"Don't, wait, just a moment..."

Huai Shi subconsciously reached out to grab something, but was cruelly pulled away as if by an invisible rope, passing through the bustling streets and surging crowds, returning from the countless steel forests.

Crack!

A crisp sound!

In the cellar, the wooden shell suddenly cracked open, and a faint exclamation of regret could be heard from within.

Feeling the heavy restraint, Huai Shi struggled subconsciously.

In that instant, he finally felt himself.

At the same time, the huge root network under the earth suddenly trembled, drawing a negligible amount of life force from the sea of life formed by countless plants.

And so, Huai Shi returned from the void.

The wooden shell cracked, revealing his pale face. Huai Shi subconsciously raised his hand and felt an almost endless vitality being delivered from the root system, reconstructing a new arm from the void, with nails growing slowly.

He subconsciously breathed, and in an instant, the root network buried deep in the earth shrank, withering away. The radiant vitality flowed out from it, creating new lungs and a body.

Huai Shi took a step forward, listening to the sound of the roots decaying and shrinking.

Amidst the continuous shattering, the naked young man emerged from the withered trees, and behind him, the huge root system that once covered the entire city silently lost its color, cracked, disintegrated into decayed wood, and finally collapsed into dust.

Huai Shi stood in the darkness, astonished.

Drops of pale green tree sap dripped slowly from his black hair down to his waist.

He lowered his head and looked at his hands and naked body, only to find that the pale skin, which had lost its color after becoming a Yin soul, had regained a faint rosy hue. And beneath the skin, a rich dark green color could be seen pulsating in the veins.

It was as if he had regained life from the depths of the underworld.

Crow stood on the shelf in front of him, smiling as he looked at the bewildered young man. "How does it feel?"

Huai Shi slowly raised his head, tears streaming down his face without him realizing it.

Then, he reached out and grabbed Crow's neck, shaking it angrily.

"Almost there!"

Huai Shi shouted in despair, "I was so close to seeing it! Why couldn't it have waited just a little longer?"

"Life is hard for everyone. Please don't record anything on the book of fate that will cause a 404 error for everyone, okay?"

Crow looked at him with a mix of exasperation and disappointment. "Besides, regaining self-awareness by peeking at a female classmate changing clothes, you're really something, young man! If Director Fu hadn't collapsed, it would have been a loss for all of humanity!"

"..."

Huai Shi was speechless, but... for some reason, when Crow mentioned Director Fu, he couldn't help but want to give the middle-aged man a thumbs up: Your daughter has a great figure!

But saying that out loud would definitely get him killed, right?

Yeah, being crushed into human debris by the steel torrent of tanks, missiles, and guns from the special operations department's macho brothers...

He shook his head with some trepidation, not daring to think about it anymore, and instead began to study his current body.

"Is this the second stage already?"

Feeling the surging vitality in his body, he tried to move and found that the previous limit of his Yin soul had disappeared, and he could easily reach speeds that were previously unattainable.

His strength had also increased, although the difference in speed was probably far greater.

What surprised him even more was the significant improvement in his physical coordination. Huai Shi tried to throw eight or nine beakers in succession, and when he extended his index finger, the beakers falling from the air stacked up into an extremely precarious pile at his fingertip.

The delicate mechanics of the stack turned it into a tower on its base.

When Huai Shi gently moved his fingertip, the waist of the tower began to bend and slowly rotate with the subtle tilt of his finger.

In the end, it fell to the ground.

Forming the shape of a pyramid.

Huai Shi had not yet recovered from his shock.

In that instant, he almost felt his limbs extending onto the beakers, able to sensitively perceive the movement of every fulcrum and center of gravity, effortlessly holding the complex changes in his hand.

What was even more intriguing was...

"Hey, keep going."

Crow's voice interrupted Huai Shi's thoughts, and a piece of iron had already been thrown into Huai Shi's hand. Huai Shi subconsciously reached out, but just as his fingertip was about to touch the iron, he saw a burst of hot electric light erupt from the iron.

It shot towards Huai Shi's fingertip from a hair's breadth away.

In an instant, Huai Shi pulled back, but he still felt a stinging pain at his fingertip.

But what surprised him was that in that extremely short moment, he could almost see how the electric light burst from the iron gradually lengthened, slowly moving in the air, and finally entwining itself around his fingertip.

Not only that.

His reaction speed... if it had been before, he probably wouldn't have had time to react, or even realized what had happened before being hit directly.

But now he actually had time to react.

Although his speed was still slow, going from nothing to something was still a major breakthrough.

