Harvest and Cost

As his feet touched the solid, real bluestone streets and he looked at Francis City, still shrouded in the night, Ning Xiuyuan stood there, lost for a good while.

He was thinking, what was he planning to do when he left the Divine Realm?

Ah, right. Bishop Byron had rewarded him for stopping the spread of loss of control twice.

After receiving the reward, he planned to go back and catch up on sleep.

But on his way back to the groom's quarters, he stepped into darkness and entered the human world.

Counting on his fingers, only two days had passed, but it felt like half a year.

Looking at the scenery around him, Ning Xiuyuan was surprised to find he was on the way back to the groom's quarters, and in the right direction.

However, judging by the sky, it was already the latter half of the night, and dawn seemed to be approaching.

Ning Xiuyuan sighed.

He turned and returned to the church.

"Dong—"

The sound of the Dawn bell echoed from afar. As the sound reached his ears, a gentle morning light spread across the land.

Ning Xiuyuan had no intention of admiring the sunrise.

He walked to the church doors, hesitated for a moment, and pushed open the large doors.

The morning light streamed through the stained-glass windows, illuminating the interior brilliantly, but it couldn't hide the dim candlelight from the lamp stands.

He hadn't returned all night, and nearly half of them had gone out.

Stepping inside, Ning Xiuyuan's worst fears did not materialize.

No priest jumped out to declare him a heretic and sentence him to judgment and purification.

His left eyeball was also as calm as still water.

This made Ning Xiuyuan completely relieved.

Despite having just experienced unimaginable absurdity and terror, he still mustered his strength, relit the extinguished candles, refilled the oil lamps one by one, and then left.

Back in his dormitory, he quickly took care of personal hygiene and then fell into a deep sleep.

Given his current life essence, he wasn't actually tired.

But his heart was weary.

He needed to sleep, to properly calm his mind and restore his spirituality.

If every sleep was a death;

Then Ning Xiuyuan, upon waking, truly felt reborn.

This sleep allowed his exhausted spirituality to find relief.

His body, which had undergone changes, also reintegrated and adapted during sleep.

Ning Xiuyuan sat up from the soft couch, let out a long breath, and took advantage of his active mind to sort through the gains and losses from his venture into the human world.

Firstly, the two consecutive traversals had confirmed one thing for him.

—That is, traveling between two worlds might become a regular occurrence.

This realization was of great significance to him.

He could leverage the different characteristics of the two worlds to accomplish things that couldn't be done in a world of opposition.

What specific things these were, he would need to ponder slowly.

Secondly, the Plague Disciple he had consumed had finally integrated by one-fifth.

The power increase from this integration was secondary; the main thing was that he had escaped the fatal influence of the "Plague environment."

In simple terms, even without the Plague around him, he wouldn't lose control for a while. At most, he would feel a bit uncomfortable in the environment.

Lastly, there was his "left eyeball."

This was likely a fragment of the essence of the "God of Abundance, Verdant Form" that had escaped from the white worm's mouth.

Its parasitic presence had brought Ning Xiuyuan immense wealth.

One, an exponential increase in his senses!

Even in a passive state, Ning Xiuyuan could detect very subtle existences, such as flying insects, rats, ghosts... and so on.

If he actively consumed spirituality to drive it, he could see even more.

Ning Xiuyuan had once, in the darkness called "Gate," opened his sheep pupil and glanced at the unchanging darkness. The sight made his scalp tingle.

But this also indirectly proved the usefulness of the striped goat pupil.

Two, the striped goat pupil granted him the ability to move through displaced time and space.

Theoretically, by traversing displaced time and space, he could achieve invisibility, evade attacks, traverse space... and many other effects.

But the practical value of this ability?

Ning Xiuyuan found himself pondering.

After all, he had personally witnessed the terrifying sight of the white worm freezing space, rendering the Verdant Form's displacement ability useless.

Therefore, this ability should have a limit.

However, considering the power of the reference point, worrying about the limit of this ability was essentially like worrying about the sky falling.

In reality, it was difficult for Ning Xiuyuan to use this ability at the moment.

It consumed a great deal of spirituality.

With Ning Xiuyuan's current spirituality, he could maintain displaced traversal for a maximum of six minutes. Well, actually eight minutes, but that would completely deplete his spirituality.

Three, extraordinary knowledge.

The passive ability of the Heart of the Beast allowed him to master the racial language of the "Verdant Form."

The striped goat pupil fed him some fragmented extraordinary knowledge.

The reason it was described as fragmented was mainly because Ning Xiuyuan couldn't understand most of the knowledge. Therefore, if this portion of knowledge were to be concretely represented, it would be like a burnt book, appearing fragmented and unsystematic.

To Ning Xiuyuan, these miscellaneous things were a rich treasure trove.

But facing the wealth gifted by the striped goat pupil, Ning Xiuyuan's feelings were very complicated.

When he controlled the striped goat pupil, in addition to extraordinary knowledge and racial language, he also received... hunger!

—A hunger that seemed to cry out from within his soul!

It was constantly crying out with hunger. Initially, Ning Xiuyuan didn't pay much attention, thinking he could just block out the cries.

But when he woke up and found that the striped goat pupil showed subtle signs of losing control, he realized that this hunger needed to be taken seriously.

His spiritual intuition told him that if the hunger of the striped goat pupil was not alleviated, it would inevitably fall into a state of loss of control at some point, and might even backlash against him.

The key issue was that the food for the striped goat pupil was, for Ning Xiuyuan, a violation of moral principles and worldview.

In the extraordinary knowledge it fed back, the processing method for this food was described in detail.

The raw material for the food had to be an intelligent creature with seven bodies. By removing its internal organs, filling them with special secretions, and then rotting the flesh and fermenting the soul, the process was extremely bloody and utterly insane.

"Is this trying to force me to become a dark villain?"

Ning Xiuyuan sighed. The Plague Disciple was like this, and so was the striped goat pupil.

Why did he feel like the path of the supernatural was a path to becoming a monster?

"But then again, could this so-called hunger be the damned eyeball deliberately using the threat of losing control to blackmail me into working overtime for it?"

"Once its strength recovers to a certain level, it'll break free from my control and directly process me into jerky?"

Ning Xiuyuan fell into contemplation.

If he hadn't seen the true form of the striped goat pupil, he might have actually treated this eyeball as a supernatural item.

But having seen its true form, Ning Xiuyuan wouldn't believe for a second that this thing was easy to control.

What was the point of the snipe and the clam fighting while the fisherman benefits?

In the supernatural world, this would likely only evolve into harboring a tiger that would bring disaster!

"I must find an opportunity as soon as possible to test its hunger threshold and see if this hunger is an instinct or a necessity."

"Also, I need to find a way to strip it from my body and use it as a pure supernatural item. If that's not possible, then I'll find a way to strengthen my control."

"Furthermore, the extraordinary knowledge it fed back to me must be verified by someone. This kind of malevolent and heretical knowledge should absolutely not be trusted lightly. Otherwise, one might unknowingly become its believer without even realizing it."

Ning Xiuyuan pondered, treating his gains with the utmost skepticism and caution.

As his thoughts drifted, his left eyelid twitched slightly… a visitor had arrived.

He let out a long sigh and collected his thoughts.

"Knock, knock, knock…"

Before long, rhythmic knocking came from outside the door.