(PS: Just two updates today. I'm sick. I started running a fever the same day I got back from the hospital after a follow-up for depression. I suspect I caught the flu or some other infection, and today it got much worse. My whole body aches, and I've been drowsy all day. I ate lunch and then slept straight through until evening, so there'll only be two updates today. I'll take my medicine and go to bed. If I'm feeling better tomorrow, I'll go back to three updates.)
Since the day his finger moved, Lu Yuanming hadn't tried anything else.
Lu Yuanming's soul was still far too weak. Just moving a finger had left him utterly exhausted, so making any bigger movement was out of the question. He was better off resting and quickly absorbing the White Light Particles into his soul to strengthen it. Then he could return to the world after death.
The key question now was whether he could obtain Colorless Light Particles by controlling his finger's movement and making his parents and the doctors notice and get excited.
So far, Lu Yuanming still didn't know where the Colorless Light Particles came from. Did they require a ritual involving burning joss paper money? Or could they be produced by sincere prayers and recitations?
This time, too, was an experiment.
Colorless Light Particles were incredibly useful. They could create food and fresh water, as well as weapons and ammunition. In the final moments before his previous return, he had used his last Colorless Light Particle to create a potato.
At the time, Lu Yuanming had only one thought: hunting and searching clearly weren't reliable. In a situation like this, which was practically the apocalypse, the only real answer was to grow crops.
During the days he spent back in his Original Body, Lu Yuanming had also kept thinking about what to do next in the world after death.
First, they couldn't stop sending people to explore the surrounding area. They needed not only to keep exploring, but to send even more people.
Second, they had to start farming. It was never too late to do that. Among the meager agricultural knowledge he had, potatoes were the crop with the highest yield per acre, the least demanding soil requirements, and the lowest need for water.
This was only an experiment. If the potatoes didn't grow, he would think of something else. But if they did, they'd have a steady source of food—far more than they could get from searching, prospecting, or hunting.
Whether or not New York City in the world after death had a large stockpile of food and fresh water, even if there were no monsters lurking around, their supplies would eventually run out if they searched day after day. Farming, on the other hand, could provide them with food continuously.
Lu Yuanming hadn't even realized that he had, without knowing it, awakened the hidden skill of the Huaxia Bloodline.
And so Lu Yuanming spent a full seventeen days in his Original Body before the warmth and feeling of growth in his soul finally subsided. To be safe, he stayed one more day. On the eighteenth day after returning to his Original Body, he finally began the crossing again and went back to the world after death.
Nothing particularly unusual happened. When Lu Yuanming came to, he was standing in an open space. In the distance was the large supermarket where they had encountered the Spider Monster. He immediately spotted more than ten spider corpses lying on the ground. Their long legs had all been cut off, leaving only their plump bodies. After eighteen days, the bodies had rotted and stunk.
Lu Yuanming didn't see any human corpses, which put his mind at ease. He had been afraid that the people he'd worked so hard to find had all died there. If they had, many of his plans would have become impossible. Without the strength of an organized group, a lone person was far too vulnerable.
Lu Yuanming immediately set off toward the bank, but after running a few dozen meters, he stopped in confusion.
It wasn't anything else—he felt both too fast and too slow.
It was an extremely contradictory feeling. He must have been running very fast. He had covered around thirty meters from where he appeared to where he was now, and by his estimate, he'd done it in about three seconds. That was a terrifying speed, especially since it included the slow acceleration at the start. If he were running a hundred-meter dash, he might be able to break the world record.
At the same time, as he ran, Lu Yuanming felt as if something had slowed down. The scenery around him seemed to move past more slowly.
"What's going on?"
Lu Yuanming was puzzled. He ran back and forth more than ten times to test it, and gradually figured out why.
The first reason was that his physical abilities had improved, and by a lot—far more than during his first enhancement. He could run a hundred meters in about eight seconds. He hadn't tested his strength, but it was clearly at least twice what it had been before.
That wasn't all. His reaction speed and dynamic vision had undergone an almost qualitative change.
Whenever he moved too fast, everything around him seemed to happen in slow motion. He could clearly see every detail of his surroundings. It was a little like Bullet Time from an animation he'd once seen, though not nearly as dramatic.
That was why he felt he was moving very fast while the scenery around him seemed to slow down—a strange, contradictory sensation.
