Over the past few weeks, Xiang Zainan had been experimenting with this incorporeal form he now had. Though he could still see and hear, his senses were far from what they used to be.
For starters, instead of seeing only in the front, his vision was now 360-degrees and then some. He could extend it to view up to 2 meters away from him in all directions. And though he lost the ability to smell, taste, and touch, he gained one he wish he had while human.
Instead of having to pick things up or directly act to make something move, he could just extend his own blackish-green spirituality to make it happen, though this only extended to things 2 meters away and less than 10 pounds. Like some basic watered-down version of telekenisis.
He had once tried to push himself to make something he thought a little over 10 pounds move, but his spirituality had a shock-like effect and somewhat burnt the corpse and left Xiang Zainan weakened for days.
'But this definitely won't be my limit. I've realized that once I stop taking the memories from bacteria in the carcasses, the mass of my spirituality: my soul, starts to exhaust at a rapid rate. So i'm essentially not only taking the memories of the bacteria but little bits of spirituality too.'
'To think something so small contains the power of the soul. Or... what if it only does because it's feeding off of the host's body. This world is vividly different than Earth so bacteria don't have to necessarily behave the same way.'
If Xiang Zainan had a face, his would surely be a more pondering expression.
'While the creatures are alive, the bacteria makes them experience symptoms of a disease like normal. However, the bacteria don't stop there, they even leech off of the dead corpse too. Adapting as its main form of sustenance goes from being actual nutrients in the body, to the leaking spirituality from a corpse! That's Perfect!'
Xiang Zainan had always been obsessed over creating the perfect virus to mutate in a rapid way similar to normal ones, but instead of destroying all of the human body, it would only attack certain parts. This was his way of going about curing that God-forsaken disease known as cancer.
However, as soon as he was about to reach a breakthrough - Red Wake appeared. A bio-weapon that mutated uncontrollably to the point where it killed every little thing, even bacteria itself.
He floated over the corpse of what once might have been a bear—or something like it. Its skull had horns, and fungal growths pulsed from beneath its fur like second hearts. The ground beneath it shimmered faintly, shimmering with rot and bacteria.
Xiang Zainan had come to the conclusion long ago that not every single corpse here had not been supernaturally afflicted by the mana plague while alive, but most of those corpses had long been turned into bones. Like the one next to him.
He hovered still, studying the site. The bear was gone, flesh-wise, but something remained. The bacteria—barely alive now—still clung to the last traces of marrow.
Zainan drifted closer. Carefully. Almost reverently.
'So... should I name you,' he thought.
Usually, Xiang Zainan would not name anything that has harmed people in respect for the deceased. But now, it's as if that emotion completely disappeared. He probably wouldn't even have a reaction if a person were to die right in front of him.
He was a husk of himself. The only emotion left was the feeling that kept urging him to continue on his quest for knowledge in this new world.
He extended some of his spirituality from his mass in the form of a tendril. He'd learned, slowly, how to extract information without letting the whole personality of a decayed beast crash through his thoughts. The first week had been hell. Screams, terror, final instincts—he had drowned in them.
If he had a brain it would have definitely combusted from the boatload of information all at once.
But now he could filter it out.
'I only need your last week of living. No need to relive your last mating season.'
The memory flowed into him, restrained and clean. His point of view was now that of the bacteria itself within the creature. The animal was infact a bear with two horns looking from it's reflection next to water.
The only thing he saw was a forest filled with all sorts of organisms. This animal had been near the top of the food chain yet it was killed by something in one hit.
If he had to guess, he would probably say that some sort of supernatural power had one-shotted the beast from behind. He made a mental note to not wander off in that forest until he has the strength to.
He slowly drifted back, his form flickering as he adjusted his shape. His mass was suddenly thinning.
Xiang Zainan looked up.
The overarching mist was parting, just slightly, revealing the dull light of the twin suns.
They were just like Earth's sun. Warmth, pressure, radiance. But the rays also carried with them a mysterious power that would dissipate Xiang Zainan's body if he stayed in the direct light for too long.
The moment it touched him, his body recoiled. Tendrils of his spectral mass started evaporating into thin air, like boiling water.
Xiang let out a rasping growl.
'It seems my new form is akin to that of an evil spirit if even sunlight harms me. I've read enough lightnovels to know this will kill me if I stay a little too long out here.'
He retreated to the shadow of a massive carcass—some kind of scaled lizard with a skull the size of a cart. The damage was minor. He was used to it by now. But it reminded him of what he still was.
'I am just a phantom, no longer human or alive... But for some reason, I enjoy this way better than my previous life! Except I will definitely miss sex.
Xiang Zainan let out a mental sigh and continued on his journey.
He slowly stopped at another corpse. A deer-like thing with spider legs and an eye in its chest. The birds were picking at it. They were Crows. Black wings flashing like oil in the mist.
These birds were much larger than the ones in his old world, standing at 4 and a half feet, and they even had razor-edged feathers.
They've been coming every day now.
Zainan had watched them in silence for a few days. Waiting for the day they would eat that specific corpse.
'Lets see what happens.'
'My new experiments.'
He focused on one crow in particular. This one was the largest standing at almost 5 feet tall. It had been eating the most meat off of the previous carcasses and looked like the leader of their murder.
It flapped down onto the exposed ribcage of the eight legged deer-thing and tore out a chunk of muscle with its beak. Zainan drifted forward, silently, like a thought no one had.
Inside the meat was a viral cluster Xiang Zainan had already altered. From his own fiction reading experiences, demonic spirits always had some kind of special supernatural power tailored towards their own personality and he guessed from the moment he had been able to read the memories of bacteria, that his special power had been to control it.
Only now though, was he actually able to do it.
He reached out with the smallest tendril of energy, and nudged it. He had somehow been able to rewrite the genetic code of the bacteria by just extending his own spirituality and speaking to it.
Once done though, he maintained a connection to it, being able to see and hear from it, and even kill it remotely if needed.
[Change the capsid. Increase temperature resistance. Trigger behavior alteration on protein activation and once absorbed enough organic matter, rapidly accelerate growth and reproduction. Nest it in digestive flora. Do NOT kill host.]
It was difficult work. His control was nowhere near perfect. Not yet. His commands were a little blunt, shaped more by memory than finesse. He lacked the molecular precision he'd had in the lab—but every day, he got a little better.
The crow swallowed.
And deep inside it, something changed.
He felt it. Not fully, not clearly. But he knew it had worked. A connection had successfully been established with the bird itself.
'Bird experiment number 000,' he murmured. 'Let's see what you become.'
He turned back toward the heart of the graveyard.
Then he saw something
A figure in the distance. One that didn't match the aesthetic of ambient decay.
It was alive.
He spun.
A boy.
He was no taller than 5 feet, thin, barefoot, horrendously deformed, and crying?