In a dark world, a faint point of light appeared, accompanied by a weak, confused, halting murmur.
"I..."
"I... am..."
"What... am I?"
The voice, dragging out each word, sounded like a newly born life struggling to sustain its existence on the verge of collapse. Its halting tone carried a soul's standard question.
"Am I... going to... die?"
"What... is death?"
"Is it the end of life, or the annihilation of consciousness?"
As the muttering gradually quickened, the faint light rapidly brightened, growing from a tiny glow at the tip of an incense stick into candlelight.
As though struck by a flash of inspiration, the candlewick flared, and the questioning voice abruptly rose.
"Right, I'm Leo. This is my second time reaching the deepest part of my consciousness space. It's like waking from a dream."
"This time, I took the Bitterheart Grass Potion, and there's no mana left in my body. The recovery method I used last time definitely won't work, so let's try the method I came up with."
"Brain, brain, try absorbing all the Bitterheart Grass Potion. Let some of the cells passively evolve in response to it."
After an unknown amount of time, Leo estimated that he had repeated himself at least a million times. Only because the deepest level of his consciousness space could disregard the passage of time did he finally feel a powerful suction again.
The bottommost level of his consciousness space shattered, and his consciousness returned to his body.
It had worked. His body could pick up powerful subconscious thoughts.
Sure enough, his body was buried beneath layers of sand dunes again. This time, Leo was in no hurry. With experience behind him, he quickly assessed his body's condition and analyzed the situation.
Pushing his bodily functions to their absolute limits had sent over sixty percent of the cells and bodily functions in his mummified body to the grave.
Much like last time, he had two minutes left to live. The only difference was that the cells in his left palm were noticeably more active than those elsewhere.
Leo knew that his body's passive evolution must have concentrated all the Bitterheart Grass Potion in his left palm. Although the potion could isolate mana, it also contained enormous energy.
The fullness of his left palm made that clear. It had evolved using the energy of the Bitterheart Grass Potion.
Compared with the mummified appearance of the rest of his body, his plump left palm was simply out of line!
Hogging it all!
His shadow appeared again and covered his entire body. The faint power within it flowed into him, and mana fluctuations appeared throughout his body once more, apart from his left palm. With a thought, Leo used Shadow Jump, teleporting from beneath the dune into the shade behind it.
He poured bottle after bottle of healing potion into his mouth. His mummified body rapidly recovered, and his mana returned. The Healing Rune Array on his chest activated, sending healing power through his body again and again. Before long, Leo was back at his peak.
"The cells went through over a hundred generations of replacement, evolving slightly each time. My body strengthened by around four percent, my maximum mana increased by five percent, and my passive defense increased by two percent."
"A very good evolution."
Repeated brushes with death drove his cells to strengthen frantically. The rapid death of one generation made the next generation desperately avoid repeating its mistakes.
Especially since the causes of death this time were dehydration, starvation, and lack of energy.
Thus, all their passive evolution went toward compensating for those causes of death, to avoid dying like the generations of cells before them.
Leo clearly felt his skin harden and his pores shrink, all to reduce energy loss. The result was skin that seemed like a sheet of iron, preventing both energy loss and injury.
Moreover, besides inheriting the previous cells' poison resistance, these new generations had changed their energy storage capacity. If a cell could originally hold only one unit of energy, after hundreds of generations of replacement, it could now hold more than one unit.
The increase in each cell's energy capacity seemed tiny, but every cell throughout his body had grown in capacity. Added together across countless cells, Leo's total mana had risen by a tenth. That was ten percent.
His total mana had increased by ten percent in just four months. Was there any more effective way to cultivate than this?!!!
No!!!
Leo took a deep breath, suppressing his shock. His strength was increasing far too quickly!
The increase in total mana was only one aspect of his body's response. Passive evolution improved his overall attributes. Almost every brush with death made Leo a little stronger, until this environment could no longer have an effect.
"You really are a freak, waking up even under these conditions."
Benji was somewhat impressed. He did not know how Leo made his body evolve so quickly. If Leo truly had mastered this method, it meant he could court death over and over without worrying about the consequences.
This was cheating. This was using hacks!
Leo laughed heartily, although he still could not determine exactly how the relationship between consciousness and flesh worked, or why his cells could evolve so quickly.
If he could freely master the principles behind this rapid cellular evolution, Leo could not imagine how far his future would take him!
During his previous recovery, activating the fourfold Gravity Rune Array had still been a struggle. Now, it was considerably easier. He estimated that another five rounds of cellular evolution would let him fully withstand fourfold gravity.
