8 Absorption

'One day until the sunrise water lily is estimated to bloom.' Bai Lian focused her attention on absorbing the properties of the water lily. The sunrise water lily did not have the power to help gift its properties to Bai Lian. All it could do was not hinder the absorption.

The absorption was slow, but the more she absorbed, the more warmth Bai Lian felt. Such a comfortable feeling could be comparable to the warmth her family had given her in her previous life. Gradually, the fatigue from growing her roots alleviated. Although she tried to speed up the absorption, her speed hardly changed.

Two days following the estimated date of bloom for the sunrise water lily, the flower showed signs of blooming. The crowd of spirit beasts and spirit masters had grown impatient. Those of the higher levels of strength found the matter to be odd. They had confidence in their ability to estimate when the flower would bloom. Yet, they were off by two days. No one among the crowd could have predicted the water lily's blooming would be delayed by an external force.

Bai Lian's roots had absorbed more than just the properties of the sunrise water lily. She had taken in some nutrients from the water lily, thus stunting the flower's growth and giving her enough time to finish absorbing the flower's properties. A small amount of qi from within the sunrise water lily was also absorbed. Had Bai Lian not chosen to stop the absorption, the water lily would have been sucked dry.

The delayed blooming was already a surprise to the waiting crowd. However, the actual blooming of the sunrise water lily had given them an even greater shock. The water lily's bud had unravelled itself fully, revealing a set of pure white petals. There was no radiant orange glow befitting of its name. It appeared as any normal water lily would and upon closer examination, one would realize it had less benefits than the average water lily.

The crowd gazed at the water lily with vexation. All their days of waiting had come to naught. They could not comprehend how such a large group of spirit masters and spirit beasts had been fooled. Clearly, the experts had confirmed the flower was the sunrise water lily with their very own eyes days ago. Could the noses of so many spirit beasts mistake a normal water lily as a treasured flower?

While the crowd was wallowing in their disbelief, a certain lotus with petals portraying a sunrise scanned through the crowd, unnoticed by all. Once her gaze landed on a certain crown prince, satisfaction surged up within her. 'That narcissist looks peeved, but this is only just the tip of the iceberg. There will be a day where I make you feel the anger I had felt.' Bai Lian was brimming with determination to evolve. After all, she had no hope for obtaining her revenge in her current form.

The properties Bai Lian had absorbed had a high affinity with the phoenix blood within her. She could feel her blood become restless. Her roots began to to tremble. Bai Lian could feel her body's desire to change. However, she held back her evolution. Although she was able to conceal herself despite her current eye-catching petals, she did not have the confidence to conceal herself while evolving. During an evolution, Bai Lian would lose control over her body.

Within a day, the crowd had grudgingly disperse. Filled with relief, Bai Lian allowed her body to change as it wished. As the sun began to rise, Bai Lian assessed her changes. Her petals were white once more, as though they had purified themselves. The blood within her had grew stronger. To withstand the heat of the blood, her body had once again fortified itself. Her roots had become as strong as steel and its ability to absorb had improved. She could feel her affinity with fire qi had become stronger.

Bai Lian had still remained unchanged with regards to appearance. Like her first evolution, all her changes were internal. Evaluating this evolution, Bai Lian realized her petals had changed colors after absorbing new properties, and reverted back to its original white after her body had evolved, fully integrating the new properties. Based on this, she will likely experience small evolutions everytime she absorbs new properties.

On the other hand, her roots must have evolved due to her two day endeavor of forcing her roots to grow along with fully utilizing her root's absorption abilities for the first time. 'I should become stronger if I continue to grow my roots and absorb more properties.'

Bai Lian shifted her gaze to where the crowd had once stood. There were a few corpses of spirit masters and spirit beasts laying on the dirt. She began to urge her roots to grow in the direction of the corpses. Not only was she targeting the bodies of these beings who were stronger than her, she suspected the spirit masters would have storage rings or other treasures on them. She had yet to absorb an inanimate object, but the abilities of a storage ring was too appealing to not give it a shot.

Although forcing her roots to grow was still tiring, it was not nearly as agonizing as before when she would experience excruciating pain if she urged the growth for too long. Additionally, the increased strength of the roots allowed her roots to move through the ground, as it grew, with much more ease than before.

While growing her roots, Bai Lian did not have the strength to train the other parts of her body, so she focused on cultivating. As she circulated the qi throughout her body, she eased up some of the fatigue from her root growth, allowing her to continue her growing endeavor for much longer than she would have otherwise been able to handle.

With three days worth of growing, Bai Lian's roots reached the closest corpse, which was 20 meters from her body.