Successful advancement

Now that he knew the exact formula, Lin Shan built a simple boiler by the lake.

He placed wood underneath and a stone pot full of water above it. This time, he had no leaves, so he covered it directly with a glass lid conjured from Heart Light.

To collect the distilled water first, he took out the two small ceramic bottles he had prepared beforehand.

Seeing the reading on the Parchment reach exactly one hundred grams, Lin Shan took out the Castini core and scraped twenty grams of fine shavings from it with a Heart Light blade.

When the potion in the ceramic bottle became crystal clear and brimming with spirituality, slowly swirling inside as though alive, Lin Shan nodded in satisfaction and thought, Done.

Next, he poured out the boiling water in the pot and tossed in the mercury grass, its leaves already wilted, to heat it dry. A short while later, only one leaf had melted, yet the stone pot was already full of silvery-white potion. It really did look like mercury.

Lin Shan took out the remaining mercury grass, washed it, and stuffed it back into his bag. If this stuff really could produce mercury when heated, it might prove useful later. This was transcendent mercury, after all. At worst, using it as a transcendent laxative or making thermometers out of it would both be decent options.

At that moment, he felt some regret over not taking the two stalks of mercury grass with eight and nine leaves back then.

He shook off the thought.

Then he filled the other ceramic bottle with fifty milliliters of the silvery-white potion. With that, both supplementary potions were ready.

Once he had finished preparing the supplementary potions, he tied his backpack and the Red Lantern to a thick ancient tree with willow twigs.

Riding his sword, he rose a thousand meters into the sky. Blood Wing still hovered silently in place.

Lin Shan directed the Heart Light sword closer. Blood Wing had a wingspan of nearly ten meters and stood over three meters tall. Up close, it was still quite intimidating. Its play of light and shadow gave him the feeling that he was looking at a mirage.

Without hesitation, he drank both bottles of supplementary potion in succession. Immediately, an intense sense of discord arose within his body.

Feeling the changes in his body, Lin Shan dared not delay and hurriedly reached out to touch Blood Wing.

He actually touched it!

Without using any spirituality, he had touched the anomaly's true body with his flesh alone.

The next second, Blood Wing's enormous body began to distort. An inexplicable pull emerged from Lin Shan's palm, slowly drawing Blood Wing toward him. Like a hemp rope twisted tight, Blood Wing contorted into a black thread and was absorbed into his body.

A black cocoon immediately formed around Lin Shan, but he had already lost consciousness completely.

With no spirituality sustaining it, the black cocoon plummeted from the sky into the lake and sank deep to the bottom.

Day and night began alternating rapidly. An unknown stretch of time passed.

At the bottom of the blood lake.

Crack!

A black cocoon suddenly burst apart, and Lin Shan stepped out of it.

At first glance, Lin Shan seemed unchanged. A closer look revealed that all the bloody water in the lake was actively avoiding him, creating a hollow space within three meters of him.

"Blood Wing and the supernatural power in this blood lake actually share the same source..."

Lin Shan felt that he could control the bloody water in this lake at will. It was not truly bloody water, either, but a manifestation of supernatural power.

"There's an anomaly at the center of this blood lake, and it only appears at night. Whenever it appears, its supernatural power affects the entire lake."

Lin Shan privately guessed that the beam of white light that day must have been heading toward the center of the lake.

As for why Blood Wing and the supernatural power in this blood lake shared the same source, he had no way of knowing. Perhaps a deeper secret lay hidden there.

The next moment, a pair of wings made of blood slowly unfurled behind Lin Shan. Fully spread, they spanned over three meters.

With a gentle beat of the blood wings and a flash of red light, Lin Shan appeared above the blood lake. It was nighttime, and the Red Moon hung high in the sky.

Blood Wing had granted him two abilities: blood manipulation and flight. Its flight ability also came with the additional power to traverse space over short distances, though using it consumed a great deal of supernatural power. Each jump could cover at most a thousand meters, and with his current reserves, fewer than five jumps would drain him dry.

Beating his blood wings, he flew to the tree where he had left the Red Lantern. The Red Lantern was unchanged, but mushrooms had already sprouted on the backpack beside it.

"Looks like another long stretch of time has passed. I hope they're all right. I wonder whether the Human Race has arrived in large numbers..."

Lin Shan untied the willow twigs and opened his backpack. He threw out all the moldy dried meat, then stuffed the willow twigs inside.

Finally, he spent one month of lifespan to locate the Purple Soul Flower Forest. The indicated distance was 1,057 kilometers.

Lin Shan waited where he was until dawn. The moment the Red Moon vanished, he turned into a streak of red light and disappeared.

The current Lin Shan was no different from an anomaly. He possessed both an anomaly's body and its supernatural power.

Ten thousand meters in the air, red light sliced through the ash fog. A faint pressure from the ash fog bore down on him, but Lin Shan pushed against it and sped onward. Despite the additional pressure, this altitude was very safe. He encountered neither anomalies nor Fallen along the way.

After half a day of flight, his supernatural power was nearly depleted, so he switched to the Heart Light sword and continued flying on it.

His speed immediately dropped by more than a hundredfold, but there was nothing he could do. Blood Wing had only just advanced and was still at the first stage of Sequence 9. Being able to fly for half a day was already exceptionally difficult, and it was mainly because its true form was a pair of wings that its consumption was so low.

Although Heart Light had already advanced to the fourth stage of Sequence 9, it was not a Sequence with a flight ability. Its speed fell far short of Blood Wing's, and its consumption far exceeded Blood Wing's as well. When Heart Light had been at the first stage, its spirituality could not even sustain flight.

Two days later, outside the Purple Soul Flower Forest.

A streak of blood-red light swept across the sky like a meteor.

The next moment, red light flashed outside the Purple Soul Flower Forest, and Lin Shan appeared out of thin air.

By alternating between Blood Wing and the Heart Light sword along the way, he had covered over a thousand kilometers in just two days-truly traveling a thousand li a day.

The Purple Soul Flower Forest remained exactly as it had been. He crossed the river and reached the place where Zhang Zhonghua and the others had been advancing, only to find it deserted.

"What I feared most has happened after all."

Lin Shan took out the Parchment, paid seven months of lifespan, wrote down the seven people's names, and began locating them.

It was worth noting that after his Specter Physique had successfully advanced, his lifespan had been reset again. This time, it had increased to a full three hundred years, even giving him the illusion that he would never run out of lifespan.

Seven dots appeared on the Parchment. They were clustered together and extremely close to him, only seventy kilometers away. That was precisely the distance to their former camp.

"Could they have gone back?"

Lin Shan was puzzled. Even with his current abilities, he would be blind in the ash fog without the Parchment. They had only just advanced, so how could they have found their own way back?

"Perhaps something happened that I don't know about. I'll find out once I go back and take a look."

As he spoke, the blood wings behind Lin Shan beat once, lifting him into the air, where he became a streak of red light.

Thirty minutes later, Lin Shan entered the area covered by the Clan Artifact.

"The range has grown a lot!"

Lin Shan was rather surprised. The golden barrier definitely had not covered such a large area before.

"Looks like the Human Race has arrived... I just wonder how things have developed..."

Lin Shan felt a little anticipation. It had been a long time since he had seen his own kind.