When his feet touched the solid and real bluestone street, looking at Francis City, which was still shrouded in night, Ning Xiuyuan stood in place, dazed for quite a while.
He was wondering, what was he planning to do when he left the divine kingdom?
Oh right, it was that Bishop Byron was giving him a reward because he twice prevented the spread of out-of-control incidents.
After getting the reward, he was going to head back to catch up on his sleep.
As a result, on the way back to the Groom's quarters, he stepped into the darkness and walked into the mortal world.
If he counted on his fingers, only two days had passed, yet it felt as though half a year had gone by.
Looking at the surrounding scenery, Ning Xiuyuan was surprised to find that he was currently right on the way back to the Groom's quarters, and the direction was not off by a single bit.
However, looking at the sky, it was already the second half of the night, and it seemed dawn was about to break.
Ning Xiuyuan sighed.
He turned around and headed back to the church.
"Dong..."
The morning bell chimed from afar, and just as the sound lingered by his ears, a touch of soft dawn light spilled over the earth.
Ning Xiuyuan had no heart to appreciate the sunrise.
He walked to the church door, hesitated slightly, and pushed open the church doors.
The light of dawn pierced through the stained-glass windows, illuminating the interior of the hall in a gorgeous and dazzling manner, yet it could not conceal the faint candlelight on the lamp stands.
Having been away for the entire night, nearly half of them had burned out.
Stepping inside, the thing Ning Xiuyuan worried about most did not happen.
No priest jumped out to declare him a heretic, to judge him, and to purify him.
His left eyeball was also as calm as water.
This made Ning Xiuyuan completely heave a sigh of relief.
Although he had just experienced unimaginable absurdity and terror, he still mustered up his spirits, lit the extinguished candles, and replenished the lamp oil one by one before leaving.
Returning to his dormitory, he hastily dealt with his personal hygiene before falling soundly asleep.
Given his current life essence, he was not actually exhausted.
What was exhausted, however, was his heart.
He needed to sleep, to properly buffer his mind and spirit, and to recover his spirituality.
If every sleep was a death;
Then Ning Xiuyuan, waking up from a sleep, truly felt as though he had been reborn.
This sleep allowed his exhausted spirituality to be eased.
His body, which had suffered from strange mishaps, was also able to re-blend and adapt during sleep.
Ning Xiuyuan sat up from the soft couch, let out a long breath, and taking advantage of his active mind, he sorted through the gains and losses of this step into the mortal world.
First of all, two consecutive crossings made him certain of one thing.
--That was, walking between the two realms might become normalized.
This realization was of extremely important significance to him.
He could just use the different characteristics of the two worlds to accomplish some things that could not be accomplished in the opposing world.
As for specifically what things, he still needed to ponder them slowly.
Secondly, the Plague Disciple he had ingested had finally fused by one-fifth.
The increase in power brought by this bit of fusion was actually secondary; mainly, he had gotten rid of the fatal impact of the "plague environment".
Simply put, even if there was no plague around him, he would not lose control because of it for a while, at most feeling that the environment made him a bit uncomfortable.
Finally, there was his "left eyeball".
This should be a bit of essential selfhood that the "God of Abundance, Verdant Form" had escaped with from the mouth of the white worm.
Her parasitism brought Ning Xiuyuan extremely rich wealth.
First, an exponential enhancement of his senses!
Even in a passive state, Ning Xiuyuan could detect very subtle presences, such as flying insects, mice, ghosts... and so on.
If he actively consumed spirituality to drive it, the things he could see would be even more.
Ning Xiuyuan had once opened his sheep pupils in the darkness called "Door", glancing at that time-immortal darkness, and the sight he saw made his scalp tingle.
But this also sideways proved the wondrous utility of the Horizontal-Pupiled Sheep Eyes.
Second, the Horizontal-Pupiled Sheep Eyes endowed him with the ability to walk in misplaced space and time.
In theory, he could achieve invisibility, exemption from attacks, spatial shuttling... and many other effects by shuttling through misplaced space and time.
As for the actual application value of this ability, though?
