After letting the two play to their hearts' content on the beaches and markets of New Salem for two days, Simon put away his usual cynical smile.
During these two days, Ryan and Lucia tasted the small town's specialty charcoal-grilled sea fish—coarse-scaled sea fish slow-roasted over local mangrove hardwood, its skin charred and crispy, which, when sprinkled with coarse salt and lime juice, let the tender fish release a rich, oily aroma on the tip of the tongue. Under the tutelage of Simon, that cynical old-timer, Lucia even learned how to track the rising and falling of the tides. In the crevices of the rugged black reefs after the tide receded, she rolled up her trouser legs, stepped into the cool seawater, and managed to harvest more than half a bucket of plump flower crabs.
The sea breeze of New Salem was thick with warm salt and the sweet scent of decaying vegetation. That sense of groundedness, so completely different from the Old World, thoroughly relaxed their nerves, which had been stretched to the limit by days of life-and-death pursuit.
However, pleasant times were always fleeting. When the curtain of night on the third day completely swallowed New Salem's bay, it was time to repair his body.
Late at night, the iron door of the secret chamber beneath the archive was shut tight. The sound of the heavy lock falling echoed in the narrow corridor, producing a dull, cold metallic clang.
No lamps were lit inside the secret chamber. The surrounding walls were completely lined with heavy lead plates capable of isolating spiritual leaks. A simple diagram had already been laid out on the floor. There were no religious paintings or complex occult ornaments, only a few lines of spiritual conduction laid out with highly pure 【Heart】 aspect mediums. The mediums took the form of dark red mucus that wriggled like living things, glowing with a faint red light in the dim subterranean darkness, casting a bizarre yet solemn aura over the entire chamber.
Simon shed the loud floral shirt he usually wore and changed into a sleek, grey long-sleeved cotton shirt, his cuffs tightly bound with leather buckles. In his hand, he held a precise silver scalpel and a sealed lead box engraved with containment runes.
As Simon stood solemnly beside the diagram, his usual slack, rogue-like demeanor vanished, replaced by an absolutely professional, almost non-human, cold extraordinary aura. As one of the core members who had participated in the physical creation during that forbidden experiment in London back then, no one knew the internal structural pathways and spiritual defects of Ryan's body better than he did.
“Lie down.” Simon pointed to the cold grey stone slab in the center of the diagram, his tone devoid of any emotion. “Once the process starts, the 【Grail】 and 【Lantern】 inside you will experience massive rejection. Remember, the 【Lantern】 is responsible for guarding your consciousness—don't let it get scattered or go astray. The 【Grail】 is responsible for providing physical vitality—don't let your flesh die in the tearing. As for how to insert the 【Heart】... that's my business. You aren't to interfere even a single millimeter.”
Without hesitating, Ryan unbuttoned his shirt, draped it over a nearby iron chair, and lay down bare-chested on the cold stone slab. He slowly closed his eyes and regulated his breathing. “Begin.”
Simon's gaze narrowed as he popped open the mechanical lock of the lead box with one hand.
Accompanied by a rising wisp of hot crimson steam, a core medium glowing with a dazzling crimson light was revealed. It was not formless spirituality, but a fleshy core that seemed to still be beating spontaneously, as crystal-clear as a ruby!
Holding the silver scalpel, Simon traced a brilliant arc in the air. His spirituality, like a transparent scalpel, cut precisely into the depths of the extraordinary pathways in Ryan's chest!
Boom!
The diagram on the floor was instantly and completely activated! The blazing, colossal crimson light transformed into living, blood-vessel-like ropes of light, which forced their way into Ryan's chest with a powerful rhythm of life!
In the mental world, a storm suddenly erupted!
Sensing the forced intrusion of this high-rank foreign power, the source of the 【Grail】 was instantly enraged. A towering black wave of blood surged in the lower depths, and countless tentacles formed of desire and physical instinct reached out wildly from the sea of blood, attempting to tear apart and devour the 【Heart】 medium on the spot. Meanwhile, the sunlight of the 【Lantern】 above crashed down, transforming into an absolutely cold, absolutely rational white line of defense, shielding Ryan's core of thought to prevent him from being completely submerged by the raging blood waves.
One yin and one yang, one blood and one light—the two forces that had barely maintained a delicate balance within Ryan's body now clashed and repelled each other with extreme violence!
“Ugh—!”
In reality, Ryan's hands tightly gripped the edges of the stone slab, his fingers squeezing so hard that they left deep, crushed indentations in the hard stone. Veins bulged like rough iron wires on his neck and arms, and his entire body convulsed violently from the excruciating pain!
