Yang Yang shook his head. "Because his sins were the deepest. He's the one who created the fake medicine formula, the source of it all. Maybe his evil was too great, so he's cursed to live ninety-nine years of suffering before finally being dragged to the eighteenth level of hell."
"Alright then," Jing Shu said, shrugging. She opened her medical kit and started doing a few routine checks. She looked professional enough, but to Hao San'er, the old man nearby, she was just a fraud. He snorted, spat a mouthful of liquid far across the room, and gave her a look that clearly said, "What can a half-baked amateur like you possibly figure out? The Hao boy's soul is already writhing in the eighteenth hell."
Since the Spirit Spring couldn't wake Hao Yunlai anyway, there was no point wasting it.
Jing Shu coughed a few times, dropped the act, and pulled out the withered tree that had been soaking in the crimson liquid.
Yang Yang pointed at it, stunned. "Wait, isn't that the one from billionaire Job Sibus's lab in the States? The one you exchanged fifty contribution points for?"
She nodded. As expected, Yang Yang was sharp, which only made her more cautious.
Jing Shu took out a knife and carefully sliced into the withered tree. Sure enough, after soaking for so many days, the once-dead tree that even the billionaire's research team couldn't revive had sprouted fingernail-sized blood-red crystals.
She had suspected from the start that the tree acted as a converter, slowly turning the crimson liquid into crystal form. She still didn't know what these crystals actually were or how to use them, but she could feel their power.
She stitched the tree's wound shut again and held the blood-colored crystal in her hand, hesitating. Back when she'd touched the gateway to the fourth dimension, she'd nearly died after losing her anchor point. It was the Cube Space that had pulled her back. It was that very crystal that had altered her life's timeline.
It had taken her back to the moment before her body collapsed. Yet the pain still tore through her, because time couldn't erase memory. The body remembered—just like how, in her previous life, she'd died and then returned ten years earlier.
If her guess was right, these crystals had the power to "send a person back to a specific point in time." Say you got riddled with bullets and were beyond saving, the crystal could bring you back to a moment just before that. But your body would still remember the agony of being pierced through.
So... how exactly was she supposed to use this thing?
"Oh, right. The crystal only works when it's inside the tree. I remember it melting inside my brain last time." She clapped her hands, grabbed her knife, and jabbed it straight into Hao Yunlai's left shoulder—close to his heart, for better absorption. Then she shoved the blood crystal deep into his flesh. Blood gushed out, and within seconds, his lips turned pale.
"Are you serious right now? What the hell are you doing?" Yang Yang was completely lost. Whatever this was, it sure wasn't medicine anymore.
Jing Shu quickly stitched the wound, slapped on a black herbal pellet, and pressed hard over the spot, massaging to help the crystal fuse faster.
Blood spurted now and then from the wound, but she didn't care. None of this came with an instruction manual. She had to figure it out herself. If the crystal didn't work, she'd just reopen the wound and dig it out later. That thing was way too precious to waste.
She'd spent over ten days in America collecting that crimson liquid. She had no clue what it was for, but it was definitely valuable.
After a few minutes of pressing, she felt the crystal shrink.
"There we go!" she said in excitement. But the next second, a roaring pulse filled her head, like someone hammering a massive bell right beside her ear. Her mind buzzed violently, resonating with something unseen—and before she could react, she blacked out.
Yang Yang blinked. "What the...?"
What just happened?
Jing Shu's soul drifted free for the second time. She watched herself—dressed in that bulky cotton coat, looking ridiculously plain—collapse onto the ground. Even she thought she looked embarrassingly rustic.
From her god view, she hovered above the entire house. She had no idea what had just triggered this or how.
Resting her chin on her hand, she felt a little anxious. "Crap... don't tell me I actually died this time?"
Drip. Drip. Drip.
The sound of water reached her ears. She followed it through the Cube Space and spotted the one-cubic-meter core section—the one that usually produced only twenty drops of Spirit Spring a day, just one gram total.
But now, the Spirit Spring was pouring out at an insane rate. Drop after drop, clear and beautiful, echoing like music.
"What the hell? It's supposed to make only one gram a day, and now it's gushing like crazy? That's gotta be at least a few days' worth!"
Her heart leapt. Spirit Spring was insanely precious. Every day, she carefully numbered, diluted, and distributed it among her plants, her family, Xiao Dou, and even the villa's vegetable garden and fish pond. Lately, the production couldn't keep up with consumption.
But now, the Spirit Spring was overflowing, drop after drop, until her jaw almost hit the ground. Then she finally understood what was happening.
The blood crystal she'd risked her life to retrieve from the fourth dimension—the one she hadn't wanted to waste on Hao Yunlai—was melting away before her eyes. It was dissolving, being converted into Spirit Spring at roughly a one-to-one-hundred ratio.
She was torn between excitement and heartbreak. Watching the Spirit Spring multiply like crazy made her thrilled, but seeing her precious blood crystal get devoured hurt like hell. Still, it proved something huge: the Spirit Spring didn't just grow on its own, it could also absorb and convert other materials like that crystal.
The price was steep, but damn, the Spirit Spring was worth it.
Soon, she noticed that the newly formed Spirit Spring looked slightly different—it was darker, and the space had separated it into its own section.
"So does that mean it's higher quality? Or maybe just different? Or does it have another use entirely?" she murmured thoughtfully.
The mad overflow lasted only a few minutes before calming down. The pool settled, now with a Spirit Spring about the size of a fist resting quietly in one corner.
Every last bit of the blood crystal was gone, the crimson liquid still lying silently beside it.
At that moment, Jing Shu groaned and slowly came to. Her head felt light and hollow.
"Ow... ow... ow..."
And right beside her, Hao Yunlai woke up too, jolted awake by the pain.