The darkness stopped less than a foot from Lin Shan. He could feel the terror lurking within it. One touch meant certain death!
The second after the woman's voice rang out, the darkness surging toward him vanished, along with the old man nearby. Only the scorched earth around him proved that something utterly terrifying had happened here.
A gust swept past, and the surrounding trees crumbled into black powder, drifting on the wind and staining the air black once more...
Having escaped death yet again, Lin Shan mustered what little strength he had and quickly left this den of trouble.
Nothing else went wrong over the final three kilometers. After two grueling days, he finally saw the goal of his journey.
It was the purple othershore flower growing from the earth-or rather, the Purple Soul Flower.
Behind that purple flower stretched an endless sea of flowers and ancient trees towering a hundred meters high. This was exactly where they had first arrived after crossing over!
A river a hundred meters wide cut off the sea of flowers. Unless he was mistaken, it was the same river they had seen on the first day.
"I never thought I'd come full circle... So that teleportation didn't actually take us very far."
"Not necessarily. Maybe this whole sea of flowers is enormous."
He shook his head and put those thoughts aside, shifting his gaze toward the broad river.
The water was clear enough to see the bottom. Though the river was wide, it wasn't deep. At his height of 1.8 meters, Lin Shan estimated it would only reach his waist. The trouble was the swift current... One careless step might get him swept away.
Lin Shan stripped down to his underwear, untied the two little cloth bundles at his waist, and clutched them in one hand. He held the Red Lantern in the other.
He didn't dare forget the Red Lantern. Though it had helped him before, if he dared turn his back on it, it would still teach him what it meant to be chilled straight through the heart. There was no circumventing the rules of Spectral Objects like this; he could only follow them.
Lin Shan raised both hands and waded into the river. The water was bone-chillingly cold. Gritting his teeth, he slowly moved forward.
If he got swept away, there would be no hope of starting again. He was carrying all his materials. Had he known, he would have brought only some of them first.
A third of the way across, Lin Shan began regretting his lack of forethought.
He could only grit his teeth and keep going. Fortunately, despite how swift the current looked, its actual force wasn't that great. The greatest obstacle was still the water's icy temperature.
It took him a full five minutes to cross those hundred meters. When he finally reached the bank, his whole body was trembling nonstop.
Once his body had recovered a little, he walked toward the Purple Soul Flower marked by the Parchment.
This flower grew at the outermost edge of the sea of flowers and was also the closest one to Lin Shan.
He didn't venture farther into the flowers. This sea of flowers was an uncanny place in itself. No matter how he looked at it, so many transcendent plants gathered together wasn't normal.
He recalled that the uncanny old man had mentioned the Human Race. Perhaps this place belonged to the humans of this other world... If they were all like that old man, Lin Shan doubted there would be any possibility of communication.
He found four large leaves nearby, opened the two little cloth bundles, and poured the two powders onto separate leaves.
Taking out the Parchment, he weighed the other two leaves themselves. Looking at the values displayed on the Parchment, Lin Shan nodded. He hadn't expected it to be so conscientious.
After weighing them, he began sorting the powders. Both had dirt mixed into them, so he needed to pick out the powder grain by grain. Too little or too much could easily spell disaster. This wasn't cold medicine, where a slightly larger or smaller dose wouldn't matter much.
It took a full half hour to separate two ten-gram portions of powder. He put away the remaining materials, then folded up the two prepared portions for now as well.
Next came pure water. Distilled water qualified as pure water.
He found a few square stones nearby and used the Red Lantern's flame to melt hollows into them, making crude stone bowls. He made three in total.
Luckily, the Red Lantern saved him time. Without it, he would have had to grind them down by hand, and who knew how long that would take.
Once all three stone bowls were ready, he filled one with water and propped it on two slightly taller stones, then lit a fire beneath it to boil the water. This time, he could only use an ordinary fire. With the Red Lantern, never mind the lamp oil-the heat alone could easily burn through the stone bowl.
With everything ready, he covered the top of the bowl with a large leaf and waited for distilled water to condense on it.
Three hours later.
Collecting distilled water with leaves wasted far too much. After three hours, he had gathered only 130 milliliters, divided between two bowls.
Lin Shan only needed to glance at the Parchment while filling them to know how much water each bowl held.
Once the water in both bowls reached the required amounts, he poured a different powder into each. After the powders were added, the water in the stone bowls began undergoing a fundamental change.
The pure water in the stone bowls grew viscous and crystal clear, resembling mercury. It slowly swirled and circled within the bowls, as though an invisible force kept driving it to move and change shape.
The supplementary medicines were ready. The final step was the main ingredient-the Purple Soul Flower. It bloomed right beside his feet. This tiny flower had reduced their original group of dozens to just eleven people.
Lin Shan suspected the flower would spontaneously combust if left too long after picking, so he had saved it for last.
He pulled out the entire Purple Soul Flower, roots and stem included, washed the dirt from its roots by the river, then stuffed the whole thing into his mouth and swallowed without chewing.
A searing heat instantly spread through his body. Without the supplementary medicines, death would surely have been inevitable. Lin Shan hurriedly picked up the two stone bowls before him and drank both down together.
After he drank the supplementary medicines, the searing heat inside him vanished. So did his consciousness.
A golden cocoon began enveloping his body.
A hundred li away, amid the same sea of flowers, the uncanny old man quietly watched the golden cocoon. A moment later, he slowly vanished from where he stood.
An unknown length of time passed.
Crack!
A faint, crisp sound rang out amid the sea of flowers.
Crack, crack.
The golden, human-shaped cocoon split open, its cracks gradually widening.
An arm as smooth as creamy jade broke through the cocoon, followed by a second hand. Then both hands pulled at once, tearing open the golden cocoon and revealing the bald head within.
Lin Shan emerged from the golden cocoon and stood stark naked on the earth. He reached up to feel his bare head and brows.
"...I've gone bald, but I've gotten stronger too."
He looked down at his palm. A layer of soft, subdued golden light clung to it. It wasn't just his palm-every inch of his skin was covered in that golden light.
This was the Spiritual Power of Transcendence!
His physical capabilities hadn't actually improved much. Compared with before the curse, they had only roughly doubled. The maximum explosive force of one punch exceeded a ton!
That wasn't even his most important improvement. The true strength of the Heart Light Sequence lay in controlling heart light, something beyond the reach of human strength.
Only Transcendence could stand against Transcendence.
Picking up the Red Lantern, he easily waded across the river that had once obstructed him. The heart light kept the river water at bay, leaving Lin Shan entirely unaffected. When he reached the opposite bank, his body wasn't even wet.
Lin Shan picked up his clothes and froze.
"How long has it been for them to end up like this...?"
A layer of green mold covered his clothes, and a small mushroom had even sprouted on them. The pattern and color had almost entirely faded away. His yellow teddy-bear pajamas had turned almost plain white.
Before you continue