Perhaps it was the blessing of the God of Luck. In that instant, a flash of inspiration streaked through Han Li's mind.
He bolted toward the pouch he had hurled away, covering the distance in just a few quick strides. He bent down, snatched it up, and pried the leather bag open. With frantic haste, he pulled out the Peace Talisman his parents had given him.
The moment his palm touched the talisman, a wave of refreshing clarity seeped through his hand and penetrated to the very depths of his body and mind. Han Li's restless thoughts settled at once. All the frustration and discomfort that had been churning inside him vanished without a trace, and every abnormal sensation within his body automatically subsided. Everything seemed to return to normal.
Now Han Li paid no further heed to any of the strange changes that had come over him. He simply cradled the Peace Talisman gently in one palm, holding it before his eyes, while his other hand slowly, tenderly stroked its surface. His entire being was fixed upon it, gazing without blinking.
After a long while, Han Li let out a sigh, stopped rubbing the talisman, and shifted his gaze away from it.
Han Li had no idea that the crisis which had nearly killed him was not "deviation" during cultivation, but what practitioners called a Heart Demon Invasion. Had he not reacted quickly enough, using an external object to drive the Heart Demon away in time, he would soon have had the demon invade his Primordial Spirit. It would then have trapped him in an illusion, seizing control of his body and forcing him to dance wildly to death. All of this, of course, he only learned after he had embarked on the path of cultivation.
Han Li circulated his energy and inspected himself from head to toe, finding that everything was in order. To his pleasant surprise, his cultivation had actually grown considerably. He had not yet broken through from the third layer to the fourth, but he had reached the peak of the third, not far from the threshold of the fourth.
A faint smile appeared on Han Li's face at this unexpected windfall, but he immediately reined in his excitement. He was terrified that emotional instability might trigger another bout of deviation. He had no confidence that he could survive such a close call a second time. He picked up the leather pouch that held the Peace Talisman, intending to return the talisman to its place and store it safely.
"Hm?" Han Li noticed something in the pouch — an item he had completely forgotten about, a treasure he had kept stowed away for years. The mysterious Small Bottle.
Han Li had long since forgotten all about the Small Bottle. Had he not caught sight of it now, it might never have crossed his mind again.
Compared to four years ago, Han Li's knowledge and judgment had changed enormously. His voracious reading of every book in Doctor Mo's study had broadened his horizons immensely, and his cultivation practice had sharpened his mind considerably. He could now easily deduce, from the strange phenomena the bottle had produced in the past, that this Small Bottle was an extraordinary rarity — an object of uncommon power.
What he needed to do now was to unearth the bottle's true value, to see whether it could be of use to him. He could not simply let it languish in the pouch, its mysterious function wasted.
Han Li took out the bottle but did not rush to open it. Instead, he examined it once more with the sharper eyes he had gained over four years, searching for anything he might have overlooked before.
Unfortunately, after turning it over and studying it closely several times over, he found nothing new.
Han Li stopped wasting time on futile inspection. He carefully removed the stopper. The tiny drop of emerald-green liquid was still sitting quietly at the bottom of the bottle, unchanged from four years ago.
Han Li understood clearly that all of the bottle's secrets likely resided in that Small Bottle's Green Liquid. This drop of green fluid must possess some special properties he had yet to discover. To unravel its mystery, it seemed he would need to find some small animals and carry out some rather cruel live experiments.
It was nighttime. It was dark outside, far too inconvenient to go searching for creatures. Moreover, after the ordeal of the afternoon and the first half of the night, Han Li felt thoroughly exhausted. Besides, even if he found something, under the dim light of a nighttime lamp, he might not be able to make out the details of any changes — what a waste that would be!
After weighing all these considerations, Han Li decided to get some sleep and rest well for the night. Once he had recovered his energy, he could run his experiments tomorrow. Perhaps a great surprise was waiting for him after tonight. This was what he hoped as he drifted off to sleep.
The next morning, Han Li got up, washed, and went to the large kitchen outside the valley for a simple breakfast. When Doctor Mo had still been on the mountain, he had always instructed the kitchen staff to deliver meals directly to Divine Hand Valley. Han Li had enjoyed that privilege by association, never needing to leave the valley for his food — the cooks even brought his portions along. Now that Doctor Mo was no longer at the Seven Mysteries Sect, the kitchen staff naturally stopped delivering meals to his door. This made Han Li reflect bitterly on the snobbery of those in charge, and he sighed at how useful power truly was.
After finishing breakfast, Han Li did not leave the kitchen right away. Instead, he sought out the head cook, paid a few coins of loose silver, and exchanged them for two lively gray wild rabbits, which he brought back to Divine Hand Valley.
Back in the valley, Han Li tied the rabbits with rope in a spacious patch of the herb garden and left them basking under the sun.
When the rabbits had been baked into a state of listlessness, their mouths dry and tongues parched, he fetched a large white porcelain bowl. Carefully, he poured a measure of the Green Liquid from the bottle into the bowl, then mixed in some plain water.
The bean-sized drop of Green Liquid dissolved effortlessly into the water, turning the entire bowl a brilliant jade green. That lush, verdant color sent an involuntary shiver of coolness straight from the viewer's heart upward.
Han Li carried the bowl of diluted water over to the rabbits, who were by now desperately thirsty, and set it down beside them.
The sun-scorched rabbits immediately crowded forward, swarming around the porcelain bowl and gulping down the water in great, heaving swallows. Han Li did not want them drinking too much at once. When they had consumed a little over a third of the bowl, he pulled it away from them.
Then he stood to the side, bowl in hand, watching patiently for their reaction — to see whether any interesting changes would occur.
It was not a long wait. In roughly the time it took an incense stick to burn, the rabbits began to leap about in agitation. Their movements grew increasingly frantic, increasingly violent. Then astonishing changes began to appear on their bodies. Underneath their fur, bumps the size of eggs started to swell outward, multiplying rapidly, gradually spreading over their entire bodies. Then these lumps merged together, making the rabbits look as though they had inexplicably grown a size larger — a comical sight when compared to their tiny heads.
The rabbits' bloated bodies maintained this state for only a brief moment before they began to inflate, little by little, swelling ever faster as time passed. It was as though some kind of gas was being pumped continuously into them, stretching them larger and rounder. In the end, their bodies looked like two great watermelons — distended into enormous, drum-tight spheres.
Staring at the bizarre sight before him, Han Li was somewhat taken aback.
Everything that had happened far exceeded his expectations. If the unidentified liquid had turned out to be some deadly poison, or a miraculous elixir that boosted one's cultivation, that would have been one thing — entirely within the realm of possibility. But he had never imagined witnessing this skin-crawling spectacle: the rabbits' bodies bloating as though someone had inflated them, growing so terrifyingly, grotesquely round.
(End of Chapter)