The world outside greeted the foreigner with cheer. The singing birds, blooming flowers, and shining sun were all instruments playing a symphonic serenity reflecting the beautiful nature of this world that's remained untainted by the spirit of modernity.
Pollution is nowhere to be seen in this forest and the clouds in the sky are true clouds unmarred by the smog of factories rising into the sky.
At night, the stars could be seen. During the morning, the sun is crisp and blinding.
Ji Yuan stands up, stretching his stiff body and shielding his eyes. There's a smile on his face despite tears nearly welling up from the dazzling rays.
He felt the sun reflect in his inner world, light breaking through his eternally dark and clouded heart.
Before he could let out a sigh of appreciation, he was interrupted by a sharp pain in his abdomen.
"Ouch...! Ow, ow, ow, ow! What is this?"
His good mood was dashed in an instant. His smile dropped as he uncomfortably bent his stiff body at the waist with his arms over his stomach. The roar of a starving beast echoed couldn't be blocked by his arms.
"F-fuck, I forgot to eat in all that chaos!"
He also didn't expect to have meditated all night long. Why wasn't he alerted by his growling stomach? Did exhaustion force him to spend all of his attention on recovery? He would've rather stopped the meditation mid-way so he wouldn't have to deal with this kind of hunger pang.
Even when he's fasted as a form of punishment to himself he never felt this kind of ravenous hunger.
This is the worst he's ever starved in both lives!
The world outside was cheering, but the world inside was crying.
It was still as dark as ever.
"Urk, it must've been the pill."
He opened his book and turned the pages to the description of the pill.
"I should've expected this — 'makes use of the vitality in the body to heal itself' and 'will leave a person relatively exhausted and weak in the body after consumption' is all I need to put two and two together."
The vitality in the human body isn't just profound energy, but everything within the body. His food storage was low and he took a pill that made use of that empty body which made him even hungrier.
He needs to eat now.
Ji Yuan didn't just pull the book out to needlessly confirm his suspicions. This was his spatial storage that contained the berries he picked while he made his way through the forest. Natural sweets contain sugar to give him energy and a moderate amount of carbs for additional energy and fiber to balance things out. There's no protein, which is what he severely needs...
Wait.
"How much of the wolves did they skin?"
With some hope in his heart, he stood up, tossing enough berries in his mouth to nearly fill it whole while chewing down on them fiercely. A bit of juice leaked from his lips from the quantity, which he wiped away with his dirty sleeves.
He halfheartedly wondered if the berry juice would attract animals to his location. That'd be good bait.
His mind went to that train of thought relatively quickly because those campers cleaned up these corpses so thoroughly that only bones are left. Additionally, some critical bones, like femurs and skulls were missing.
Ji Yuan stood in silence and stared at the ultimate proof of greed. He was filled with surprise.
Surprise that these guys didn't strip his bones or the wolves on his side as well. Do they actually possess a notion of fairness in their bandit-like appearances?
There's still the remainder of a blown out campfire that he can recycle for his own use, but he actually doesn't know if the temperature of a campfire's flames can reach the melting point of bones. It should be around 400 degrees celsius if he remembers correctly, but he wasn't completely sure.
How high does a campfire go? It's not like he's desperate enough to resort to eating bones, but it's worth considering in case he does get desperate in the future.
"Well, I don't need to mind that for now," he thought aloud while tossing a blood-red berry in his mouth. It resembled a strawberry, yet tasted like a raspberry. The red juices in his mouth also had the viscosity and consistency of blood, a fresh reminder of the exhilarating battle he had last night.
I think it's about time.
The book in his hand felt his will and turned on its own, flipping to the page with red ink radiating strength.
The grin on his face was matchless in ferocity.
The book had enough energy to generate a full three sets of the needed ingredients while still having some left over. The dead wolves he recorded to gain energy didn't need to be killed by him, but there was definitely some type of limit.
The one limit he could easily figure out was the distance one. If there was no limit and the book would record an infinite distance, then it would be generating a ridiculous amount of energy at an incredible rate.