Ning Xiuyuan had a few misgivings in his heart.
After all, he had witnessed with his own eyes the terrifying scene where the white worm froze space, rendering the Verdant Form's misplacement ability completely useless.
Therefore, this ability should have an upper limit.
However, considering the strength of the reference frame, worrying about the upper limit of this ability was actually not much different from worrying the sky would fall.
In fact, it was currently very difficult for Ning Xiuyuan to use this ability.
It consumed a massive amount of spirituality.
With Ning Xiuyuan's current spirituality, he could maintain misplaced shuttling for at most six minutes—well, actually it should be eight minutes, but that would completely exhaust his spirituality.
Third, extraordinary knowledge.
The Heart of the Beast's passive ability allowed him to master the racial language of the "Verdant Form".
The Horizontal-Pupiled Sheep Eyes fed back some fragmented extraordinary knowledge to him.
The reason why it was said to be fragmented was mainly because Ning Xiuyuan could not understand most of the knowledge; therefore, if this portion of knowledge was specifically manifested, it was like a burned book, appearing fragmented and lacking system.
These miscellaneous things could be called a rich treasure trove for Ning Xiuyuan.
Yet, facing the wealth gifted by the Horizontal-Pupiled Sheep Eyes, Ning Xiuyuan's mood was extremely complicated.
When he controlled the Horizontal-Pupiled Sheep Eyes, besides extraordinary knowledge and the racial language, what was fed back to him was also... hunger!
--A hunger akin to a cry echoing within the soul!
She was crying out in hunger every moment; originally Ning Xiuyuan didn't care much, thinking that shielding out this cry would suffice.
But waking up from sleep, when he discovered that the Horizontal-Pupiled Sheep Eyes showed faint signs of losing control, he realized that this hunger had to be taken seriously.
Spiritual intuition told him that if he did not alleviate the hunger of the Horizontal-Pupiled Sheep Eyes, she would inevitably fall into a state of losing control at some point, and might even backlash against him.
The crucial point was that the food of the Horizontal-Pupiled Sheep Eyes could be said to violate moral and ethical views for Ning Xiuyuan.
In the extraordinary knowledge fed back, she detailed the processing method of this kind of food.
The raw materials for the food had to be intelligent creatures with seven bodies, and the process of extracting internal organs, filling with special secretions, rotting flesh, and nitreing souls was extremely bloody and could be called utterly deranged.
"Is this going to force me to become a dark villain?"
Ning Xiuyuan sighed; the Plague Disciple was like this, and the Horizontal-Pupiled Sheep Eyes were likewise.
How come he felt that this extraordinary path was simply a path to becoming a monster?
"However, come to think of it, could this so-called hunger be this damn eyeball deliberately using out-of-control threats against me, making me work 996 for her?"
"Once her power recovers to a certain level, will she break free of my control and directly process me into dried jerky?"
Ning Xiuyuan fell into deep thought.
If he hadn't seen the true form of the Horizontal-Pupiled Sheep Eyes, he might have really regarded this eyeball as an extraordinary item.
But having seen her true form, even if beaten to death Ning Xiuyuan wouldn't believe that this thing was easy to control.
What snipe and clam grapple, fisherman profits?
In the extraordinary world, this would probably only evolve into nourishing a tiger to become a calamity!
"I must find an opportunity as soon as possible to test her bottom line of hunger, and see whether this hunger is an instinct or a necessity."
"Also, find a way to strip her from my body and use her as a pure extraordinary item. If that doesn't work, find a way to strengthen control."
"In addition, the extraordinary knowledge she fed back to me must also be verified by finding someone. This kind of evil and heretical knowledge must definitely not be trusted lightly, otherwise, one might unconsciously become her believer without even knowing it."
Ning Xiuyuan pondered, treating his harvest with the utmost spirit of suspicion and caution.
While his thoughts were wandering, his left eyelid twitched slightly... a guest was visiting.
He let out a faint breath and reined in his thoughts.
"Knock, knock, knock..."
Not long after, a rhythmic knock came from outside the door.
Before you continue