69: goodbye

After gaining over 1 million points of energy, he stopped cultivating, losing almost all his energy in the process.

He thought, "I'm not in a solid object, am I?" The darkness offered no visual clues, but the fact that it was dark, combined with the feeling that he was floating, began to suggest he might be in water.

Since he was in water, energy was extremely harmful to him because once the water temperature was high enough, most water molecules would leave the ocean floor.

Therefore, he first had to find a suitable body to inhabit.

He had enough energy to swap bodies; the only thing left was to find a corpse.

"System, can you help me locate a corpse?" he asked.

<Everything around you is just water.>

"So, I have no target, huh," he said.

He decided to think of other methods.

Among all the methods he could think of, all required either teleporting or finding a corpse before teleporting.

"God, I'm not very good at this stuff," he thought.

"Where am I supposed to find a body... Wait, my body. I have my body. Can I use that right?" he thought.

But then he reflected on it.

He currently had about 20,000 points of energy, which was far from enough to teleport.

If he couldn't teleport the moment he entered a body, the immense pressure at the bottom of the ocean would destroy his body.

That would just waste the energy and time spent getting that body.

He decided to check what else he had.

He checked his dimensional storage and found something very useful within the first two seconds.

"That should work. System, prepare to transfer me to it, okay? No questions," he ordered.

<Confirmed.>

"Alright, come out."

He wanted to pull that thing out of his body.

Suddenly, he felt the water in front of him undulating.

As soon as that happened, his consciousness transferred.

"I finally have a body," he thought.

Only then did he begin to use the Yin-Yang Transformation Method.

The dense Yin energy at the bottom of the ocean immediately attached itself to Ning, filling his energy up at once.

The remaining Yin energy just gathered there, starting to emit a red glow.

In the depths of the darkness, Ning could see the color emanating from himself; the body he was inhabiting was that blood-red spear.

"Alright, teleport me 90 kilometers away," he ordered.

<Confirmed.>

The system teleported him to the previously mentioned location without question.

Night fell, and Ning could see clearly using his "Night Vision I."

He began to look around and found himself in a jungle, no different from the island next to the one where Shay lived.

"Once I've accumulated more energy, I should go back there," he thought.

"However, this looks like the same island... is it?" he asked the system.

<No.>

"Are you sure? Because I think I remember the vegetation on that island, it must be the same one," Ning said.

<The vegetation has changed now.>

"Changed? Why would it change—have I been asleep for more than a few days?" he asked.

<Host's spirit was overexerted, exceeding the critical point.>

<System placed the host in a coma to save his brain.>

"I... was in a coma? I do remember you telling me that, but..." He paused.

Suddenly, he recalled the system's words again and asked, "How long was I in a coma? The Villagers must have been waiting for me to return for weeks, if not months," he said.

<You have been in a coma for over 164 years.>

Shock. That was the only feeling Ning had when he heard the words "164 years."

It was a period of time no normal person could comprehend.

Ning was speechless for a long time; he was speechless not because he had countless thoughts swirling in his head and couldn't choose what to say.

He was speechless because he didn't truly understand what the system had just said.

164 years.

That was almost twice, if not three times, the lifespan of a normal person on Earth.

And he had just spent that same amount of time in a coma.

"That's not true, is it?" he asked, but received no response.

"But why? How could it be?" he began to ask angrily.

"Then... no one is waiting for me to return on the island? Everyone I know... Hasini, Bellini, Hasini, the Chief, and the others... are they all dead?" he couldn't help but ask.

From Ning's perspective, he had just decided to save the Villagers by burning the snake alive.

Then he found himself in darkness and decided to use his spear to get here.

However, suddenly learning that 164 years had passed since then, he couldn't understand his own emotions.

Was it shock? Surprise? Despair? Sorrow? Grief? Anxiety? Sympathy? Astonishment? Melancholy? Fear? Anger? Depression?

It felt like it was everything, but at the same time, it was nothing.

However, whatever it was, thanks to this system, whether good or bad, it was amplified.

He could clearly feel every emotion, but when he tried to see the whole, it was just a gray mixture of all emotions.

Whatever he was feeling, it terrified him.

"I... I didn't even have time to say goodbye," he thought.

He thought he knew how much he cared about them, but he only now realized the extent of it.

Realizing that he would never see the people he cared about again, a huge wave of sadness washed over him, and all he could do was cry out loud.

Ning cried, and he cried for a long time.

The system did not take any measures to stop him, giving him plenty of time to express his sorrow, because that was the only way to move on after a loss.

After an uncountable amount of time, Ning finally stopped crying, calmed down, and said only one word: "Goodbye."