Quartex The System

Drops of sweat swivelled down his forehead and after swallowing his saliva, he calmed his nerves and steeled his mind, he then injected the syringe into his arm.

Badump

Instantly after Zhao Yun injected the blood into his arm his eyes dilated and his face morphed into one of intense pain.

"F*ck"

Zhao Yun couldn't help but curse, it felt like he had injected fire into himself instead, like molten lava slowly flowing down a volcano and destroying anything that came in its path. The feeling coursed throughout his veins slowly as if it was taking its time on purpose just to torture him.

From his arms to his c.h.e.s.t down to his legs and feet, all the way to the back of his eyes.

His body had already become a pool of sweat, he g.r.o.a.n.e.d quietly while his teeth threatened to crack under the pressure.

However, he endured the pain while remaining cross-legged, with his hands clenched tightly on both his knees he was determined to persevere through the pain.

He couldn't help but think, "Is the system a sadist? It's not actually trying to kill me is it?"

"This agonizing pain couldn't even be compared to when I took the "Body Restoration Pill". In comparison, it was like a cute little flame pitted up against a scorching sun"

The scorching feeling travelled to every inch of his body, unknowingly the base of his black hair began to change into a deep white snow colour. The more the blood travelled throughout his body the more his hair colour turned.

Zhao Yun's consciousness almost slipped several times throughout the process, when the scorching feeling reached his head, he squeezed his eyelids, he felt like if he didn't he was going to go blind, his head felt like it was been compressed by two anvils.

The excruciating process felt very long for Zhao Yun however, in reality, only ten minutes had passed, by now the sun had fully set and with it was replaced by the bright stars.

The scorching burning feeling inside him slowly disappeared and eventually, he felt like the pain was just a lie.

However, his clothes were moist and stuck to his body like glue, his back and forehead were completely drenched in beads of sweat.

Huff

Huff

Fuuu

Huff

It was obvious Zhao Yun was exhausted, his face was pale as a sheet of white paper, he could not help but gasp for breath.

Zhao Yun opened his eyes and in front of him, a system notification appeared,

"It better have succeeded after all that otherwise ill fight the sadist system to death"

He read the notification several times before a thought a sudden realization dawned on him, "Success? You mean it could have failed?"

At that time the system notification disappeared, Zhao Yun couldn't help but imagine the old man walking away whistling with his hands behind his back with a look of "I forgot to tell you".

A tick mark appeared on his forehead annoyed.

Zhao Yun looked down at his body and thought, "I need a bath, this feeling is disgusting". He had not taken a bath for the last ten days or so, being someone who always looked after his hygiene he felt a great discomfort of being filthy.

"Eh? What?!"

When he looked at his body his hair coincidentally fell and his bangs dropped in front of his eyes, "My hair! I-It's white?"

He was shocked, was it not black his whole life? Even his life on Earth he had black hair, since when did it turn white?

"Wha- Bu-" He stammered a few times before he seemed to figure out why it was so, "it must have been the bloodline, so it had this kind of effect as well? sigh never-mind" The weird surprise feeling started to become numb to Zhao Yun, too many weird things have happened to him lately that he found it harder to be shocked.

If a mountain fell from the sky he might not even flinch as if it was a normal thing.

Zhao Yun shook his head and started to focus on the task at hand, he peeked his head out from the bushes and looked towards the entrance of the Cold Cellar Prison.

Yet, when he did, he was ironically surprised once again, he could see a thick blue gas like substance floating through the air that glowed a dim blue hue. It wasn't just in front of the entrance of the prison, in fact, it was everywhere, the sky, through the tree's all the way to the horizon.

Not only that, he felt as if he could see a lot further than usual, he could see clearly a fly buzzing around a tree from seventy meters away clearly, "Eh? Why is it so slow? What kind of fly is, it?" his voice trailed off towards the end of his sentence as he seemed to have an idea as to what was happening.

