Chương 134: Chapter 133: Dermatologist Needed

Body horror warning As soon as the pill entered his mouth, he could feel it dissolve into a bitter liquid. As he swallowed, he could feel the mix of liquid and partially solid pill move down through his chest. Even then, his cultivator's body was able to track the tingling sensation of the pill traveling through him. Yang wasn't sure if it was some kind of pill qi, the ingredients, or a mixture of both. He had braced himself for pain. So far, there was nothing. Just a slight tingling.

But as the minutes passed, he felt the tingling heat up, spreading outward from his core toward his skin, until suddenly it was as if every inch of his skin was being stretched from the inside. And then he felt it, the first truly unpleasant part, the disgusting sensation of something being pushed out through his stretched open pores. It felt slimy and irritating. He wiped a hand across his nose instinctively and brought it close to his eyes.

The substance coating his skin was an oily sludge and brownish, with darker and lighter flecks mixed into it. He turned his hand over and back. He raised both hands and noticed it was not just his face. His whole body was doing the same thing. He could feel the slipperiness most intensely in the soft areas where skin folded, under his arms, behind his knees, at every joint and crease where the body bent. Those areas were particularly bad.

The oily substance was collecting there, and the feeling was extremely irritating and made him want to peel himself out of his own skin. He was still trying to come to peace with this condition when he felt a sudden itchiness in his scalp and a sharp pain in his nails. He brought his hand to his face and noticed that his nails were visibly growing. The new nail pushed past the cuticle and lengthened slowly, barely a millimeter at a time, but obviously noticeable.

He could also see the hairs on his arms rising as the pores around each one widened and a dry ring of skin pushed out from the base of each hair, surrounding it like a tiny ring. Yang just watched this with an expression of pure horror. He was certain the same process was playing out across every hair on his entire body.

Yang, who was used to the painful sensation of beast cores, was not particularly bothered by the mild discomfort, but it was deeply unpleasant watching his skin ooze and push out whatever toxins his body had accumulated over his lifetime. He could feel as the tingling completely changed into itching. He kept his position but had to sit straight and stop resting his back against the wall. His nails continued to lengthen. By now, they were almost an inch long.

Then, instead of growing further, a new nail began pushing up from beneath, shoving the old one forward from the cuticle. He watched one old nail loosen and lift and felt the new smooth surface underneath it with something akin to revulsion. Ugh, his whole body felt itchy, and he resisted the urge to scratch himself everywhere like some kind of ape. He forgot the irritation entirely a moment later as extreme heat erupted across every inch of his skin simultaneously.

It did not come from outside but from underneath the skin itself, rising through the layers of his flesh, and he had to clench his jaw to stop himself from screaming as the skin of his hands reddened, and crack in real time before his eyes.

He watched the skin dry and curl and peel back from his hands and arms, pulling free in layers to show raw red skin beneath, but there was no relief because the moment it was exposed, the burning continued on the new surface, and it peeled again, and again, the cycle repeating itself over and over across every part of his body at once. Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. His vision began blurring. And then the burning reached his eyes. He screamed.

He could not help it anymore. He brought his hands to his face by pure reflex, pressing and rubbing his eyes, trying to find some relief, but there was none to be found, and the pressing made it worse. His eyes felt as though they were being boiled from the inside. He could feel a thick film forming over the surface of each eyeball, and the light began to fade as the film thickened until he could distinguish nothing. His ears filled shortly after, and he lost his hearing too.

Unlike the beast cores, which had brought quick agony and faster relief when he fainted from pain, Yang had to feel every moment of this first stage of the Molten Body Pill, blind and deaf. He didn't know how long it lasted. When the pain finally eased, he laid on his bed curled on his side, still unable to see or hear anything. He tried to shift position and found his whole body stiff, the joints reluctant, his movements reduced to careful inching and shuffling.

His first instinct was to bring his hands to his eyes. His heart was beating fast as he worried something had gone wrong. If the pain was over, why could he still not see? He raised his hands, and several loose nails dropped away as he touched his face, landing somewhere on the bed. He found his eyes crusted completely shut, sealed with what felt like layers of dried material plastered across both lids. He worked carefully, not knowing what was under it, and peeled the first layer.

Faint light came through from one eye. He took a shaking breath. He was not blind. He worked faster, cleaning away the crusted material from both eyes, and discovered that his eyelids themselves had shed layers through the process, and he had to remove those too. When the outer layers were gone, he could see blurrily, but he stayed calm as he could feel something coating the surface of each eyeball, a layer sitting directly against it.

He made sure his fingertips were clear of loose skin and old nail fragments, then carefully touched one eyeball directly and confirmed the layer was there. Thin, gel-like, slightly translucent. He worked his fingertip against the edge of it until he got purchase, pinched it between thumb and forefinger, and peeled it away. It came free in one clean piece. It felt weirdly satisfying. His right eye cleared at once. He looked around and found it was night outside, which explained why the light had seemed so dim.

He removed the membrane from the left eye and could finally see properly again. He looked at his hands and was struck silent. He looked horrific. He could probably pass for a monster. If this had been his first life, he would have been running to a dermatologist as if there was no tomorrow. His bed looked equally bad, and not wanting to remain on it a moment longer with a pile of his own shed skin, he stood up, and something solid dropped from him to the floor.

He bent to pick it up and winced at the full-body itchiness the movement stirred up, then held the object up and stared at it. It was the accumulated layers of shed nail, half an inch thick at least, all the old nails compressed together in a stack. He threw it down and went to the washing area. Standing beside the tub he began rubbing his arms and watched as thick dry flakes of skin came away in pieces, along with the tiny ring formations that had built up around each body hair during the process.

He ran his hand over the hair on his head already dreading what he would find and was not disappointed, he felt scaly, thick skin across his entire scalp. He removed what was left of his clothes. He worked through the rest of his body methodically, brushing away the loosest and easiest pieces first, then removing the more stubborn layers, and then carefully peeling the dry layers on his more sensitive areas.

He nearly fainted when the innermost final layer from one particularly sensitive area came away in a shape he had not been in any way prepared for. He took a comb and worked it slowly through his hair and across his scalp, dragging out large patches of dried and scaled skin section by section, running it through again and again until the worst was gone. It took more than two hours before he was satisfied he had removed the largest pieces.

Small flecks still clung here and there, stuck to the first oily layer that had come out of his pores, but the worst was done. He took an ear cleaning stick and cleared both ear canals, feeling the dried material scrape the sensitive skin as it came free. Sound returned properly as the last pieces were removed Small flecks remained stuck in places on his body where the initial discharge had acted as adhesive, but the large pieces were gone. He filled the tub using a watering technique and stepped in.

He dunked his head fully and held it under for as long as he could manage, letting the water soften what remained in his hair and scalp. Then he leaned back against the tub and let himself float for a moment as the remaining patches on his body loosened and the full-body itchiness finally began to ease. He reached for a washcloth and soap and began to scrub.