Chapter 585: The Scales of Price

Mo Ling walked up to the pool of mercury and looked at the recording slate lying within.

He knew that if he initiated the teleportation, it would most likely succeed.

But just then, he hesitated. A strong sense of unease suddenly welled up in his heart, warning him not to do it.

‘If I erase the root cause, will none of this ever have happened? The Black Calamity won’t spread, and it will never have reached the Hua Sheng Islands.’

‘The Red Spirit Flower won’t appear, and I’ll never have met Xi…’

Remembering those calls of “Senior,” Mo Ling suddenly realized what a regret it would be if none of this had ever happened.

Mo Ling slowly turned to face the mysterious healer.

“What’s your name?”

“Ladi.”

Mo Ling froze for a moment. He suddenly remembered that he had met this Elder named “Ladi” back on Senluo Island. However, that was inside a manager’s Healing Space, and it hadn’t been the real Elder Ladi.

He never expected to actually meet him again here.

“Elder Ladi, have you used the Root Cause Healing Method many times?”

“Not too many. Only when I encounter extremely stubborn illnesses,” Elder Ladi answered truthfully.

“Do you remember the timeline from before the change?”

“Of course. The one who initiates the Root Cause Healing Method does not forget what happened.”

“If I erase this recording slate, will the disaster on the Hua Sheng Islands never have happened?” Mo Ling asked earnestly.

“If the root cause is eliminated, of course nothing that follows will happen.”

“But…”

Mo Ling didn’t finish his sentence. His heart was filled with conflict.

To save the entire Hua Sheng Islands, he would have to sacrifice the Red Spirit Flower. Xi would forget him—this “Senior”—and everything he had experienced on this island would vanish like a phantom bubble.

‘Am I being too selfish?’ In the face of the Hua Sheng Islands’ safety, this wasn’t an unacceptable sacrifice.

‘A plant that shouldn’t have existed in the first place, and some emotions that aren’t all that important…’

The Red Spirit Flower’s innocent words echoed in his ears. Mo Ling knew what he should choose, but he just couldn’t bring himself to abandon it all.

Watching the conflicted Mo Ling, Elder Ladi slowly walked over and stood beside him.

“You aren’t ready to bear the price of the Root Cause Healing Method,” he said faintly.

“Price?”

“Yes. Everything in the Abyss comes with a price, doesn’t it? Even when the scales of that price have already tipped to one side, a choice still feels impossible to make. The Abyss is always this cruel.”

Standing beside Mo Ling, Elder Ladi slowly began to recount his experience using the Root Cause Healing Method for the first time:

“Back then, we encountered a kind of thought plague…”

It was a plague that spread through thought. It would occupy a creature’s every thought, infecting and replicating within their consciousness. It could be a phrase, an image, a word, or even a single character.

Take a word, for example. In the initial stages of infection, the patient’s mind would occasionally wander to this word. Gradually, they would lose their ability to concentrate. While trying to think of other things, their thoughts would suddenly jump to silently chanting this word in their mind. The patient couldn’t control this, and would only think of it more and more.

In the final stages of the infection, the word would completely occupy the patient’s brain, and they would lose the ability to think about anything else entirely.

At this point, the thought plague would begin to spread. The patient would incessantly repeat the word, allowing it to infect others through language or other media, thus spreading the plague.

At that time, Ladi and some companions used the Root Cause Healing Method to contain this plague. They planned to go back in time and erase its source.

The patients’ habitat was on a Sky Island on the verge of collapse. After Ladi and his companions returned to the past, they went to that Sky Island and began to investigate the source of the thought plague.

Soon, they found the first patient, who was also the origin of the plague.

But to their surprise, that patient was a scientist who had just discovered a way to stop the Sky Island from collapsing.

And this “method” was the very thought plague that later spread throughout the patient’s entire people.

Ladi and his companions had never imagined that a “method” could become a thought plague. The scientist was excited, wanting to pass on this method that could stop the Sky Island’s collapse and save his entire people.

However, to eliminate the plague, they would have to make the scientist forget the method during the initial stage of his infection.

Ladi and his companions were caught in a dilemma.

They only wanted to treat a disease, but they had run into an impossible problem:

Let the plague spread, and the patient’s people would soon be destroyed.

Eliminate the source of the plague, and the patient’s people would be destroyed by the Sky Island’s collapse.

The disease would destroy an entire people, but the price of treating the disease was also the destruction of an entire people. Ladi and his companions had no idea what to choose.

“Let’s just leave. Let them fend for themselves…” one of his companions suggested.

If the healers acted, they would become the source of the destruction. If they didn’t want blood on their hands, the best course of action was to turn a blind eye.

“But this plague could very well spread to other races. We are healers. Containing the spread of a plague is our responsibility,” another companion retorted. Their mission was simply to cure the disease; they only needed to cure the disease and shouldn’t concern themselves with anything else.

“Maybe they’ll find another way. Their Sky Island might not necessarily collapse. Since that scientist could come up with one method, he can surely come up with another.”

“And what if he can’t? Can you live with the extinction of an entire people on your hands?”

The companions argued, unable to reach a decision. The hearts of healers are inherently fragile; they are excessively compassionate, which made them even more sensitive and conflicted when facing such a choice.

No matter what they chose, their hearts would be tormented.

Responsibility and guilt weighed down on the healers. Even knowing the cause of the illness, they couldn’t bring themselves to act.

To excise the disease, they had to kill the patient—a concept that conflicted with their long-held beliefs.

“Are we treating the disease? Or are we saving people?”

…

As he spoke of this, a rare tremor entered Elder Ladi’s voice. Even after so much time, he still couldn’t find peace when he recalled the choice he faced back then.

Mo Ling couldn’t contain his curiosity and pressed, “So what did you do in the end? Did you choose to eliminate the root cause, or did you turn a blind eye?”

Hearing Mo Ling’s question, Elder Ladi didn’t give a direct answer. He simply patted Mo Ling’s shoulder gently.

“If it were you, what would you do?”