Arrival, Laying Foundations

The diagram was now a blinding array of swirling energy, expanding from one space to the next and thus shortening the distance between them.

In other words: a wormhole.

He stepped onto it, and what followed was an immensely disorienting process. He felt like space flipped over, and thus every part of his being had to rearrange and flip over as well. His mind faltered for a moment, causing him to almost lose his balance.

He ended up being rotated faster because of this, resulting in him throwing up a transparent liquid. He had lived off of nothing but spiritual energy for years. Though that world's energy was weak, it was enough to heal minor injuries and ward off hunger for long periods of time.

If at any moment he stopped consciously absorbing energy, he could have died of starvation. His eyes were closed now, his insides still feeling as if they were spinning. He wiped his mouth, then realized that he was standing on solid ground.

When he opened his eyes he saw scenery he hadn't expected to see immediately upon his arrival. He was standing in a garden of crimson colored flowers, tall oaks with bloody leaves and muddy red soil.

If he hadn't recently thrown up through even his nose, he would've smelled an all too familiar scent. Unfortunately, when he tried to smell he just felt a stinging pain in his nostrils. He took a moment to breathe, adjusting his state.

Yuan Zhen could already feel the difference in the spiritual energy. It was thousands of times richer than the world he had just come from. Before his body greedily began to absorb the energy, he shut off his connection to the outside world.

He didn't want to change the amount of energy he had in his body for a while. He continued to enjoy the scenery, finally able to smell the scent of rotting corpses and rivers of strange reddish water.

"The Forest of Gore... So I crossed over into King Xie's territory."

He then began to inspect his physical form. His body had changed quite a bit. He was almost a meter taller, already standing at the height of the average human adult. Two stubby horns were already protruding from his skull, hidden by his pure black hairs. This indicated that he had assumed the form of a young, pure blooded beast.

He found a murky puddle of water, more or less seeing his reflection. His skin was quite rosy, almost too much, and he saw that the structure of his teeth had shown changes. His body now belonged to a youngster of the Golden Purgatory Realm's Beast Race.

He smiled, revealing short fangs.

"Good. And since I'm in the Forest of Gore, I can get started immediately. To the Blood-Absorbing Tree!"

Yuan Zhen marched off into a seemingly random direction. However, he had long memorized the layout of the world when he had planned to subjugate it.

Now, though, he planned to destroy it entirely.

He walked deeper into the forest. Soon, the light of the sun was obstructed by tendrils of blood-colored branches, leaves and vines. This meant that he had entered the heart. During his stroll in the heart of forest, he came across one of his objectives.

"It's about time I saw one of you."

It was a tiny insect, colored bright red, sucking on the bark of a thin tree. It grew in size as it devoured the sap, becoming larger than a fist before long. He waited until it drank its fill of the sap, then he waited some more.

After about five minutes of it digesting the sap, he grabbed it by the sides and held it in front of his face.

"I'm close enough now."

He then proceeded to eat the insect. The sap was transformed by the digestive juices into a thick gel. Thanks to the introduction of the digestive juices, a reaction occurred that made the sap highly toxic. As a matter of fact, the sap was now potent enough to kill hundreds of men with a drop.

It burned his flesh as he swallowed it; he could feel it arrive in his stomach. He immediately began to revolve the energy in his body, but already found that his legs were becoming weak and his vision was getting blurry. Without wasting anymore time, he walked as quickly as he could.

He was headed deeper into the forest. Thanks to the spiritual energy he had, his body didn't shut down immediately. This caused him to be forced to live through the poisoning. His body would be able to adapt this way, as he would be able to prolong his suffering for a longer time without his bodily systems shutting down.

He was now crawling, using his hands to grab tufts of grass or exposed roots. He finally saw his destination. A lone tree, secluded by the hundreds of large trees that formed a hedge around it.

This was the Blood-Absorbing Tree that birthed the Blood-Absorbing Fruit. He needed both, but right now his priority was the tree itself. He arrived at the base of it. The trunk was the result of various vine-like growths having become one. He bit into it, hard, finding a thin liquid spraying out into his mouth.

As if it were the most precious of resources, he sucked on that spot without moving for half an hour. Finally, the tree mended itself from inside. He remained motionless for a while, but his body was going through obvious changes.

First of all, it appeared like all of his blood had been drained.

He was as white as paper, and his skin seemed to dry up also. Suddenly, his lifeless eyes opened and he threw up a torrential amount of blood.

This blood was like a minor stream, and it soaked into the earth around the tree. Seeing this, a smile appeared on his face despite his miserable appearance.

Thanks to the highly toxic poison, and the attributes of it, a miracle was about to occur. The poisonous sap from that insect had actually directly diffused into his bloodstream. It was a unique poison that killed each and every organ with poisoned blood.

The sap of the Blood-Absorbing Tree was like laxative, but focused entirely on the blood within the blood vessels. It purged him of every drop of blood he had, essentially killing him dead. Relying only on tenacious willpower, and his tiny amount of constantly revolving spiritual energy, his body was able to survive long enough for the miracle to take form.

The blood that soaked into the soil was sucked in by the roots of the tree, nourishing it and bringing about a dramatic change. The tree began to glow with thrumming life force, slightly brightening the patch of forest.

In a matter of seconds, a rush of his blood intermingled with the life force of the tree poured into a certain branch. At the end of that branch, the arriving nutrients spurred on the growth of a fruit similar to a peach. It grew swiftly, bringing the thin branch down with it.

That fruit then took on the glowing aspect as it was filled with blood and life force. The tree slowly lost its glow and returned to its initial state. Finally, he stopped circulating the energy, instead beginning to urge the abundant spiritual energy outside into his body.

Thanks to the constant revolutions of his energy, it was refined and purified in a drawn-out process. Now, it would act like a filter and absorb the most pure energy possible from the environment. This was a method that very young Beast Nobles used to increase the potency of their spiritual energy. A youthful body was much easier shaped than an adult one.

Using this method, he forcibly changed his spiritual energy channels into ones of the highest quality. He followed the image in his mind, using the energy like a tempering force to sweep through the passageways over and over. As a result of all this, his body received a temporary boost of energy.

It was just enough for him to stand up, supporting himself with the tree, and reach up for that new fruit. He grabbed it, feeling the warmth of the freshly generated fruit. He quickly picked it, bringing it to his mouth before the strength left him.

Yuan Zhen immediately ate it, falling to the ground again.