Lin Shan watched helplessly as his shattered bones scattered across the ground.
He was dead, yet not dead.
He had not blacked out immediately as he had last time, either. That middle-aged member of the Fox Clan had been so powerful that he had torn apart even Lin Shan's Specter Physique, causing him to lose consciousness. Blood Wing clearly lacked that ability.
What had died was his outward body, but his Specter Physique remained. Only now did he realize that his Specter Physique and soul were one. Ordinary people had souls, but those souls could not leave their bodies. When a person died, their soul dispersed as well.
He thought it over carefully.
That made sense. Whose soul kept leaving their body...? Only after coming to this world and acquiring the Specter Physique had his soul begun leaving his body regularly.
What he felt now overturned many of his earlier conjectures.
His Specter Physique was a black shadow composed entirely of supernatural power, apart from the half of a pale-golden heart in its chest.
That was right-the half of the Pale-Golden Heart was inside his Specter Physique. Other people's spiritual organs might be attached to their bodies, but his was not. His was attached to his Specter Physique.
Even without a body, he could still wield Spiritual Power!
He briefly examined his current body. It was simply a black shadow with the same proportions, no different from his original form.
But lacking a physical body came with many inconveniences. For instance, he was floating now, unable to feel his own weight, and had lost all human senses. The feeling was actually terrifying. It could be considered a kind of conscious death.
He held the Red Lantern in his hand. This time, he did not need to let blood.
He fed it the essence of his Specter Physique directly.
In an instant, red light shrouded the sky.
A red female figure appeared behind Lin Shan and merged with him.
This red figure had not appeared for a long time. Ever since confronting the eerie old man in the Purple Soul Flower Forest, she had never appeared again.
He had not expected the essence of his Specter Physique to awaken her.
At that moment, Lin Shan felt as though he could set everything ablaze!
He turned his gaze toward Blood Wing above him.
After "killing" Lin Shan, it had remained where it was without moving at all.
The instant Lin Shan looked at it, red flames ignited across its body. The flames were eerily transparent.
They sizzled as they burned over its body.
Sensing the attack, the vertical pupils in its wings swiveled toward Lin Shan.
It began mobilizing its supernatural power to resist the flames, and an eerie supernatural magnetic field immediately formed in the surrounding space.
The two evenly matched supernatural forces remained locked in a stalemate.
One side of the sky was pale red, the other blood-red.
The clash between fire and blood was not fierce, yet it was fraught with peril.
Lin Shan activated Heart Light, transforming it into a long spear that spun as it stabbed straight toward Blood Wing.
The Heart Light spear pierced Blood Wing's body, punching a hole straight through its wing.
However, its essence soon surged and repaired the damage.
This was exactly what Lin Shan wanted. With the Red Lantern at his disposal, all he needed to do was deplete its essence.
Lin Shan directed the spear to pierce its wings over and over-a hundred times, a thousand times, ten thousand times.
Just as the essence of Lin Shan's Specter Physique was nearing exhaustion, Blood Wing finally stopped repairing the holes in its wings. It had presumably run out of essence to repair them.
Blood Wing flapped its wings, trying to flee.
Lin Shan was ready. Gripping the Willow Branch in his hand, he moved along with it.
If he could not pull it back, he would simply follow it. He had neither a physical body nor any weight now, anyway.
Blood Wing moved incredibly fast. The surrounding scenery stretched into straight lines, hurtling backward.
Along the way, Lin Shan did not forget to intensify his attacks.
As Lin Shan continued attacking, the total amount of Spiritual Power within him gradually dwindled to nothing.
After flying for only a short while, Blood Wing abruptly stopped somewhere.
At last, Lin Shan's efforts to wear it down had borne fruit.
Before Lin Shan could hold out no longer, the vertical pupils between those wings slowly closed, and the surrounding supernatural power vanished.
It had entered a dormant state.
Lin Shan breathed a sigh of relief. The red light had nearly burned through his essence as well, but fortunately, he had held on.
Essence was different from spiritual and supernatural power. It was merely a restorative substance produced by his physique.
If his essence had run out first, he would have entered dormancy first. All his efforts would have crumbled at the final hurdle, and there was no guarantee he would ever awaken again.
He had won this battle of attrition purely through sheer quantity. The Red Lantern's supernatural power was evenly matched with Blood Wing's, leaving it no power to spare for defending against Lin Shan's attacks. It could only keep taking the blows.
Had anyone been watching, they would have noticed that, apart from Blood Wing's final attempt to flee, neither Lin Shan nor Blood Wing had moved much from their original positions. Only their supernatural powers had been clashing.
"I won. Time to collect the spoils."
The dormant Blood Wing was no different from before, except that its wings were riddled with holes and the vertical pupils between them were tightly shut. It floated silently high in the sky, waiting for the day its essence recovered and it restarted.
Lin Shan did not touch it rashly. He feared it would vanish at the slightest touch, like the flattened mass of supernatural matter in that footprint crater last time.
He was considering whether to complete his advancement first or return to the Purple Soul Flower Forest to find Zhang Zhonghua and the others.
Three months had already passed. They should be close to completing their advancements.
Suddenly, Lin Shan felt his consciousness growing hazy. The scene before his eyes became blurred, as though covered in a mosaic.
"Maybe I used up too much power." Lin Shan shook his head.
I'd better ask the Parchment how to prepare the exact formula first.
Lin Shan took out the Parchment, but before he could write anything, words appeared on it of their own accord.
Parchment: [After losing your body, you have not considered repairing it as soon as possible. Perhaps you do not know that prolonged activity in your Specter Physique will cause you to lose consciousness completely and become a supernatural entity driven only by instinct.]
"No wonder my consciousness feels hazy. So it's the Specter Physique affecting me."
After reading that sentence, Lin Shan's heart tightened. He decided to repair his body immediately before considering anything else.
His Specter Physique had very little essence left. Fully repairing his body would probably take a long time...
Lin Shan sat cross-legged on the Heart Light Sword and began mobilizing his essence.
Immediately, the shattered bones scattered across the ground began gathering and filling out Lin Shan's body. These were all that remained of his original body's materials...
One month later.
Lin Shan looked at his hands, their skin as fair and tender as a baby's.
With nothing left of his body but shattered bones, the repairs had taken a full month this time. His Specter Physique's essence was still depleted; all the essence that had recovered had gone toward repairing his body. If his Specter Physique were torn apart again now, he would enter dormancy immediately.
He had also discovered that the essence of his Specter Physique recovered extremely slowly. Less than a tenth had recovered in a month, and all of it had been used to repair his flesh.
So this was a dangerous period. For now, he would lose his ability to revive.
Lin Shan took out the Parchment.
Lin Shan: [Can you locate the Human Race?] Parchment: [Yes.]
The answer was just as he had expected. The Parchment had been stored together with the Human Race's Clan Artifact, so it should have a connection to the Human Race. That meant the Human Race's racial fortune would not block the Parchment.
There was another possibility, though. Perhaps the Human Race did not yet have any racial fortune...
Lin Shan looked at Blood Wing ahead of him. It still hovered silently there, riddled with holes.
He planned to complete his advancement first.
As though sensing Lin Shan's thoughts, the Parchment revealed a passage of writing on its own-the exact formula for the Sequence Potion.
Parchment: [Sequence 9-Blood Wing. Dissolve 20 g of Sikatini core fragments in 100 milliliters of pure water. Brew Mercury Flower into a medicinal liquid and take 50 milliliters. Touch the dormant Blood Wing with your hand.]
Before you continue