Crunch! Crunch! Crunch!
Lan Jin finishes chewing on a pear before throwing its core toward two more cores near the corpse of the echidna that had been chasing him before he put an end to it. He hadn’t wanted to undo his hoodie, and he definitely didn’t want to eat so many of his pears so early into his forced adventure, but the pain in his collar made him remove his backpack hoodie to check out his shoulder and, since he had no water, he decided to eat a few pears to at least quench a little of his thirst before moving on.
His shoulder wasn’t in the best of shape, though. After moving his shirt so he could see it, which was in itself a painful experience, he found that not only had he gotten a large blister around his collar, but it had also popped and had been rubbed raw by his hoodie’s sleeve digging into his neck for the last little while.
Naturally, he was grumpy and began to complain bitterly about it.
“This is so stupid! I should be in my English or Physics class right now, not running for my life in a stupid forest chased by a roided-out rodent!”
Looking at the dead echidna several feet away from him, he wants to stab it again. If not for his shoulder bothering him so much and the fact that he is exhausted and parched, he might even waste the energy to do it.
After glaring at the dead animal for several seconds, he turns his thoughts to other things and asks himself, “What was that feeling earlier anyway?”
The sense of fear he experienced wasn’t normal. It may have eventually caused him to flee for his life, but at first, it was just a strange, building sensation that warned him of the danger long before he could have ever known about it. He knew himself very well, and there was no way that that was all him. If he had to rely solely on himself to realize there was a giant, presumably man-eating monster trailing behind him looking for a quick snack, then he’d be looking at the pearly gates right about now.
He spends a while thinking about it as he rests and tries to recover enough energy to move on. In the end, what he realizes is that his inexplicable fear could, reasonably, only be caused by the Auspicious Tri-Colored Flame or, possibly, even the Omega Browser itself. Though, he thought it was much more likely for it to have something to do with the Auspicious Tri-Colored Flame as he remembers what the voice in the jade said the hundreds or thousands of times he has played it.
Mumbling under his breath, he says, “Devouring resentment, subduing evil, purifying all things. I haven’t had an opportunity to try devouring resentment or subduing evil— unless you count scaring the echidna as subduing evil— but I can probably be considered to have purified the pears, right?
Then the next part is… The birth of providence, fortune, prosperity. There’s also the part about the guiding light and the name of the purple fire, Auspicious Tri-Colored Flame.
If burning the pear can be considered purifying it, then the next step is the birth of providence, fortune, and prosperity. That should mean that the purple mist might have something to do with those three things. Then, by… it sounds weird to say I sucked up the purple mist, but that’s kinda what I did. But, if I did suck up providence, fortune, and prosperity, then maybe the reason why I was able to figure out I was being hunted was just because I was lucky?”
Staring up into the canopy of the forest above him, Lan Jin slowly nods his head. “I really don’t see anything else saving my life other than luck. For now, I’m going to choose to believe that the purple mist is basically liquid luck and I should probably look into getting more of it.”
Blinking, he then says, “Holy shit. That old dude that I saw in the jade made an entire mountain range into purple juice. All I’ve had were a few strands of mist and it already saved my life. So if it’s really luck, then how lucky was that dude?”
The more he thinks about it, the more unnerved he becomes.
“If some random old dude I saw in a rock could take mountains and turn them into luck, then what else can people do around here? And is that guy the norm or the exception?”
Lan Jin doesn’t know, and despite being curious, he is afraid to find out. But, after seeing the large echidna, he has a newfound appreciation for the scroll’s author. He still doesn’t believe in birds with a wingspan of over a hundred miles, but he does start thinking that maybe the author didn’t exaggerate as much as Lan Jin had originally thought
After realizing that this world is more different than he first thought, he turns his attention inward for a brief moment and begins activating the jade again out of habit. Then, still tired and parched but with his needs taken care of for the moment, Lan Jin stands up and walks toward the dead echidna laying on the ground.
Looking it over, Lan Jin has a conflict of conscience.
“Should I try burning it?”
