Dark Vision

The lotus seeds of the Blazing Red Lotus, soaked in strong liquor, gave off an enticing fragrance. Zhang Tie picked up the bottle, looked again at the pure red liquid inside, gritted his teeth, brought it to his lips, and began drinking in great gulps.

The taste of the liquor had already been diluted. The first sensation as the stuff entered his mouth was not the burning bite of strong alcohol, but astringency—extreme astringency—tinged with a chill that seemed capable of seeping into every bone in his body.

The lotus seeds, which had been as hard as steel pellets just two days ago, had now become crisp and brittle like chestnuts. Zhang Tie paid no heed to anything else and crunched through all ten lotus seeds in the bottle before swallowing them.

Not long after the bitter, cold liquid reached his stomach, Zhang Tie felt his stomach begin to burn like the external combustion chamber of a turbine steam external-combustion engine. His body temperature immediately began to soar.

Remembering his master's instructions, Zhang Tie drained the bottle in a few gulps, let out a shout, and charged out of the laboratory.

In less than half a minute, Zhang Tie felt as though his entire body had caught fire. Even the Iron-Blood Battle Qi within him had been stirred into instantly erupting as an enormous Centipede Beast Battle Qi Totem.

Running as he stripped off his clothes, Zhang Tie was like a mad bull with its tail set ablaze. In the blink of an eye, he had sprinted more than a hundred meters through the Castle of Black Iron. Then, with a strange cry, naked as the day he was born, he plunged headfirst into the Castle of Black Iron's freshwater lake like a meteor, throwing up a splash more than