The Dawn of the New World

Hao Xuan closed his eyes to feel the energy passing through him in undulating waves.

It began with a bloating feeling in the pit of his stomach which turned into a gush of warm prickling heat after a couple of seconds, spreading to almost every corner of his body from the inside out.

The skin sizzled and smoked while healing at a speed that was observable to the naked eye. It started from the face, and back and then spread to other areas. But what genuinely delighted him more than anything else was that even the much older injuries were a part of this healing process.

The automatic notifications from Baracus began to pour in one by one to highlight everything categorically.

[Energy Reserves refilled]

[Internal energy recovered to 87%]

[Internal Injuries reduced to 43% and falling]

[External Injuries reduced to 27% and falling]

But what caught him completely off-guard was the last notification.

[Limb Regeneration Detected!]

[Regaining Mass and Bone Density]

"What?!"

Hao Xuan opened his eyes in shock to quickly examine his right arm which was in fact recovering.

It was so slow and gradual that if he wasn't looking at it so carefully he wouldn't even notice the difference but little by little the skin was beginning to regain its previous luster.

What used to be blackened skin and bone resembling a dried-up tree branch now looked a lot more like something that once belonged on a human body.

"It can do that?! I didn't think I would be able to recover the arm without some serious outside help but by the looks of this, a few more demons and it will be back to normal!"

Hao Xuan was so happy that he wanted to cry. It hadn't been THAT long since the energy from the heavenly tribulation settled within his arm but it still felt like years, especially since he couldn't use it at all in the meantime.

In relatively good spirits now that he realized that demons were like little health packs for him, Hao Xuan got up on his feet and called for Grey through the 'soul bond'. But when he lifted his foot out of the hole that was created by the demon's body something caught his eye.

"Hmm? What's this?"

A piercing heat blinded him momentarily.

"Argh!"

But when he slowly opened his eyes again the intensity lessened greatly allowing him to get a second look at the object.

It was a bright red ruby about four inches in size. It didn't seem to have a proper shape because it looked like something that had just been dug out of the soil.

Its red color was due to the viscous red liquid that filled the insides while the source of the extreme heat seemed to be the minute hair-like white strand that was floating in the middle.

But when Hao Xuan picked it up the surface of the ruby felt cold to the touch despite the prickling heat he was feeling when it was further away.

"What the hell is this? Did it fall out of the demon's vessel?" he thought until he remembered what its ability actually was.

"Can't be. It was changing the vessels left and right and the last one for sure never had anything."

He channeled some chaos Qi towards his hand but the moment it came close to the ruby an unknown power forcefully dissipated all of it.

Hao Xuan couldn't help but look at it in a new light.

"It feels like there is a barrier around it. The aura is not much different from that of the demon but it still feels a little foreign, almost as if it's a more pure version of it...if I can get past the barrier it will be much easier to understand it."

Thinking that to be the best choice, Hao Xuan quickly separated a few strands of spiritual sense and sent them in to prod and probe in hopes of finding a weak spot somewhere around the ruby.

Golden threads came out of his temples and went straight towards the ruby. But unlike what happened with the energy there was absolutely no resistance to the threads of spiritual sense when they came close to it.

In fact, they easily pierced the hard outer shell of the ruby and went straight through the liquid. Hao Xuan felt like he had dipped his fingers and toes into a tub of boiling liquid since they all started burning at the exact same time.

If he had to guess the temperature inside the ruby easily exceeded a thousand Celsius, hot enough to even melt steel. But that was just the proverbial icing on the cake because Hao Xuan could feel a strong sense of attraction coming from the small strand of light swimming within the red liquid.

It was almost pulling him in with open arms. When the threads of spiritual sense came close, the strand of light moved so quickly that Hao Xuan had no opportunity to react.

Everything happened within a blink of an eye.