Deep night. The world was ink, everything drained of color, the whole village reduced to faint outlines.
Qin Ming was handling the Blood Snake. This spiritual creature's skin was a nightmare to peel — scales harder than fine iron, clanging when struck with the wood-chopper. One careless move, and the crimson scales sliced a finger open, forged like pure gold.
He tossed the chopper aside for a better tool. When Mu Qing gave him the black-gold hammer two days earlier, he'd also brought a short sword. Not as keen as the ashen-faced man's long sword, but gripped tight it could peel the hide.
He focused completely. After cutting one end open, he yanked down hard — far easier than slicing straight through.
Sunstones cast soft light, making the snake gleam a clear red, like polished jade. As the crimson hide peeled away, the flesh beneath was snow-white and fine. The gall, unlike an ordinary snake's dull shade, glowed a translucent blue like a cut gem.
Both flesh and gall held dense, vigorous spiritual energy, faintly luminous. A top-notch tonic by any account.
"No wonder the men from Redcloud City tore off their masks the moment they saw it, killing to seize it."
He cut the flesh into segments, cleaned them, and set water to boil. When it came to beginning a Second New Life early, he'd never wait a day.
In these times he felt a sense of crisis. Every kind of monster was coming out, the great houses of Redcloud City appearing one by one. All hunted the mountain "nodes" — special zones bearing strange phenomena. The place where five-colored mist shone in every direction was the one they craved, willing to offer supremely rare scriptures as a bounty for any lead.
Ever since the magnetic field went haywire, fire springs had died and been reborn, and oddities kept occurring.
"There's also a wave of high-grade creatures migrating from far away." Qin Ming mulled it over. Could the migration just be a cover? Were these new top-tier beasts also searching for something?
By now the flesh was in the pot. A rich aroma rose, snapping him from his thoughts and stirring his appetite.
"It's really fragrant. And so tender." His eyes lit up at the first bite. This spiritual creature was far better than an ordinary snake — like a different species. At first he'd felt squeamish about snakes, but now he couldn't care less. To him this was "dragon meat" fallen to the ground.
After a few mouthfuls, warmth rose in his body. The effect was immediate.
"The gall can be steamed, or soaked in fierce old wine and eaten. Sigh — no wine at home, so there's no choice."
He ate the flesh while setting the translucent blue gall into the steamer — it held the spirit's mysterious essence, and he needed to watch it closely.
Before long, the gall, like a great blue diamond, cooked through. He began on the true "main course."
"My... mountain god, heavens, I'm so bitter!" One bite and his tongue went numb. He looked in the mirror and found even his mouth had taken on a blue tinge.
He'd known the gall would be bitter. But the essence-concentrated gall of the Blood Snake — its bitterness far exceeded expectations. In that instant, even the flesh stopped smelling appetizing.
He hurriedly drank a mouthful of the fragrant soup to wash it down, but it barely helped. By taste alone, you wouldn't feed this to a dog. Even a New Lifer built on a foundation beyond Gold could barely stomach it.
Qin Ming didn't swallow it whole — partly because it was large, partly because chewing would let the body absorb the essence faster. With half still in hand, he gritted his teeth and chewed it slowly.
Having eaten the whole gall, he examined himself in the mirror. His lips looked painted a garish blue, giving him a strange, hard-to-place bearing.
"Good thing I ate it deep in the night. In daylight, I'd have no face left to show anyone!"
But the gall's effect was fierce — barely down and his body ran hot, as if burning with fever. He stayed calm and continued with the flesh, not just to drown the bitterness but to feed another spiritual fire into his body.
At last his body blazed, like a vigorous furnace, driving back the deep winter cold, the whole of him glowing.
"Food tonic, medicinal diet — the effect is here!" Qin Ming seized the black-gold hammer and went into the yard to practice the killing strokes from the blade manual.
At once the snow rushed toward the night sky. White mist coiled around him, faint light rippled across his skin, his sinews quivered and rang, and each swing of the great hammer dragged a rumble of wind and thunder.
His spirit climbed higher and higher. He knew the Second New Life had begun — a process, not an instant transformation. But he felt it clearly: strength rising, tendons stretching, senses sharpening.
As if a secret flame burned in his flesh — cutting away the old, urging the new, hastening the vibrant change within.
He spent himself again and again, until his hair was soaked and his body drenched in sweat. Only then did he return indoors, sitting quietly to feel the changes within.
Would his body grow again after the Second New Life? According to Old Liu, the different qi circulation manuals and meditation arts one chose led to vastly different changes. Next Qin Ming would verify the worth of the "wild path" he practiced.
He'd originally stood half a head taller than the common man, and after his first New Life had grown nearly two inches more. When he'd discussed New Life with Old Liu and Xu Yueping, both felt his height change wasn't great — because some people shot up a whole head.
Old Liu was rich in experience; in his youth he'd kept close to the old patrollers, hearing no small number of anecdotes.
"The kind of qi circulation art that makes you expand — every New Life, the body swells like a blown bubble. But only part sets into a firm golden body; most is just mud. So many arts, once practiced to a stage, force the body to stop growing." That was one case Old Liu described.
He emphasized that certain secretly handed-down arts were precious — once practiced they produced strange changes, even a third eye. Certain sacred legends came from this. Such volumes were so rare that even many great houses never touched them.
As he drank, Old Liu spun out the anecdotes the old patrollers had told him, then spoke of several special New Life arts and their odd changes. Finally he mentioned a school that, from the earliest stage, had to keep the body's golden height proportions.
While drinking, Old Liu looked at Qin Ming and said tipsily: "I think your height hasn't changed much."
Qin Ming's mind was at peace. He only needed to wait two days to see which way his practiced art leaned. For the first time, he felt staying here made for a dearth of news — no doubt Redcloud City's New Lifers knew all this well, while he pieced it together from scraps. Some didn't advance through New Life at all; there were other roads, entirely beyond his understanding.
After sitting a long time, Qin Ming felt hungry. He ate the snake soup at once, fueling his body with the spiritually dense food. Then he washed with cold water and, in the dead stillness, fell asleep.
As he drifted off, he dimly saw a "Golden Thread Jade Garment" appear over his skin again — silver light covering him, gold threads interweaving, quite wondrous.
He passed from light sleep to deep sleep, and at last to a state between waking and dreaming. He felt himself in slumber, body and mind relaxed — yet part of his consciousness stayed active.
Between waking and dreaming, he seemed to see a black cloth covered in dust, veiling his subconscious, blocking his vision, hiding whatever lay beyond.
But through the Second New Life, those motes of dust were gradually blown away. One corner of the cloth lifted, and he glimpsed himself as a dim, uncomprehending child. The changes were raising his body on every level, even his mind — and with it, the blurred memories of childhood surfaced.
In the haze, it seemed someone whispered: "This path... it has real provenance, but it cannot be trained to completion."
Then, through the lifted corner of the cloth, Qin Ming saw a rough, large hand holding a very thin old book, opening it to the first page before the child he once was...