When he swallowed the potion, he realized that he wasn't taking things seriously enough. The world, his conflict and his situation, and his own desires. Thus, he underestimated the power of a Hunter.
The inner peace he thought he had, that small light in the darkness that was a piece of serenity, a rock in the storm of his mind, was nothing more than a lie.
That sun isn't a light.
It's a raging ball of fire.
The liquid was like a complete piece of unseparated jelly forced down his throat. The potion casted him into flames that popped the serenity around him like a fragile soap bubble. As if it were nothing more than an illusion, his body and soul were ignited by the flames.
His heart pumped blood and fire, a nameless agitation in his heart surging through his veins and acting as fuel. Blood fueled the fire, fire drove the heart to pump more blood, and the fire continued to rage, chasing after the raging blood rushing through all parts of his body.
Hair, teeth, nails, skin, muscles, fascia, bones, and organs were surrounded by flames and filled by flames.
His mouth opened unbidden. An uncontrollable roar was about to tear its way from his throat, but the transmigrator shut his eyes and bore the pain in silence, swallowing it all back into his body to be turned to ash by the fire.
The unneeded things burn.
The unwanted things become fuel.
He was engulfed by the flames, but he will simply swallow it from the inside. He will not be taken over by power. Power is his to command!
Just like that, the pain slowly dissipated into his heart, the tempo of the beats slowing down.
Right when he thought it was over and he successfully passed the hurdle, it came back once more, stronger than before! His eyes shot wide open in agony, red veins nearly overtaking the sclera. The pain was a tide, surging and receding periodically, preventing him from adjusting to it. It kept him unbalanced and off his feet, forcing him to respond to the fresh pain as if he's experiencing it for the first time again and again.
His entire body felt like one giant heart. Pain pulsed with every beat. The irregular rhythm was proof of a cardiac arrhythmia. His heart was in disorder.
His body was in disorder.
He tasted blood. There was an additional pain in his body that didn't come from burning. His body was being destroyed and reborn.
If an outsider were to look at the young man right now, they would see veins bulging from his skin, the natural blue color replaced with the red of burning blood. The dull colored crosses that faded from his mind were also undergoing a slight change. Rather, it was the cross on the right hand that glowed a dark red.
It was at this moment that his profound energy began to change. Not in volume or mass, not in element or quantity. It was something invisible and indescribable, like the very essence of his profound energy was changing. It was mixing further with the power that connected the Book of Genesis and Terminus to Ji Yuan.
It was only when that change finished that both the quality and quantity of his profound energy began to increase.
With a bang, the ceiling of the Elementary Profound Realm shattered and his power was elevated to the next floor.
Xiao Yuan's body officially returned to the Nascent Profound Realm while Ji Yuan stepped into this realm for the first time.
His teeth and fists were clenched tight, yet his eyes were wide open under the endless waves of pain washing against the shore of his soul. He looked at the bright sky that appeared even brighter from the burning sphere in the sky.
The naked man grinned in lieu of the pain. No, he grinned because of the pain.
Ji Yuan enjoyed this pain.
He spread his arms wide as if to embrace the world and relished in the painful change within him. His body was undergoing armageddon, but it was lukewarm compared to the torment of never being able to live true to oneself.
Sometimes he wondered if he had a masochistic streak.
There are different types of pain. Some are enjoyable. Others are deplorable. This was an enjoyable one because he could feel the transformation of his body and envision a future of battle with this new body.
At the end of crackling bones and tearing muscles was a body reforged through internal strife and torment. Like a blacksmith ruthlessly smashing upon hard steel and scalding it with flames as if he were afraid it wouldn't mold into the form of his desire.
With one last spiritual smash into his body, the pain reached its peak and shot to the top of his skull, leaving a permanent memory of this delightful agony before it receded for good this time.
The power contained in the potion seared his soul and left a mark within it, altering it forevermore.
That mark was proof that Ji Yuan finally became a Hunter.
He exhaled a warm breath of air that possessed a heat slightly above his own body temperature.
The first thing he did was put back on his partially torn clothes after realizing impurities weren't expelled from his body like he expected. Successfully avoiding the embarrassment of a stranger stumbling across him being naked in the forest like a pervert who loves trees a little too much, he began to ascertain the changes within him.
He formed a fist with his right hand and loosened it, staring at his palm and the dull grey cross etched into the skin.
There were scars on his forearm that remained as a mark from the wound he got from the wolf's teeth. He shoved that arm into its mouth to open it up and kill it, so he deserved the injury. The healing pill could only turn the wound into a negligible scar, but the added boost from his potent potion made even that scar disappear.
It's not just that scar. Even the wounds on his thigh and abdomen that were the most severe became nothing more than faint white marks.
"My body is stronger than before. A lot stronger than before, but that's not all. There's a sense of coordination that wasn't there previously."
He threw a punch into the empty space in front of him. The air cracked from the speed and force of the strike, the resistance of the air nearly forming a complete barrier.
Judging from the multiple expansions and contractions within his profound veins, he's at the third level of the Nascent Profound Realm. Even without mobilizing all of that energy, the natural strength of his body has undergone a great change.
The potion might not have had any truly valuable ingredients within it, but the combination produced an effect that was equivalent to the whole being far greater than the sum of its parts.
Ji Yuan's pupils constricted with focus. Four hundred meters deep into the forest ahead, there was a moth chewing on the sweet nectar of a blue flower. The low sound of his own breath was akin to the rumbling grunt of a tiger in his ears. His own sense of touch was greatly magnified to the point where he could feel the individual hair follicles on his exposed arms brushing against the wind.
Relaxing his concentration, those enhanced senses faded to the background. They didn't fully disappear though. It remained as a passive enhancement to all five of his senses when he didn't focus, allowing him to naturally notice if he needed to proactively use it for situations.
"Hm? My clothes tore a bit more."
Ji Yuan realized that his body shot up a few centimeters after taking the potion.
Xiao Yuan wasn't a particularly tall person to begin with due to him overly working his body in his childhood. Going from a little under 1.7 meters to a few centimeters above was a very noticeable change that led the young man's clothes feeling tighter around his chest area and the bottom of his pants no longer covering his ankles.
"It's like night and day," he commented, feeling all the physical changes.
However, he knew that the changes on the outside weren't all there was to the potion. There was a great change on the inside that wasn't just an increase in his realm. His brain was bursting forth with inspiration on wilderness survival knowledge and tactical knowledge pertaining to traps.
A key was unlocked to a library of knowledge and specific contents of books were jammed into his brain, yet it wasn't in an uncomfortable way.
That might be because the process of taking the potion was already uncomfortable on its own, but new information slotted in like a missing puzzle piece. It felt like it was always supposed to be there and he just forgot long ago, only now remembering the lost information.
Information about plants and animals. About the application of poisons onto weapons and traps and the process of using plants to help with recovery. Though he knew which plants did what with the help of the book, he received additional knowledge that wasn't in the book along with the ability to fully apply it packed and ready to go.
This was truly amazing. It's nothing like taking a pill. This was a true philosopher's stone, an alchemical product far surpassing anything in this world.
"No, don't get too carried away. There are probably pills that can boost someone up to the level of a god or make them comprehend a law of the world on the spot. Just because I have special methods doesn't mean that others won't."
First rule of being a Hunter, the transmigrator mentally jotted down. Do not overestimate oneself and have the positions of predator and prey reversed.
"Yeah, that sounds like a good motto to keep in mind." He even felt a special change in his body after noting that.
"I've felt some of the changes, but that doesn't mean I've grasped all of them. Let's see if the book recorded anything I missed about myself."