The Mystic Eye Bloodline could increase the user's reaction time to an astounding level as well as boost his visual prowess.

"This is... isn't this cheating?"

His body trembled in excitement and anticipation, he continued to watch the fly buzz around slowly in the air, he was confident that he could cut the fly in half with a sword with how slow it was moving. On Earth, although it was not entirely difficult after some training in martial arts, it was still not easy to hit a moving fly that was so fast and small.

He said in confidence, "With this, I should be able to react to a trap before it even activates"

The only thing he was confused about was, what was this transparent blue glowing gas with hints of dark purple that was floating throughout the land?

Could it be, "Is it spiritual energy?" he paused while he thought back on the description, he muttered "To see the truth within the lies and the lies within the truth. Does the blue gas represent spiritual energy and the dark purple gas means, corrupted energy? Spiritual beasts?"

Zhao Yun quickly guessed what he was seeing, if one were to look at him now one would come to find that both his eyes were filled with various colours, sometimes it was blue, red and purple, others it was green, yellow and orange. It was never always one colour, it constantly changed. You could say his eye's looked like an ever-changing chrome rainbow.

After examining his surroundings he thought that his guess was accurate, he could feel the presence of spiritual energy all around him thanks to his Divine Spiritual Veins and it just so happened that the spiritual energy he saw with his eyes was around him as well.

Normally one would not be able to see spiritual essence as it was colourless. Only when one cultivates the surrounding energy and converts it into his or her own and performs an energy-based move will one see it. Although you could not see it a cultivator could feel it's presence.

In this world, people having special bloodline traits were not unusual, although it was not normal it was still widely known. Some people had the blood of ancient beasts from long ago coursing through their veins giving them unique abilities.

If one had the Ancient Divine Phoenix bloodline then one would be able to cultivate its divine flames to a certain degree, if someone had the bloodline of the Divine Dragon Race, one would inherit an indestructible body just like the dragons scales comparable to the hardest metal known.

However, people with these special bloodlines were rare and normally only found in powerful Families, Clans, or Sects.

Although he was oblivious to the changes in appearance in his eyes, Zhao Yun could certainly feel its changes and knew how amazing this bloodline was.

Seeing how he calmed down a lot and had understood the usage of his eyes to a degree, he looked towards the mountain forest.

"I can only gamble now"

Confirming that no one was around he stood up and rushed into the forest whilst using the Shadow Void Steps, his eyes constantly darted around scanning everything meticulously.

His figure had turned into a shadowy blur.

The more he ran the more his blood pumped, this feeling was exhilarating, the only times he felt like this was when he was playing tag with the old man in the wild when they went out hiking.

Woosh

Woosh

The trees became blurred as Zhao Yun sped up, even if he ran near someone they wouldn't even be able to tell that someone had ran passed him, the Shadow Void Steps used a complex foot and movement rhythm that it would make peoples brain unintentionally ignore him.

However, he wasn't confident that he could remain invisible to the eyes of someone in a higher realm than he, although the Shadow Void Steps hid him from the onlooker's sights it did not mean it would hide his sense of smell.

What if he came up against a spiritual beast with a good sense of smell?

He could only test his theories once he was in the clear.

He ran for a long while, so far he hadn't even a single trap, he was not sure if that was a bad thing but he was confident in his ability to escape now that he has the Mystic Eyes.

"Hmm?" Amongst the blue gas, he saw floating in front of him a small strand of yellow gas drifted in the direction that coincidentally was on his running path causing him to slow down his pace.

"Yellow? What does that mean? Could it be that I guessed wrong? No that shouldn't be the case"

While he slowed down his pace he was still moving forward in the direction the yellow gas was heading, curiously. The more he ran the bigger the gas became.

It did not take Zhao Yun long to arrive at the source of the yellow gas. Zhao Yun jumped to the top of a tree branch for a better look of the area. "A wall?"

