Chapter 3: Wish... Rest in Peace

"This object..."

Xu Qing's eyes revealed a strong light, and his mind recalled the intact corpse before the purple crystal was taken away by him.

"Can keep a corpse intact, can make a living person's wound heal rapidly?"

Xu Qing gripped the purple crystal in his hand tightly, his heart racing, and he looked around rapidly.

Although he knew there shouldn't be any other living people here, he was still instinctively vigilant because he had obtained a supreme treasure.

At this moment, he didn't stop any longer, but sped at full speed, rushing straight to the hole where he was hiding.

On the way, he vaguely discovered that not only had his wounds healed rapidly, but even the exhaustion of his body seemed to have lessened a lot.

In the past, when he ran like this, he would need to rest after about half an hour, but now, long after half an hour had passed, he felt warm all over, and his physical strength seemed still abundant.

Even on his way back, he grabbed a bird that had fallen.

He didn't kill it, but stunned it, because living things could be preserved for longer.

Even after doing these things, the time he took to return to the hole was reduced a lot. Before the night arrived, he had already seen his hole from afar.

Xu Qing's mood had improved like never before, but he didn't neglect his vigilance.

Because he knew that perhaps due to the deity opening her eyes and the forbidden zone being newly formed, in this area at night, apart from strange beasts awakening, there would also be some eerie existences appearing.

He had heard people in the slums say that many places with many deaths would form this kind of eerie existence.

For example, the laughter that came from outside at night was emitted by this kind of existence.

And for this kind of alien, it was publicly acknowledged not to look, not to touch, and not to encounter.

Although his previous experiences were that those existences appeared at night, Xu Qing was not sure if they would occasionally appear during the day.

So his speed did not decrease in the slightest. He soon approached the hole, flashed in, and blocked the gap with the stones and debris.

Then he sat cross-legged and opened his tightly clenched palm.

The purple light spread from his palm, illuminating the small hole. Under that light, Xu Qing's face and eyes were also rendered purple.

He stared unblinkingly, gazing at the purple crystal in his palm.

This crystal was long and thin, about the size of his finger, and there seemed to be some flocculent matter inside, and the purple light was exactly what those flocculent matters emitted.

"Healing wounds..." Xu Qing observed for a long time, untied his clothes to look at the wound on his chest, and found that the wound had healed by ninety percent.

Now, for the remaining part, it seemed that it wouldn't take too long before it could be completely healed, and even the scars around it were fading.

Combining this with the much-lessened exhaustion he felt running back, Xu Qing had already made a preliminary judgment about this purple crystal.

The function of this object was obvious: it was recovery.

Recovering wounds, recovering physical strength, recovering vitality!

"I wonder if there are any other effects." Xu Qing muttered, his eyes showing contemplation.

He didn't know if this purple crystal was related to the deity opening her eyes, but it was highly likely.

But no matter what, this was a supreme treasure. At the very least, Xu Qing had never heard of any item that could have such amazing recovery power since he was a child.

Having such an item by his side was equivalent to a second life for himself.

But Xu Qing knew very clearly that he could possess this item now because there were no other living people in this city except himself.

And once the blood rain ended and he walked out... he was afraid he wouldn't have the power to protect such a treasure.

So the only way was to hide this purple crystal...

Xu Qing pondered for a long time, looked at the stunned bird he had grabbed back, and raised his hand to take it.

After pinching its beak so it couldn't make a sound, he drew the dagger from his lower leg and directly cut a wound on the bird.

As the bird struggled, Xu Qing stuffed the purple crystal into it.

Then he watched closely without blinking.

Only to see that the bird struggled at first, but soon dark currents surged all around. Spiritual energy seemed to be attracted, and even more spiritual energy surged in than when Xu Qing cultivated, rushing straight into the bird's body.

And the strength of this bird's struggle suddenly became much stronger than before. Xu Qing's force compared to it seemed unable to hold it.

This scene made Xu Qing's eyes shine brightly.

The bird's neck, which he could crush with one hand in the past, he now had to pinch several times with force before breaking it.

