Outworld Liberators-Chapter 153: Gauge Point’s Resolution to Cultivate Being Tested

Chapter 153: Gauge Point’s Resolution to Cultivate Being Tested

The Tiyanak was still present, hovering at the edge of the work with that hungry interest he always wore.

He had been asked to watch for qi deviation and any anomaly. Radeon could see the same things, everyone knew that, but Radeon did not gamble on certainty when a second set of eyes cost him nothing.

The Tiyanak decided to make it cost someone else instead.

He gathered a few ghosts and fetched a stretcher. With a few linen cloths thrown over the frame, it looked like they carried a body.

Then he ran down the stairs with the ghosts in tow, tears shining in his eyes like polished coins.

Upstairs the operation had already been going for an hour.

Gauge Point waited below and worked himself raw with fear. His legs fidgeted. His hands were slick.

He kept wiping his forehead even though the air was cold.

Footsteps. Fast. Many. He snapped his head toward the sound.

The Tiyanak appeared first, face twisted with grief he did not own. Behind him, the ghosts bore the stretcher, completely covered.

Gauge Point had no spiritual qi to probe. He only had eyes, and eyes were easy to lie to. All he saw was a shrouded shape carried with care.

Dead. Spice Cure was dead. The operation failed. 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

His body screamed at him to leave. To bow once at the pavilion door and never return.

To accept the safest life that still had breath in it. His feet even started to obey.

Then his mind grabbed a different memory and gambled against instinct.

Back then, Radeon tested the Ironbuck Miners. The ones who endured did not just survive. Their lives became a far cry from what they were.

They ate when they wished. They earned fortunes with mere spittle and smiles.

It had not been kindness. It had been a challenge, and the prize had been real.

Gauge Point’s breath hitched.

’This is the same thing.’ The thought did not calm him, but it pinned him in place.

The Tiyanak watched him waver and felt a private irritation. He wanted the boy to break. He wanted to taste that crack.

"So unfortunate," the Tiyanak wailed. "Alas. Alas. Life, a precious thing. Gone just like that."

Gauge Point had just stood when he froze again.

He wanted to rip the linen away and look, but the ghosts were already moving past him, disappearing into the corridor as if they had never been there at all.

Then a voice called from above, calm as stone.

"Gauge Point. Come."

His stomach dropped.

’Dead. I am going to die here.’

His throat worked. His legs turned toward the door again, halfway to running, halfway to surrender.

He stopped himself, teeth chattering hard enough to ache. Instead of obeying fear, he threw his words upward like a hooked rope.

"Master. Will I live?"

Silence answered him. One breath. Two. Three.

Then a chuckle drifted down, dry as old parchment.

"Boy. In cultivation, life and death are uncertain. If you are helpless at a meager strife, then be mortal and find a wife. No one here will be petty enough to trouble you."

Gauge Point’s hands shook. He did not want to wager his life. He wanted certainty, even if certainty was small.

But the moment he turned away, he felt the weight of his own choice closing around his throat. He put one hand on the first stair.

His fingers were cold. He climbed. Not walking. Crawling, the way a man crawls out of a pit. Each flight of stairs made his heartbeat loud in his ears.

At the top he pushed the door open and stumbled inside. A paper was placed into his hand.

Two options. Not the same three Spice Cure had been offered.

The first was the Dao Mechanism Spirit Constitution. A path that made him a spirit. With it, he could inhabit any body, human or feral beast.

He could communicate in any language. He could understand any art, from crafts to combat, as if the world itself wanted to teach him.

The second was the Infinite Metamorphosis Engine Constitution. A physique forged constantly by his own hand.

Simple spirit stones to grand arrays, integrated piece by piece. Each body part could be replaced. Each choice would shape him.

It used spiritual energy to nourish mind and soul, growing a unique meridian pathway that ran through the manifestation of one’s soul.

Both choices did not preserve his flesh. They took everything and remade it, including the soul.

