-- Chapter 16:

Hui awoke with dawn. He had dreamed of his mother, her comforting arms and the smell of her hair. Although he desperately wanted to remain with her, gradual consciousness told him he was in a precarious world. Hui felt a pang of homesickness for the first time as he tore himself away. Shrugging off his faint regret, Hui opened his eyes.

What greeted his senses was a far wider domain than the one he remembered. His vision encompassed everything within a hundred meter scope. He could bring a view to focus enough to see an ant at ten meters. With concentration, Hui could hear the movement of the ant as it scurried about.

Hui laid amongst the grass, speechlessly staring at the empty nondescript jade bottle still cast aside nearby. Reaching one of his branches forward to clutch it, Hui came to a startling realization.

‘My branch is.. I’ve shrunk!’

Shocked out of his reverie, Hui closely examined his transformed mortal body. Previously, though he had retained none of the physical charm of his previous life, he could still have been considered a handsome sapling or ungrown tree, with fierce branches.

Now, after taking the mysterious Dan, he had been shrunken and remolded to a more child-friendly image, with softer angles and an assortment of colorful flowers amongst his leaves.

Hui grieved. Even if the Dan proved extremely advantageous to his strength, and therefore his survival, he would still have avoided it if he had known the price.

So what if it provided power? This form lost too much face!

Hui imagined himself crusading against rivals at the head of an army, all the while being fawned over by children. When he pictured an elderly granny lifting a watering can over his head, a blood vessel almost burst. Hui flung one of his undeveloped stub of a branch at the ground.

“Bang!”

An earsplitting sound resounded throughout the forest. As the dust comforted down, Hui crawled distressingly from the several meter deep hole. He retracted his branch, which had extended involuntarily and pierced several meters into the ground.

“I-I take that back..”