Cracks had spread throughout his mind because of what he went through. But as he realized that what he had gone through was all a dream, the cracks healed, and he slowly recovered his mental stability.
He should be angry for being treated like this for saying some words that he didn’t mean. He should say in anger, "I only cursed a little. I am being cheated here. The least I am entitled to is complaining about it. Can’t I say some unsavory words to vent my anger?"
But he didn’t dare to rant or complain out loud. Even within his heart, he only felt fear. There was no ounce of resistance within him. It seemed his mind was made up about doing anything the sect wanted him to do without complaining.
Unfortunately for him, being obedient wasn’t going to be enough this time because his second attempt to summon the Divine Metac also failed.
This time, he was only frustrated. He didn’t get angry, and he especially didn’t dare to say anything negative about the sect. After all, the memory of what he just endured was still fresh in his mind, and the phantom pain was still lingering over his body.
So he only exhaled loudly to vent his frustrated emotions. Then he dived back into the task at hand.
But venting quickly lost its effectiveness when the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth attempts all failed. Even when he changed to another Divine Metac, his attempt still failed.
So he changed the process to recreating the Divine Metacs. But even this also failed.
None of the Divine Metacs could be created or summoned. This could be either because his understanding is too poor to summon and create them, or because the Divine Metacs were already being used by someone else.
It was most likely the latter, since his understanding and mastery of the pathway couldn’t be called poor by any definition. So everything he had been doing was a total waste of his time and resources.
He still didn’t complain, though. What he did was to buy more materials and spend more time and energy on more attempts. He didn’t stop until he ran out of money and couldn’t continue.
At that point, he asked himself, ’What do I do now? Do I go and borrow money now?’
He didn’t know who to report to that the summoning wasn’t going to work, and he didn’t want to say something like that, so it wouldn’t be misunderstood as him trying to shirk work.
So, like a good slave, he began thinking about going out to borrow money so that he could continue the work his master had given him. Even when he thought that what he was doing was a genuine waste of time and resources, he didn’t have any intention to stop until the deadline he was given.
Fortunately, the sect sent a message at that point. The message said, "You have done well, and the sect has seen your effort. For your reward, you have been excused for your crime. You don’t need to worry about the Divine Metacs anymore."
"What you should do is keep everything you know about the disappearance of the members of the Shadow Alliance and the inability to recover their Divine Metacs a secret. Then you should head to the meeting chambers for the sect elders meeting immediately."
When he saw this message, the first thing that went through his mind was bewilderment as he thought, ’Inability to recover their Divine Metacs? What does that mean? Their Divine Metacs aren’t lost, right? They should be in Shadow Clones’ Cave Heaven or in the Supreme Metac, right?"
He had thought that someone from the sect had gotten hold of the Divine Metacs, which was why he failed to summon them. If that is true, the Divine Metacs are still within the sect, and he shouldn’t have been made to try to summon them.
He also knows that even if a Divine Metac is destroyed, it can be recovered as long as the Supreme Metac is intact. So a Divine Metac can’t be truly lost until the entire pathway becomes lost.
But now that the sect was saying the Divine Metacs couldn’t be recovered and the sect was ordering him not to mention it to anyone as if it was something important, he realized that the situation might be bigger than he thought it was. His mind became uneasy when he considered this possibility.
However, he quickly remembered that he was the one who had suffered here, not the sect. And by the looks of things, this suffering seemed to have been intentional.
After all, the sect should have known the state of the Divine Metacs and that they couldn’t be summoned or created. Yet, the sect had ordered him to refine the Metacs. And when he failed, the sect didn’t stop him.
Instead, the sect tortured him for a thousand years. Then the sect watched him waste all his money on trying to achieve something that could never be achieved. So maybe, all the sect wanted to do was drain him of his resources so that he wouldn’t have the resources needed to plan a rebellion.
When he thought of this, his anger flared up within him again, and he thought to himself, ’You can beat me. You can punish me. But you can never break my spirit.’
That last part was a lie. To be honest, the sect had come close to breaking his spirit. If the dream had lasted much longer than a thousand years, his mind would be in pieces by the time he came out of it.
Deep down, he knew that he had almost lost his will to live because of that dream. So he’s afraid, despite all the bluster he was trying to summon.
But his fear isn’t going to make him give up resistance. In fact, the fact that he could be casually subjected to such brutal torture only made him more determined to break free.