Samsara Paradise: Dream Weaver of Connections.

When Lin Yi walked over to Karen, Karen was leaning against the support pillar, her head wrapped in a headscarf drooping in front of her chest, her breathing so shallow that it was almost inaudible.

Lin Yi squatted down in front of him and patted Karen on the shoulder: "Stand up and try walking a few steps."

Karen looked up at Lin Yi, then placed his hands, which were wrapped under his tattered robe, on the ground beside him to test his strength. He raised his upper body slightly and then lowered it back down. His shoulders twitched twice during the exertion, and finally he leaned back against the wall as if deflated.

"I have no feeling below my waist. When I woke up this morning, I touched myself for a long time, and it was no different from touching a piece of wood. Moreover, this feeling is moving upwards. Yesterday I could feel a slight numbness and itching below my navel, but today it's completely empty."

He paused, lowered his eyelids to look at his left leg, which had become completely woody, and the right leg next to it. Although the right leg had not yet turned dark brown, the woody texture had begun to appear from the middle of the thigh down: "I estimated that if I just drag this on, I will live for at most another six months. Once the woody texture spreads to my chest cavity and my heart and lungs are blocked, I will become a breathing tree stump."

Dorothea was crouching on a rock not far away. When she heard these words, the wooden spoon in her hand tapped against the rim of the bowl with a crisp sound. She quickly gripped the spoon tightly and did not make any more noise.

After listening, Lin Yi showed no sympathy. He turned to look in Dorothea's direction and said, "Come here, lift him up and make him stand upright."

Dorothea put the bowl down, walked over, bent down, and supported Karen's arms, using her shoulders to push him up from the ground.

After Karen's body was straightened, she lost all support from her lower body and slumped limply on Dorothea's shoulders, her legs dragging on the ground like two pieces of wood that had been carelessly placed.

Dorothea's stamina was clearly lacking, but she still gritted her teeth, steadied Karen against the wall, and took a half-step back, a thin layer of sweat already seeping from her forehead.

Lin Yi pulled out a purple-quality dagger from his spatial storage. He twirled the dagger in his hand, adjusted its direction, and aimed the tip at Karen's left calf. He then pushed it forward with a flick of his wrist.

The tip of the dagger struck Karen's left calf with a dull thud, like a knife piercing a dry oak stump.

The blade tip got stuck less than a millimeter in. Lin Yi pressed down with more force, and the blade curved into a slight arc, but the tip still couldn't go any further.

He pulled the dagger out; not a drop of blood was on the blade, only a few dark brown wood chips stuck to the edge.

"Can you feel anything?" Lin Yi asked, looking up.

Karen looked down at her calf, her gaze lingering for a second on the shallow, almost invisible thorn mark: "No, I can't feel it at all. Even if you chopped this leg off with an axe, I wouldn't react, it would be like chopping wood."

Lin Yi nodded, gripped the dagger, and made a shallow, probing line along the skin on the outside of his left leg. He would press the tip of the dagger upwards every inch to feel the change in resistance below.

When the dagger reached his knee, the resistance didn't change at all. The same thing happened as he continued to cut up his mid-thigh. The dry, firm feel of the wood traveled from the tip of the knife all the way to his fingers, like using a knife to probe a tree trunk that was gradually thickening.

When he slashed up to about three fingers above the groin, the dagger pierced through and caused an extremely subtle change in softness. The change was so slight that Lin Yi would hardly have noticed it if he hadn't been far more sensitive to touch than the average person.

He stopped the dagger at that spot, applied a little more pressure and pressed down, the tip of the blade penetrating about two millimeters before finally touching the actual flesh and blood, oozing out a pale pink bead of blood smaller than a grain of rice.

"And here?" Lin Yi asked.

Karen's brow twitched slightly: "I can feel it. It's like someone gently scratching my skin with their fingernail. I can't quite put my finger on whether it hurts or itches, but I can feel it anyway."

"How clear is your pain perception? If ten is the highest score, how much pain would you feel if you were stabbed in this spot right now?"

Karen was silent for two seconds, as if she was carefully sensing the signal coming from that part of her body: "About two points, very faint, like touching something through a thick quilt."

Lin Yi put the dagger back, wiped off the bead of blood on the tip with his fingertip, and examined it. The color was pale, indicating that the blood supply efficiency of the blood vessels underneath had dropped to a very low level, but at least there was still some blood, and it had not completely died.

He tossed the dagger aside, the metal striking the stone with a crisp clang.

He stood up and clapped his hands: "We've roughly figured out the situation. The lignification extends from the soles of your feet all the way up to the groin area. About two fingers up there, it enters the still-active soft tissue area. Your internal organs haven't been eroded yet. The toxins are mainly in the middle layer between your bones and muscles. Your abdominal organs are basically intact, which is why you can still eat and digest food—because your intestines are still working."

