Chapter 125: The Inevitable Draws Near

Holding the fruit in his hand, studying the Qi flows radiating off it closely, An smiled slightly. 'Everything about this is bizarre... I've never heard of a tree that could produce fruit out of concentrated Death Qi... though, honestly, this whole space is full of things my meager book collection never covered.'

Thinking it over for a few moments, he pulled one ring off his finger and slid it onto his other hand. Transferring everything out of the white ring, now on his other hand, he started moving every book he owned into it.

Pulling out a bottle he hadn't been using for wine, he filled it with water created using Qi.

Adding a huge amount of tree resin from the trees surrounding him, he grabbed a few first-rank fruits and channeled particles of DeathQi into them.

Watching closely to make sure every particle of the fruit rotted through completely, a black, rotten mass formed in the air in front of him, carrying nothing but the faint scent of fresh grass.

Mixing everything together in the bottle: water, resin, and rot. 'Hm, I should probably cut some of the water and swap it for wine, just to make sure the alcohol actually-'

Pulling out a bottle of dark maroon wine from his ring, he carefully drained some of the water from the mixture and replaced it with wine instead.

Blending everything together in the bottle, he manipulated his Qi, warming and stirring the mixture inside so everything blended evenly.

A few minutes later, he pulled his Qi away from the bottle and, opening the cap, drew out a few drops. 'Color's a perfect black... Consistency seems decent too. Stickiness is spot-on, leaves a mark on skin right away. Heh!' Satisfied, he pulled a random book out of his white ring and, opening to the first page, carefully wrapped a small amount of the ink in Qi and wrote a few letters on the edge of the page.

'Alright, the ink's done... Now I need something to write on.' Waving a hand, he gathered a huge pile of fallen, and not just fallen, leaves off the ground beneath him and the trees nearby.

'If I'm not mistaken, the best method should be a sharp temperature change... Let's try that.' Breaking down the structure of the leaves, reducing them to fine particles, he started pressing them together, compressing them as tightly as he could, forming them into individual sheets.

Once he'd formed several hundred sheets, their color shifting between deep maroon and pale orange, he wrapped everything in a Qi Cauldron and began manipulating the temperature and humidity.

'Maybe I should add some resin too, for better binding between the particles... Even though they're already packed together tightly... who knows how long they'd hold up otherwise.' He decided to use resin to make the sheets last longer and hold together more firmly.

Waving a hand, An started adding drops of resin into the Qi Cauldron, spreading it in the thinnest possible layer across the sheets, slowly and evenly, soaking them completely through, edge to edge.

Tracking the process, where he had to sense and understand the state of all hundred sheets at once, he finally dispersed the cauldron after twenty minutes, and found in front of him something close to a finished product, matching, in thickness and shape, the factory-made paper of his first world.

'Hm... guess my lack of experience kept me from achieving a true white color. Just a faint yellowish tint instead.' Picking up one sheet, he ran his fingers slowly across it, feeling the texture of every particle that made up the paper. 'The color's a bit yellow, sure, but the thickness and durability are excellent... You'd actually have to put in some effort to tear a sheet like this.'

Holding the paper, he could tell this method would let it last an extremely long time, far longer than ordinary paper, and clearly longer than some of the books he'd found in the labs, which had crumbled to dust at the slightest touch.

Carefully stacking all the sheets beside himself, An pulled over several strips of bark he'd torn from the trees. 'A cover made of leather would be better, sure... but I've never read anything about that craft, the only thing I actually know is how to dry leather... so bark it is.'

Once he'd prepared enough material, he repeated the process in the Qi Cauldron, exactly like he had with the sheets, remembering to add resin for durability.

Dispersing the cauldron, he took the still-hot cover, made from bark and resin, and without much thought, wrapped his finger in Fire Qi and started burning a symbol into the front of the cover.

Looking at the burned cross-and-circle symbol, An touched the brand on his own neck. They were identical.

Holding the cover open in front of himself, he began fitting the sheets inside, coating the inner edge with melted resin.

Once he'd finished assembling the book, he carefully picked it up. 'Maybe my true calling is to be a master of bookbinding? Though I'm already a Master... just not of books or craftsmanship.'

Smiling, he opened and closed the book carefully, checking that the resin had dried perfectly and that every sheet turned freely.

Once he'd confirmed everything was in order, he opened to the first page and, dipping into the bottle of ink, started drawing and describing the fruits and plants he'd come across inside this space, specifically, the ones he'd never encountered in the sect's own books.

.

.

"And the last one..." Drawing a copy of the fourth-rank fruit, he described everything he'd been able to read off its Qi.

Finishing the last stroke, An brought the book closer and blew gently on it, helping the ink dry faster.

Carefully closing the book and tucking it into his white ring, he picked up the black fruit and brought it closer to himself.

'I could use this fruit in alchemy... but I'm a hundred percent sure I can't handle the energy raging inside it. Besides, I don't have a single recipe where I could swap one of the ingredients for this fruit... successfully, at least.' Tossing the little black walnut a few times, he frowned slightly.

