Yang Yang shook his head, his expression dark in the shadows of the old house. "Because his sins were the deepest of all. He is the one who created the fake medicine formula, the very source of the clan's corruption. Maybe his evil was simply too great to end quickly; so he is cursed to live ninety-nine years of suffering before finally being dragged down to the eighteenth level of hell."
"Alright then," Jing Shu said, shrugging her shoulders. She opened her metal medical kit and started performing a few routine checks on the patient. She looked professional enough in her movements, but to Hao San'er, the old man tending the stove nearby, she was just another fraud. He snorted in derision, spat a mouthful of dark liquid far across the room onto the dusty floor, and gave her a look that clearly said: "What can a half-baked amateur like you possibly figure out? The Hao boy's soul is already writhing in the eighteenth hell."
Since the Spirit Spring couldn't wake Hao Yunlai anyway, there was no point wasting its precious drops.
Jing Shu coughed a few times to clear her throat, dropped the professional act, and pulled out the withered tree that had been soaking in the crimson liquid within her storage.
Yang Yang pointed at the strange object, looking stunned. "Wait, isn't that the one from billionaire Job Sibus's lab in the States? The one you exchanged fifty contribution points for?"
She nodded. As expected, Yang Yang was sharp, which only made her more cautious about what she revealed.
Jing Shu took out a sharp knife and carefully sliced into the bark of the withered tree. Sure enough, after soaking for so many days, the once-dead tree that even the billionaire's elite research team couldn't revive had sprouted fingernail-sized blood-red crystals.
She had suspected from the start that the tree acted as a biological converter, slowly turning the mysterious crimson liquid into a concentrated crystal form. She still didn't know what these crystals actually were or how to use them safely, but she could feel their pulsating power through her fingertips.
She stitched the tree's wound shut again with a quick needle and held the blood-colored crystal in her hand, hesitating. Back when she had touched the gateway to the fourth dimension, she had nearly died after losing her anchor point in reality. It was the Cube Space that had pulled her back from the brink. It was that very crystal that had altered the entire timeline of her life.
It had taken her back to the moment before her physical body collapsed. Yet the memory of the pain still tore through her, because time couldn't erase the mind's scars. The body remembered the trauma; just like how, in her previous life, she had died and then returned ten years earlier to her younger self.
If her guess was right, these crystals had the power to send a person back to a specific point in time. Say you got riddled with bullets and were beyond saving; the crystal could bring you back to a moment just before that fatal event. But your body would still remember the agony of being pierced through.
So... how exactly was she supposed to use this thing on someone else?
"Oh, right. The crystal only works when it's inside the tree. I remember it melting inside my brain last time." She clapped her hands together, grabbed her knife, and jabbed it straight into Hao Yunlai's left shoulder. She aimed close to his heart for better absorption. Then she shoved the blood crystal deep into his open flesh. Blood gushed out from the wound, and within seconds, his lips turned a sickly pale color.
"Are you serious right now? What the hell are you doing to him?" Yang Yang was completely lost. Whatever this was, it sure wasn't traditional medicine anymore.
Jing Shu quickly stitched the wound closed, slapped on a black herbal pellet, and pressed her hand hard over the spot, massaging the muscle to help the crystal fuse faster with his bloodstream.
Blood spurted now and then from between her fingers, but she didn't care about the mess. None of this came with an instruction manual. She had to figure it out herself through trial and error. If the crystal didn't work, she would just reopen the wound and dig it out later. That thing was way too precious to waste on a failed attempt.
She had spent over ten days in America collecting that crimson liquid. She had no clue what it was for, but it was definitely valuable.
After a few minutes of steady pressing, she felt the hard crystal begin to shrink under her palm.
"There we go!" she said in excitement. But the next second, a roaring pulse filled her head, like someone hammering a massive bronze bell right beside her ear. Her mind buzzed violently, resonating with something unseen in the room. Before she could react or pull away, she blacked out.
Yang Yang blinked in confusion. "What the...?"
What just happened to her?
Jing Shu's soul drifted free for the second time in her life. She watched herself from above. Dressed in that bulky cotton coat and looking quite plain, she watched her own body collapse onto the ground. Even she thought she looked embarrassingly rustic from this angle.
From her god view, she hovered above the entire house, observing the scene below. She had no idea what had just triggered this state or how to end it.
Resting her chin on her hand, she felt a little anxious. "Crap... don't tell me I actually died this time?"
Drip. Drip. Drip.
The sound of falling water reached her ears. She followed the noise through the Cube Space and spotted the one-cubic-meter core section—the one that usually produced only twenty drops of Spirit Spring a day, totaling just one gram.
But now, the Spirit Spring was pouring out at an insane rate. Drop after drop, clear and beautiful, was splashing down, the sound echoing like music.
"What the hell? It's supposed to make only one gram a day, and now it's gushing like crazy? That's got to be at least a few days' worth of production!"
Her heart leapt with joy. Spirit Spring was insanely precious to her. Every day, she carefully numbered, diluted, and distributed it among her plants, her family, Xiao Dou, and even the villa's vegetable garden and fish pond. Lately, the production simply couldn't keep up with their consumption.
But now, the Spirit Spring was overflowing, drop after drop, until her jaw almost hit the ground. Then she finally understood what was happening.
The blood crystal she had risked her life to retrieve from the fourth dimension—the one she hadn't wanted to waste on Hao Yunlai—was melting away before her eyes within the space. It was dissolving, being converted into Spirit Spring at roughly a one-to-one-hundred ratio.
She was torn between excitement and heartbreak. Watching the Spirit Spring multiply like crazy made her thrilled, but seeing her precious blood crystal get devoured hurt like hell. Still, it proved something huge: the Spirit Spring didn't just grow on its own; it could also absorb and convert other powerful materials like that crystal.
The price was steep, but the Spirit Spring was worth it.
Soon, she noticed that the newly formed Spirit Spring looked slightly different. It was darker in color, and the space had automatically separated it into its own section.
"So does that mean it's higher quality? Or maybe just different? Or does it have another use entirely?" she murmured thoughtfully to herself.
The mad overflow lasted only a few minutes before the energy calmed down. The pool settled, now with a Spirit Spring about the size of a fist resting quietly in one corner of the zone.
Every last bit of the blood crystal was gone, the crimson liquid still lying silently beside the new pool.
At that moment, Jing Shu groaned and slowly came to on the floor. Her head felt light and hollow as she blinked.
"Ow... ow... ow..."
And right beside her on the bed, Hao Yunlai woke up too, jolted awake by the pain.