Qin Ming was genuinely startled. His fingertips had turned ice-cold, and the chill was seeping into his hand. He shook his hand hard, but it kept on. A whole day had passed, and the sunstone in the bronze basin no longer glowed as brightly as before. Even so, Qin Ming felt he ought to have noticed the mysterious produce at once — he had sensed it only by the touch of his fingers.
He took a piece of sunstone from the basin and studied it in the last fire-haze. "One piece just melted?" The icy liquid was colorless and odorless, easy to overlook. Perhaps it was water that had seeped into the rock after rain, frozen, and been nurtured by Heaven Light until it became a mysterious produce — yet it had no distinguishing features at all. The rarest produce of all sent a column of ten-colored light to the heavens, destined for the history books. "You're its offcut stone. Apart from being cold enough to sting, you have nothing numinous about you."
When Qin Ming shook his hand, the liquid did not seep any further, yet it did not scatter to the ground either, and it had no stickiness to it. He had no idea how to use it. Mu Qing and Cao Long had told him that Heaven Light nurtured countless varieties of mysterious produce, and some were not beneficial but outright harmful.
But the spot on his hand that had been freezing cold now turned warm, and the warmth began to crawl along his finger into his arm, rising to his neck. He immediately circulated the New Life method from the silk tome to defend himself, to no avail. The heat went to his head, and the remaining cold liquid seeped fully into his fingers, turning from cold to hot as it climbed. Qin Ming exhausted every method; ripples of shattered gold appeared over his body, but this only sped the process. All of it rose like a hundred rivers converging into one sea, until it reached between his brows. He felt no discomfort, and in the end the dense warmth dissolved away. Apart from feeling full of energy, he seemed unchanged.
He practiced a set of blade forms with his long-handled black-gold hammer in the courtyard. His strength had not grown. But he knew the liquid could not be so simple; the change it had brought must still be hidden from him. Looking up, the night fog seemed thinner and his vision slightly sharper.
One night, sensing commotion and weeping at Old Liu's house, he hurried over and found three enormous roosters in the yard. One had pale yellow, faintly glowing feathers and thick legs with unnaturally sharp claws — the golden rooster of second mutation. A grim-faced man was speaking in a low voice: a Golden Ridge Rider, accompanied by two others. They were coercively trying to "purchase" the red little herb Old Liu had obtained from Fire Bat Cave.
"Old Liu, you're well along in years and your root foundation is ruined. You can hardly attain a Second New Life," the man pressed. "That red herb burns like blazing fire. If the Second New Life fails, the consequences would be terrible."
Old Liu's face wore a desolation tinged with sorrow. "I've toiled all my life for this very chance!" He had already prepared cold-natured supplementary medicine to ease his body through it. The claim that the herb's potency was too fierce was an exaggeration.
Qin Ming burned with indignation. This was bullying. A man past seventy, obsessing over a Second New Life for decades, finally glimpsing dawn — and now someone had come to force a buy. The price offered was only a few dozen pieces of Night Silver, an insult for substance that could grant a Second New Life. The herb grew in the cave guarded by triple-mutated Fire Bats, too dangerous even for the rider himself.
"Three gentlemen..." Qin Ming stepped forward, but one man snapped, "Who are you? Wait elsewhere!" The Golden Ridge Rider cast him a cold warning glance. Old Liu told Qin Ming not to get involved — Golden Ridge had once been a band of great brigands, crude and violent even after being summoned to heel.
Qin Ming invoked the noble descendants of Redcloud City: "This herb was given to Old Liu by Cao Long and Mu Qing." The rider sneered, not believing men of Redcloud City would befriend mere hunters.
Old Liu went inside and took a bundle of crimson herbs from a hidden niche. With a final set of his jaw, he stuffed a handful into his mouth, swallowing more than half without the supplement, and kept only a little for the yard.
"Just this much?" the rider's face darkened. "Truly, this is all there is," said Old Liu. The rider clapped his shoulder and left. No sooner had the three vanished than Old Liu spat a mouthful of blood.
"That rider is vicious. He practices the Yellow Mud Palm. Suspecting I ate the herb early, he wanted to secretly shatter my vital blood-energy and block my Second New Life."
Qin Ming wished he could chase them and deal each a hammer-blow, but he knew he could not act so crudely — the brigands of Golden Ridge could bring disaster on the whole village. He would settle it later, in the mountains. Old Liu assured him he had prepared for Golden Ridge's ways and would recover in a few days. The local Three-Eyed Church had also come to force a buy, and left in cold displeasure when they failed.
That night, Qin Ming discovered what had changed: he could not sleep. The more he shut his eyes, the more awake he grew. He walked eighteen circuits of the village and grew only more energetic. Late that night he cleared the snow from the stone stele at the village edge. The old folk said it weighed eleven hundred jin; he had estimated his one-handed strength at a thousand. To test it, he wrenched the stele from the frozen earth and hoisted it overhead with one hand. "My two arms together hold over twenty-two hundred jin — higher than I guessed."
The next morning Xu Yueping asked why his eyes were red. He said he had not slept well.
When Qin Ming told Cao Long, Mu Qing, and Wei Zhirou of the forced buys, Mu Qing said, "That's going too far." Half an hour later the Golden Ridge Rider was found, and Mu Qing's single slap sent him flying six meters, knocking loose teeth. "He's someone I hired. You thought you could snatch the numinous herb I gave him?" The rider trembled. Cao Long chopped a great tree nearly through with his great spar, warning that no revenge would be tolerated. The Three-Eyed Church people were warned too, though privately Mu Qing told them the local outpost was nothing while their distant lineage was powerful, and that Golden Ridge was a foothold of the Golden-tinged Brigands. Old Liu was deeply grateful.
That day Qin Ming dug out the blade manual he had kept hidden, since Wang Nianzhu had become a wanted criminal. After the Shallow Night he returned to the village. That evening, by the sunstone's fire-haze, he opened the old leather manual — and the instant he did, he was stunned. This world suddenly seemed different to him!