That's another thing he needs to test with this book.
Does the energy recorded decrease if the dead isn't killed by him?
There's a page for each life terminated. The nameless wolves have a page for each of them that includes a specification on who was the one who killed them in the summary of their life trajectory. From that, he also managed to get the names of those campers.
Alright, the hunger pangs have begun to fade. His body is in good condition with his injuries healed. There's just lingering soreness comparable to the pain of waking up after a day's worth of heavy exercise.
Ji Yuan strolled back to the wolves on his side and stored all but one in his book. For the one that remained, he took free hand and dug out a pair of undamaged eyes and stored them separately before storing the last wolf.
"Alright, give me the rest of the ingredients," he demanded of the book.
Without even a split second's waste of time, his storage was filled with additional items and the energy in the book decreased a moderate amount.
He looked at the formula and compared it to the ingredients in storage.
What was generated from the book was the Phoenix Eye Fruit, 80 milliliters of red wine, a Phoenix Eye Flower, and 10 grams of basil.
What he collected himself were the eyes of a canine he killed with own hands and a bunch of poplar tree leaves.
Like checking off a list, he nodded at everything, a feeling of triumph in his chest..which didn't last long
He noticed a slight problem.
He needs powder from the Poplar Tree Leaf, but he doesn't have a mortar and pestle to grind powder from it. He can use some energy to generate the powder himself, but he wonders...
Is the book capable of doing that work while saving energy?
"Let's test it."
Ji Yuan gave a mental command to his book while grasping that invisible energy that was connected to his profound energy, but also separate from it at the same time.
After waiting for a few seconds, there was a successful response.
"It worked?"
The transmigrator was surprised that his helpful yet sometimes inconvenient cheat was capable of this practical maneuver. It shows just how little he knows about his golden finger.
But at least he finally has the complete set of ingredients. That's the most important thing right now because it's tied to his ability to gain strength.
Since it's convenient enough to convert ingredients, can he just fuse all the ingredients together in the book and have it generate the elixir for him? He doesn't have a bottle to put all these things in and he's not exactly sure how to mix all the ingredients and the proper order either.
It will cost energy, but it should theoretically be capable of that, right? If it can do it, then this is a book that's fully capable of performing alchemy on its own.
Ji Yuan's eyes widened as he received another successful response.
...Amazing. That worked too.
He needs to remember that he's only been here for a day. The ingredients he believed would be difficult to gather were acquired in less than twenty four hours.
All in all, it has been a very productive day and it's almost all thanks to the book.
But he can't let himself become dependent on it. The book won't even let him become dependent on it. He needs to gather the energy for it to work through recording death, he needs to collect items to store and record information, he needs to explore regions.
And there are some ingredients that this book cannot generate.
The second main ingredient was something he needed to gather with his own hands. The canine needed to be killed and harvested by him. There's nothing the book can do to generate that ingredient.
This is a cheat to assist and guide, but that's all it is. The one who walks and finishes this path is ultimately him.
With that resolve burning in his chest, Ji Yuan retrieved the completed elixir from the book. It took the form of a vial of deep red liquid.
The blood-like drink bubbled in the vial, like a carbonated drink. As the bubbles burst on the surface of the crimson concoction, a potent stench of blood wafted into his nose, almost filling him with a burning bloodlust reminiscent of the exploding desires he felt in battle with those wolves.
He took a deep breath and calmed himself.
He was about to drink it, but then he remembered an important trope in fantasy.
"Though this isn't a pill, it's still an elixir that will grant me new power."
The pathway of the Hunter. He can feel that it will completely transform his body.
"Doesn't that mean it'll do that marrow cleansing thing and wash the inside of my body to push out impurities?"
Ji Yuan hesitated for a bit before taking off his clothes. The short-haired man stood stark naked next to a lake with a small vial of a pungent liquid.
"Bottom's up," he said, knocking back the potion like a glass of wine.