"Haah...haah..."
It took Shi Li half an hour to sprint towards where the red light possibly landed due to his measly strength. If he had higher strength, then he would probably get to this place in a shorter amount of time.
"Okay...where could it be?" Shi Li looked around while rechecking his calculations and making sure he was in the area where the red light landed. After making sure that this was the place, he slowly walked around the vicinity, but he wasn't able to find anything resembling the red light from before.
"Could it be that...someone has grabbed it before I could?" Shi Li thought up of a crazy idea and concluded that it was indeed possible for it to happen.
Shi Li gradually turned around to walk back but decided not to. He checked the area one more time as he relied on his intuition that something was off.
After checking the area once more and seeing that nothing peculiar was around, Shi Li let out a disappointed sigh and turned around to walk back.
Thump!
"Hm?" Shi Li perked his ears up and deduced the direction where the sound originated. After doing so, he walked at a straight line and gradually found himself in front of a bizarre scene.
What stood in front of him was a tree...though it was not just any normal tree. On its trunk was a dent a few centimeters deep with a diameter of being around a decimeter wide.
Shi Li thought that the trunk was being hit with a rock by a happy-go-lucky kid at this time and hid when Shi Li came close so he didn't give it much thought afterwards. But he then came closer to the dent and saw that it didn't end there.
Within the dent were small red grooves that were writhing around like blood veins which made Shi Li get goosebumps at this scene.
As of this moment, Shi Li dispelled the idea of a kid throwing rocks and connected it back to the red light he saw from before.
"If it made a dent like this on a tree trunk, then it's spherical in shape?" Shi Li looked around for more clues and saw that not far away, he could see more red grooves that looked more like veins now since it was on the ground.
Shi Li mustered his courage and came closer to the patch of red veins and bent his knees to get a closer look.
To his surprise, a spherical object could be seen underneath the red veins. He grabbed a sturdy stick nearby and used it to move the red veins away, getting a good look at the object.
At first glance, the spherical object looked like a red pearl that possibly came from a mutated oyster or something. But once Shi Li got a closer look at the pearl, he saw that the pearl was not that simple.
He didn't know if he was hallucinating or not, but he could see a world within the pearl. Within the world in the pearl were beasts that exuded terrifying auras which scared Shi Li once he fixed his eyes at the beasts.
Seeing that this pearl held a terrifying item within it, Shi Li chuckled with glee. "Haha! I can't believe I found the heavenly treasure. I must treasure it and make sure that it should be kept as a secret."
Shi Li then grasped the pearl firmly and ran as he fast as he could back to his courtyard.
...
Shi clan, Shi Li's courtyard.
"Haah...haah..."
Shi Li felt out of breath once more since he sprinted back to his courtyard while holding onto the pearl firmly, but behind this breathlessness was a sort of excitement from getting a unique treasure like the pearl.
He headed towards the living room area of the courtyard and sat cross-legged once more before placing the red pearl in between his legs.
"Since I have a unique treasure in front of me, I have to gain enough strength to protect it."
Shi Li closed his eyes and started his usual cultivation. Surprisingly, this cultivation session gave him better effects than before which shocked Shi Li. The rate of his soul becoming stone was visibly noticeable when compared to the rate of transformation before.
'Is it because of the red pearl?' Shi Li smiled inwardly at the thought. Since it allowed him to cultivate his soul faster, he was sure that the pearl was definitely some sort of heavenly treasure.
As time passed, the rate of transformation stayed the same as before, being visibly noticeable. Thanks to this, Shi Li had a hunch that he would probably reach the peak of the first stage of Martial Novice if he continued to cultivate with the red pearl for a few days.
Yet all of a sudden, Shi Li felt that he was out of energy and he was going to fall unconscious soon. With that feeling looming all over his body, he stopped cultivating the technique.
But for some reason, his body continued to cultivate the technique although he wasn't consciously doing it.
Shi Li hasn't been in a situation like this before so he panicked and tried to think up of solutions which could fix this problem.
In the end though, it was all in vain.
Thud!
Shi Li fully fell unconscious as his body fell down on the floor from his cross-legged position.
...
"Gasp!"
Shi Li took in a breath of air after a while as he noticed he was awake. He looked around and saw that he was not in his courtyard.
Instead he was at a world filled with terrifying looking beasts. Each and every beast within this world exuded a terrifying aura that shocked Shi Li to the core.
At that moment, a fleeting memory flashed through his mind, realizing where he was.
"Am I in the world inside the red pearl?"
Bang!
At the exact moment he realized where he was, the beasts disappeared into thin air as a man materialized in front of Shi Li just a few meters away from him.
This man exuded an aura of magnanimity and wisdom which awed Shi Li. Not only that, the man's body held immense power within which could possibly shatter the earth and tear the heavems asunder if released.
The man then looked at Shi Li as he opened his mouth.
"Welcome to my world, inheritor."
"Inheritor?" Shi Li tilted his head in confusion. He knew he was in the world within the red pearl, but he didn't know anything about an inheritance. "Inheritor to what?"
"You are the inheritor of my memories and my bloodline. You might not know this, but my blood flows within your veins. It only takes a few steps for your bloodline to awaken...though I don't want to do that right now," the man answered Shi Li's question.
Shi Li only grabbed a red pearl since he thought it was some heavenly treasure but all of a sudden, he was the inheritor to this man's memories and bloodline?
'What bloodline could he possibly mean? Is it like those bloodlines found in the novels I've read?'
Though he was confused, Shi Li dispelled all of the useless thoughts in his head and looked at the man with a stern gaze.
"Who are you?"
"Me?" The man pointed at himself and lightly chuckled.
"I'm Tian Zhenfei."