Dorothea, who was listening nearby, couldn't help but interject, "Is there any way to help him in this situation?"

Lin Yi didn't answer immediately. His gaze swept back and forth between Karen's half-lignified right leg and her left leg, which had completely turned into a tree stump: "There is a way, but not the kind of way you're thinking of to turn it back to its original state. His lower body has now completed the irreversible lignification process. The fibrous structure has completely replaced the muscle tissue and bone cells. This transformation is irreversible."

Karen's expression didn't change when she heard this, as if she had already guessed the answer.

He tilted his head and looked at Lin Yi: "So what are you planning to do? Saw off these two legs and then let me wait to die?"

Lin Yi pulled up a chair and sat down: "Have you ever heard of the relationship between a wall and a door? When a door can't be opened, the wall next to it can also be a door. Since the lower body is already useless, then we don't need it. We'll just cut it all off from the part that still has sensation, and then use healing magic to encourage new tissue to grow back."

Karen's eyes lit up behind that murky look: "You mean cut me off at the waist and let new legs grow?"

"To be precise, we'll cut it off from the still-active part above your groin, and discard the two sections of your lower body that have already become woody."

"I will first use purification techniques to completely remove the foreign toxins remaining in your body to prevent them from continuing to erode upwards. Then I will remove all the fibrotic residual tissue on the cut surface to ensure that the newly formed nerves and blood vessels can regrow on a clean basis."

"Afterwards, I will use a healing technique to forcibly stimulate your severed tissues to enter a regeneration mode. The key to this process is the reconstruction of the nervous system. New nerve fibers will actively extend from the ends of your spinal cord. These fibers will penetrate the newly formed muscle and bone tissue and travel all the way down until a complete lower limb nerve network is formed."

After listening quietly, Karen asked the most crucial question: "Are you sure it's okay?"

"Yes, but if anesthesia is used, the speed and direction of nerve growth will be affected because anesthesia inhibits nerve signal transmission. Newly grown fibers are prone to growing crookedly in the absence of normal signal feedback. So if you want a fully functional leg, the best approach is to avoid anesthesia. Let the nerves sense the boundaries of their body in a fully awake state, so that the network that grows will be precisely aligned with the brain's mapping relationship."

Karen was silent for about ten seconds, then he spoke: "No need for anesthesia, just go straight to it."

Lin Yi looked at him: "Are you sure? The process of nerve growth is accompanied by continuous, excruciating pain, a pain unlike any injury you've ever suffered before. It comes from the deepest structural reconstruction of your body; each fiber pulled out feels like someone is stirring your bone marrow with a red-hot wire. The whole process may last a long time; the pain won't stop, it will only increase gradually until the new limb is fully formed." Karen's lips twitched, an expression that looked like a smile mixed with a spasm in the candlelight: "I've been in this missionary grounds all this time, and the first thing I do every morning is check how much more I've become petrified. Do you think it's easy to watch your legs turn into wood one by one? I've had enough of that slow, dull pain of being cut with a dull knife. You give me a quick fix, a little pain in exchange for two usable legs—I've made a huge profit on this deal."

Lin Yi stood up and walked to Karen's side: "Alright, since you've made your choice, I won't try to persuade you anymore. Dorothea, help him up and throw him onto the operating table, making sure his entire torso is in a straight line."

Dorothea's face was a little pale, but she didn't say much. She bent down, supported Karen's arm, and half-dragged, half-carried him to the side of the operating table.

After Karen was lifted onto the operating table and laid flat, Dorothea untied his tattered robe and pulled it down to his waist, revealing his emaciated body that was nothing but skin and bones.

The skin below the waist presents two completely different conditions. Although the skin on the waist and abdomen is pale and thin, it maintains normal elasticity. However, about a palm's width below the waist, there is a clear color gradient, transitioning from light brown to dark brown. The skin surface has a wood-grain-like longitudinal texture and feels cold and stiff to the touch.

Lin Yi stood beside the operating table, took out the black and white rose, and cut it directly.

The capillaries on the cut surface were severed before they could contract within the extremely short time window of the sword's edge, and blood gushed out from the ends of the severed vessels, forming a uniform dark red liquid film.

As the purification spell was cast, Karen's blood turned bright red, indicating that the toxins in his body had disappeared.

Outside the operating room, the little beetle appeared at the doorway at some point. Her body, wrapped in gray-white cloth strips, squatted by the threshold. Her eyes, wide open, peered through the gaps in the cloth strips, as she quietly watched everything that was happening inside, without making a sound.

After completing the purification, Lin Yi took out another set of surgical instruments and began to clean the remaining tissue on the cut surface.

