Twenty-two days later, in the early morning, halfway through the hour of the tiger.
Bright morning sunlight bathed Qinghe Academy. Birds chirped, floral fragrance drifted through the air, and even the air itself smelled sweet. Ren Ye emerged from a makeshift bathing shed in the rear courtyard, his wet hair hanging over his shoulders. His skin was translucent, rosy white, like a newborn's.
An inexplicable scent of vegetation emanated from his entire body, and the Star Core in his abdomen shone faintly green. As he walked, his every movement actually drew birds fluttering down from the trees, chirping as they crowded onto his shoulders.
"Stop messing around. I need to eat."
He raised a hand to shoo the birds off his shoulders, but after two attempts, the flock shamelessly flew right back down whenever he lowered his hand. No amount of shooing would drive them away.
This "phenomenon" had begun about five days earlier. That day, in the Mountains and Rivers Land, he had been hunted down by the one-legged chicken and a beautiful merfolk woman together. His physical body had been pushed to its limits, and it had actually refined a tiny bit of the Life Green Jade he had obtained in the Ancestral Land on its own.
Since then, his body had undergone a transformation. His vital blood surged like a ferocious beast's, and his self-healing ability was extremely powerful. Whenever he entered the Mountains and Rivers Land and was beaten beyond recognition, he needed only a day's rest to recover almost completely. He no longer even needed pills.
Moreover, because he had refined a tiny bit of Life Green Jade, his body had become a treasure, brimming with an exceptionally strong aura of life. Birds and beasts were often instinctively drawn to him. The smaller ones liked