Most of the sensitive psychotropic drug ingredients that the police were concerned about naturally metabolized in five to ten days. Luo Nan had completed this process in just half an hour—from the moment of his arrest to boarding the ship. He had also taken care to regulate the digestion of the sensitive ingredients while concocting the drug. When the urine samples were taken, he had only made minimal adjustments; a standard urine test would hardly detect anything unusual.
As for other samples—blood, hair, and the like—Luo Nan wasn't confident.
So he remained silent from the moment he was forcibly detained. He had no intention of dragging Xie Junping into the mess. Not only would it have been meaningless, but he still needed that fellow to help him escape.
There was a cost to this choice.
Accelerated metabolism drained Luo Nan's energy reserves. That single hour felt like a week of fasting. His body fat and muscle tissue were being cannibalized to feed his brain and nervous system. Neurons fired and inhibited in rapid cycles, leaving him exhausted and disoriented. Pain, numbness, and mild hallucinations attacked his senses relentlessly.
He sat motionless on the ice-cold deck, every muscle subtly twitching—a clear sign of nervous system dysfunction.
Closing his eyes, he ignored the grumbling rich kids nearby. He began chanting the Sixteen Word Mantra.
At first, his words were fluent, a humming vibration shaking his brain. Gradually, his chanting slowed, the sound dropping lower, until it was no longer audible. Only faint syllables gurgled and flowed in his mind:
My heart is a prison; my heart is a furnace;
My heart is a mirror; my heart is a nation.
His mind focused along the flow of his heart, distracting thoughts evaporating as he naturally entered the visualization step.
Silver threads formed a tetrahedron, an inscribed sphere, and a circumscribed sphere in the void—a celestial construction rotating silently in the darkness of space.
Over the past five years, he had progressed hand in hand with his Medicinal Carving and Chanting and Breathing, forming a subtle correspondence between his body—the vessel—and the visualization.
Changes in the vessel affected the visualization immediately; conversely, manipulating the visualization could roughly adjust the vessel's structure, regulating qi, blood flow, and organ function.
The former explained the damage to his vessel; the latter explained the control of his urinary system. Of course, meddling with his autonomic nervous system came at a cost—backlash—and this moment, the system was pushing back harshly.
After accelerating his metabolism for half an hour, he now needed at least three times that long to recover.
Experience taught him patience. He was imprisoned; there was no need to worry about the outside world. Recuperation would suffice.
But the situation wasn't that simple.
The visualized diagram began lagging, growing worse by the second, like a demanding game running on a low-spec machine. Frames stuttered; quality faltered; and as the 'system' overheated, even his mantra's rhythm became disrupted. The backlash was far more severe than he had expected.
He paused the visualization, muttering to himself, adjusting his posture.
Cross-legged, he set himself like a monk or daoist in meditation. From the top of his head through shoulders, elbows, and knees, two perfect diagonals connected to the ground, forming a solid pyramid.
This posture—a tetrahedral boundary of the limbs—had been taught by his grandfather. The inscribed circle contained internal organs and circulation; the circumscribed sphere represented the external world. Body and mind became one; internal and external were mirrored. Visualization improved dramatically.
Silently, he chanted again. Silver threads reconstructed the complete diagram, rotating slowly. This time, he wasn't a mere observer; he was a participant. The boundary between him and the visualization blurred.
It felt as if he had merged with the void, transformed into a towering pyramid spinning in infinite darkness. He didn't move—his organs moved, and the dark nothingness outside shifted. Harmony and chaos were peeled apart, layer by layer.
Then he sensed it.
"What the hell is this!?"
A small but solid power hovered in the surrounding darkness, like a hand trying to pull the visualization apart. Luo Nan reached to grasp it, but its form eluded him, slipping through perception like a mosquito buzzing at night.
More accurately, it was a specter spiraling inside and outside his body, consuming his flesh and blood essence.
After futile attempts, frustration mounted. Distracting thoughts flooded back. Luo Nan withdrew from the Fixed Space—but his state worsened. Hunger, pain, and hallucinations surged together, forming a turbulent storm in his body. Energy misfired; his mantra slipped into incoherent, vulgar words. He knew he was in a bad state, but control was gone.
As his mind destabilized, the interference from the outside world grew harder to block.
"Hey!" a voice laughed beside him. "Kid, scared, stupid, or deaf?"
Luo Nan barely lifted his head. His energy was drained; his awareness of the outside world was dull. He didn't care about the noise or the people.
The speaker persisted. "You're so young. Why act so aloof?"
Luo Nan finally raised his eyelids, revealing the only person he recognized in the room:
Lian Yu.