Chapter 361: The Fountain of Youth (18)
The feeling of being unable to control her own body was almost like watching a first-person movie through a screen.
Everly’s consciousness curled up in a corner, helplessly watching as her body slowly began to move under the control of another will.
“How fascinating. This is my first time becoming a woman…”
“She” murmured softly, then lowered her head and examined the long, sturdy arms for a while. Her five fingers clenched and relaxed, her neck turned from side to side, and her legs stamped firmly against the ground, as though she were familiarizing herself with this body.
From the way he put it, the person who had stolen Everly’s body really was Grant. What had looked like an attempt to ambush her just now had actually been meant to create the conditions for him to seize control of her body!
Everly’s mental world trembled violently.
Although her body had been taken from her, her consciousness still retained its ability to perceive the outside world. The metallic smell of blood, her rapid breathing, the dull ache of muscles being pulled taut, the sensation of sweat trickling down her forehead… All of her senses were still there. It was just as though they were separated by a transparent glass barrier—everything was indistinct, occasionally accompanied by crackling static, like a television with a poor signal.
Watching helplessly as everything spiraled out of control was far more terrifying than being completely unaware of what was happening.
What frightened Everly even more was that the force that had invaded her mind and seized control of her body was constantly trying to assimilate and “digest” her.
It was a sensation that was difficult to describe.
Consciousness itself had no physical form. Everly could only vaguely sense something like a hedgehog extending countless tiny, needle-like spines and viciously driving them into the ball that represented her consciousness.
Each needle carried intense mental contamination. They screamed, roared, and trembled as they siphoned away the memories and emotions Everly held dear. At the same time, they writhed like maggots, planting clusters of pitch-black seeds throughout her mental world.
Before long, Everly’s mental world had been stained with filth.
As an ordinary human, once Everly lost the external means she relied on to protect herself, she could not even resist this infiltration.
She endured the increasingly shrill static and desperately tried to think of a way to break out of this predicament. Unfortunately, her body was no longer under her control, and her mental strength was nowhere near Grant’s. For the moment, she simply could not think of a solution.
Meanwhile, during the time Grant had seized control of Everly’s body, the battle in front of the stairs had finally reached its conclusion.
The witch, driven berserk by pain, had become something from an entirely different dimension—far beyond the limits of a human being. Grant’s “death” had driven her into an even more aggressive fighting mode. She would often willingly inflict a thousand points of damage upon herself just to deal eight hundred points of damage to the Sacred Tree. Under such circumstances, even with the Sacred Tree’s ability to absorb energy, it was simply no match for the witch for a time.
At the height of the battle, it had even been forced to draw in its vine-like tentacles and focus entirely on defense, leaving it incapable of attacking.
Fortunately, the same old problem of endurance eventually prevented the witch from pushing her advantage any further, allowing the two sides to barely reach a stalemate.
The deadlocked duel finally came to an end when the Sacred Tree’s true form withered on the spot—its energy was being consumed too quickly, causing the summoning period to end prematurely.
After the Sacred Tree’s true form withered away, the banyan tree that served as its main body nearby also collapsed and dissipated.
From beginning to end, Grant had stood off to the side with complete indifference, coldly watching the witch and the Sacred Tree tear into each other. Only now, after the victor had been decided, did he leisurely walk over. He bent down and picked up the bracelet left on the ground, held it between his fingertips and examined it for a moment, then slipped it onto his right wrist.
“So this is the sacred tree of the Winton people. Interesting.”
Everly heard “herself” say this.
Clearly, while attacking Everly’s consciousness, Grant had acquired her memories concerning the Sacred Tree bracelet.
This made Everly, trapped within her own mental world, even more furious.
Right now, Grant had merely forcibly taken over her body and claimed her items. But once he returned to the United States carrying her memories, what if he disguised himself as her and deceived her grandfather, Misha, and the others? Everly couldn’t even bear to imagine the consequences!
Damn it! How was she supposed to turn this situation around? Was she really going to just stand by and watch him usurp her life?!
Inside her mental world, Everly was so anxious that even her soul seemed to tremble.
Yet at a time like this, with her fate in someone else’s hands, the more anxious Everly became, the more unstable her mind grew, creating even more openings for Grant to exploit.
Or perhaps Grant was deliberately trying to disrupt Everly’s state of mind, accelerating the process of devouring and assimilating her.
Tragically, the effects of the mental contamination she had suffered earlier had severely weakened Everly’s control over her own emotions. Even though she knew perfectly well that she needed to remain calm, she still couldn’t stop herself from becoming agitated. Negative thoughts came one after another, gnawing away at her mental world until it was riddled with holes.
As the situation grew worse and worse, Everly was beginning to despair when, all of a sudden, a warm, gentle force climbed up along her right wrist and reached her brain. It flowed through the cracks in Everly’s mental world and seeped into her consciousness.
It was an exceptionally fresh and natural force.
It was like a breeze sweeping away a thick layer of duckweed, like a cloud drifting across the sky on a scorching summer day, like a timely rain soothing parched earth. Carrying a power that inspired peace and tranquility, it effortlessly dispelled the unease and agitation in Everly’s heart, filling her with a sense of relaxation and comfort she had not felt in a long time.
It was the Sacred Tree bracelet’s “Blessing”!
