Following Li Mei's words, a terrifying pressure erupted from her body and bore down on Di Tian.
This was something she had forged from years of battle and slaughter. The poor youth was almost stunned into unconsciousness as the bloody aura hit him.
Li Mei suddenly remembered her aura was not something a mere mortal could bear and quickly restrained it. Then again, the only reason she had unleashed it in the first place was to create an intimidation effect, which was rather unnecessary in hindsight. It was only a puny mortal after all.
"Go on," she repeated dismissively when the youth regained himself. The plan was for the guy to test the waters.
"She has the intent to kill, I better do as she says," Di Tian shivered as he obediently reached for the said object, taking stock of the situation. Even though he barely understood what was going on, he had some guesses. If the incorporeal pressure the raven-haired lady exuded wasn't enough clue, the fact that she descended from the sky and the immortal bearing of her presence made it clearly evident that she was not ordinary.
"Is she some sort of deity or something? Also, how is she linked to the alien? Is it even an alien, or another....godly person like her? Is this object I'm retrieving dangerous, like a bomb?" Involuntarily, speculations started appearing in his mind, and his hand subconsciously stopped mid-descent.
Li Mei frowned, wondering if she had unintentionally turned the guy into a retard with her spiritual pressure earlier. Was he courting death?
"Shit," goosebumps appeared on Di Tian's skin as he felt a wave of killing intent wash over him once again. He hurriedly grabbed the object.
Boom!
As soon as his hand touched the smooth surface, a certain mechanism seemed to be triggered, and a bright light burst out from the Supreme Primordial treasure.
"Sure enough, I was right," Li Mei thought, quickly erecting several layers of defence to shield her from the eruption. But this light wave was not that simple.
From the point of contact, it ignored all barriers and spread not just to the immediate vicinity, but over the entire planet. All over Earth, the residents of the planet had their senses temporarily impaired for about three seconds as an energy wave swept over them.
The light faded, and Li Mei cautiously dispelled her defences, activating her ocular spell immediately.
The mortal was the first to catch her eye. He was lying unconscious on the ground with fourth degree burns. From the look of things, he was severely injured and on the verge of death.
She ignored his state and shifted her gaze. The treasure was gone, and only a few charred remains were left of Yi Ming.
After a brief hesitation, Li Mei retrieved a talisman from her storage ring and sent out a transmission.
Just a while later, three people appeared on the planet, right where Li Mei was.
"Tsk tsk, Mei Mei," one of the newcomers remarked dryly. He was a stout young man with a wild aura, a scabbard hanging around his waist. Li Mei ignored him, looking instead at the child beside him.
The girl, with an oval face shape and silver hair, was no older than twelve. She carried herself with a certain grace that hinted her prestigious background. Right now, her pupils gleamed with a faint fluorescence as she observed the surroundings.
"The mission is a failure, Young Miss Auna," Li Mei said, bowing her head apologetically. "I think the target set a self destruction sequence, and both himself and the treasure were caught in the aftermath." She explained everything that has happened.
"The treasure was destroyed in an explosion? Do you take me for a fool?" The young girl chided in a surprisingly mature voice as soon as Li Mei was done speaking. "There are no signs of damage to the surroundings at all apart from the mortal on the ground."
The other newcomer, a dark, brooding man commented as he finished scanning the planet, finding no signs of the treasure, "The destruction of a Supreme Primordial treasure should cause the destruction of not just this planet but three-fifth of this entire domain at the very least." His words conveyed an unspoken implication.
"But an explosion really did occur," Li Mei protested. "I don't really understand it either, but I'm guessing the explosion was self contained or something." She finished her words somewhat in doubt herself.
The young girl didn't believe Li Mei's words and suspected some foul play. She thought for a while before giving an order.
"You'll be following me back to the clan right now. We'll confirm there if your words are indeed genuine."
Li Mei nodded, not voicing her dissatisfaction. It was pointless to; the Young Miss had more authority in the clan but virtue of her purer bloodline.
"What do you think happened, Da Sha?" The young girl turned to the dark man.
Da Sha hesitated, "I don't know, Miss. This is beyond my scope of my speculative ability."
Young Miss Auna nodded and instructed the man wearing a scabbard to retrieve the charred remains of Yi Ming to bring back with them. While he was at it, she impulsively brought out a pill and forced it down the mortal's throat.
"Errr, Miss," her stout subordinate hesitated. The Young Miss recently picked up the art of alchemy, but all her refined pills so far were barely safe for consumption. "I don't think it's a good id...."
"Hush, I know," the girl replied. "But he's already on his last breath anyways. If the healing pill turns out not to be poisonous, it's his good fortune, and he'll live."
Da Sha secretly scoffed. He knew the Young Miss had functional pills on hand; she just wanted to test the viability of the one she had refined, and the poor mortal was the subject.
As expected, nothing changed in the span of four breaths after she administered the pill. Under normal circumstances, the effect would kick in within two breaths.
"Well, let's get going then, shall we?" Young Miss Auna said nonchalantly and retrieved her Star Map, entering the relevant coordinates. Afterall, this was a Clan Mission; they could not afford to waste time.
In a few short breaths, she vanished with her subordinates.
*****
Di Tian's condition was a bit special. He was awake, but not in the typical way.
His consciousness was strangely split into two. There was a part passively taking stock of his physical state and his external environment, while the major portion was deep in his soul space.
For mortals, and even for cultivators below the first five stages, the consciousness–soul–was an abstruse domain; inaccessible and incomprehensible. Only after cultivators reached the fifth stage would they gain Divine Sense and be able to "introspect", meeting the threshold of soul cultivation.
Typically, an uncultivated soul space is a pitch dark environment, dimensionless and formless. But in Di Tian's, a certain change was occuring ar the moment.
An unknown structure appeared out of nowhere, gigantic double helix strands that stretched infinitely. These two strands glowed with a golden luminescence, squirming as they tangled and untangled every other second.
"Grand Primordial Helix?"
The name appeared in Di Tian's consciousness, alongside an influx of information that threw him into an trance.
At the same time, the presence of this structure seemed to induce a certain degree of order. All of a sudden, Di Tian's formless soul space underwent an intrinsic baptism.
Boom!
Boom!
Boom!
A transformation occured as an unknown amount of time passed. Eventually, the double helix stabilized, becoming a center beacon that lit up the rest of the soul space which now appeared vastly different from before.
The Grand Primordial Helix abruptly emitted an orange-reddish flame that escaped the Soul Space and set Di Tian's body ablaze momentarily, scorching and refining his internal organs and skeleton. On a morphological level, another transformation occured, this time to his physical form.
While all this seemed to take an unimaginable amount of time, it only translated to a split moment in reality.
Two breaths later.
A pure stream of life energy quietly erupted from Di Tian's stomach in a special circulation pattern.
Under the effect of this energy, his broken bones, deep burns and injuries started to recover at a speed visible to the naked eye!
Five minutes later, Di Tian's eyes abruptly flew open.