He doesn’t really want to, and it isn’t because he has any misgivings about burning the thing that hunted him. Instead, Lan Jin has the random thought that, if he burned it and tried to absorb any purple mist that came off of it, it would be the same thing as him sucking up the death juices of an animal.
That thought makes him squeamish and, consequently, he remains motionless while staring at the dead animal in front of him for several minutes.
“I’m in the middle of who-knows-where and the one sign of people I’ve seen was a weapon lying on the ground. I also would have died if not for the purple mist, probably, so I need more of it. Since the echidna was also probably rabid, I shouldn’t eat it. So I can either waste the echidna and let other animals become exposed to probably-rabid, and eventually rotting animal meat, or I can try to burn it… I also kinda want to burn it because fuck this stupid thing.”
After thinking it over he nods his head and says, “Yeah, fuck you. You’re gonna burn… slowly, if at all.”
Not wasting any more time, Lan Jin brings the Auspicious Tri-Colored Flame into his hand and then looks over the echidna once before deciding to try lighting its fur on fire. He has no idea if it will work or not, though, because despite having a fire, he has only used it to burn pears and has never tried to actually light something on fire.
Luckily for him, it lighting the echidna on fire works much better than he had anticipated. In fact, it works so well that, as Lan Jin approaches the echidna’s fur with the Auspicious Tri-Colored Flame, the fire takes the initiative to jump out of his hand and ignite a small patch of fur.
“Uh…”
Lan Jin stares at the fire on the echidna’s fur and wonders what just happened.
“It definitely didn’t do that for the pear.”
He continues watching as the fire grows freely, a circle of flame slowly spreading outward across the entire body of the echidna. The only problem is that it is ridiculously slow. It takes a full five minutes for the fire to completely cover the echidna’s side, but once it catches, it seems to have no intention to stop burning.
What bothers Lan Jin most about the entire situation, though, is not that the fire seems to have a mind of its own, but that he doesn’t see any purple mist coming off the dead animal. As a matter of fact, there isn’t even any smoke coming off of it.
“What the heck, man?”
Walking around the corpse multiple times, Lan Jin still cannot see any of the purple mist he had been hoping for.
He ends up scratching his head in confusion before an idea comes to him.
Running to the pear cores lying on the ground, Lan Jin picks them up before turning to the fire and letting his hand rest above it. Just like when it was smaller, the fire still doesn’t bother him and he sighs gratefully before holding one of the pear cores above the fire and watching as it is licked from the flames beneath it. Moments later, a thin strand of purple mist is released into the air and Lan Jin makes sure to cup his hand over it to bring it to his mouth and drink it in. Once more, a brief euphoric sensation overcomes him as he swallows the purple mist and he can’t help but smile happily.
“This is so weird. How come a dead animal made the fire grow but fruit gives me purple mist?”
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He thinks it over for a minute before deciding to experiment while the fire is still growing. Turning around, the only things he really sees to experiment with are bamboo stalks, bamboo shoots, and bamboo leaves. He also has his blade and clothes, but since he needs those he decides not to risk damaging them. Shrugging his shoulders, he reaches out and tears the nearest leaves from a stalk of bamboo and holds them over the fire to see what happens.
After a while, another strand of purple mist is released into the air and Lan Jin cups his hands and brings the mist to his mouth.
“I think I’ve got something here!” Lan Jin grins, feeling delighted with the situation.
He turns around again, but this time he grabs his blade and walks over to some of the stalks of bamboo that were felled by the echidna crashing through them. After finding a stalk that was about two inches in diameter, Lan Jin takes his blade and cuts off a length about eight inches long above and below two of its nodes. Then he uses the tip of his blade to poke a hole in one of the nodes before cutting the bottom node in half to make a small shelf. With that done, Lan Jin shoves some leaves into his new bamboo tube and returns to the fire.
Holding the end with the shelf above the fire, Lan Jin watches it carefully while making sure he doesn’t accidentally touch the burning fur or flesh of the echidna. After several minutes of waiting, he is rewarded by another strand of purple mist escaping out of the hole he punctured into the top of his bamboo tube.
