Chapter 1753: Chapter 1753

The green flames gradually receded. As the surrounding darkness rushed back in, Jenkins and Sigrid cautiously approached. He knelt on the cobblestones and dug through the warm pile. There was no corpse beneath, only a layer of white ash. The ash roughly formed the shape of a human, and at the heart of this figure lay a small, cylindrical glass vial, no bigger than a thumb.

The vial was empty, and its stopper was of an ordinary design. But as Jenkins picked it up, a strange palpitation suddenly stirred in his heart, and he immediately understood its cause: Thıs text ıs hosted at novel⟡fire.net

“This is a Bestowal!”

He blurted out, and the elf on the opposite bank spoke as well:

“This is the reward for your trial. I believe my lord is very fond of you... This is a Bestowal unrecorded by humankind. In the Prosperous Forest, it is known as the Holy Spring Water Vial, and it is enshrined year-round in the temple on the central island of Moon-Luo Lake.

“Fill the vial with water, and every seventy-two hours, it will transform the contents into one dose of Holy Spring Water, capable of healing any non-mystical external injury. For injuries less severe than full-body fractures, healing is instantaneous. For injuries more severe than full-body fractures but less than having all four limbs minced, recovery will take at least three hours. But be warned, the Holy Spring Water can only be stored in this vial. If not consumed within ten seconds of being removed, it will immediately lose its efficacy.”

Chocolate's two small, delicate ears poked out from Jenkins's pocket, and he let the rain soak them without retracting.

“Is it really a Bestowal?”

“Yes, it certainly is.”

He hesitated for a moment before pressing the vial into her hand:

“Do you feel anything?”

“Feel what? Oh, I understand. No, this Bestowal hasn't chosen me.”

Jenkins took it back, disappointed. If the Holy Spring Water Vial had chosen Sigrid, the Bestowal would have belonged to her. Then, Jenkins could have found a pretext to ask for the World Tree Seedling back. Although the two were not of equal value, he would have at least paid a price of some sort, and he could make up for the rest later.

“It's yours. I can't take it.”

Sensing Jenkins's intention to give it to her, the golden-haired girl returned the vial, her face blushing. Because she was a little cold, the two were still standing almost pressed together, a proximity that made the young lady slightly uncomfortable.

“Alright then. To be honest, it's not much use to me. I can heal similar injuries myself; it's not difficult.”

With that, he clenched his fist around the vial, and it vanished into his spirit, falling into a quiet slumber.

“It seems the Lord of Blossoms is a bit more generous than the God of Death,”

Jenkins thought to himself, gently pushing Chocolate back down into his pocket with a finger. He and Sigrid stood together, gazing upstream.

On the far bank, the elf took up his lute again. This time, he sang a distant and sorrowful ballad:

“The most ancient legends, Birthed the tales of the undying.

A sorrowful story of sorrowful men, Who can truly understand, The dearest departed, The confidant gone forever, The cherished no more, The acquainted forgotten.

Life springs from a beginning, Life concludes in an end.

The way of nature is a cycle, Unchanging, Are only the stars above, And the god within the heart.”

The content of the song was nothing extraordinary, but its sorrowful tune made both Jenkins and Sigrid deeply uncomfortable. Standing in the rain, they stared into the distant darkness, trying their best to ignore the elf's endlessly looping song.

As the elf finished his fourth repetition, a dark figure finally appeared upstream. The singing ceased instantly. Jenkins let out a sigh of relief he didn't know he'd been holding, realizing for the first time that even a beautiful song could be a form of torture.

Once again, it was he who waded into the water to retrieve the corpse. After dragging it ashore and examining it in the dim light, Jenkins recognized this body as well. It was Skryu Pompey, who had died at the hands of Mr. Hood.

Jenkins explained Pompey's identity and story to his cousin, then dragged the corpse with considerable annoyance to the spot where he had buried the first one, where there were plenty of cobblestones.

“Honestly, causing me trouble even after you're dead.”

Jenkins grumbled, treating this corpse with far less courtesy. He picked up cobblestones and tossed them directly onto the body, rather than placing them gently as he had before.

Seeing Jenkins's childish actions, a smile touched Sigrid's lips. She reached up to brush away the hair plastered to her skin by the rain, then bent down to help him gather stones.

They worked quickly this time. But unlike the last, the corpse, its skin bloated and pale from the water, waited until it was almost completely covered before speaking:

“I did no such thing,”

Jenkins retorted, annoyed. The one who killed him was clearly Mr. Hood.

“We both rely on the power of death. Why did you have to kill me?”

“I'll say it again, I didn't kill you.”

Jenkins was getting genuinely angry now. To make matters worse, the corpse reached out and grabbed his wrist—in the exact same spot where the "Papa Oliver corpse" had seized him earlier.

He tried to shake it off, but the dead man's hand seemed fused to his skin; he couldn't break free: “Why is it that we both use the power of death, yet I am dead, and you are alive?”

“Because you don't understand balance,” Jenkins blurted out, inventing an answer on the spot. “Nature is about balance, not an extreme reliance on death. You didn't understand balance, so you died.”

Sigrid had no opinion on this matter, so she remained silent.

“Balance? What is balance?”

Pompey's corpse asked again.

“Positive and negative, night and day, good and evil... Why are you asking this? Didn't you ever go to school?”

Jenkins, himself only a graduate of a primary public school, posed the question. But he was certainly qualified to ask it, being, in reality, a postgraduate from a world of materialism and science.

“Impossible. There's no such thing as balance in this world.”

The corpse's voice grew suddenly shrill.

“Of course there's no absolute balance. Nature is a dynamic equilibrium!”

A flash of white light split the sky, and the sudden lightning startled Jenkins. He glanced around and urged Sigrid to stand closer to him, sensing that something was wrong:

“Do you know what dynamic equilibrium is? It's not about being balanced at every single moment. It's a balance that constantly shifts between positive and negative, all centered around a certain standard. Nature is in flux, but as long as you understand and maintain this principle—cycling endlessly through imbalance, balance, and back to imbalance—that is the true nature of balance.”

A deafening clap of thunder—

—seemed to explode directly overhead. Even the rain intensified after the crash, growing more violent. Jenkins, bewildered, looked up at the sky again, then turned to his cousin, wanting to ask if she had noticed anything amiss.