An Unsettling Experiment

Perhaps divine fortune was watching over him. Suddenly, a moment of clarity struck Han Li like a lightning bolt.

He dashed toward the discarded bag, reached it in a few strides, bent down, and picked it up. He tore open the leather pouch and pulled out the peace talisman his parents had given him.

The instant his palm touched the talisman, a wave of pervasive cool clarity surged through his hand. The turmoil in his heart immediately calmed. The stifling frustration and misery vanished without a trace. The abnormal sensations within his body disappeared as if wiped clean. Everything seemed to return to normal.

He paid no further attention to the changes in his own body. He simply held the talisman in one palm, brought it before his eyes, and gently, slowly stroked it with his other hand, staring at it with complete absorption.

After a long while, he sighed, stopped the motion, and turned his gaze away.

He did not know that this life-threatening incident was not the “Qi Deviation” that martial practitioners fear, but was the “Heart Demon Invasion” that cultivators dread most. Had he not acted in time and expelled the demon with external help, the heart demon would soon have invaded his Primordial Spirit, seized control, cast him into an illusion, then forced his body to dance wildly until death. All of this, of course, he would only understand after stepping onto the true path of cultivation.

He performed a full internal examination and confirmed that everything was normal. Moreover, to his pleasant surprise, his cultivation had increased considerably. Although he had not breached the third layer to reach the fourth, he had reached the peak of the third layer, only a step away from it.

A hint of a smile touched his lips at this unexpected fortune, but he quickly contained his excitement. He was afraid that if his emotions became unstable again, he might suffer another dangerous Qi Deviation, and he had no confidence that he would escape unharmed a second time. He picked up the pouch holding the peace talisman, intending to put it away properly.

“Ah!” He discovered something in the pouch that he had long forgotten—a treasure left untouched for several years—the mysterious little bottle.

The matter of this bottle had been completely erased from his memory. Had he not seen it now, he would likely never have thought of it again.

His experience and understanding were now vastly different from four years ago. He had absorbed a great deal of knowledge from the books in Doctor Mo’s library, and the breathing technique had made his mind sharper. He could now easily deduce that this little bottle, given its previous strange behavior, was definitely a rare treasure with extraordinary properties.

What he needed to do now was to fully uncover the bottle’s value and see whether it could be useful to him. He could not let it lie forgotten and wasted in the bottom of the pouch.

He took the bottle out. He did not open it eagerly, but examined it again with his new understanding, searching for details he might have missed.

Unfortunately, no matter how many times he inspected it, he found nothing new.

He stopped wasting time. He carefully opened the lid. The single drop of emerald green liquid was still at the bottom of the bottle, exactly as it had been four years ago.

He understood that all the bottle’s secrets might lie in this tiny drop of green liquid. It must have some special property that he had yet to discover. To learn the liquid’s secret, he would have to find small animals and conduct some cruel living experiments.

It was already night, very dark outside, and inconvenient for searching for live subjects. Moreover, after the afternoon’s and the first half of the night’s ordeal, he was exhausted. Besides, even if he found the animals, what use would it be if the light was too dim to observe the changes clearly?

After careful consideration, he decided to get a good night’s rest. He would regain his strength tonight and conduct the experiments tomorrow. Perhaps a great surprise would be waiting for him when he woke up.

The next morning, after washing up and completing his morning routine, he first went to the main kitchen outside the valley for a plain breakfast. When Doctor Mo was still on the mountain, he used to have the kitchen staff deliver meals personally to Divine Hand Valley. Han Li had simply enjoyed the same privilege, as the cooks brought his food along with Doctor Mo’s. But now that Doctor Mo had left the Seven Mysteries Sect, the kitchen naturally stopped delivering. Han Li sighed at how quickly the kitchen steward shed his courtesy when there was no longer any benefit to be gained.

After breakfast, he did not leave immediately. Instead, he found the kitchen steward and exchanged a few small pieces of silver for two lively, gray rabbits, which he brought back to Divine Hand Valley.

Once in the valley, he tied the rabbits in a spacious area of the herb garden and left them under the sun to dry.

When the rabbits were thoroughly wilted and parched, he fetched a large white porcelain bowl, carefully poured the bottle’s green liquid into it, and mixed it with plain water. The drop dissolved easily, turning the entire bowl of water a vivid green, a color so cool that it sent an unbidden chill into the heart.

He carried the diluted water to the thirsty rabbits and set the bowl down beside them.

The rabbits, already dry and parched by the sun, eagerly gathered around the bowl and drank quickly. He did not want them to drink too much at once, so after about a quarter of the bowl was gone, he took it away.

Then he stood to the side, holding the bowl, patiently waiting for the rabbits to react.

It did not take long—only the time it takes to burn an incense stick—before the rabbits began to jump restlessly. Their movements grew more agitated, more violent.

Then their bodies began to change alarmingly. Lumps the size of chicken eggs bulged beneath their fur, growing more numerous until they covered the whole body. The lumps merged into one another, making their bodies seem unnaturally larger, comically disproportionate to the small heads.

The suddenly fattened bodies only held that shape for a moment before they began to swell, steadily and faster, as if gas were being pumped into them. They grew bigger, rounder. In the end, their trunks were like two large watermelons, stretched into round, taut spheres.

Han Li stared in shock. This completely overturned his expectations. If the unknown liquid was some sort of deadly poison or a medicinal tonic that could increase cultivation, he would not have been surprised. But never had he imagined such a gruesome outcome—the rabbits’ bodies blown up like balloons.