Chapter 211: Unknown

Chapter 211: Unknown

Perhaps the Undying Witch was truly in deep trouble, or maybe she was injured from the explosion. Zheng Yichen left very smoothly, not encountering any members of the Sanctuary Church along the way. He arrived quite effortlessly at the next temporary shelter.

This time, Zheng Yichen was even more cautious. Just because the Sanctuary Church people hadn’t found him didn’t mean others couldn’t. Last time it was Cultists, this time it was the Undying Witch directly. After using up the crystal bomb, Zheng Yichen couldn’t guarantee he’d have a chance to fight back next time. After the direct confrontation, he clearly understood the gap in strength between himself and a Witch.

She could easily block his strongest accumulated attack just by casually releasing her power . This was Zheng Yichen’s first encounter with the Undying Witch, and it happened because he had some understanding of her abilities while she knew nothing about his. That gave Zheng Yichen the opportunity to act. Next time, with the Undying Witch sufficiently prepared, he figured he’d have no real chance for a counterattack.

Anyway, for now, he absolutely must not run into her again.

“Hiss—that really hurts.” Zheng Yichen twisted his long neck to look at the injury on his back. The sight of his shattered Scales pained him. Though Zheng Yichen wasn’t overly focused on maintaining his Scales—he didn’t wax and apply skincare products to them for no reason—he was very diligent about cleaning them. He often kept his Scales clean and tidy because his whole body, including his face, was pitch black. If any part was dirty, it would ruin his overall appearance.

So, in this situation, the damage to his Scales made him rather upset. He didn’t know how long it would take for them to recover.

“Why didn’t I bring any medicine when I left…” Zheng Yichen grumbled. He placed Lily on the ground beside him, which had been magically treated to become fluffy, and began rummaging through his pockets for something that could help. Apart from some little tech gadgets, all he found were useless Magic Potion residues.

Based on his needs, the potions he had created were for honing or giving special effects to certain things, not for recovering from injuries. This left Zheng Yichen in an awkward spot. He dumped all the materials for making potions he had collected along the way onto the ground. Looking at the few leaves he held in his claw, his expression twisted.

Tsk, these things were somewhat useful, but this amount… even after processing, could it cover even one of his Scales? He glanced at the dense web of cracks on his back… He pursed his lips slightly and decisively put those leaves away. Better to save them; using them on himself would be a waste.

“I’m still lacking experience. I never thought about getting injured before, and now that it happened, it’s this severe.” He muttered, lightly moving his body. Immediately, a piercing pain shot from his back. Several Mana Threads wove into a Magic Rune Array, and a large ball of water appeared behind Zheng Yichen, falling and washing over the injured area on his back. The congealed Dragon Blood was cleaned and washed away.

Carefully removing the water, he collected the Dragon Blood. Though not fresh anymore, involving knowledge of Potionology, Dragon Blood was an excellent material for potions. Of course, Dragon Blood was too precious to be obtained by slaying dragons, so it had to be acquired through special means, like seeking out the Dragon Clan for trade…

Bloodletting… Others might call Dragon Blood precious, but to Dragons, it genuinely wasn’t that valuable. A human’s drop of blood was just one drop. A Dragon’s drop of blood, especially an Adult Dragon’s, was at least ten times the amount of an ordinary human’s. Losing a bowl of blood was practically nothing to them, given their size. A small amount of blood loss was quickly replenished by their natural healing.

But to obtain Dragon Blood, the first condition was to withstand the Dragon Clan’s extortion… and also have a high enough status. What status? Either be strong enough, or have an important enough identity—like a prince, princess, or emperor. The former meant you had the fists to back up your words; the latter meant you were purely wealthy.

The most crucial condition was, first, you had to find a Dragon.