This leap in strength fascinated Leo. Since his cells could evolve and replace themselves so dramatically when he was near death, he might as well be bolder.
Leo took several bottles of poison from the Shadow Space and poured them all into his mouth.
Naturally, he did not leave out the Bitterheart Grass Potion he had used last time to restrict his mana, gulping it down along with everything else.
He would not die anyway, so he might as well go hard!
"The old method of slowly evolving passively over time was too slow. I'll speed it up."
After more than a decade of continuously taking poison, Leo's body had developed considerable poison resistance. That resistance came entirely from his cells evolving on their own. Its advantages were stability and endurance; its drawbacks were slow speed and poor results.
Now that Leo had experienced the appeal of instantaneous evolution in a short burst, he could no longer appreciate that sluggish old method.
Leo also knew that opportunities to stimulate rapid bodily evolution through harsh environments were rare, so naturally, he had to make the most of this one.
Poison, mana restriction, and fourfold gravity—the three layers of passive impairment took hold of Leo, instantly weakening him until he staggered, feeling as though life was about to crush him.
Keep going. Body-refining wizards advanced through repeated tempering like this!
Wizards were feared across countless worlds precisely because of their persistence!
In just ten days, Leo gloriously lost consciousness and collapsed again. As windblown sand buried him, a small dune came into being.
Benji lost contact with Leo as soon as he fell unconscious. Sensing the increasingly weak signs of life from him, Benji was not worried at all. While he had feared for Leo the first two times, he certainly would not now.
From Benji's perspective, less than a day after the windblown sand buried Leo, he instantly teleported out from beneath the dune with Shadow Jump.
Then came the potions and healing runes. Using both methods together, the mummified Leo revived at full health right there in just a few hours, once again a vigorous Wizard Apprentice.
Whatever the lively Leo was pondering, he immediately took out another pile of poison and poured it into his mouth. Then he waited for his mana to be restricted and his aura to vanish, beginning another round of pushing his limits.
Benji did not understand. In his world, this kind of challenge was clearly extremely dangerous. Only those with tremendous perseverance dared attempt it. Often, fewer than two out of ten survived, and those two were usually people who had failed midway.
The wizard books Leo had read also clearly recorded that body-refining wizards suffered considerable casualties in this regard.
Yet why was it that, even when Leo had clearly failed the challenge and could not possibly survive, he still came back to life against all reason?
He should have died, several times over at that. Why did he keep coming back to life?
Benji wanted to rush out, meet Leo's gaze, and stare into his eyes as he demanded loudly—why?
Benji truly could not understand. Although he could observe Leo's memories and share his view of the outside world, there were many times when he could not understand Leo's thoughts.
Benji watched Leo hop back and forth across the line of death. Sometimes, he was so angry that he wanted to kick Leo to death and be done with it. Why could he survive over and over like this? It was simply an insult to the god of death.
By the time Leo recovered to full health for the sixth time, Benji declared that he was used to it and no longer cared.
After all, the more outstanding Leo was, the more it benefited him.
With each near-death revival, Leo's aura grew a little stronger. Although the increases became smaller with each round, after ten rounds, Leo was already half again as strong as when he first entered the desert.
That meant Leo had grown fifty percent stronger!!!
This rate of improvement was not merely fast. It was a little outrageous!
By now, Leo could withstand fourfold gravity at any time, and only a year had passed. Honestly, even Benji, with his demigod cultivation, was a little envious!
He was bitter.
He was jealous!
"Why aren't you continuing?"
When Leo stopped taking poison to suppress his body's vitality, Benji actually found it a little strange. Leo was not someone who gave up halfway.
"The desert's harsh environment no longer does much to stimulate me. It's time to leave."
Leo's feet moved in rapid succession as he stretched his legs and hurried out of the desert.
Although his increased strength was gratifying, Leo's brows remained knitted. Certain questions lingered in his mind, still unexplained.
For Leo, compared with increasing his strength, he wanted even more to understand how consciousness and the body influenced each other.
How did they exert that influence, and how could he control it?
He disliked this feeling of having no control and being able only to accept things passively!
He had come close to death ten times in total, entering the deepest reaches of his consciousness ten times. The first two times had been unremarkable; Leo had mainly focused on contacting his body, afraid he might truly die.
During the following eight times, knowing that he would not die, Leo had made many hypotheses and attempts concerning the relationship between consciousness and the body, but none had yielded any progress.
Increasing his strength was nowhere near as enticing as researching the relationship between consciousness and flesh!
Leo had already started a separate page in his experimental notes.
He had one more research project now!
Leo believed that once he understood the relationship between consciousness and flesh, his strength would grow explosively!