The instant she came into contact with that power, countless images flashed before Everly’s eyes—
Drizzling spring rain fell upon a barren stretch of land, and the seeds scattered across it sprouted in the moist soil. On summer evenings, Native Americans with painted faces and dressed in ceremonial finery gathered around bonfires, singing and dancing. The autumn wind carried the scent of a bountiful harvest, as golden soybeans and kernels of corn were poured into woven-grass granaries. When the bitter winter winds blew, people wrapped themselves in animal hides and felt, then happily downed cups of corn liquor…
For thousands of years, the Native Americans had lived in harmony with the seasons, thriving upon fertile and abundant land. Nature itself had always been their greatest teacher.
And now, through its “Blessing,” the Sacred Tree bracelet was imparting the Winton people’s wisdom for survival to Everly in its entirety.
“When everything else has vanished, you must look inward and find the ‘core’ that belongs only to you. Then, even if you have nothing left and have been changed beyond recognition, you will still be yourself—just as a seed will never forget what it is meant to grow into,” an aged voice earnestly admonished her.
Look inward. Turn your gaze upon yourself, reflect within, and seek the spiritual core that belongs uniquely to you.
A seed would never forget what it was meant to grow into. Likewise, Everly would not become someone else simply because she had lost her body. She was the sum of her memories, emotions, and all her social bonds. As long as her core remained stable, Grant could never assimilate her!
The moment she realized this, her wavering heart steadied once more. Her formerly frail consciousness became denser and more substantial, stronger than it had ever been.
“We never fight the storm. When the rain comes pouring down, we take shelter in our tents and wait for it to stop on its own. Those who insist on pressing onward through the rain will only end up falling into a mud pit,” another lively female voice shared.
When she finished speaking, the voice carefully guided Everly, teaching her how to change the form of her consciousness. Instead of awkwardly curling herself into a little ball, she learned to become like water, abandoning any fixed shape and adapting fluidly to Grant’s attacks. She flattened herself into a soft, shapeless mass and slipped into the gaps between the needle-like projections.
—A person cannot overcome a storm, but they can take shelter from it. That was the second lesson the “Blessing” taught her.
Once Everly had learned how to change the form of her consciousness, a deep male voice followed. He seemed to be an experienced hunter, calmly and patiently teaching Everly: “You must first understand the temperament of the forest before you can find your prey’s weakness and reap a greater reward.”
Grant’s consciousness had squeezed into her body, tightly enveloping Everly’s consciousness. It seemed as though he had captured her, but from another perspective, hadn’t she also infiltrated his consciousness?
“First, you must learn to conceal yourself. A consciousness has its own behavioral habits, unique patterns of movement, and even preferred forms, just like a human being. Observe him, study him, imitate him, and make him stop seeing you as an enemy—you can do it, because his consciousness is mixed with far too many things that don’t originally belong to him. As long as you imitate him well enough, he’ll think you’ve already been assimilated by him. He won’t be on guard against you at all…”
For Everly, who had only just become a consciousness for the first time, this was rather difficult.
Fortunately, she still had time.
After picking up the bracelet from the ground and putting it on, Grant did not immediately hand over the meteorite and ascend the stairs. Instead, he walked over to the Thorn Witch.
After the brutally fierce battle, Savannie was now barely clinging to life.
She lay weakly on the ground. Her thorn-transformed body had yet to return to human form. A large mass of loosely tangled red thorns lay sprawled across the ground, forming her torso. They were covered in wounds, some of them visibly snapped and broken. Flaccid chunks of flesh hung among the thorns—her damaged internal organs, injured during the battle. Beneath the thorns was a large pool of blood. Judging by the amount of blood she had lost, she would likely die if she was not treated immediately.
Everly had the Panacea on her—three drops, enough to heal the witch’s injuries and pull her back from the brink of death.
Grant had taken over Everly’s body and read her memories. If he wanted to, he could have dripped the potion onto the witch at any moment and saved his dying lover.
But he didn’t.
“Suni.”
Everly heard Grant call her that.
He was using her body and her voice, yet the words carried a cruelty and coldness that felt utterly alien to Everly herself.
The thorns on the ground twitched, and the witch’s voice came from somewhere within them.
“That name… Ah, is that you, Grant…? Only you know my childhood name…”
“Yes, it’s me. I didn’t die. At the critical moment, I took control of that girl’s body.”
“So… that’s… what happened… That’s… that’s wonderful…”
The witch’s words came in broken fragments, her faint voice overflowing with unconcealed joy. Even her long-blind eyes briefly flared with bright starlight.
She was genuinely happy that Grant had survived. She didn’t even care that his body was now that of a woman.
Unfortunately, in this relationship, she was the only one who had ever truly loved.
“Yes. I really am very lucky to have made it this far alive… Suni, thank you for helping me all this time. I’ll carry my memories of you and my gratitude with me as I enjoy the long, endless boredom of the rest of my life.”
Grant lowered his voice and bent down, leaving a gentle whisper beside the witch’s ear.
Then, in the space of a second, the softness vanished from his face.
His expression turned cold as he pulled an M15 white phosphorus grenade from Everly’s bag, removed the safety pin, stepped back several paces, and threw it directly onto the witch.
“BOOM!”
Roaring flames erupted from the thorns. Under the scorching heat of the burning white phosphorus, the witch screamed in agony. Before long, she was burned alive, reduced to black ash.
By then, Grant had already turned his back and walked away, approaching the guards.