Chapter 105 – Florida Man Criticizes Missionary, Gets Struck by Lightning, and Gains Enlightenment
After resting for the night, Leo returned to the courtyard and checked on the plants. When he saw the changes in this mountain, he was astonished.
The white dragon fruit plant should be called a "tree" instead. It grew 10 meters high, and it developed a thick trunk. Surrounding the white tree was 12 black dragon fruit trees. Thousands of mutated fruits hung on the branches, waiting for them to be ripened.
Seeing so many fruits, Leo brightly smiled. He collected them in his spatial rings, planning to plant them in his shop domain.
After collecting the black trees, Leo looked at the white tree. As he hadn't achieved his goal yet, Leo stared at the tree, wondering what he lacked to acquire the gnosis or dao.
Leo sat down under the tree. He picked up a white dragon fruit and watched it mutate.
"Hah. What am I missing?"
He didn't notice that the toddler spirit had been sitting on his head, giggling and laughing at Leo. The spirit looked at the mutated fruit and came up with an idea. It flew toward a nearby fruit and touched it.
The ripened dragon fruit instantly dissipated into dust, and its nutrition entered the spirit's body.
The toddler giggled again. As greedy as Leo, it went around and absorbed the life force of the fallen fruits around him. One after another, the fallen fruits around the white tree vanished.
Leo didn't notice at first. But when half of the fruits around him were gone, he frowned and looked around.
"…"
Leo frowned and carefully looked around him. He had a hunch that something invisible was at work, and it stole the fruits around here. He then glanced at the eyeball, who latched onto the white tree as usual.
The eyeball once again pointed its tentacle at the spirit of a toddler.
Finally, Leo caught the hint and followed where the tentacles pointed at.
WHOOSH
One of the fruits withered and turned into dust right in front of Leo's eyes. He raised his eyebrows and walked toward the pile of dust. Curious and confused, he picked up the white dust and looked at the eyeball again.
The creature tracked the flying spirit and kept pointing, hoping that Leo could do something about it.
Leo's eyes also followed after the pointer. Upon noticing that the invisible thing went for a pile of ripened fruits, Leo rushed there and gathered the white dragon fruits in his spatial rings, leaving only one fruit on the ground.
The toddler spirit was greedy. As it knew that Leo couldn't see it, the spirit went for the fruit next to Leo's feet. It reached out to touch it.
Suddenly, Leo's hand thrust down. The hand went through the spirit's body, but the former failed to touch or grab it.
The spirit was surprised. It flew away in a hurry and hid behind the white tree.
SCREECH!
The eyeball never missed its chance. It jumped down from the white tree and cladded itself in white light.
PLOP
The octopus-like eyeball caught the toddler!
Leo saw that. He praised the eyeball, "Good job! Pin it down!"
Rushing to the eyeball's side, Leo ordered his cancer cells to coat his hands and fingers with Qi strings. Then, he tried to touch the invisible spirit again.
Unfortunately, Leo's hands and Qi threads were unable to touch the infant dao spirit. Instead, the Qi threads entered the spirit's body and were digested.
Sensing his Qi leaving him, Leo was annoyed. Still, as he had fought with mutated monsters that could steal his life force before, Leo had a trick up in his sleeves.
Instead of pulling his hands out, Leo ordered his cancer cells to increase the power output. Instead of creating harmless Qi threads, Leo wanted them to exhibit their inner "essence" and feed the invisible thief some more.
"You want to rob my energy? Sure. Go ahead. Fill your stomach! Make sure you don't die from overeating!"
As if a dam had opened a floodgate, thick energy gushed out from Leo's palm.
"!!!"
The toddler spirit was taken aback when its master tried to overflow it with his element essence. It wiggled and tried to flee from the eyeball monster's grasp.
This needed to stop. If Leo kept pouring more element essence into the spirit, it would explode because of the overflowing energy. It was not sturdy enough to contain such domineering essence energy.
Unfortunately, a newborn dao spirit couldn't be an opponent of an older 9th-rank monster. The creature's eye curved up, mocking the spirit that it had no chance. It continued to press the spirit to the ground.
The spirit was offended. Still, for the sake of survival, it dispersed its body particles and entered Leo's body.
Leo immediately sensed a cold energy flow entering his palms, going up his arms, and entering his heart. He widened his eyes in shock.
"What?"
Leo sank his mind into his body, commanding his cancer cells to identify the weird energy flow inside him.
The cells swiftly complied with the order and contained the mysterious energy, driving it away from his heart. They pushed it to his solar plexus.
The flow of energy fought back. It manifested itself, transforming into a tiny ball. The ball then shone and repelled the cells from entering its body. Unfortunately, it underestimated Leo.
Leo was ruthless. He shoved his index finger into his chest and dug the grain-sized ball out. He looked at it and narrowed his eyes as it was so little.
"What are you?"
The wound in Leo's chest was healed while he looked at the orb. He wondered if it was the gnosis or dao that the quest mentioned.
WHOOSH
The ball moved by itself and escaped from his fingers. Instantly, it transformed into a streak of light and entered the alien ring.
Leo witnessed everything. He looked at the finger with the ring.
"You again. You never stop amusing me, ring. Very well, let me amuse you!"
Using his full strength, Leo rubbed the alien ring while he ordered his cells to pour essence into it, trying to flush out the light ball earlier.