He quickly took out the purple crystal from its body, wiped it clean, and closed his eyes to ponder.

"The bird didn't die, but instead, spiritual energy surged in, and the bird's strength suddenly became very great... It should be fine."

After a while, Xu Qing opened his eyes, his eyes carrying decisiveness, and he directly stuffed the purple crystal into the wound on his chest that was about to heal completely.

The process of stuffing it in was a bit painful, but Xu Qing gritted his teeth and endured it.

There was no place safer than hiding it in his own body.

And he had also simply verified that if this object was placed in the body, the effect seemed to be better.

With the integration of the purple crystal and the healing of the wound on his chest, before Xu Qing could check carefully, a rumbling sound came from his body.

A spiritual energy even more majestic than the attraction force of the bird before rushed toward him from all directions, piercing through the mud.

This spiritual energy was too astonishing. Xu Qing's body instantly turned pale green, and an indescribable ice-cold permeated his entire body.

This was caused by the spiritual energy being too concentrated with heterogeneous matter.

But Xu Qing was well-prepared. At this moment, he didn't hesitate and directly operated the Haishan Secret Technique.

With the operation, the spiritual energy surging into his body was instantly separated from a large amount of heterogeneous matter.

The remaining pure spiritual energy flowed through his entire body's meridians, causing Xu Qing's body to emit 'bang-bang' sounds at this moment.

It was as if some clogged places in his body were instantly opened, and his flesh and blood were nourished and refined at this moment.

The Xiao totem he visualized in his mind also seemed to come alive at this moment, automatically assuming various postures.

The Haishan Secret Technique, although a cultivation technique, was not a method, but a type of body tempering.

It was divided into ten layers, corresponding to the ten layers of the Qi Condensation Realm.

The bamboo slip had a clear introduction to it. Each layer could allow the practitioner to increase the strength of one tiger, and five tigers were one Xiao, and two Xiao were one Kui.

It was claimed that a Xiao could move mountains, and a Kui could move seas, so it was named the Haishan Secret Technique.

At this moment, the purple crystal he buried in his chest was like a vortex, constantly sucking, and spiritual energy poured in like a head-on infusion.

Xu Qing's cultivation speed also skyrocketed.

I don't know how much time passed, but the 'bang-bang' sounds in his body suddenly became intense, and a large amount of impurities in his body flowed out through the pores of his entire body.

A fishy and foul smell also permeated the hole.

And with the outflow of impurities, Xu Qing's body actually became much more crystal clear, and the face covered in grime also became increasingly handsome at this moment.

Until half a while later, with the gradual disappearance of the sounds in his body and the surging spiritual energy, Xu Qing opened his eyes suddenly.

A purple light flashed in his eyes.

After returning to normal, Xu Qing was stunned for a moment.

The pitch-black hole was actually clearer in his eyes. He quickly lowered his head to check himself, and his expression gradually revealed disbelief.

"This feeling..."

Xu Qing's expression carried a trace of excitement. He stood up and threw a punch, actually causing a sharp sound of wind.

Because the hole was very small, he couldn't try his speed, but the feeling of raising his legs and throwing punches let him know that he had achieved astonishing improvements in all aspects compared to the past.

Then he immediately rolled up the sleeve on his left arm.

When he saw a black dot the size of a fingernail appear on his forearm, Xu Qing took a deep breath and suppressed the excitement in his heart.

"So, this is the first layer of Qi Condensation!"

This black dot, according to the description on the bamboo slip, was the alienation point. The alienation point of the Haishan Secret Technique was on the left arm, and each layer added one.

Touching the alienation point on his arm, Xu Qing felt more excitement about his own obvious strengthening. He looked up at the gap at the entrance, pondering that when dawn came, he would try his speed.

But soon Xu Qing looked suspicious, approached the gap at the entrance, and listened carefully.

Outside, it was clearly still pitch black, but there was not a single abnormal sound.

This was something he had never encountered in the many days he had been here.

Even after dawn, without the sounds of strange beasts and eerie existences, the sound of rain was always present.