“Hmm… Boiling Blood Potion, tsk! What am I thinking!” Zheng Yichen knocked his own head. Right now, he should focus on finding a way to speed up his recovery. With his massive Mana, he could assemble a ‘powerful’ Magic, but how profound its foundation was was another matter. For example, others might use spells with less raw power than Zheng Yichen’s, but their understanding and mastery of the spell might be much higher.

The effects they could produce could completely surpass Zheng Yichen’s…

If Zheng Yichen released a fire wall covering one hundred meters, a Mage might only manage a ten-meter fire wall, but theirs could be ten times hotter and have several times the Magic penetration power. Magic wasn’t just about outputting enough Mana; that didn’t decide everything.

“…Hmm, Water Healing, better than nothing.” Zheng Yichen flipped through his Magical Grimoire and found a spell that could ignore a fair amount of Magic Resistance: Water Healing. This spell didn’t have a powerful instant recovery effect, but it provided the user with a continuous, slow healing effect. It enhanced recovery while having minimal side effects on the body. Basically, it was like taking a special, potent tonic.

Even though it was a spell that ignored significant Magic Resistance, its effect on Zheng Yichen wasn’t great. However, the fine threads of Dragon Blood immersed in the Water Healing were gradually pressed into his wounds under some effect, re-entering his bloodstream. This was one characteristic of Water Healing.

Its wound recovery speed was slow, but it restored injuries in the most harmless and gentle way.

Lying on the ground, Zheng Yichen slowly let out a breath. He bit into a chunk of meat placed beside him and started chewing. Eating well when injured was never wrong. Afterwards, he needed proper rest. Grumbling to himself, Zheng Yichen slowly closed his eyes. The next moment, a small dragon-shaped Projection hopped out from atop his head.

Physical rest was fine, but mental rest was out of the question. He wouldn’t risk sleeping so soundly that someone might barge in again and screw him over. That would be a foolish mistake after nearly dying.

“Tsk tsk, how pitiful.” Dan Marina looked at Zheng Yichen’s current state and clicked her tongue slightly. She gazed at the materials gradually being prepared in front of her. After tedious and complex processing, they no longer resembled their original forms. She had spent a great deal of time on this. The next, shortest step was the hardest. Each of these materials, frankly, was quite malevolent.

A few of them didn’t even need processing; tossing them into a city could cause a huge disaster, even attracting unknown terrifying creatures. Making these dreadful things come together and react might very well trigger a series of chain reactions. Otherwise, her current location wouldn’t be this Secluded Refuge, but another place after Loris kicked her out. Loris?

She was currently watching Dan Marina’s situation from a distance.

Just as Dan Marina wanted to check on how Zheng Yichen was doing, the water basin in front of her vanished, leaving behind Loris’s faint voice: “Don’t get distracted!”

“Huh?? You just want to watch yourself, don’t you!” Dan Marina pursed her lips and continued focusing on her task. She sighed, suppressing her last flicker of scattered thoughts. Anyway, once she finished handling this thing, she could more or less start doing what she wanted.

Though staying here felt nice too, still… she didn’t want her life to stay like this.

Time passed until evening, when Dan Marina’s work slowly drew to a close. However, the situation here had undergone an extreme transformation. The originally lush, green area had turned into a bizarre zone, with strands of eerie energy drifting about. Dan Marina glanced around. “Well, I’ll leave this to you. Don’t touch anything here. Let them dissipate naturally. Just seal off the area.”

“I’m going to find someone. If nothing unexpected happens, we’ll have a result tomorrow.”

“What if there is an accident?”

“Can’t you say something nicer?” Dan Marina looked at Loris helplessly. “An accident just means she refuses. In that case, you come along and we’ll both go talk to her properly. It’ll definitely work out.”

“Mm.” Loris nodded. She understood what Dan Marina meant by ‘talk properly’…

Oh~ The moon mark is changing. How strange. At night, Zheng Yichen’s Projection held a telescope, gazing at the White Moon in the sky. The moon mark looked vastly different from its appearance during the Witch Hunt era. Trying to recall carefully, Zheng Yichen couldn’t remember what it looked like back then, as he hadn’t paid much attention to its shape originally.

