Chapter 42
Yan Bujian fell face up in the dense grass, his eyes closed, his long eyelashes casting a fragile shadow on his pale cheeks.
His brows were tightly furrowed, as if he was silently fighting against some invisible pain. His face was as pale as a piece of paper soaked by rain. His lips were cracked and oozing with blood. A trace of undried blood meandered down from the corner of his mouth, which was shocking.
His clothes were now soaked with blood, and countless sword wounds, some deep and some shallow, covered his body, still oozing blood. Warm liquid flowed down his limp arms, drop by drop, falling into the grass below, quietly forming a dark and sticky pool of blood.
Lin Yibai trembled as he reached out his hand to feel his breath, but all he felt was a faint, wisp of air from his fingertips.
Her heart suddenly sank into the bottomless abyss.
"Wake up!" Her voice trembled. She held his shoulders with both hands and shook him gently, but the body in her hands was cold and stiff, and there was no response at all.
Just as she was getting anxious, a light bulb suddenly flashed in her mind, as if she suddenly remembered something. She reached into her storage bag and soon pulled out a bunch of bottles and jars.
Jade bottles and brocade boxes were piled on the ground in front of her, filled with various healing elixirs, all of which were the elixirs she had looted from the Old Demon's Labyrinth in order to save her life.
In a panic, she didn't bother to choose. She opened a jade bottle, poured out a few healing pills, and pried open Yan Bujian's mouth, pouring them in like feeding candy beans. Then, without even taking a breath, she picked up the small jade bottle containing the stone marrow milk and carefully dripped the milky white liquid into his mouth.
Soon, the ground was filled with a pile of empty bottles.
But time passed minute by minute, and Yan Bujian remained motionless. Not only did his brows not relax at all, but his face seemed even paler.
Lin Yibai looked at the half-empty medicine bottle on the ground, his heart sank little by little, and a feeling of powerlessness surged in his heart.
Just as she changed a bottle of elixir and was about to feed it into his mouth again——
[It has been detected that the male subject's spiritual energy is too full. If he is fed with spiritual medicine, he may explode and die.]
The cold mechanical sound of the system suddenly rang in her mind.
Lin Yibai was so shocked that he quickly threw the spiritual medicine in his hand away. Although he was quite puzzled by this system that suddenly appeared without being summoned, he was more happy than surprised at its appearance. It was like grabbing a life-saving straw. He quickly asked in his heart: "Why didn't he wake up after feeding him so many spiritual medicines? What happened?"
[The protagonist's spirit is severely damaged. The medicine you fed him only hurts the flesh and has no benefit to his spirit.] And for some reason, this system, which always liked to play dead, surprisingly didn't keep the question in suspense this time, but instead answered succinctly.
The cave was momentarily silent, with only the fluorescent moss casting a faint, rippling blue light, illuminating Yan Bujian's lifeless face. His brows were still furrowed in pain, as if he were struggling in an endless nightmare. His fragile appearance was completely different from the young man she remembered, who always stood straight and had a sharp gaze no matter how desperate the situation.
"The soul is damaged..." She murmured the answer given by the system, only to feel a deeper sense of powerlessness gripping her.
Physical wounds could be healed with elixirs, but the soul... that was a mysterious realm she had never explored. Since her time traveling back in time, she had relied on her limited foresight about the Honkai Impact 3rd plot to navigate the system's missions, scavenging life-saving elixirs as her limit. She had never imagined she would face such a precarious situation.
She said dejectedly, "Then...what can I do to save him?"
[——Host needs have been detected. The system store training section has been opened. You can purchase soul healing related skills.]
"Practice section?" Lin Yibai was puzzled when she heard this, "Shouldn't it be the spiritual medicine section? And...that section seems unable to be opened." However, saving people was the most important thing at the moment, so she didn't bother to think too much and quickly opened the system store in her sea of consciousness to check.
The familiar translucent light screen appeared in front of her, and then to her surprise, the "Practice" plate that had been gray and black as if locked, now lit up like the other two plates.
[Host's breakthrough to the Golden Core stage detected, the training section has been unlocked.] The system voice sounded at this time.
Although she felt that this was all too coincidental, she still reached out and clicked on the training section. The next moment, this brand new section was finally revealed before her eyes -
However, unlike the other two sections that were filled with dazzling displays, there was only a solitary manual lying there, with a few small words written underneath it:
The Art of Clearing the Mind and Concentrating the Spirit.
She hesitated and clicked on the introduction of the technique, only to see the following effects: [Warms and nourishes the soul, repairs soul damage, and stabilizes the mind.]
Just what she needs right now!
And the price of the technique...after she saw it clearly, her eyes couldn't help but become confused.
——How could it be such a coincidence?
The price of this scripture is exactly all the achievement points she has earned from completing the tasks so far - no more, no less, exactly 400!
"But system, you deducted 50 achievement points from my first mission, so now I don't have enough achievement points." She paused and said hesitantly.