But now, even the sound of rain was gone.

"Could it be..."

Xu Qing's mind shook, and a guess emerged in his heart.

While waiting silently, until a beam of dazzling light shone in through the gap at the entrance of the hole, reflecting into Xu Qing's pitch-black eyes, as if lighting up his world.

Upon seeing the light, Xu Qing's body obviously shivered.

He raised his hand, slowly approached the ray of sunlight, placed it in his palm, and the long-lost warmth slowly awakened his sleeping soul.

"Sunlight..."

After a while, a bright look appeared in Xu Qing's eyes. He pushed away the debris blocking the gap, and as more light beams embraced him, he slowly drilled out.

The moment he stepped out from the exit, he looked up and saw no longer dense and dark clouds, but a bright and brilliant sun.

It was as if the old man in the dawn, after being critically ill for many days, had regained his vitality, slowly pulling back the curtain, bringing freshness to the mortal world again.

"The rain has stopped."

Xu Qing took a deep breath of the air containing sunlight and looked silently at the city under the morning glow.

Everything in the city, under this dazzling red sun, seemed to bloom with some different brilliance.

The fresh red morning glow in the sky shone down from the gaps in the clouds, like countless whales spitting out golden waterfalls, washing away the haze and fog of the city bit by bit, revealing mottled scars.

Those collapsed houses, those blue-black corpses, those shocking blood-colored puddles, all seemed to be reminding Xu Qing of the catastrophe that happened here.

Xu Qing's eyes revealed a trace of complexity. He had lived in the slums outside the city for six years, and he had looked at this city for six years as well.

Although he hadn't entered many times, this place was the place he had longed to live in the most during those six years.

"I obtained the cultivation technique here."

"I obtained the purple crystal here."

"I... survived here." Xu Qing muttered, silent.

Until a long time later, he sighed softly, walked to a blue-black corpse, lowered his head to look for a long time, carried it on his back, and walked forward.

He walked to a square nearby, put the corpse down, then turned around, carried the second one, the third one, the fourth one...

Some corpses were scattered on the streets, and some were pressed under the ruins.

Until he carried all the corpses in the nearby area to the square, the corpses here were piled up like a mountain, some complete, some incomplete.

Xu Qing stood there and set a fire. Perhaps because of the heterogeneous matter, the flames burned more and more fiercely, rising with thick smoke...

In that thick smoke, Xu Qing looked for a long time, walked away silently, went to the second area, and soon, another thick smoke rose, more and more... more and more...

Just like this, on the first day the sun shone into this ruined city, apart from light, there was also the black thick smoke of corpse cremation.

This black smoke rose into the sky one after another, covering the sun, and the dawn at this moment was also filled with powerlessness, turning dim red, as if hiding deep sighs.

It seemed that those wisps of thick smoke became its tears. And the shadows formed on the ground seemed to turn into the tear stains of the earth.

The last tear stain was the place where Xu Qing found the purple light.

There, Xu Qing put down the old man's corpse from the pharmacy. As the fire of the corpse pile burned, the heat wave brushed his face. He stood silently by the fire, the rolling flames reflected in his pitch-black pupils, constantly swaying.

His withered and messy hair also curled due to the permeation of the heat wave. After a while, Xu Qing's body also bent, and he bowed his head.

"Wish... rest in peace."

The flames at this moment burned violently, more and more fiercely, emitting countless fire seedlings like dandelions, drifting away with the wind.

Only the thick smoke rising into the sky still carried the unwillingness and regrets of the deceased that could not be melted, and the wind could not blow it away.

Rising higher and higher, like a few scars on the firmament.

Insignificant, filled with helplessness.

After a long while, accompanied by messy footsteps, a strange, yin-yang voice suddenly came from far behind the boy.

"I was wondering why I didn't see any corpses along the way. So it turns out there's such a silly kid, not hesitating to consume his own physical strength to actually move the corpses here for cremation."

"Fine, since you are so nostalgic, then I will help you and throw you in to accompany them."

Xu Qing turned around suddenly. ===== CHAPTER 4 =====