Gauge Point stared at the words until they blurred, then forced his eyes to focus.

The first choice felt safe. Dao. Understanding. Certainty. A road that many had walked, wide enough to promise success.

But he found himself looking back at the word endless. He swallowed.

’What is the end of Dao?’ The question rose uninvited.

If Dao was only one summit, then what lay past it. If he became only Dao, what did he become blind to?

He did not want to be misled by his own lack of understanding, so he lifted his head and searched for Radeon in the room.

"Master. What does Infinite Metamorphosis mean?"

Radeon did not dismiss the question. He did not hide a mans future from his own hands.

"The Dao is one path," Radeon said. "With that physique, you can fold in science, arcana, occult work, shamanism, whatever fits."

Gauge Point felt the answer crack something open in him.

Possibility. Other realms. New places. New powers.

A life that did not end at the first ceiling he could name.

Excitement flared, sharp enough to cut through fear.

"I chose Infinite Metamorphosis Engine Constitution."

"Smart choice," Radeon said. "Come. Let’s begin."

Gauge Point lay on the cold marble and let his eyes sweep the room. Spice Cure was not there. No body. No blood. No shrouded stretcher.

His chest loosened in a shaky rush, half relief and half shame at how easily he had believed the worst.

Calyx stood nearby with his staff. For a moment, he had the urge to join the Tiyanak’s cruelty, to squeeze another reaction out of the boy.

He only shook his head. Then he swung the staff down toward Gauge Point’s head.

Body, mind, and soul split once again.

This time, the body was not treated like something to be repaired. It was treated like a husk. Discarded.

Gauge Point’s essence was compressed down until it no longer looked like a boy waiting for permission.

It became a rod artifact in Radeon’s hands, a hard little prison for everything that made Gauge Point himself.

The Tiyanak chuckled when he saw what Radeon shaped the rod into.

It was a man’s organ, made with a crude humor that only the dead seemed to enjoy.

Radeon did not laugh. He understood the resentment men carried, the petty anger, the quiet dread, the way some cursed cultivation for taking that part of them away.

He did not want that problem lodged in Gauge Point’s future. So he made one anyway.

"Put it here," Radeon said.

A metal body was dragged forward. It hit the marble with a weight that made the floor give a small complaint, a faint crack traveling like a hairline fracture through stone.

A forged shell, built from cold steel ore they had looted from the two cities they now owned.

Arrays dotted every joint for extreme mobility. Lightness runes lay layered beneath, so that once a soul inhabited it, the bulk would move like a feather’s lie.

The body could withstand a hundred full strikes from early nascent embryo cultivators. That was impressive, but it was not the focus.

The focus was the soul.

Needles shot from Radeon’s sleeves and pierced Gauge Point’s spirit. The soul body writhed, pain rippling through it in waves no scream could carry.

The needles went in and out, carving grooves into what had never been meant to be carved.

"Infuse soul energy," Radeon said.

Ghost attendants poured soul energy in. The spirit stabilized, but it still trembled, like a candle flame forced to stand in wind.

Then the attendants brought the attachments.

Small half cylinders, each no wider than a chopstick, with a coned opening and multiple fine hairs protruding from one end.

Soul Anchors, made from ethereal copper common in the ghost realm. Each one looked harmless until it touched the spirit, then it felt like a hook finding flesh.

To keep Gauge Point alive through the process, Radeon infused strands of luck into the work.

Not enough to make him invincible. Just enough to keep the knife from slipping at the worst moment. A tiny tilt in the boy’s cosmic coin.

Each insertion made the soul flicker, as if it might be snuffed out. That was normal. Souls were not meant to be modified this way.

What they were doing spat in the face of natural order and expected the world to swallow it.

One anchor. Ten. Thirty. Gauge Point’s soul shuddered.

The texture of it looked grainy, sand like, as if a single hard breath could scatter him.

Ninety-nine.

By then, his soul was already crumbling at the edges, breaking down in silent pieces.