Lan Jin drinks it up with a smile on his face and wonders just how far he could take his experimentation. So far he knows that dead animals seem to feed the flame itself for some reason while vegetation seems to release the purple mist that he can absorb. Considering this, he has half a mind to grab a larger piece of bamboo and shove it jam-packed full of things so he can throw it directly into the fire. But, when he thinks about the rush he gets from just one strand of mist entering his body, he gets the chills thinking about multiple strands of mist entering his body at the same time. He’d heard about people falling into comas while chasing highs and, though he was pretty sure his situation was different, he was hesitant to find out just how different it was given that every strand of mist he absorbed filled him with euphoria and literally made him see the world differently for an instant.
So, while watching the fire carefully in case it decided to spread out from the echidna, Lan Jin continues burning things in his bamboo tube and drinking up strand after strand of purple mist. All the while, the fire burning on the echidna’s body grew larger and larger, as, eventually, even the echidna’s flesh and blood are burnt into nothingness by the purple flame. It was a grotesque sight, but Lan Jin couldn’t be bothered to care about it considering he was receiving purple mist at shortening intervals as the fire grew.
This continued for several hours before the echidna that had been the size of a small bear was entirely consumed by the flame and Lan Jin finally had no choice but to finish absorbing the purple mist.
He stands up unsteadily, his body feels like it is being buffeted by waves, and he holds his hand out to the Auspicious Tri-Colored Flame before summoning it back into his palm. It’s larger now than it was before he started, being able to fully cover his palm now, and he is satisfied with the change even though he can’t understand it.
Stretching, Lan Jin says, “Maybe instead of looking up the Great Desolates Body Transformation or Qi Sensing I should look up the Auspicious Tri-Colored Flame first. It’s clearly the thing helping me out the most right now, so I should learn more about it. Speaking of which…”
Lan Jin turns his attention to the Omega Browser’s Space once more. What he finds is that he has absorbed several dozen strands of purple mist, each of them floating about doing their own things within the Space.
Not wanting to deal with all of them separately, he uses his thoughts to condense them into a single, larger strand of purple mist. Though, even when he compresses them, he is shocked to find that he still hasn’t formed a single drop of the purple liquid he had seen in the jade.
“How much of this stuff do I need before it becomes an actual liquid? Do I actually need to burn mountains for that to happen?”
He doesn’t know and, right now, he doesn’t have a way of finding out so he decides to do something different.
“When I used the Omega Browser to search for cultivation stuff earlier my purple mist disappeared. If I search for something really small, will the same thing happen?”
Not wanting to waste all of his purple mist at once, Lan Jin pulls off a smaller strand of mist from the larger one and then places it around the star. He then uses the star to draw out a circle with the intent of looking for circles. Expectedly, the Omega Browser’s Space begins to churn and Lan Jin keeps a close eye on both the strand of purple mist around the little star and the larger grouping of mist that he keeps isolated from the star.
Both of them react, though, but they are in different ways. The larger grouping of mist twists and contorts under the churning of the Space, and after a minute, it seems to coalesce. It doesn’t turn into a liquid, but he had a feeling that, if he tried to pull it apart now, it probably wouldn’t work.
As for the purple mist hanging off of the little star, it seems to be directly absorbed. Lan Jin doesn’t know why it happened now and not when he tried to force them together, or even how it happened during his sleep, but something about the undulating of the Space seemed to cause the purple mist to sink directly into the little star. Consequently, as he looks the star over, he finds that it is just a little larger and even had a hint of a purple hue to it. Whether this was good or bad, Lan Jin didn’t know. But he assumed that liquid luck merging with what he assumes is his soul is probably a good thing, so he doesn’t complain about it.
“Should I try to mix more in?”
Looking at the larger strand of purple mist and the star, Lan Jin decides to give it a shot. The only use he knows of for the purple mist is to make the little star larger and, possibly, make him lucky enough to realize he’s about to die. And since both of those things happened after the purple mist merged with the star, he decides it would be a good idea to try it out.