However, this action awakened something else. Instead of destroying the ring or flushing out the content inside, it reinforced the ring and fed the spirit more energy. As the ring was enhanced, it faded into Leo's flesh, becoming one with him.
The alien ring was gone. He could no longer find it.
"Huh?!"
Leo was at a loss. He had no idea what he had done. He sat on his butt and scratched his head.
"Argh! Dammit! This is frustrating. What was that thing?!"
Because of frustration, Leo got lazy. He lay on the rocky ground under the white tree and looked at the abundant dragon fruits.
The chilly wind above the ground and the thin air made Leo drowsy. A few seconds later, Leo fell asleep.
.
After Leo was asleep, the spirit came out from Leo's finger. However, its appearance looked a lot different. Instead of coming out as a toddler, it was now a boy.
The boy had the same face as Leo when he was six. His cheeky smile and big head made him look naughty rather than cute.
The dao spirit looked at Leo's sleeping face and sneered at him. He dug a small hole in the ground near Leo's waist. Then, it created a small water pond. After that, it grabbed Leo's hand and put his fingers into the water.
When the deed was done, the boy's spirit sat on Leo's chest, waiting for his deed to show a result.
Suddenly, Leo snapped open his eyes. He stared at the being on his chest.
The dao spirit was taken aback. It turned around and tried to flee. However, Leo's hand was faster.
This time, Leo caught the boy by the neck. His hands were coated with the thick essence of the cancer cells.
He could see the spirit!
"Too bad for you, I'm immune to this prank. I know exactly which dream will make me wet my bed, and I can easily break every dream I have with a thought! Do you know how many years I have been sleeping and playing in my dream world when I was bored?!"
The boy struggled to flee, but he couldn't escape. It looked at Leo to the face, moving its mouth. However, no word came out.
RUMBLE
While Leo and the spirit conversed, black thunderclouds manifested above the mountaintop.
BOOM
Thunder cracked, and a lightning bolt flashed in the clouds. Coincidentally, it was black lightning.
"Oh, shit."
Leo had faced this before. He remembered how the black lightning bolts almost killed him several times back when he was on Earth. That time, he managed to escape the lightning barrage by running away from the chasing clouds.
Facing the unknown tribulation clouds again, Leo realized that he had no time to run. He tossed away the spirit and prepared to bail.
"!!!"
However, the spirit latched onto Leo's chest, hugging him like a baby monkey. He looked up and faced its master.
"What do you want, ghost? Do you want to get fried or what?"
The spirit had enough. Its ghostly body sank into Leo's chest and merged with him.
This time, the ghost didn't try to do anything funny to his body. Instead, it assimilated with him, transferring all its memory to Leo.
A new memory gushed into Leo's mind, and one of his blood veins ruptured. Transparent blood came out from his nose, but he snorted all of them back.
"Ah? Eh?"
It was hard to comprehend what he saw in the vision. In his mind, he saw countless scenery of trees, forests, and mountains. He witnessed the passage of time, seeing the growth of plants, animals, and insects.
Life and death came and went. When old creatures died, new beings replaced them. Each generation was different from the previous one as they had different personalities and traits.
However, there was one thing in common. In every generation, one or two of the plants, trees, insects, or creatures mutated and created a new subspecies. These variants changed the major traits of their ancestors, and they either thrived or died trying.
Among all plants, a descendant of a green dragon fruit plant absorbed too much wood Qi, and it bored a mutated fruit. That fruit fell from the tree and was eaten by a wild cockatrice. Then, the monster defecated the germinated seeds, which gave birth to a new species of dragon fruit plant – The white dragon fruit plant. Not long after that, a rabbit trent uprooted the plant and gave it to their king.
"Ah…"
Leo drooled and looked up to the sky as he was still drunk by the memory injection. He tiptoed toward the white tree and the eyeball. As his muscle memory kicked in, he collected the tree and the eyeball into one of the spatial rings.
CRACK
A few seconds later, black lightning descended, aiming at Leo!
While half awake, Leo side-stepped and dodged the lightning bolt.
BOOM!
The whole mountain erupted and exploded!
That was not all, the black lightning created a five-kilometer-deep hole in the ground. The tip of the lightning bolt then gathered more force, condensing another explosion.
BOOM!
Something in the large hole exploded.
Meanwhile, Leo fell from the mountain as the heaven tribulation lightning destroyed it. He snapped back to his sense and used the falling debris as a stepping stone. He leaped from the falling rock and hopped on the next.
After five jumps, Leo traveled 500 meters and caught another erected mountain's cliff.
Leo looked at the sky, wondering why the black lighting pursued him. He didn't remember doing anything wrong for heaven to curse him.
"WHAT DID I DO?!" Leo retorted and cursed heaven.
RUMBLE
A second later, the black clouds dispersed, leaving Leo confused.
"HUH?! THAT'S IT?!"
Leo scratched his head and looked down at the narrow hole that the lightning bolt had created. There was a glowing red dot at the end of the tunnel, but Leo was not interested.
CLINK
Leo suddenly heard a chiming bell sound. Behind him, a dao spirit of him emerged. It had the face of Leo, but its body was made of wood.
The first dao avatar of Leo was a wood mannequin with his face.
When the dao avatar came out, Leo received a system notification.
<Congratulations. You have digested the gnosis of rabbit trent king.>
"…HUH?!"
