CHAPTER 92: MIND HEX

Harry sat cross-legged, trying to improve his soul cultivation. But before that, he checked his dantian.

He rarely checked it since he had nothing to do with it. The only thing he could do was cycle the energy in his body to lessen fatigue and recuperate lost Qi.

When he found his cultivation plummeting, his mind wandered to his dantian. As he cycled his Qi through his body, he could see energy seeping out of his dantian as clearly as day.

It was hard for Harry to digest, so he meditated, and his senses enabled him to see his dantian.

It looked like a pot, inside which a light blue energy was swirling.

Everything looked normal, but just as he was about to withdraw, his eyes fell on a dark blue root in the middle of his dantian.

The blue color of the root camouflaged among the blue Qi energy. Harry would have missed it if he hadn’t noticed the imbalance in the swirling pattern.

As Harry looked closely, it gave him an ominous feeling, as if it was moving independently giving sign of life.

His senses snapped back, and he looked toward the three blue fruits lying beside his bed.

He skimmed through his space ring—there were piles of corpses, some weapons, and a lot of crystals. Then there were luxury items like chairs, a camp, a bed, a pair of shoes.

He ignored all of them until his eyes landed on some paper and a pen. He brought them out instantly.

Before Harry could look inside the pages, he saw words written on the front cover: "Escape."

His mind struggled to comprehend the meaning, but he forced himself to write two other words beside the previous one:

"Fruit danger."

He didn’t remember when he wrote the last word, and his heavy mind told him that soon, he wouldn’t remember writing the new ones either.

As he put the paper back, his mind lightened, losing the will to fight back against the constant pressure.

The moment he relaxed, everything that happened in the past five minutes vanished from his memory.

He sat cross-legged again, trying to train his soul cultivation, but noticed his energy leaking from his dantian.

He checked his dantian and saw the blue root. As he stared at it, his gaze shifted to the three fruits beside his bed.

Then came a struggle—a struggle of will... the thought of the fruit began to slip away. He hurriedly grabbed a pen and paper. As he was about to write something, his eyes fell upon the words:

"Escape"

"Fruit danger."

He stood up and vanished into the shadows, fighting mentally against something that was fighting him.

His will clashed with a vague presence.

As he approached the edge of the settlement in the dark night, he emerged from the shadows. Looking at himself, he was perplexed.

"Why am I here?" It didn’t make sense. Why would he come all the way out here? He tried to recall something that could explain it.

His brows furrowed when he realized he had no clue why he was standing there so far from his room. He looked up the tree whose branches blocked the moonlight.

Harry sighed dejectedly and returned to his room. His eyes were heavy, as if he had fought an arduous battle. He lay in bed.

The night passed, and the sun rose. Harry’s eyes opened, feeling refreshed. His mind felt clear, ready for anything—but then he realized he had nothing to do.

He looked beside his bed and grabbed a fruit, chewing it happily. The sweet taste lifted his mood.

Then he sat cross-legged again to cultivate his soul energy—only to realize his energy was leaking.

He checked his cultivation and saw that he had fallen from the peak of level 6 to the average of level 6. It wasn’t temporary—he had lost it permanently.

He was about to check his dantian but flinched.

"Wait... wait," Harry stopped himself.

He pondered, According to the rate I’m losing energy, I shouldn’t have dropped a quarter of my level in mere minutes. This could only mean it’s been happening for a while.

Things weren’t adding up. If it had been going on for so long, why was he only noticing now? It wasn’t hard for him to detect energy leakage—so why not earlier?

He focused seriously, trying to remember what happened earlier—but nothing came to mind.

"Mind hex," he blurted out.

It was the only explanation.

It wasn’t that I hadn’t noticed earlier—I had noticed before, maybe multiple times—but kept forgetting.

I must have checked my dantian before. Something about it caused the memory loss.

"I’m always forgetting something related to specific things," Harry concluded.

Strangely, these theories didn’t vanish from his memory.

He felt nothing unusual—it was all normal. He had expected to forget these thoughts if it was really a mind hex, but he didn’t.

That led Harry to question himself—was he just making it all up?

He didn’t know what happened in the previous cycles, but his mind was sharp enough to piece together this information. Still, he was human.

Random theories without concrete proof or any confirmation from another person were hard to accept.

For now, he had two possible conclusions: either he was just imagining things... or certain triggers caused him to forget.

If it was the latter, he was sure he hadn’t encountered those triggers yet—but that only made him more tense, because those triggers might be the key.

His mind wandered—from the happiest moments to the darkest atrocities like murder and cannibalism—but nothing triggered anything.

He didn’t forget anything.

He gave up. His trembling hands reached into his ring. He remembered taking out the paper and pen with the intention to write—but not what he wrote.

That alone was the only evidence supporting his theory. But now he was at a stalemate. If he didn’t read it, he might never figure out what was happening. To his current self, everything seemed normal—except for the energy loss.

He used all the ways he had to fortify his mental defence, everything he learned from the academy.

And then he looked at the paper:

"Escape"

"Fruit danger."