offer. The tree takes it.

A second rhythm forms inside the trunk, quieter than the beacon below, round and steady. It is there, but it is not the source.

The black seepage at the split roots hesitates, then leans toward the tree instead of the mossy wound beneath Li Wu's feet.

Chen and Master Wei both watch the trunk settle into the decoy rhythm, while the original corruption keeps its buried beat. Li Wu has the distraction, and the forest waits for what he does with it.

Li Wu presses deeper, and the bark parts its answer into the lines of his palm. The false pulse stays round and steady, but beneath it another rhythm stutters, buried, narrow, and alive with spite.

His fingers trace the grain. The corruption is not in the visible wound, but knotted under the roots, where the earth pinches shut around a hidden seam.

The beacon below answers the pressure with a dull, trapped throb, while the decoy in the trunk drinks the attention away. A cold draft rises from somewhere under the moss, threading through the roots.

Li Wu feels the hidden source settle into focus, contained for the moment only by his hand and the tree's borrowed rhythm. The forest holds its breath, waiting for whether he seals it here or follows the seam downward.

Li Wu follows the seam by touch, easing his qi into the narrow beat beneath the roots. The hidden line answers, and the corruption peels back in thin, dark threads that his healing flow draws into harmless dampness.

The exposed passage opens under his hands, and the false pulse loses its grip on the split. A cold draft breathes up from below, but the draft now carries only earth and old water, not rot.

A faint sting runs through Li Wu's meridians as the last of the tainted force slides out. The crimson lattice on his skin flickers once, then settles under the strain.

Below the roots, the hidden beat stays put, narrower now and clearly separated from the decoy. The forest waits in uneasy stillness, as if asking whether Li Wu seals the opening with more qi or follows it down.