Grabbing the purple mist and moving it over to the star, Lan Jin has the errant thought that the mist now looks more like a thin scarf than a spiderweb. That thought doesn’t deter him, though, as he focuses on the space and tries to figure out how to make it move. Though he’d never done it before, Lan Jin realizes that controlling the Space within the Omega Browser isn’t that different from making the Auspicious Tri-Colored Flame appear in his palm, and after learning that, he is quickly able to replicate the churning of the Space without searching for anything.
It takes a lot of focus for it to happen, but eventually, Lan Jin is able to make the space churn with his thoughts. His newfound control over the Space makes him happy, but he isn’t completely satisfied as it takes a lot of mental effort for him to use the churning of the space to slowly fuse the purple mist and the star together.
The process takes a while when he does it by himself, but when they’re finished, Lan Jin receives a massive shock as the same euphoria he felt when first taking in the purple mist rapidly fills his body. The only difference is this time it doesn’t go away after a few seconds. Instead, the feeling builds and builds, and as it builds it starts to move upward and a strange pressure slowly fills his skull.
Lan Jin begins to struggle with his emotions. Part of him is terrified by the strange pressure and he curses his decision to shove so much purple mist into the star at once, but a much larger part of him cannot help but relax and enjoy the feeling of the pressure slowly shifting toward a spot between his eyes as he lays down on the ground with a smile on his face. Several seconds later, Lan Jin feels a pop and the pressure slowly subsides even as the euphoria remains.
His eyes flash open and he stares at the world anew. As far as he can tell, nothing seems to have changed except for the fact that everything seems more vivid than a moment before. When he takes a breath, he suddenly finds that his saliva tastes disgusting but the air is sweet from the abundance of plants around him. The pain of his popped blister and the aches in his legs and feet are also more obvious and he feels a strange burning sensation throughout his entire body that he’d never felt before. But as he looks around, even despite all of the pains, aches, and general nastiness he has suddenly become aware of, he finds that he likes the world a little bit more than he had before.
“Am I high?” He wonders as the strange desire to caress the stalks of bamboo and feel the dirt and grass beneath his fingers fills his thoughts. “I’m definitely high.” He confirms before forcing himself to stand up.
Lan Jin is unsteady on his feet and has to hold onto a stalk of bamboo just to remain firmly standing. But, despite the world feeling like it is actively trying to knock him over, Lan Jin finds himself unable to focus on his unsteadiness. Instead, his attention is drawn toward a strange sense of dampness brushing against his skin.
He can even find the general direction from where the dampness is coming as he turns his head and pays more attention to the feeling of his skin. A few seconds later, Lan Jin picks his blade and bamboo tube off the ground, and with both of them in hand, he begins walking again.
Seconds pass and he begins rushing through the bamboo, his body moving almost with a mind of its own through the thick growth, and several minutes later Lan Jin finds himself at a small stream. It’s only about ten feet across and its deepest point is only three feet deep. But the water looks crystal clear and he can even see small fish swimming downstream without a care in the world.
Rushing to the edge of the water, Lan Jin falls to his knees and cups his hand before dipping them into the cool liquid and bringing them up to his lips. The water smells sweet to him, and when he dips his tongue into it he finds that it tastes better than any bottled mineral water he had ever had before. He then uses some of the water to gargle before spitting off to the side.
Before putting any more of it in his mouth, Lan Jin hesitates and tries to summon fire to his hands. He doesn’t know exactly what it is he hopes to happen, especially as he doesn’t think the Auspicious Tri-Colored Flame produces any heat, but he remembers that the fire is supposed to be able to purify everything so he hopes that letting the fire form around the water will make sure it is safe to drink.
Strangely enough, his idea immediately seems to have some merit to it as not only does the fire burn around the water without going out, but it also produces trace amounts of purple within the water that Lan Jin takes to be the impurities within being turned into the purple mist. He lets the fire go for about a minute before drinking, purple specks and water flowing smoothly into his mouth and down his throat while leaving a sweet aftertaste, and he feels satisfied. And since purifying the water with his fire seemed so easy, he even believes that it would be smart for him to fill up a section of bamboo with more water and drink from it whenever he needs it.
“Life is getting better.” He says as some of his anxiety flees him having found a stable source of water. Looking at the small fish within the stream, he even thinks he may have solved a little bit of his food crisis as well.