"Starting from the second stage, the soul of a Sublimator will begin to activate. Ignoring the innate limits of the body, the reaction speed will greatly increase. A Sublimator like you, who specifically enhances nerve reflexes, may even directly advance to the level of soul reflex. Feels good, doesn't it?"

Huai Shi shook his head, "What's the use of realizing it and still not being able to avoid it?""You're an idiot, aren't you? If you can't dodge a bullet, can't you at least dodge the action of someone pulling the trigger?"

Crow looked at him with the eyes one reserves for an idiot: "In a duel, being a split second faster means being faster without limits. You're just stepping into the second tier, not the fifth. What, you want to become the Flash or something?"

"I just want to make more progress, that's all."

Huai Shi slowly moved his body, initially fearing that a surge in attributes would render him unable to adapt, but to his surprise, there was no sign of losing control over his body.

Quickly, with a wave of his hand, seeds buried in the mud plowed by broken tree trunks began to sprout rapidly, growing into a green carpet as high as his knees in the blink of an eye.

Huai Shi felt this was far from his limit; if he exerted his full strength, he could turn the grass of an entire football field into a half-human height.

However, doing so would leave him in a weakened state, akin to suffering a massive blood loss.

As his will dictated, the thick grass turned razor-sharp, and from a distance, it looked like clusters of small knives.

Although the specific lethality needed further development, the natural talent of the Mountain Ghost was unexpectedly cool.

Strength was a matter of patching up, but style was for life.

Aside from the greenery being a bit unusual for him, he was quite satisfied with everything else.

Soon, he noticed his long hair that reached his waist, sticky with tree sap, damp and uncomfortable.

Drawing his sacrificial knife, he grabbed a handful and attempted to cut it off, only to find that his hair's toughness was unexpectedly strong, requiring Huai Shi to rub vigorously with the blade of Source material to sever it.

The cut hair fell to the ground and, like taking root in the soil, quickly expanded and grew into a lush thicket of thorns.

"Is that even possible?"

Huai Shi paused, and while he marveled, he was shocked to find that the hair he had cut off had grown back!

Restored to its original waist-length.

Not a bit more, not a bit less.

As if it was fixed in place, stubbornly maintaining that length, no matter how Huai Shi tried to cut or trim it, it would not compromise. Only when he began to feel dizzy from insufficient blood supply to his brain did Huai Shi reluctantly put down the knife.

"Fine, if it's this long, then so be it..."

On the bright side, at least he wouldn't need to visit the barber anymore.

"Do you want to see what you look like now?"

Crow, with a smile that made Huai Shi uneasy, flapped his wings, and a water mirror appeared out of thin air. The light source above his head, previously cut off, lit up again, illuminating Huai Shi's face.

Huai Shi stood there, stunned.

As if struck by lightning.

Thanks to the abundant supply and enhancement of vitality, Huai Shi's previously malnourished pale face had gained some color, no longer gloomy, and he had bid farewell to the cold, handsome gothic prostitution style.

Although his essence was still primarily negative energy, at least he wasn't as dead as when he was in the ghostly stage, suppressed by the Holy Marks of the light series.

Now, in the mirror, Huai Shi saw a nightmarish reflection through his cascading black hair.

"This, this, this..." He pointed at the mirror, the face that seemed familiar yet somehow different, and almost screamed: "Who the hell is this effeminate guy?!"

"..."

Crow looked at him with pity.

"..."

Huai Shi stared blankly at the mirror, at the sparkling eyes and androgynous melon-seed face, and the soft features, subconsciously reaching down.

Then he breathed a sigh of relief.

Good, good, the goods were still there...

Once he came to his senses, he couldn't help but look at Crow, his hands drawing out knives and axes, pondering how to stew this woman into a pot of crow chicken soup.

"Hey, slow down..."

Crow dodged backward: "Look, I told you most Mountain Ghosts are female, I warned you, and besides, you're not effeminate now, just a bit more androgynous... Think of it as adding a beauty filter!

Besides, don't you think girls will like you more now? Honestly, switching from gothic to J-style isn't bad!"

"Then why are you dodging?" Huai Shi asked darkly: "Come here, I won't do anything to you..."

"I'm not afraid of what you might do to me, after all, I'm just a blob of ink and not afraid of being chopped up."

Saying this, Crow shrank back a little more, looking cautious: "But you're toxic now, like a walking contagion. I have to keep my distance."

"What the hell?"

Huai Shi looked down in astonishment, towards his feet.

In the patch of grass he had grown, unbeknownst to him, a cluster of colorful mushrooms had sprouted, looking quite appealing and appetizing.

This was bad.

Find the original at "pawread dot com".

It seemed like the plague aura... couldn't be turned off.