The fruit felt like it was burning a hole all the way down his throat into his stomach. Involuntarily screaming at the top of his lungs, Yin Xiu's consciousness finally became slightly stimulated due the pain coursing through his body. Breaking the enthrallment the tree had placed upon him
The first sensation his awakened mind felt was the fruits path down. Like it was burning a hole all the way down his throat into his stomach. He gasped while the poison started infiltrating his veins and meridians, wantonly wreaking havoc throughout his entire body. He bent over trying to vomit it out, but the fruit almost seemed alive as it burrowed itself farther inside, and refusing to become dislodged. The fear and pain left Yin Xiu helpless.
It was as if time had slowed down just to make him feel the poison move excruciatingly slowly. Forcing him to watch the end of his life while helplessly burning it into his memory. Wherever the toxins passed, the pain would follow, and it was destroying his body constantly.
He managed to move his eyes down looking in horror at his arms and watched as his veins protruded outward as they went from blue to red as if there were truly a fire boiling his blood.
The poison seemed to have circulated through his system completely several times as if it was taunting him by avoiding the areas that were fatal. Only inching ever closer to his rapidly beating heart like it was playing a sick game that would finally come to an end only when the tree decided it had enough. Yin Xiu felt it inching closer and closer which he knew that if it made it all the way there, his life that he had barely escaped with a few days earlier would all have been for nothing at all.
As death came calling, something in Yin Xiu erupted, 'I CAN'T DIE LIKE THIS!!' he screamed internally, and as if an answer arrived from the heavens an inconspicuous bone in his clavicle seemed to awaken. It was a conspicuous black color surrounded by pure white, with a slightly cold feeling exuding from it. If Yin Xiu could see it he would only describe the feeling the bone exuded as hunger and longing. As if it had been waiting dormant to complete itself.
The poison that was about to strangle his heart, and end any hopes of living was pulled away in futility, as the bone exerted an overwhelming force of attraction.
The unknown force pushed the poison directly into any other part of his body that was expendable in a seemingly intentional order.
Quickly, his muscles screamed in agony as the poison was pushed into the fibers tearing them apart, and bursting the veins and arteries that traversed his extremities.
If Yin Xiu could see the state he was in he would be appalled. His arms and legs were so swollen and filled with blood that they looked less like limbs and more like bags of rotten meat.
Collapsing on the ground in pain his vision was filled only with the blue sky and the tree. As his mind drifted away, the purple leaves of the tree seemed to dance in and out of his vision. The wind blew them tantalizingly making a subtle whispering sound as they brushed against each other.
'How can something so beautiful be so horrific?' He thought as his mind drifted away.
Unbeknownst to an energy was separated from the poison, and was forcefully poured into his eyes. Drops of blood slowly seeped out like tears. He laid almost physically and mentally broken underneath the tree surrounded by bones. Gradually the rest of the poison was attracted to the bone, and branded into it with complex red and purple runes.
When Yin Xiu was awakened again, a burning heat from his clavicle sent a searing message into his mind. It seemed to be urgently saying that a condition was yet to be fulfilled.
Then while standing up barely understanding reality, Yin Xiu's hand was forcefully raised. He struggled in desperation as his body refused to accept his commands
'I can't do it again!!' horrified to find that his hand was putting the rest of the fruit into his mouth again, he closed his eyes in despair, and waited for the pain to come.
'Huh? It only burns a little bit.' He watched in confusion, as his veins briefly jumped, before the mysterious bone once again trapped the poison and cycled it in a mysterious way,
'I can feel it moving cycling throughout my body. Also what is this black gunk?' he almost retched as a pungent odor came from his own body. Mean while the bone finished branding more runes onto itself, signaling to Yin Xiu that it needed more.
Emboldened by his success he finished the fruit in his hand and focused his mind to feel the mysterious changes that were happening in his body.
'I'm not entirely sure, but my own body feels completely different. I can see more clearly, and every movement seems uncoordinated, like I'm barely able to control myself. Have I started to cultivate?'
Yin Xiu's gaze looking at the eerie tree changed dramatically. He had never been truly exposed to cultivation, but the changes that were brought by this mysterious fruit made flames appear in his eyes. He reached out plucking two more fruits, and once again the bone in his clavicle utilized it to brand itself with runes, and wash Yin Xiu's body.
The process repeated itself as Yin Xiu plucked the tree clean, even climbing into it and searching around to try and find any that might have been overlooked.
After finishing the last of the fruits. Yin Xiu took the time to closely observe the tree, The trunk was bone white, and knotted up and down its length. The leaves were deep purple, oval shaped, and had fine serrations all around the edges. It was both beautiful and highly strange. He turned around and observed the field of bones that he had crossed while enthralled, and noticed the disparity in size.
The majority of the skeletons were bestial in nature with hulking frames, or with sharp fangs and claws. Naturally the more common denizens of the forest of the four seasons. Strangely enough there was only a tiny bit of flesh on two or three of the newer skeletons. Which seemed to have what Yin Xiu could only assume were the roots of the tree, wrapped around them.
"I need to leave this place, it's really a little uncomfortable." Yin Xiu mumbled, then shuffled his still un-coordinated body out of the field. As he started to make his way towards his hideout he stopped.
"What on earth is that?" He bent down and picked up a strangely glowing object from the ground.
"One of the berries I picked earlier? Why is it glowing?" Before he had time to ponder carefully his body seemed to react just like before and instinctually craved the fruit that he was holding in his hand.
"I'm still unsure about what exactly is happening to me, but if it can make me an immortal, I have to give it a try." Steeling his resolve Yin Xiu tossed it into his mouth and quickly chewed the extremely tart berry.
Then in disbelief he once again found himself bending over in pain, as colors swam in and out of his vision. Hallucinations taking hold over his vision.
"I thought I only had to go through this once. Is it different because It's not the same fruit?" Yin Xiu lamented as he stumbled around in confusion. Finding himself wandering around grabbing spots of glowing lights, and shoving them into his mouth. Blearily he seemed to recognize a stream as he was trying make out anything that felt somewhat familiar.
Half out of his mind he noticed a slight pain coming from somewhere, and in his peripheral vision there seemed to be a long red and sand colored stripe attached to his arm it seemed to convulse in pain just like Yin Xiu had before. Curling on itself in a ball. Quickly the stripe stopped moving. An irresistible craving seemed to erupt in Yin Xiu's mind as it had before with the fruits.
As he put the long stripe up to his mouth and took a large bite. It exploded in his mouth with wonderful taste, but it racked his body with more pain, the bone working overtime to adapt the new toxins to itself. The runes flashed and flickered becoming more and more complex, more and more complete.
Urging Yin Xiu to subconsciously continue to grab the glowing lights that occasionally showed up in his vision, and then consume them. Days passed as Yin Xiu haunted the forest like a specter. Going all over this particular swath of summer in the forest. The animals avoided him like a plague. Only watching from afar with morbid curiosity as the strange human with torn white robes acted deranged.
Every time they caught a glimpse of him he would look different. At the beginning he looked extremely similar to other humans save a few strands of hair turning purple, and a slight red color in his irises. Then these features gradually became more and more pronounced, until eventually they changed completely. His hair was a deep purple, his skin turned stark white like porcelain, and his irises completely changed to a blood red hue.
Close to two weeks later, the dark black bone in Yin Xiu's chest seemed to complete its metamorphosis. It had red and purple runes looping continuously around it giving off an aura that entranced one, and made them inherently fearful. As it slowly fell dormant, Yin Xiu sprawled on the forest floor in a trance.