Chapter 246: I'm dead now?

As soon as the pills dropped down into his stomach he felt a burning pain all over his body. It was similar to what he felt when he was trapped in the array with Li Jun when he ate too much of the phoenix fruit. Only this time it felt as though he might really die. He held onto hope the first time but what he was feeling after taking too many pills was unlike anything he could describe.

He grunted in pain slightly as he breathed but that was the only sound he let out as his body went limp and he felt the floor hit his cheek after falling to the ground. Haru's heart began to race as his lungs desperately tried to draw another breath but it was as if they had stopped working. He couldn't exhale no matter how hard he tried to.

'What's happening?' Haru thought as he struggled to move and was quickly losing all the strength in his body. He felt cold despite having Kun's power that constantly warmed his body and his fingers started to feel numb.

"You're dying. But you know that don't you?" A whispered back to him as he questioned what was going on with his body.

'Dying? I'm really dying? But I thought… I didn't think that I would die like this again.' Haru thought once again, not questioning the fact that someone else's voice was in his head. He looked over the fact that he heard anything in the first place and concluded that it was his, it was just his subconscious talking to him. But his assumption changed when the voice called out once again.

"Yeah, Of course, you are dying. What a foolish child. I mean to take so many pills at once. You were practically asking for death. Seriously, what were you thinking?" The voice asked. But this time Haru realised that it was somebody else talking to him. He wouldn't insult himself like that even subconsciously.

"Wait… Who are you?" Haru asked but as he did so his mind was transported somewhere else. He was previously staring at the cold and hard wooden floor of his office but as soon as he asked that question it looked as if he was absorbed within a dark cloud of mist and was transported somewhere far away. He heard the sounds of trees blowing in the wind and felt the coldness of the breeze all over his skin.

The mist slowly faded and he was now standing within what looked to be a shine of sorts with a paved concrete floor beneath his feet and a fish pond directly in front of him with a small island and a tree in the centre of it.

'I'm standing… But I was just… Where am I?' Haru struggled to collect his thoughts as he now felt more alive than he ever did before. He didn't feel as though he was dying anymore but he still couldn't stop feeling as though there was a whole within his chest.

"Welcome to paradise." The voice spoke out as a roar of thunder rang out through the sky overhead.

Haru looked up to see red flashes of lights within a dark cloud that sat above the building. A pit immediately formed in his stomach as he realised where he was. It was the very same place that he was warned about being able to kill him within a heartbeat. And the place responsible for making him learn the law of space.

It was the floating island within his soul ocean.

'But how did I get here? I didn't mean to come here…' Haru thought once again. Usually, he would have to be at peace completely before he could enter his soul ocean yet he was in possibly the most stressful situation of his life and he had managed to enter.

"Well, to put it bluntly… You're dead." The voice said, this time sounding a lot further away than it did before.

'Dead? I'm dead? Then how am I still able to think? Shouldn't my consciousness have disappeared?' Haru asked as he just couldn't believe what he was hearing. A strange voice had told him he was dead and there wasn't so much as a scrap of proof to support the claim. He knew that he was about to die. But he suddenly felt so much better.

It was almost as if all the pain in his body had vanished. But as he thought about it again he stopped denying that he might actually be dead.

'I can't feel any pain… I felt that my organs were damaged by the pills but now I feel nothing. That would only happen if I was suddenly healed. But there was no one around who would be able to do that. Or…' He gulped.

'My soul is no longer connected to my body…' He thought before realising the severity of the situation.

"Correct, Your heart exploded almost immediately after taking those pills. What you felt when you couldn't bleed was the blood from your heart rushing down to your lungs and restricting your diaphragm from moving." The voice whispered, and once again sounded far away as if it was no longer within his head and was an actual person talking to him from a distance.

"My heart exploded… No! It can't be! I had so much I wanted to do! So much I wanted to see! Why did it come to something like this? I'm really such an idiot. I got a second chance at life yet I was so reckless in an attempt to become stronger. I knew what would happen yet I did it anyway, thinking that I would get lucky once again… I guess my luck has finally run out hasn't it." Haru broke down and fell to his knees.

He knew full well that there was no coming back from this mistake. Even if someone was to find his body there was no way they would be able to heal his heart and then manage to drag his soul back from wherever it was now and then put it back inside his body.

"Give it a rest Ralph, Just heal him already and let him learn from this mistake." A familiar sounding voice called out.

"Li Jun? What are you doing here?" Haru asked before managing to pull himself to his feet again.

"Oh, You think I'm the type of man to sit by and watch my students die? I'm here to give you another chance, you idiot. I didn't know what you had done until I felt your life force begin to wither. What did I tell you about taking too many pills at once?" Li Jun asked, sounding very angry with what Haru had just done.

"If you take too many you will die a brutal death…" Haru quoted what Li Jun briefly mentioned to him during one of his many pill refining lessons.

"That's right. And you still decided to go ahead and take enough to kill you? Do you think that you're smarter than me or something? I told you to practice so that you could reach this place alone. Yet you really forced me to bring you here. You know, I'm starting to think that I was too soft on you if you think that what I tell you isn't worth taking seriously.

Why did I have to have a student from a place like this?" Li Jun said and then asked himself a question to show that he was contemplating life.

"Ralph, Didn't you hear me? Go ahead and heal him." Li Jun said once again since there was no reply the first time he spoke.

"Heal him? But he's dead. I could heal him using the power from the mansion. But to resurrect him… I would need access to the life injector. And I don't have the key to the room. If you want me to resurrect him. Then he will need to get the key to open the door himself." The voice replied back to Li Jun.

"Where are you two anyway? I don't see you anywhere." Haru's voice became shakier with excitement now that he had learned that he might get to live once again and he had begun to look around to try to find the source of the talking. But no matter where he looked. It sounded as though their voices were in the complete opposite direction. He wasn't sure where to begin looking for them.

On the other side of the pond, there was a double set of wooden doors and he was considering going inside. But he was wary of Li Jun's warning. He said that this place could kill him just like he said that taking too many pills would kill him.

He had just found out what happens when he does something that Li Jun says can kill him. And he didn't want to know what would happen if he decided to risk his soul now that his body was dead. So he remained in the same spot where he had appeared and resisted the urge to locate the two.

"Can he at least come inside then? Don't think that I didn't notice you putting up that array when you brought him here." Li Jun asked the voice known as Ralph but upon hearing those words Haru felt as though he had been struck by lightning.

"Array? What array?" He quickly asked.

"Ralph here was afraid that you might damage something so he placed an array that would destroy your soul if you approached the building." Li Jun explained. A deeper pit formed where Haru's stomach would have been if he had a body.

Not only was his body dead. But his soul would have been wiped from existence if he became reckless and tried to find where the voice had been coming from.