But just as she finished her words, the price suddenly changed and dropped to 350 in front of her.
[A malfunction in the store system has been detected and has been repaired]
Lin Yibai: “???”
"Isn't this really a price you set deliberately because you see how much money I have?" Looking at the number, she finally couldn't help but question it in her heart, and a suffocating feeling of being manipulated by an invisible hand arose spontaneously -
I won’t even act anymore!
From the moment she entered the book until now, whether it was the constantly deviating plot, the increasingly outrageous quests, or even this reward... she felt like she had been set up by this system from the beginning to the end?!
The system fell silent again.
The moss in the cave was still emitting a faint blue light. Under its reflection, the light curtain where the martial arts technique lay quietly appeared even more strange. Lin Yibai couldn't help but be full of suspicion.
However, she had no choice but to continue in order to complete the mission and keep Yan Bujian alive.
She took a deep breath, and with a barely perceptible tremor on her fingertips, she tapped the "Buy" button on the light screen.
[Exchange successful. Achievement points -350. Remaining achievement points: 0.]
As the prompt sounded, a huge stream of information suddenly poured into her sea of consciousness. It was not words from a book, but a mysterious inheritance of thoughts. The key to nourishing the mind was engraved into the depths of her soul like a brand. She almost didn't need to understand it before she understood the operation method of this "Art of Purifying the Heart and Concentrating the Spirit".
...They deliver the goods to your door and provide teaching until you learn how to use them. The service is quite "thoughtful".
Despite her inner complaints, she dared not delay for a moment. She immediately followed the formula she had just comprehended, holding her breath and concentrating her mind, mobilizing her spiritual energy. A faint white light emerged from her palm, soft and pure, with a soothing and tranquil power. Carefully, she hovered her palm over Yan Bujian's forehead, letting the white light flow into him like a stream of water.
Her spiritual power carefully probed into his sea of consciousness——
That should have been a cultivator's most central and secretive realm. Yet, what she "beheld" was a shattered scene. Chaotic light darted everywhere, fragments of memory drifted and collided like shattered mirrors, and violent energy currents raged within, turning everything upside down.
This place doesn't seem like a space of consciousness, but more like a ruin that has just experienced a doomsday disaster.
Lin Yibai was horrified, and at this moment he remembered the system's task -
[Save Yan Bujian from his mental block and awaken his consciousness.]
Is this the tragic state of a damaged soul? What exactly has he been through? What is this so-called mental barrier?
However, this was obviously not the time to think about these things. She collected her thoughts, closed her eyes and concentrated on practicing the "Art of Clearing the Mind and Concentrating the Spirit".
The soft white halo gradually became thicker, like the finest warm gauze, gently covering the restless fragments, trying to slowly gather and glue them together.
This was an extremely exhausting process. Fine beads of sweat soon formed on her forehead, and her face gradually turned pale. Her spiritual energy flowed like a trickling stream, flowing into Yan Bujian's dry and chaotic sea of consciousness, striving to repair the terrible wound.
Time passes quietly in silence.
An unknown amount of time passed until Lin Yibai felt that the spiritual energy in his body was almost drained out, and his sea of consciousness was also experiencing bursts of stabbing pain due to excessive consumption.
The young man on the ground gently opened his eyes.
Under the thick long eyelashes, there are a pair of eyes that are initially dazed and distracted, as if covered by a layer of mist, and have not yet fully focused, but the deep background has been revealed, like black jade immersed in a cold pond, faintly reflecting the gleam of the swaying moss on the cave ceiling... and the girl in front of him with a weak face, who is sending spiritual power towards him with all her strength.
[Ding—Mission completed, reward: 100,000 achievement points, host's physical function increased by 100%]
The moment the announcement came down, Lin Yibai saw with his own eyes that his store account had suddenly become a six-digit number, and the cultivation level that had just broken through in his body was instantly injected with a warm current, thus stabilizing it.
Feeling the powerful force filling her limbs, she didn't feel much joy at completing the task. Instead, she felt depressed because of the sudden enlightenment.
No wonder there was such a huge difference between the achievement points she earned and the prices in the store!
If this shitty system had never intended for her to buy things in it from the beginning, and was just used to help Yan Bujian in an emergency, then everything would make sense!
This time, I was given a 100,000-point reward all at once... Could it be that these 100,000 points I received right now will also be used to save him in the future?!
She couldn't help but feel pain in her heart, and then she was angry: Those were all earned by me with my hard work and life!
However, while she was still immersed in her anger and suspicion towards the system, and was unable to react for a moment...
The next moment, without any warning—
An arm suddenly wrapped around her waist, pulling her forward with an almost uncontrollable force!
"Ugh!" Lin Yibai was caught off guard and let out a short cry of surprise. The scene in front of him suddenly spun around.
When she came to her senses, her cheek was pressed tightly against a warm chest.
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