Chapter 310: Scars

If forced to find a word to describe it, Kraft felt he was enduring severe... phantom limb pain.

He systematically moved each part from head to toe—spine, arms, legs, fingers—only minor surface abrasions and bruises from the jostling, all confined to the skin, no missing parts detected.

The pain came from something else.

His self-perception contained vast excess portions; extra “limbs” were flooding his consciousness with overwhelming negative sensations.

It was an extreme agony, as if limbs had been folded into an impossibly small space, unable to stretch, tissues starved of blood first swelling with ache, then stabbing with pain, finally decaying—but the nerves remained alive, faithfully transmitting the cramping, twisted agony, even the pain itself sinking into endless, endless decay with no end.

It was not imaginary, but a real, tangible thing, crushing heavily against his consciousness.

The frantic cultivators could not perceive this; they were Heli dragging the incapacitated professor out of the floodwater, fearing he would drown in the sinking boat.

And then they were helpless.

As professional armed personnel, they did possess some basic field first-aid knowledge—enough to loosen collars for air, check for severe external injuries, perhaps apply basic bleeding control and bandaging.

Normally, this was sufficient; as long as they could hold out until a doctor arrived.

But now, they were lost in murky filth, surrounded by darkness and floating debris, and the only doctor in the group looked like he himself needed a doctor.

If it were only this, it wouldn’t be utterly terrible. After all, such experiences weren’t new; those surging waves of pain had flooded his mind before—and receded like floods, leaving the erosion of his mental foundation to manifest only later.

Even Father Gelin , most severely affected, had barely recovered, clutching his head and organizing order.

Two men were assigned to stabilize Kraft; those with strength left were to find containers and bail water from the boat; the rest sorted remaining supplies, searching for anything that could reignite fire.

Perhaps the superstition of “surviving disaster brings fortune” took hold; psychologically, they assumed some luck, even divine protection, or reasoned that nothing could be so coincidentally lucky as to survive the catastrophe alongside them—so they stopped hiding their activities.

Only minutes passed before they realized their assumption was utterly wrong.

A cultivator bent over bailing water glanced up and noticed a patch of light before him.

He initially thought it was a normal effect of exhaustion, paid it no mind—until he wondered why it didn’t move with his vision, but vanished when he looked down, blocked by the boat’s side.

When he looked up again, the light patch had grown larger.

By the time everyone was alerted, the thing had drawn dangerously close, trailing a spreading fluorescent trail; luminous fluid oozed from its wounds, like a meteor streaking through water.

By visual estimate alone, it was no smaller than the boat itself.

They didn’t know what it was, but that light—that pale, chilling white—was a memory impossible to erase.

One cultivator tried rowing away, but the half-full boat moved slow and sluggish; it wasted energy to no avail.

Gelin used his foot to draw back the crossbow again; the composite-string, soaked in water, felt slack and stiff, like pulling a wrung-out wet cloth, accuracy severely diminished.

The arrow, pulled from the water, shot off crookedly, splashing water beside the light patch—this was their strongest counterattack before close contact.

There would be no second chance; before the painfully slow reloading could finish, it would be upon them.

His arms could still lift weapons—but only lift them; cold and exhaustion dragged them downward, uncontrollably trembling.

Closer now—close enough to see its motion: several flexible limbs extended and retracted to propel it forward, rising toward the surface. The glow intensified, emanating from swollen luminous tumors, flickering erratically across the branching structures on its surface.

His consciousness grew hazy, perceiving it as pairs of soft arms, opening palms as fine as hair, embracing the lost traveler in darkness.

Overlapping voices, like a requiem, rose with the bubbles, enveloping the exhausted mind—hard to resist the urge to surrender into them.

Then they heard the water beside them.

No one had helped; Kraft had slipped back into the water and clung to the boat’s edge. The suffocating sensation of water in his lungs briefly overrode his mental agony—then was pierced by a new intrusion, briefly awakening his core consciousness.

His spiritual senses had long been severed—at least, they should have been—but he still clearly perceived those illusory presences; perhaps this was their true nature—always denied, forever inescapable, another part of himself.

But now, what mattered was not this—it was the roaming, chaotic pain.

Clarity was more painful than chaos; the pain drove his consciousness to generate an extreme, razor-sharp will to destroy.

The foreign object embedded in his left arm neared activation, synchronizing with his boiling spirit, responding to that will, desperate to tear apart everything around—the boat, the lake, the darkness, even...

【This suppressed layer】

His consciousness wanted to do it—and could do it.

The tearing was an expression of pain; he had fully resonated with that pain, and thus could express it too.

A moment before, his body had been spasming irregularly; now it erupted with astonishing force, shoving the figure before him away.

Muscles in his left arm tightened, skin stretched, blood vessels swelled; he slashed downward like swinging a sword, striking the water’s surface, splashing a wide spray.

Something happened—no ripple, no sound, less than the gentlest wave; only the initiator knew: it was the bitter fruit forged by the worst torment, spiritual wounds transformed into physical scars.

A thin, invisible line appeared out of nowhere—colorless, like a transparent hair stretched between the boat and the approaching light. But new currents immediately swirled around it, as if its presence altered water pressure, stirring up silt and revealing its form in the murky water.

A sliver of hope emerged; several eyes fixed on the swirling, muddy streak—no one had time to wonder where it came from or how it connected to the wounded man’s sudden motion.

The hope lasted only a few breaths; the luminous creature passed through the line unimpeded, showing no resistance whatsoever—not harder than passing through a phantom.

The luminous entity continued advancing at a steady pace, lifting its limbs... its front half.

The proximal end attached to its body swayed, while the distal end remained frozen in place.

Its motion became disjointed—stuttering, then halting completely, losing all Dongli .

They watched the light patch sink silently, swallowed entirely by the dark abyss beneath the silt, splitting into two utterly unrelated fragments.