It was still midnight when Han Xuhan opened his eyes. He considered sleeping till dawn. But that could give rise to some deadly situations, for example- if a flood hit when he was asleep, he might just be dragged along with the water, off the edge of the island due to the Heavenly Hailstorm peak's proximity to the edge.
There hadn't been any floods since a pretty weak one during the sunset. The new formation of mountains around the island was working wonders. Some of the sudden, smaller ones like small-scale series of lightning strikes were even beginning to go unnoticed by a good portion of the disciples.
Han Xuhan and his fellow disciples were still totally in the dark about how these trials affected their ranking in the tournament.
From what he had seen inside Luo Yi's Beast pet, The Crimson Snow Sect was pretty much at the bottom of the barrel in terms of ranking.
Why? He didn't know. Nobody did.
How to change it for the better? He didn't know. Nobody did.
What all of them did know...was that they needed to climb the ranks fast if they didn't want to be thrown off the list of the sects that would qualify for the next round.
Han Xuhan made a mental note to revisit the central field of the island tomorrow and check what has changed in the ranking list after the most recent trials. Comparing the data from both sides should provide a good clue.
For now, sleeping for that long would not be a good idea. He sat up on his bed, feeling slightly refreshed from the three hours of physical sleep.
There was one more issue he hadn't looked into yet.
Taking out the square-shaped blue crystal from a pocket of his robe, Han Xuhan hesitated on taking action for a long while.
Must I really suck on this?
In the end, he did it for the greater good. The crystal was warm, but not enough to cause discomfort in his mouth. But he immediately gagged.
Horrible! The taste was absolutely horrible! It tasted like someone had wrung out a concentrated dose of Bitter-gourd juice and made a crystal out of it!
Teeth gritted, Han Xuhan persevered through the ordeal, trying his best not to let a single drop of saliva come into contact with the crystal.
But would merely sucking without tasting it work?
Apparently not.
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Han Xuhan awaited salvation for a very long time, almost fifteen seconds, before choking and spitting out that hellish instrument of torture.
No! I must do it! For the benefits! For the power!
Even Xuan Zi wanted him to do it. He had to maintain a decent relationship with the enigmatic sect master for now. He needed shelter and safety.
In the back of his head, he imagined an epic orchestral piece booming in his ears as he put the crystal in his mouth for the second time, this time determined to taste it thoroughly!
Oh, the stench! The misery! This world would never know the sacrifice he had made tonight, the sheer terror his tastebuds tangled with. Right when he was about to admit defeat and spit out the saliva-soaked crystal, something changed.
More accurately, he felt that something had changed, but he could not pinpoint what it was. The only thing he could sense was the changing texture of the crystal, from velvet smooth to a rough exterior grating on his tongue.
The disgust he felt seemed to stem not just from his tastebuds, but also from his mind. Sure, the taste was horrible, but the mental abhorrence he felt was enhancing the feeling of disgust beyond the far reaches of his tolerance limits.
The taste reminded him of everything he hated, every unpalatable dish he had ever tasted, every nauseating stench he had encountered in his short eighteen years of life. Even his qi fell into chaos.
It was more than just a reaction of his body to the taste, it felt like a cultivated sense of hatred.
Wait a second, did the crystal get smaller just now?
It can't be edible, right?
Han Xuhan quickly tried to spit it out, but alas...the crystal also turned out to be sticky.
He immediately jammed a couple of fingers down his gob to pry it out, but by then, the damage had been done. The crystal had morphed into a substance as foamy as cake, spreading all over his mouth, sticking stubbornly wherever it reached.
Han Xuhan felt like he was about to pass out from disgust and horror.
Right then, the taste disappeared, and his sight went dark.
Han Xuhan's sight returned soon enough, albeit with an unfamiliar characteristic.
He could recognize his bedroom, his bed, the small window adjacent to the bed, the bedside table, and the miscellaneous objects littering the bedside table.
But these objects looked different now. Something extra, something unknown to him was perceivable in each of them.
When he looked at the bed, what he saw was not just the outline, sheet, and frames, but also a grey sketch that resembled a child's scribbling. It was superimposed over his original vision of the bed, yet not obstructing his normal sight in any way; almost as if the two images were coming from two different sources, received by two different receptors inside his mind and then amalgamated into one compound image where both images existed in their full, intact form.
His table, the objects on the table, and the rest of the room displayed the same phenomenon. In the dim moonlight coming through the window, this new attribute in every object he could see made him shiver in fear.
Han Xuhan couldn't tell if a normal human brain had the capacity to visualize and comprehend images like these. Nonetheless, his brain seemed plenty capable of functioning as things were right now.
Heavens! What was in that crystal candy?
Didn't Shangguang Ce say that sucking on the crystal was a contacting method?
If not, why did I undergo this torture of taste?
"Shangguang Ce! This better not be a prank!" Han Xuhan roared angrily at the ceiling and leaped down from his bed, getting dressed for a venture outside.
The moonlight tonight was rather brilliant. Han Xuhan took advantage of that by running his eyes over every object around his hut and made a mental list of his observations.
Firstly, all the dead objects, like the walls of his hut, the soil under his feet, and even the empty air itself displayed scribblings of all sorts. He couldn't find any patterns or codes inside the scribblings. Everywhere he looked, swathes of grey ink took up his vision. This world of grey ink was not just a collection of two-dimensional images of separate objects. In fact, most of these scribblings were three-dimensional. What made this apparent to him was the air itself, which was pretty much an all-pervasive projection of grey lines, twisting, turning, crossing, tangling everywhere. The sight made Han Xuhan feel like had been transported inside a surrealistic painting drawn with a needle-sharp pencil.
Secondly, not the entirety of his vision consisted of the color grey. There was he himself, a mixture of uncountable colors overshadowing the grey ink around him. In his normal vision, his body looked the same as before, while in the new superimposed vision, he was pretty much a multi-colored blob contained within a humanoid outline.
Thirdly, the grass on the ground was also not entirely grey. Webs of jet-black lines ran through their leafy bodies, pulsing every now and then inexplicably. Same with the trees. Black veins vibrated among the gray lines which represented them, all the way up to the highest stalk.
Fourthly, he could see another mass of bright colors erupting in the sky just above their mountain peak, landing near Kong Ye's hut like a shooting star.
BOOOMMM!
BOOOMMM!!
BOOOMMM!!!