The Medicine-Testing Rabbits
Perhaps it was the blessing of the goddess of luck. All at once, a flash of inspiration crossed Han Li's mind.
He raced toward the bag he had thrown into the distance, reaching it in a few strides. Bending down, he picked it up, quickly pulled open the leather pouch, and snatched out the safety talisman his parents had given him.
The moment the talisman touched his palm, a clear, calming sensation spread from his hand through his body and mind. Han Li's agitated heart immediately grew calm. His earlier gloom and discomfort vanished without a trace, and all the strange symptoms in his body disappeared of their own accord. Everything seemed to have returned to normal.
Han Li no longer paid any attention to the changes in his body. He simply cradled the safety talisman in one palm and brought it up before his eyes. With his other hand, he gently, slowly stroked it, gazing at it with all his heart and soul.
After a long while, Han Li sighed. He stopped stroking the talisman and shifted his gaze away from it.
Han Li did not know that the trouble that had nearly cost him his life was not "Qi Deviation," but the "invasion of a Heart Devil" known to cultivators. Had he not recognized the danger early and used an external object to drive the Heart Devil away beforehand, it would likely have invaded his Primordial Spirit before long. He would then have fallen under its control and into an illusion, his body manipulated into dancing wildly until he died. Of course, he only learned all this later, after he embarked on the path of cultivation.
Han Li circulated his cultivation to examine his entire body and found nothing wrong. To his delight, his cultivation had actually increased considerably. Although he had yet to break through the third layer and reach the fourth, he had reached the peak of the third layer and was not far from the fourth.
This unexpected pleasant surprise brought a faint smile to Han Li's face, but he hurriedly reined in his excitement. He was afraid that another swing in his emotions might bring on another perilous bout of Qi Deviation; he had no confidence that he could come through it unharmed a second time. He took hold of the leather pouch meant for the safety talisman, intending to put the talisman, which had rendered such great service, back inside and store it away safely.
"Huh!" Han Li unexpectedly spotted an object in the pouch that he had forgotten for a long time, a keepsake he had held onto for several years-the mysterious little bottle.
Han Li had long since forgotten all about the bottle. If he had not caught sight of it now, he still would not have remembered it.
Compared with four years ago, Han Li's knowledge and discernment were now vastly different. He had greatly broadened his knowledge by reading all manner of books in Doctor Mo's collection, and cultivating the Mnemonic had made his mind much sharper than before. From the strange things that had happened with the bottle, he could now easily tell that it was without question a rare marvel in the world, with an extraordinary function.
What he had to do now was uncover the bottle's full value and see whether it was of any use to him. He could not leave it in the pouch, never seeing the light of day, and let its mysterious function go to waste.
Han Li took out the little bottle but did not rush to open it. Instead, he examined it again with the eyes he had gained over the past four years, looking for anything he might have missed before.
Unfortunately, after turning it over and examining it carefully several times, he found nothing new.
Han Li stopped wasting time on a fruitless search and carefully opened the bottle. The drop of emerald-green liquid was still sitting obediently at the bottom, no different from how it had been four years ago.
Han Li knew very well that all the bottle's secrets might lie in this tiny drop of green liquid. It had to possess some special effect he had yet to discover. To uncover its secret, it seemed he would have to find some small animals and conduct some cruel experiments on them while they were alive.
It was night, and it was very dark outside, making it inconvenient to go looking for live animals. Besides, after all the commotion that afternoon and the first half of the night, Han Li felt exhausted. Moreover, even if he did find some, wouldn't it all be for nothing if the dim light at night kept him from seeing the precise changes during the experiment?
After weighing everything carefully, Han Li decided to get some sleep and rest well for the night. Once he had restored his spirits, it would not be too late to conduct the experiment tomorrow. Before going to sleep, he hoped that a great surprise might await him after tonight.
The next morning, after getting up and washing, Han Li first went to the large kitchen outside the valley for an ordinary breakfast. When Doctor Mo had been on the mountain, he had always instructed the kitchen staff to deliver his meals personally to Divine Hand Valley. Han Li had benefited from Doctor Mo's favor and had not needed to leave the valley for meals either; the kitchen cooks had brought his food along with Doctor Mo's. Now that Doctor Mo was no longer at the Seven Mysteries Sect, the kitchen staff naturally no longer delivered meals to his door. This left Han Li reflecting for quite some time on how snobbish the kitchen steward was and sighing over how useful power could be.
After breakfast, Han Li did not leave the kitchen immediately. Instead, he found the kitchen steward and paid him a few qian of silver pieces for two lively, hopping gray-furred hares, which he took back to Divine Hand Valley.
Back in the valley, Han Li tied the hares with rope in a fairly spacious part of the medicinal garden and left them under the blazing sun.
Only when the hares had grown listless, their mouths and tongues parched from the sun, did he fetch a large white porcelain bowl. He carefully poured the green liquid from the bottle into it, then mixed in some ordinary clean water.
The bean-sized drop of green liquid dissolved easily into the water, turning the entire bowl a deep green. At the sight of that verdant color, a profound chill involuntarily welled up from the depths of one's heart.
Han Li picked up the bowl of diluted liquid, went over to the thirsty hares, and set it down beside them.
Their mouths and tongues long since parched by the sun, the hares hurried over, crowded around the porcelain bowl, and drank the water in great gulps. Han Li did not want them to drink too much at once, so after they had drunk a little less than half, he took the bowl away from them.
He then stood to one side with the porcelain bowl in his hands and patiently waited for the hares to react, watching to see whether they would undergo any interesting changes.
Not much time passed-only the time it took an incense stick to burn-before the hares began hopping about restlessly. Their movements grew increasingly impulsive and violent. Then their bodies also began to undergo an astonishing change. Egg-sized lumps started bulging beneath their fur, growing more and more numerous until they gradually covered their entire bodies. The lumps then joined together, making the hares' bodies look as though they had inexplicably grown a size larger. Compared with their tiny heads, they looked quite comical.
The hares' plump bodies stayed that way for only a short while before slowly swelling, little by little. As time passed, they expanded faster and faster, as though some kind of gas were being pumped into them without cease, stretching them larger and rounder. In the end, their bodies were stretched into two round balls, each as big as a watermelon.
Han Li was somewhat startled by the hares' bodies, which had become extraordinarily bizarre before his eyes.
Everything happening before him was far beyond his expectations. If the unknown liquid had been a deadly poison or a spirit medicine that could increase one's cultivation, that would have been nothing unusual; both were within his imagination. But he had never expected to see the scalp-tingling sight before him: the hares' bodies had become so utterly horrifying, as though someone had blown them up.