A large yellow gas wall cut his path off. Turning his head left then to the right, Zhao Yun frowned. The wall stretched for about 50 meters in both direction, the wall was 100 meters across seemingly to block him.

Although he said wall it was more accurate to say that it was a transparent mist that made up a wall, if he wanted to he could just walk through it, however, reason told him not to.

Squinting his eyes he peered deep into the yellow mist, he could only see that there were more trees and bushes without anything that looked out of the ordinary.

Seeing nothing else he tried something else, he relaxed his eyes and with it, the chrome-coloured rainbow Mystic Eyes were replaced with his normally bright blue ones.

He learned how to do this after he successfully injected the bloodline, it was like second nature to him, he didn't understand and was just grateful that he didn't have to waste time learning how to do it. Otherwise, he might run out of time to escape, who knew when those two guys he locked up would report him. If he was caught who was he supposed to cry to?

After returning to his normal vision he could feel the drawback on overusing his eyes, "It seems that the more I use the Mystic Eyes the more strained my eyes become, this could be a problem"

"I'll have to be careful"

He still had the Energy Vitality Pills as an emergency but he would only use them if he was desperate, who knew when he would get such pills again?

With his normal vision, he looked forward and saw that the yellow mist wall had disappeared completely.

He expected as much though, jumping down from the tree branch he activated his Mystic Eyes again and proceeded forwards. He came to just a few meters away from the yellow wall and stared at it curiously for a moment before walking to the edge of it.

When he reached the very end of the wall he could see something an that was an even deeper coloured shade of yellow compared to the wall coming from near the bottom of the bolder. Walking closer to just being a few meters away from the deep yellow object Zhao Yun deactivated his bloodline and saw a piece of paper sticking to the bottom of the boulder with some calligraphy drawn on it.

Underneath the piece of paper was scribbles of ink, it was an outline of a square with the piece of paper placed in the middle, on a closer look, the scribbles in the shape of a square were surrounding the paper were a bunch of letters he couldn't understand.

It was then something dawned on him and an old memory surfaced in his mind, "Is this an array?"

An array was also known as a spell formation, it's purpose depended on what type of spell formation the caster wished for. From his memories, he recalled a passerby elder explaining it's usages to a group of kids. "I recall that there were defensive, offensive and sealing arrays"

An offensive array relied on spiritual energy to function, the array could use treasures and artifacts or people, to make it functional, however, the strength it would display was dependent on the amount of spiritual energy it can draw on as well as the foundation of the array.

Each type of arrays all followed the same rule. For it to function it must have a solid foundation set by a formation expert and a power source of spiritual energy.

The defensive and sealing arrays were quite self-explanatory, however, unlike the offensive array which consumed and burned through a large amount of spiritual energy to maximize its use, these two arrays consumption of spiritual energy was dependent on the amount of damage the formation took.

Now that Zhao Yun thought about it these arrays could indeed be used as traps, if what he had encountered was a sealing array then if he didn't have the Mystic Eyes and just continued running straight and landed in a sealing array, would he be able to get out?

Thinking up to this point his back ran cold and he felt very lucky that he had received such a useful bloodline.

The piece of paper with calligraphy writing emitted faint spiritual energy that was almost undetectable, yet this little thing was able to create an array?

Zhao Yun found it hard to believe but by this point, he didn't find it strange, in fact, it would be strange if this world didn't have at least this.

"It seems I will have to check the area every so often if I don't want to fall in an array like this"

Without hesitating any longer he left the place in a blur leaving behind a gust of wind.

...

Zhao Yun's eyes now felt quite sore at this moment, he has been running non-stop for the last two hours in one direction while continuously using his Mystic Eyes to check for traps.

There were a lot of arrays in the forest and he had no choice but to stop and move around, in total he has had to move around more than twelve arrays just like the first one he encountered.

However, he finally reached what looked to be the border of the Chen Clan. Or so he hopes anyway.