His bones ground together with sharp, scraping sounds, and muscle fibers and extraordinary blood vessels repeatedly ruptured and reformed! It was the agony of having his fundamental extraordinary structure completely torn open, forced to accept a new node, and sewn back together—a pain far worse than any death by a thousand cuts in the world!
“Don't move! Guard your consciousness!” Simon's voice boomed in Ryan's ears like thunder.
Simon's gaze was cold to the extreme, his eyes reflecting the crimson glow as his fingers rapidly traced countless dense red lines of spiritual trajectory in the air. Armed with his absolute experience and control from participating in the creation of this body back then, he was always able to use the 【Heart】 medium to precisely lock down the 【Grail】's activity nodes at the exact moment it was about to run wild and blow the physical body apart. And when the 【Lantern】 over-defended, attempting to eradicate the foreign spirituality, he transformed the life-vitality of the 【Heart】 into a bridge, forcing a connection across the spiritual chasm between the two!
Tearing, suppressing, guiding, integrating!
Time stretched endlessly in the mad clash of agonizing pain and spirituality; every second felt like a century.
Fine beads of sweat broke out on Simon's forehead, sliding into the corners of his eyes, but he did not even blink. His right hand holding the scalpel remained steady as a rock. The silver blade and spiritual threads of light swiftly traversed and wove inside Ryan's body, sewing the core of the 【Heart】 bit by bit between the desire of the 【Grail】 and the reason of the 【Lantern】.
After an unknown amount of time, just as Ryan's consciousness was on the verge of being worn away by the endless agony—
Thump!
A colossal heartbeat, muffled yet echoing like the heavy toll of an ancient clock tower, suddenly vibrated through the narrow chamber!
The air seemed to freeze for an instant.
In the mental world, the churning black waves of blood instantly calmed. The 【Grail】 below had finally found its anchor of life, and its violently out-of-control activity began to flow through the body in an orderly cycle. The 【Lantern】 above slowly withdrew its cold line of defense, gently enveloping his body in absolute rationality. Meanwhile, the new 【Heart】 in the center acted like a perpetual motion machine that would never go out, endlessly pumping out pure, abundant vitality, perfectly linking the three together.
Phew—
Ryan let out a long breath of turbid air that had built up in his chest and sat up abruptly.
The dark red diagram on the floor gradually faded away, and all the excruciating pain vanished in an instant. Replacing it was an unprecedented sense of groundedness, clarity, and harmony. He could even clearly hear the blood inside him flowing and singing rhythmically like rushing thunder.
Simon wiped the sweat from his forehead and casually tossed the scalpel, coated in spiritual medium, into a metal tray with a clink. He fished out a cigarette, lit it, took a deep drag, and leaned lazily against the wall.
“Alright, you're good to go.” Simon exhaled a puff of blue-grey smoke, squinting at Ryan on the stone slab. “From now on, if any ordinary high-rank 【Grail】 power tries to drag you over and force a calibration, it will be pure wishful thinking. You are now an independent entity.”
Ryan looked down and touched his chest, feeling the stable, powerful, and perfectly closed three-phase loop within him. “Just like that? It's over?”
Simon rolled his eyes, both amused and exasperated. “Otherwise? Did you want me to throw you a graduation ceremony and hand you a 'Certified Complete Human' certificate? Beat it, my spirituality took a massive hit. I need to sleep.”
The next morning, the thin mist had not yet fully dispersed.
On the volcanic rock clearing of New Salem's back mountain, the sea breeze howled.
Ryan was bare-chested, his bare feet stepping on the rough, hard black volcanic rock. The morning light washed over his muscular, well-defined body, casting a golden-yellow glow. Before him stood a massive boulder formed from cooled volcanic lava erupted from underground, twice the height of a man and hard as iron.
Simon sat on a folding chair he had scavenged from who-knows-where under the shade of a tree, a cigarette dangling from his mouth and a cup of rich, bitter black coffee in his hand. Lucia stood beside him, clutching her specimen book, watching Ryan in the center of the clearing with a mixture of curiosity and nervousness.
“Give it a try.” Simon took a sip of his coffee and hollered, “Do whatever you want, just don't collapse my mountain.”
Ryan took a deep breath and closed his eyes.
Within a thousandth of a second of his consciousness issuing the command, the three forces of the 【Grail】, 【Heart】, and 【Lantern】—which had previously acted independently—achieved an unprecedented, perfect coordination!
The 【Lantern】 activated instantly, providing an absolutely precise perspective, calculations of air resistance, and strike trajectories. The core of the 【Heart】 pumped furiously, endlessly delivering a massive yet gentle life-vitality that filled every muscle fiber. The 【Grail】 pushed his physical raw explosive power and muscle tension to the extraordinary limit!
