Every unoccupied inch of Liang Rou Yan's skin was getting filled with fast-growing, parasitic fungi.
She dropped the mushroom in her grip and let out a choked scream, reaching to stifle the sound of her voice with her hands.
Except, when she touched the skin of her cheeks, she instinctively retracted her fingers after pressing on multiple lumps.
The honey-kissed surface wasn't perfectly smooth as it was a few seconds ago. Tiny bumps began to break out all over her face.
"What is this?! What kind of spell is this?!" She yelled in panic, scratching herself all over. Her face. Her legs. Her arms. Wherever she could reach.
But, no matter how many bumps she removed, they kept regrowing shortly after!
"Stop it!" She shouted loudly, to no avail.
Liang Rou Yan was no simpleton. She was a seasoned fighter and a skilled cultivator, and yet, she had absolutely no idea how to deal with this type of attack!
Her powers were all offensive, and if she were to roast the mushrooms with lightning, she'd end up killing herself as well!
She whirled around and narrowed her eyes at Li Meirong. Somehow, she knew this was the girl's fault.
The mushrooms continued sprouting all over, some developing from within Liang Rou Yan's nostrils, armpits, and even her ears. Eventually, her vision clouded once more, as patches of small brown bumps spread around her pupils.
"What did you do to me?!" Her face mottled red as she bent down in front of the corpse and grasped Li Meirong's limp shoulders, spitting out the words.
Then she froze in place as she felt it.
It was a heartbeat. A weak, faltering pulse, but the heart was beating nonetheless.
Liang Rou Yan squeezed the girl's shoulders tightly until the pale skin underneath her fingers changed its hue to an angry purple. The damned furnace. No, not a furnace. Whatever Li Meirong was, she was still alive!
Li Meirong appeared to be dead in every practical sense, completely helpless and unmoving. But, deep within her stilled chest, her heart was still pulsating!
"Why are you still alive?" Liang Rou Yan clenched her teeth and held her breath, forcing herself to calm down, to analyze.
Li Meirong was a mortal furnace who took on a direct lightning strike. She should have been dead. Any other person who did not attain immortality would die from a lightning attack.
Lightning vein attribute users were one of the deadliest and brightest cultivators because the lightning utilized by them was a discharge of heavenly lightning, and no mortal could withstand a heavenly bolt!
Liang Rou Yan had absorbed that furnace boy, Liu Wei's lightning vein when she drained him of his powers. She knew that the level of her attack was enough to eliminate those who were far more powerful than one insignificant furnace at the foundation stage.
So, how did Li Meirong survive?
The next puzzle piece was the girl's strange blood. Liang Rou Yan had drained Li Meirong of all the spirit essence coursing through her, and yet she still kept providing more, as though she was a pool of unending spiritual energy!
To top it all off, the biggest revelation was that all this while, this damned girl hadn't been a furnace, and worse yet, she wasn't even dead!
"Li Meirong, what the hell are you?! What kind of game are you playing?" Liang Rou Yan asked the girl, furiously shaking her still figure. "You want to keep pretending to be dead? Fine. If lightning won't kill you, then my hands surely will!"
Liang Rou Yan clasped both sides of Li Meirong's milk-white neck, squeezing hard.
She was so engrossed in her rage and madness that she didn't notice the presence of a monstrous, carnivorous plant sneaking up behind her, along with a small mushroom perched on one of its tendrils.