Having nothing better to do, Zheng Yichen used a small notebook to record the moon mark he saw and casually tossed it into his pocket. He continued monitoring his body’s condition. After a night of healing under Water Healing, the slowest-to-recover Scales showed no change, but the torn flesh beneath them had recovered quite a bit. Still, the recovery speed was rather slow.

Conflicting strands of ice and fire Elemental Power continuously intertwined at his wound, never separating. That lingering Elemental Power gave Zheng Yichen a peculiar feeling he had only experienced in the Forbidden Zone before. “This thing… is really annoying.”

Zheng Yichen tried using his Projection to poke at the injury on his back. The entire Projection started to destabilize under that power, and the involved energy, when stimulated, erupted immediately, giving no chance for his Mana to assimilate it… or rather, even with the slightest stimulation, they would conflict and explode even faster.

A small-scale explosion acted on the newly grown flesh, making Zheng Yichen grimace in pain. Well! That method was a no-go too. Zheng Yichen was truly worried now. The injury on his back—he could turn his head to see it thanks to his long neck. As a Dragon, he also had an awkward human-like trait: his hands couldn’t reach his own back.

Being unable to grab his back meant he couldn’t utilize his claws’ gripping effect. Relying solely on external Mana assimilation speed wasn’t as good as gritting his teeth, enduring the pain, and directly detonating all the lingering ice and fire Elemental Power attached to his wound. Before finding a way to accelerate healing, adding injury to injury was the worst choice.

Zheng Yichen feared accidentally encountering another unexpected situation; that would truly be disastrous. Better to endure. His main body opened its eyes again. Zheng Yichen treated the parts he could reach. Looking at the two intertwined red and blue forces in his claw, he sighed softly.

Previously, the ice and fire Elemental Power attached to him was fused together, but once grabbed, they automatically separated. Trying to forcibly restore them to their previous fused state resulted in his grasping ability failing, causing a new round of explosions. Zheng Yichen felt a bit regretful, because that fused state was truly… miraculous.

“It returned from fusion to this. Such a downgrade.” Muttering, Zheng Yichen didn’t waste these two types of Elemental Power either. He stuffed them back into the Magic Weapon Summoning Book. These Elemental Powers were highly refined. When Zheng Yichen used them to cast corresponding spells, even with little understanding of that Magic, the effect could rival that of a Mage who had mastered it perfectly.

Unfortunately, the blue Elemental Power was ice, not fire, so Zheng Yichen couldn’t use it for Water Healing. As for ice-element recovery Magic, Zheng Yichen recalled… he seemed to have seen a related recorded spell in the Underground Library, one that completely froze the target to accelerate healing. Sadly, that spell belonged to the Arcane Arts / Secret Method type, and the Underground Library had no record of it…

Loris had many collections, but it was still not like a search engine that had records of everything. It was normal for things to be incomplete.

Keeping this power, he hadn’t entirely given up on the idea that one day he might be able to revert it back. If he couldn’t do it now, it didn’t mean he couldn’t in the future. After handling this, Zheng Yichen endured the pain from his movements aggravating the wound again. Turning his head, he saw a pair of bright eyes staring directly at him. “What are you looking at? Interested in my wings?”

As he spoke, Zheng Yichen waved his wings, which now had several holes, and felt a pang of heartache again. Appearance—once ruined, it was for a lifetime. He could only hope they would recover.

“Does it hurt a lot?” Lily looked at Zheng Yichen’s nonchalant appearance and hesitantly whispered.

“Ah~ It’s okay, just a bit of skin broken.” Zheng Yichen pointed at his cracked Scales. “How serious can broken skin be? I think you have questions for me?”

“…Mm, what is a Corpse Puppet?”

“Sigh~ I don’t know!”