Genshin Impact's Incense Burner Of Liyue.

Gu Sanqiu rushed into the archive room and, relying on his memory, flipped through the records until he found the text he had been looking for.

"Our lineage seems to harbor a heart demon within. If this technique is recorded, there will inevitably be moments of uncontrollable impulses. Therefore, the method has been erased."

"This is it."

Gu Sanqiu frowned. He remembered finding this sentence when he had been searching for records about the Killing Intent Battle Soul.

Back then, he assumed it was because their family's reckless genes were too strong, and the elders were afraid that their less sensible descendants might do something foolish. So, they removed all related mentions.

But now, revisiting this sentence with his current situation in mind, it felt different.

"What's going on? Does my family really have a heart demon? Could it be some reckless emperor existing in spiritual form within our bloodline, just waiting for a chance to forcefully revive itself?"

Gu Sanqiu placed the book back on the shelf. "If it's really a heart demon, then why does this single line give anything away, yet no other record mentions it?"

"Well, trying out a method wouldn't hurt."

Gu Sanqiu made his way to the courtyard, gripping his spear tightly. He chose an open spot, stood still, closed his eyes, and began to channel his spiritual will to make contact with his soul.

The heart demon was an incredibly broad concept and could objectively be viewed as a form of mental illness, an external manifestation of one's fears.

Of course, there was also another definition, the extraterrestrial demon, which leaned closer to the God of Calamity category.

If it wasn't some big-shot capable of hiding within every strand of spiritual will, then contacting the soul directly would definitely be the fastest method.

After a few minutes, Gu Sanqiu felt something stir within him. The great cauldron inside his body trembled violently as if it were boiling. A wisp of white flame surged through his meridians and reached his head, transforming into an elemental rune that adhered to the place where his soul resided.

Boom!

Gu Sanqiu's spiritual will suddenly spiraled out of control, and his body convulsed uncontrollably as a result.

He quickly plunged his spear into the ground to stabilize himself.

"Damn it. If I'd been sitting on a chair just now, my head would've smashed through the table."

Gu Sanqiu spat out a mouthful of blood. That brief moment of spiritual turmoil caused his body to go haywire. The sensation was comparable to getting sucker-punched by Yaya's whale fist without a shield.

Breaking the table would've been minor, but failing his experiment because of something so trivial would've been truly aggravating.

The rune formed by the white flame trembled before dissipating under the contamination of a pitch-black spiritual will.

Gu Sanqiu shuddered again. This pitch-black spiritual will came from within his own soul, yet under his perception, it felt as foreign as an invader.

Dark, lifeless, despairing, mad—it was something that no collection of negative words in this world could truly describe. It left Gu Sanqiu utterly stunned.

"(Bleep)—why the hell is this kind of thing in my soul?"

At this point, Gu Sanqiu could only remain standing by leaning heavily on his spear. Under the impact of the black spiritual will, he truly understood the feeling of bleeding from every orifice.

Accompanying a sense of all-encompassing annihilation and terror was a madness pushed to its absolute extreme—a killing intent that sought to destroy everything in sight!

The plants, the buildings—they all needed to be destroyed. Even the earth itself should be annihilated and turned into nothingness!

No, even that wouldn't be enough. Even nothingness itself had to be obliterated, destroyed until the very last fragment was wiped away, even if it meant self-annihilation!

Die, die, die!

"Die your ass! Who the hell dares to shout nonsense inside my head?"

Gu Sanqiu gritted his teeth and hurled his spear far away. Then he looked up toward the direction of the Incense Hall.

"So this is the so-called heart demon? What the hell is it? Could it be that my ancestors provoked too many demon gods, and after they ascended to calamity spirits, they collectively cursed my family? They can't be that smart, right?"

Clutching his head, Gu Sanqiu slowly stood up. Just now, it felt as if his soul had been on the verge of being torn apart. Whatever it was, he never wanted to experience it again.

"Well, let's make a bold prediction: since this only started happening recently, why can't you be the reason?"

Gu Sanqiu patted his stomach, where a great cauldron—something both intangible yet physically perceivable—resided.

"If some cultivation method in the past had the ability to suppress that spiritual will, and I accidentally fused with it, the suppression effects might need to redevelop. That could explain why I'm being affected by this black will."

The reasoning sounded plausible, though it lacked concrete evidence.

"Do I need to go ask the old man about this?"

Gu Sanqiu instinctively shook his head. If he asked, he'd likely end up in another dream sequence beating after returning home, followed by a ten-day house arrest.

"How exactly is this force being suppressed…"

Gu Sanqiu glanced at the Incense Hall, then at the ground.

"The… ley lines?"

A new idea struck him. He lifted his head and stared toward Jueyun Karst, his expression shifting between uncertainty and realization.

"The power of the ley lines…"

"If that's the case, then maybe when the ancestors were buried by the Geo Lord and Old Ruo into the ley lines, it wasn't just for fun—it might've been a way to hide the real purpose!"

He remembered what Xiao and the others had told him: that Gu family members were often sealed within the ley lines as punishment for their reckless behavior. At the time, he hadn't thought much of it.

But what if that had been a form of protection, a treatment plan of sorts?

According to his guess, the Gu family must've had both a main branch and side branches in the past. Someone must've known about this situation. It was just that, due to some reason, he was now in the dark.

Things were different now. However, despite the clarity of his thought process, Gu Sanqiu hesitated.

If his guess was correct, this will and the Gu family's karmic entanglement had been intertwined for who knew how many years. Would rashly probing it cause the plot to veer into an ultimate self-destruction scenario?

"No way. Dying without understanding the reason would be even more annoying."