There was none of the internal friction from before, where every deployment of power required splitting half his focus to forcibly suppress a loss of control. The three coordinated naturally like limbs, complementing one another.
Ryan opened his eyes, his gaze calm as water, and punched the giant volcanic rock before him with extreme casualness.
Boom—!
A visible ring of white shockwave erupted in front of his fist! The incredibly hard, weathered giant volcanic rock didn't even make a dull impact sound upon contact with Ryan's fist; it disintegrated directly from the inside, shattering into countless fine, dust-like stone shards!
The wild wind swept the stone dust into the air, blotting out the sunlight.
Ryan slowly withdrew his fist, standing in the center of the dust. His skin bore a faint, healthy luster, showing no signs of the mutations, bulging veins, or skin tearing that used to occur during power overloads.
The power of the 【Grail】 could finally be fully deployed without any reservations or fear of consequences, with no further risk of out-of-control mutations. The 【Lantern】 remained his core consciousness and absolute reason, watching the world. And the newly embedded 【Heart】 had become the true core that perfectly connected flesh and spirituality.
He completely shed the fatal vulnerability of being a "defective construct," becoming a powerful individual with a complete, self-sustaining extraordinary loop.
“Tsk, nice power, and the control is spot on.” Simon blew a loud whistle from afar, slapping the dust off his hands. “Looks like that astronomical sum of material costs we burned through in London back then was indeed worth every penny.”
Ryan walked back to the shade, picked up his white shirt, and put it on. Buttoning it up, he said, “I don't plan on returning to that ruin in South America anytime soon.”
“Suit yourself,” Simon said listlessly, taking a sip of his coffee. “That place was just an obsolete, automated facility to begin with—a storage dump for the rejects abandoned back then. Now that you're fixed, going back to fight that pile of rotten meat would just be plain stupid.”
At this, Simon paused and looked up at Ryan. “What are your plans next? You can't stay in my little run-down archive forever, can you?”
Ryan fastened his cuffs and looked up at the vast, boundless sea to the south. “I'll stay in New Salem for a while first to thoroughly stabilize the three-phase loop of my body, and help Lucia sort some things out while I'm at it.”
Over the next month, New Salem enjoyed a period of peace.
There was no industrial fog or cold, drizzling rain that never dispersed like in London, nor were there the overwhelming sweeps of secret agents from great powers and orthodox churches. There was only the endless sea breeze, the scorching sunlight, and the rhythmic washing of waves against the reefs.
In the leisurely lifestyle of Simon, that old fox, Ryan and Lucia found a long-lost comfort and ease.
Every day, Simon maintained his relaxed pace of being an archive clerk in name while slacking off in reality. In the morning, he would set up two bamboo fishing rods in the archive's backyard, bait them with sandworms, and start dozing off. In the afternoon, he would take Ryan and Lucia to pick wild fruit in the island's orchards, or head to the low-ceilinged pubs by the sea to shoot the breeze with bearded, fish-reeking pirates and whaling captains.
He never brought up the past in London of his own accord, nor did he pry into how Ryan had survived all these years. In Simon's eyes, Ryan was just an old friend he hadn't seen in years, who had finally sorted out his messy affairs and come to visit.
In his spare time, Simon would casually pull two wooden sticks used for propping up the fence out of the yard, toss one to Ryan, and clamor to "spar" with him.
“Kid, just because your 【Heart】 is complete doesn't mean you can just use brute force.” Holding his wooden stick, Simon stood on the grass. His moves looked crooked and unpolished, yet they were extremely tricky to deal with. “Extraordinary strikes must follow the flow of vitality, emphasizing endless generation. Don't be stiff like a block of iron like you used to be, shattering the moment you hit something.”
Ryan traded blows with him using the wooden stick. Under Simon's effortless and unpretentious guidance, Ryan gradually learned how to naturally integrate the life-vitality of the 【Heart】 into his own combat style. His strikes and blade paths lost some of their former desperate, rigid stiffness, gaining a smooth, unpredictable, and dense quality like flowing water.
Lucia also completely shook off the psychological shadow left by the South American ruin incident. She no longer clutched her heavy specimen bag at all times, warily scanning her surroundings. Instead, she learned from Simon how to dry coarse salt from seawater on the beach, identify volcanic plants and poisonous mushrooms unique to the South Pacific, and even helped Simon organize the messy blueprints and old logbooks in the archive basement that hadn't been touched in years.
Ryan, on the other hand, threw himself back into his original hobby and profession—botanical research.
With his specimen folder and monocular telescope in hand, he strolled through the lush tropical rainforests and coastal wetlands of New Salem, collecting unique specimens of volcanic flora and recording their subtle mutations under the nourishment of extraordinary spiritual energy.