In addition to all that, Lu Yuanming discovered that he had grown taller and bigger.
Lu Yuanming's Original Body was only 1.73 meters tall. The American drug addict he had crossed into was about 1.75 to 1.8 meters tall. After he died and arrived in the world after death, his appearance had initially been that of the drug addict. But after he first crossed back into his Original Body, his Soul Body had gradually begun to resemble his real body, and his height had started to decrease as well.
But after absorbing a large number of White Light Particles and greatly strengthening his soul, Lu Yuanming found that his Soul Body had clearly grown taller and larger. He had no ruler or anything else to measure himself with, but judging by eye and comparing himself with the nearby houses and utility poles, he estimated he was nearly two meters tall. And it wasn't just his height, like a bamboo pole growing longer—his arms, legs, and torso had all grown proportionally.
His soul had grown so much stronger this time that Lu Yuanming could hardly believe it.
As Lu Yuanming ran toward the vault, one Colorless Light Particle after another appeared out of nowhere and hovered around him. Thirty-one appeared in all, and their number filled him with both surprise and joy.
Thirty-one!
They could create weapons and food, and perhaps had other uses as well. The Colorless Light Particles were practically a miniature wish-granting machine. They could be considered Lu Yuanming's greatest hope of surviving in this world after death.
As Lu Yuanming ran with unbridled excitement, taking long strides, cries of astonishment came from the roof of a small building by the road. Several men and women rushed out of the building, shouting loudly. Father Edward was at the front.
Father Edward looked terrible. The dark circles under his eyes were deep, and his face was pale. But as he ran toward Lu Yuanming, he was so excited he seemed ready to take flight. Lu Yuanming hurried to meet him. The moment Father Edward reached him, he fell to his knees, clasped his hands together, and began to pray, repeatedly thanking the Lord for His Mercy and saying that the Lord hadn't abandoned them sinners.
Five more people stood behind Father Edward, three men and two women. Lu Yuanming didn't know any of them. They weren't from the bank vault, so they were either people rescued from the supermarket earlier or people found during the eighteen days he'd been gone. They stood behind Father Edward, looking apprehensive. When he knelt, they all knelt too.
Lu Yuanming immediately helped Father Edward up. At the same time, he said, "I told you I'm not a god or the Messiah. Don't call me Lord. And I didn't abandon you—I just went back to the Living World. See? I've come back now, haven't I?"
Father Edward only sobbed and cried, continuing to recite words about the Lord's Mercy and Jesus Christ rising from the dead on the third day.
Lu Yuanming was at a loss and could only keep comforting him. After a long while, Father Edward and the five people behind him finally calmed down. Lu Yuanming quickly asked, "Did anything happen to the base while I was gone? Did you plant those potatoes I gave you?"
Father Edward immediately replied, "We now have one hundred and seventeen people. When the Lord returned to the Living World, we organized two more expeditions. At last, we found a great deal of food and fresh water in a Logistics Warehouse—enough to feed and water everyone for at least two months. We also reinforced the outer walls of the bank and set up several observation posts outside to guard against a sudden monster attack. As for the potatoes, we planted them all in a park not far from the bank. Almost all the seeds the Lord bestowed have sprouted. Someone in the group who knows agriculture told us that we could harvest the first crop in as little as three months."
Lu Yuanming nodded repeatedly as he listened, but before he could show how happy he was, Father Edward suddenly said, "John... is dead."
"Huh?" Lu Yuanming froze, then quickly asked, "What happened? Didn't John have a gun? A powerful rifle, too, and more than twenty rounds of ammunition. How could he have died? Those monsters clearly know fear. After you kill a few, the rest run away. Could they have encountered one of those enormous monsters?"
As far as Lu Yuanming could tell, only an enormous monster would have left them unable to escape, and conventional weapons would have been nearly useless against it.
But Father Edward shook his head. "No. John was killed by someone who cut his throat from behind. It was one of the refugees he'd rescued. They killed John and stole his weapon and ammunition. Two days ago, they discovered the potatoes planted in the park, and they also found out that the bank was our headquarters. They sent us a message demanding that we submit, or they'd attack us and kill every last one of us."
"Lord, send down fire from the heavens and burn these heretics to death! Cast them all into Hellfire!!"
Before you continue