He used surgical scissors to carefully trim away the slightly fibrotic tissue at the edges of the incision, removing about one or two millimeters of hardened layer with each cut until the entire cut surface showed a uniform, healthy bright red color.

The process lasted for nearly twenty minutes. Lin Yi's scissors made a regular and fine snip sound under the light, with each snip accompanied by a small piece of dark brown hardened tissue being peeled off.

Karen remained remarkably quiet throughout the entire process. Apart from the initial jolting, he made no other noticeable noises, only his chest heaving at nearly twice the usual rate, and sweat seeping from his face, which was then wiped away with a cloth handed to him by Dorothea.

After Lin Yi finished trimming the last hardened remnant, he straightened up and stretched. His gaze fell on the cut surface, where the entire incision presented a perfect circular cross-section. The outermost layer was the skin edge that had shrunk and stopped bleeding, and all the tissues remained fresh, healthy, and active.

He held his hands about a palm's width above the fracture surface and began to cast a healing spell.

After the power of the abyss covered the broken bone, extremely faint crackling sounds began to emanate from the center of the broken bone. This was a signal that the bone cells were being stimulated to undergo reproductive division. New bone matrix expanded outward from the center of the broken bone, gradually filling the space that had been cut away.

At the same time, the reconstruction of the nervous system also began.

A thin, silvery-white thread emerges from the nerve bundle at the center of the spinal cord's distal end, each strand thinner than a human hair, vibrating and stretching forward in the air.

They extend extremely quickly, almost one millimeter per second, but each millimeter of extension is accompanied by an electric-like pain shock that travels directly from the nerve endings back to the brain.

Karen's body shuddered violently the moment those nerve fibers extended, and his back arched off the operating table.

His fingers gripped the edge of the operating table tightly, his nails scratching shallow white marks on the metal surface, his muscles tense to the point of near spasm.

The newly formed nerve filaments continue to extend under the light layer. The moment their tips touch the air, they produce a pain signal similar to being repeatedly pricked by a needle, because the exposed nerve endings are not yet covered by muscles and skin.

This stage is the most painful, several times more painful than any previous stage, because the nerve endings are directly exposed to the air, and every gust of air brings a sharp stinging pain.

Karen's forehead veins were bulging so much they were almost bursting through his skin, his jaw muscles were clenched so tightly that they were bulging, and the veins in his temples were throbbing visibly beneath his skin.

New muscle tissue wraps around the skeletal framework layer by layer, presenting a fresh, light red texture, while the vascular network extends rapidly within the muscle to form a complete circulatory pathway.

After the silvery-white nerve fibers were completely wrapped in the muscle layer, they entered a deeper extension stage. They began to grow downwards along the newly formed muscle texture, and the tip of each fiber split into finer branches at the end. These branches gradually built a nerve network covering the entire new thigh.

The pain reaches its peak at this stage because the entire newly formed neural network simultaneously begins sending signals to the brain, with each fiber reporting where it has extended to, what tissue it has encountered, and what state it is in.

The dense torrent of signals converged into a continuous and intense wave of pain, surging upwards from Karen's lower back, as if someone were repeatedly sawing deep into his bones with a fine-toothed steel saw, or as if countless red-hot copper wires were simultaneously passing through his muscle fibers.

Karen's back was completely soaked with sweat, and a large dark sweat stain was imprinted on the light blue sheet on the operating table beneath his body.

Dorothea's hands, clutching the cloth, began to tremble. She dared not go over to wipe his sweat, afraid that her trembling hands might accidentally touch something she shouldn't.

Throughout the process, Lin Yi consistently output energy, adjusting the output and coverage area as needed.

The newborn thigh has grown to nearly ten centimeters, with a complete and well-formed skeletal framework, evenly distributed muscle layers around the bones, unobstructed blood vessel network, and the branch density of the nerve network gradually approaching normal levels.

Lin Yi adjusted his focus, concentrating more energy on the new tissue below the fracture surface to accelerate the synchronous growth of muscles and bones.

Karen experienced overwhelming pain that spread from his waist down during the process, a pain that was beyond what willpower could directly overcome, but he never called for a stop.

A trace of blood had seeped from his lips from the constant clenching of his teeth. The blood seeped from the edge of his lower lip, trickled down his chin, and left a thin red mark on his neck.

Karen opened his mouth, his voice so hoarse it was almost unrecognizable: "How much longer?"

Lin Yi didn't look up at him, his gaze fixed on the nascent tissue growing below: "It's only grown to the middle of your thigh, and there's still your knee and calf. The whole process will probably take another twenty minutes, depending on your recovery ability. If you can't hold on any longer, just say so, and I can reduce the intensity of the healing spell, at the cost of prolonging the process."

“No need to lower it.” Karen’s voice was forced out through clenched teeth, with a force almost like grinding steel nails. “Continue.” (End of Chapter)