In the day-to-day routine of harvesting, organizing, drying, and living a life as peaceful as water, Ryan fully adapted to his peak state after achieving a "complete body," thoroughly turning the extraordinary cycle of the 【Grail】, 【Heart】, and 【Lantern】 into second nature.
New Salem became a true safe harbor, quietly smoothing away all the blood, violence, and exhaustion of the past few months.
However, this peaceful life was shattered on a cloudy afternoon a month later.
Simon was still sitting on the wooden stool in the backyard fishing. The newspaper in his hand had just been bought from a large ocean liner that had docked, its pages still smelling of fresh ink and sea salt.
Ryan walked through the wooden corridor and sat down on the stone bench beside him.
Simon didn't speak. He simply tossed the newspaper to Ryan, then blew a puff of blue smoke from his mouth. “Over in the Old World, London has not been very peaceful lately.”
Ryan took the newspaper and unfolded it. The front page featured a hazy, oppressive street scene of a foggy night in London. The bold headlines and lines of text subtly revealed that friction between various extraordinary secret factions and the three orthodox churches was intensifying across the board, with frequent occurrences of unexplained spiritual out-of-control incidents and building explosions on the streets.
“That Knock fellow probably flipped quite a few big shots' tables after he went back.” Simon smacked his lips, a hint of schadenfreude in his tone. “Wherever that old boy goes, peace is impossible. London is a powder keg right now.”
Ryan looked at the news reports on the paper, his eyes narrowing slightly. “Any new developments from London regarding what happened back then?”
“What public developments could there be? The illegal, forbidden experiment that created your body was shut down and banned by the church long ago, but in the shadows, who knows how many people are still coveting that technological achievement of the three-phase fusion of 【Grail】, 【Heart】, and 【Lantern】.” Simon shook his head and sighed. “The South American sanctuary was just a failed, abandoned ruin. The ones who actually hold the core data, know the truth of what happened back then, and owe those old debts are still hiding out in the Old World.”
Simon turned his head, putting away his playful grin to look deeply at Ryan. “Kid, if you want to go back and settle the score with those who molded you like a test subject back then, now is actually the perfect time. The messier London gets, the better the chaos will serve as your cover.”
Ryan silently folded the newspaper. “You don't plan on going back with me?”
Simon reacted as if he had heard the funniest joke in the world, cackling loudly. “Me? Go back? I went through so much trouble to fake my death and escape, only to be dumped in this run-down archive in the middle of nowhere to live out my retirement in name. Isn't it nice to fish, watch the sea, and sunbathe every day? You want me to go back and deal with that bunch of brain-damaged occult lunatics?”
Simon waved his hand, a look of utter disgust on his face. “If you want to go, go by yourself. Don't think about dragging my old bones into it. I haven't lived enough yet.”
Ryan nodded and said no more, simply folding the newspaper and placing it on the stone table.
He knew better than anyone that the congenital defect of his body had been completely resolved, and his strength had recovered and broken through to its peak. It was time to return to the eye of the storm—the European continent—to settle those long-shelved, bloody grudges and historical debts, line by line, once and for all.
At dusk, the harbor docks of New Salem.
The steam passenger liner bound for the European continent blew a deep, long whistle, its massive funnels belching billowing black smoke.
Simon leaned against the thick wooden railing of the dock, his inseparable bamboo fishing rod still in hand, lazily waving at the two standing on the deck. “Kid, take it easy on the road. If you ever get crippled or your spirituality collapses in London, you're welcome to come back to my run-down archive to get fixed up anytime—though I'll charge you for the materials next time!”
Carrying his heavy black leather suitcase, Ryan stood at the edge of the deck and nodded slightly to him. “Drink less cheap whiskey. You'll die faster.”
“None of your business! Beat it!” Simon cursed with a laugh, but a broad, genuine smile reached his eyes.
Lucia stood closely beside Ryan, wearing her small specimen backpack and holding onto the railing, her gaze incredibly resolute. Having gone through this baptism of a journey, she had decided to continue following Ryan, to face all the upcoming storms and conspiracies.
Amidst the loud blast of the whistle, the thick mooring ropes were cast off, and the giant vessel slowly sailed away from the crescent-shaped bay.
The afterglow of the setting sun dyed the vast surface of the South Pacific into a tragic and magnificent golden-red. The lush volcanic silhouette of New Salem gradually shrank in their vision, eventually turning into a dark speck.
Ryan stood in the sea breeze, his coat fluttering. He closed his eyes slightly, feeling the steady, powerful, and endless pulse of the 【Heart】 in his chest.
The giant vessel cut through the golden waves, turned its bow, and sailed straight toward the distant European continent, where storms were brewing and old debts remained unpaid.
Rate on N.U.