'Honestly, I could just leave this fruit for later without any trouble… but by the time I'm strong enough to actually absorb all the energy packed inside it, this little fruit will have lost most of its internal energy anyway, since I simply don't have a container that could withstand the Qi of a fourth-rank fruit.'

He watched the Death Qi leak, ever so slowly, out of the fruit and dissolve into the air. 'I could absorb it in small amounts, sure, but the moment I start doing that, there's a real chance the Death Qi inside will react in a way I'll end up regretting... Then again, just sitting here absorbing the leaking Qi flows one drop at a time... I'll die of boredom faster than anything…'

Looking at the fruit one more time, he shook his head and tossed it straight into his mouth. "This is definitely going to hurt-"

Crack!

"Damn it-!"

The moment the fruit cracked and started dissolving in his mouth, he felt his entire body, starting at his mouth and ending at his toes, begin to harden from the sheer volume of Death Qi rapidly spreading through him, filling and wrapping around every single cell.

Understanding exactly what he needed to do, he reacted fast, activating his Cycle Symbol and drawing in nothing but WoodQi from his surroundings, trying to match the incoming energy to the Cycle Symbol, at least enough to maintain some kind of balance.

Since the sheer volume of energy from the fruit was massive, he had to set aside any concern for his physical body's limits and start absorbing energy from his surroundings at a rate that left everything around him withering and blackening.

Every tree, every patch of grass and brush, even the ground itself, started drying out and turning to ash.

Realizing he couldn't hold both the fruit's DeathQi and the WoodQi from his surroundings at once, since the fruit's energy alone had already filled him to his limit, leaving him completely immobilized.

He started absorbing the WoodQi directly, giving it no extra chance to linger inside his physical body.

"Agh-AH!!" Feeling enormous cracks, straight down to the bone, spreading across his entire body from the horrific pressure, he tried to focus, to detach himself from the pain.

Finally striking a balance between the two energies, his wounds stopped spreading, but they didn't start healing either.

Trapped in this state, he kept filtering both energies inside the CycleSymbol, slowly channeling the finished Qi into his dantian. But given the severe strain on his physical body, he could only send it through in the thinnest possible trickle, moving as slowly as possible to avoid doing himself any further damage.

Concentrating, his face suddenly went completely slack, and just like that, all the pain vanished. He slipped into a trance, fully detaching from his surroundings, focusing entirely on filtering the two energies, which had barely managed to find some kind of peace inside his physical body, now sharing space with the Qi flowing toward his dantian as well.

.

.

Several hours later, once most of the fruit's energy had been filtered through, black smoke began seeping out of the massive wounds, gathering across his body and condensing into a thick, black liquid.

The instant these drops hit the ground, whatever they touched immediately began rotting and melting, spreading like an infection to everything around it.

All of this happened because the DeathQi trapped inside the fruit simply couldn't fit inside An's physical body, and was gradually forcing its way out, escaping into the surroundings. But because three energies were now mixed inside his body: WoodQi, DeathQi, and the already-filtered Qi. And since two of these carried no distinct signature while the filtered Qi did, that filtered enegry, despite being the smallest portion, ended up taking a dominant role, indirectly enriching all the energy inside his body. As a result, the energy escaping from the fruit picked up the Rot aspect too, in very low doses, but enough to affect its surroundings regardless.

More and more of it kept escaping, through cracks, through pores, the Qi destroying everything it touched, forming a rotten black mass around and beneath him.

At a certain point, once even the ground had rotted into something resembling quicksand or jelly, An started sinking into it.

Slowly, he sank deeper, infecting more and more territory with his Rot aspect as he went.

.

.

A few more hours later, An stopped sinking, since at a certain point his Qi Silence technique finally caught up with the sheer volume of Qi inside him, and prevented any more of it from escaping.

His body’s regeneration process suddenly kicked in, and within minutes, every deep wound had knitted itself back together.

"Hooooo..." Opening his mouth, he exhaled a massive amount of residue, a mix of DeathQi, WoodQi, and his own vitality.

Unlike the previous times, when every exhale like this had brought life to whatever it touched, this time everything in the path of these residual particles simply turned to dust instead.

'Hm? What happened?' Opening his eyes, he realized he was deep underground. Looking around, seeing his body essentially floating inside a thick pool of rot, An started rising, heading toward the surface.

'Next time, I need to be more careful... And these trances I keep falling into... They spare me the pain, sure, but I should figure out some kind of alternative, since in that state, I'm essentially losing direct control over the whole process... and trusting my own subconscious when I'm not the one fully at the wheel...'

Reaching the surface, he wrapped himself in Qi and destroyed every trace of black rot still clinging to his body.

Grabbing a spare set of clothes, he got dressed and checked his dantian. 'My dantian's now filled with a little over 20% liquid Qi. If I had another dozen fruits like that, I could break through to the mid-stage without any trouble at all...' Pulling on his shirt, he suddenly looked up at the sky.

For the first time since arriving here, he could see, through the dark maroon clouds, tiny bright white points, strikingly similar to stars.

'Only a few hours left before this space opens up and teleports us back... Hm, I really hope my plan works, I really do...' Shaking his head, he shot up into the sky and flew off in the opposite direction from the center, toward the inner ring.