Now that Jared grasped the hidden mystery inside the Blood Ganoderma, every trace of doubt drained from him. Resolve settled in his chest like a drawn blade, steady and gleaming.
He drew a deep breath, then stilled even the beat of his own pulse. At the tip of one finger shimmered a single pale gold drop of blood—his life force mixed with the regal authority of his Dragon lineage.
Mimicking the careful motions he had watched the giant ape perform, he lowered that drop toward the oldest, most radiant ganoderma in the patch. Each inch felt like lowering a crown onto a sleeping king.
A resonant hum rolled through the basin, low and endless, as if the earth itself had begun to sing. The moment his blood touched it, a pillar of crimson light burst upward, fiercer and brighter than anything the ape had summoned.
The ganoderma quivered, alive, awakened, its flesh turning crystal clear while a tiny golden dragon darted inside its stem like a heartbeat made visible. Then the entire stalk melted, becoming a torrent of dark gold essence, thick as molten metal, radiant as a newborn sun.
That essence coiled once in midair, radiating a pressure so heavy the black-furred giant ape flinched. In the next breath, it arrowed into Jared’s brow, flooding every vein and bone.
Sound exploded inside him—an ocean tipping over, a mountain tearing free, a universe beginning anew.
A roaring tide of power rampaged through him, too vast for language, too raw for metaphor. Yet the torrent did not clash with his own chaotic energy; it meshed, perfect and inevitable, as though both had once been parts of the same whole.
That merged force scoured his meridians, polished his organs, and reached places so hidden even pain had forgotten them. Old wounds vanished in its wake.
Jared dropped into a seated stance, spine straight, palms resting lightly on his knees. He guided the flood with measured breaths, turning chaos into ordered rivers.
His body became an endless well, drawing in every drop of the Blood Ganoderma’s life nectar with a hunger older than words.
Gashes sealed, scabbed, and flaked away, revealing newborn skin that glowed with quiet health.
Deep inside, fractured bones snapped back together, knitting into a lattice stronger than tempered steel.
His spirit, withered from battle, drank in the surge like cracked soil meeting spring rain, swelling until it shone brighter than before the injury.
Time blurred. When the last ripples calmed, the storm of energy folded itself small, and Jared’s eyes opened, twin spears of silver light that vanished as quickly as they appeared.
He rose in one fluid motion, muscles singing, and loosed a long, unrestrained howl. The cry rolled across the ancient trees, making their trunks tremble and their leaves shiver.
Standing at the center of the basin, Jared felt whole again. Every trace of damage the mountains had carved into him lay erased by the thousand-year Blood Ganoderma.
Even his cultivation, already perched at Human Immortal Realm, Level Seven, had climbed another unreachable rung. Strength coursed through him, endless and exuberant.
The memory of blood meeting herb replayed behind his eyes, each detail etched in crystal clarity—knowledge he would study for years to come. He finally understood how the laws of this Level Ten wilderness twisted every treasure. Without the ape’s demonstration, he might have squandered a miracle.
Turning toward the towering beast beside him, Jared’s gaze softened. Where once he had seen only a tool, he now recognized a survivor, and, perhaps, an ally.
The giant ape’s mind was still half wild, yet its instinct to guard its realm and harvest its resources spoke of a fierce, pragmatic wisdom Jared could respect.
“Lead us out of this forest,” he told it through a thread of his consciousness, the words gentle but edged with purpose.
He vaulted onto the creature’s broad back, settling between the knots of dark fur like a rider reclaiming his chosen steed.
The small Fire Unicorn bounded onto his shoulder, nuzzling his cheek. Even without tasting the Ganoderma directly, the pure aura radiating from Jared had brightened every scarlet scale along its neck.
With a guttural rumble, the ape strode forward, each footfall a quiet earthquake, carrying them toward the path it had shown before, and toward whatever wild horizon waited beyond the trees.
As Jared and the giant ape trudged out of the dark-red basin carpeted with Blood Ganoderma, he felt the animal’s pace falter, each heavy footfall sinking into the loam like an anchor.
The ape kept looking back at that hallowed patch of earth, crimson eyes huge and moist, unwilling to sever itself from the place that had crowned its victory and fed its strength.
Kindness and retribution were lines Jared never blurred. The ape had guided him, taught him, nursed him back from the brink. To yank it away from its fountainhead of power would be theft, plain and cruel.
