Chương 68: Chapter 67 – First Body Cultivation Breakthrough

Ren woke to a ravenous hunger. Every part of his body screamed out for nourishment, even drowning out the pain that wracked him. His vision was still blurry, but he forced himself to sit up. Above him the storm still raged on, so it couldn't have been very long. When he tried to get to his feet, Ren noticed just how thin his wrist was. Looking down, he saw just how emaciated he was, his body cannibalizing itself for nourishment.

The dread realization that he was still undergoing a body cultivation breakthrough pushed its way to the front of his mind. He urgently pulled out and stuffed some spirit beast meat into his mouth, but it was like trying to put out a fire with a drop of water. He needed more. As his mind fully roused itself, he remembered his preparations. He stumbled forward despite his body's protests, his ribs aching painfully, but he clenched his teeth and kept going.

He gave the metal staff a wide berth and finally reached the waiting medicinal bath. Fully dressed, he collapsed into it. The medicine started to work its way into his body, which was like a starving beast scenting blood. The healing energy started to get sucked in at a prodigious rate. He pulled out two more of the medicinal pills and dissolved them into the water. But that was just the beginning. He knew his body needed vitality and energy. And he had the perfect treasure to complement his breakthrough.

He pulled out the last snake egg. It had absorbed a tremendous amount of yang energy back when he had fixed his mountain array. Combined with the innate vitality of the egg, it would give his starving body all it needed. Not wanting to waste even a single part of it, he swallowed it whole. It was unpleasant, but he managed. Soon he felt a burning wave of energy emanate from his stomach. It grew and grew until it was scorching his insides. But his body had woken completely and was absorbing all of it.

With the power of the egg within and the medicinal energy outside, his body finally stopped eating itself and started to heal. Before his very eyes, his emaciated frame filled out and returned to normal. Then it continued to grow bulkier! He thought he detected a spark of lightning as his body purged the last of the impurities, but he couldn't be certain. Soon the pain started to convert into pleasurable sensations as his body started to break down and heal in continuous cycles.

He used the last of his medicinal pills to replenish the bath once more and floated in bliss even as his body twitched and trembled. When Ren finally woke, the bath had been completely drained of the medicinal energies, and the scorching flame in his stomach had burnt itself out. He tried to clamber out of the bath, but when his hands grasped the edges, he accidentally smashed a plank, letting all the water pour out! He gasped at his new strength and climbed out more carefully. He stood and examined himself fully.

His soaked robes had actually been burned in two places near his chest. And judging by their length, either they had shrunk or he had grown! He looked around his home closely and confirmed that it was indeed him that had grown taller. He pulled out dry clothes, and as he changed, he saw his body had mostly returned to his usual lean state and was only slightly more bulky than usual. But his taller frame felt far more balanced and powerful. He still had the fading scars where he had been struck by the lightning.

Ren shuddered when he recalled the unlucky coincidence. If he hadn't been in the midst of a body breakthrough, who knew just how deadly that lightning strike could have been?! If not outright killed, he would still have been severely injured for a while. He looked up and saw the clouds were already breaking apart to reveal the setting sun. It took him a few moments to let the panicked thoughts slowly fade. It occurred to him to look around and make sure the rest of his companions and home were still well.

The lightning storm had sent many of his tortoises seeking the dry warmth of his cave. He counted most of them there. The two water qi aligned tortoises he found safe outside near the blood pool. They had probably stayed out to enjoy the rain. That left only one unaccounted for, and he tried to suppress the growing dread that something terrible had happened. He frantically searched everywhere but couldn't find any trace of it. His breaths were coming in short bursts as the dark thoughts crowded his mind.

Then he stopped. There was one place he hadn't checked yet because of the sheer unlikeliness. He slowly approached the metal rod and, to his horror, spotted a dark figure almost directly beside the metal staff. He hesitated as he neared, but the staff no longer showed any signs of lightning. He reached out with a trembling hand to uncover the shell, only to receive a small shock! A spark leapt from the figure to his hand when he made contact, stinging his fingers.

The tortoise woke up and clambered out, shaking off the soil that covered it. Waves of relief were washing over Ren when it occurred to him just how odd it was that the little one had survived while staying directly below the lightning strike. He extended his divine sense to examine it, and the sensation of qi it gave off was charged and crackling. The unaligned tortoise had actually settled into a lightning qi alignment! It was another rare and unlikely alignment like yin or wind qi.

He concluded that like him using his body breakthrough to survive the lightning, the Myriad Path Tortoise had also resorted to its alignment to survive. If it had been staying near the metal staff, then it might have been close to settling into a metal qi alignment but instead settled into lightning, a second order qi attribute like wind. It looked unharmed, and its shell now had a pattern that looked like split lightning. Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

Whatever the reason, he was glad it had all turned out well. In truth the only damages were dozens of scorch marks and the patch of flowers he had landed on. They had all desiccated into dust, most likely because his body had been so starved it had tried to absorb energy from the surroundings. Even the metal rod had been positively affected. The lightning strike had actually served to fuse the thin layers of lunar silver ore into an even layer onto the staff.

Had he been capable of breaking apart the formation, the silver staff might have even served as an astounding weapon. Once his worries were quelled, he decided exploring his body's new strength could wait and went to rest. When Ren woke and cultivated the next morning, he meditated on whether this conflicting series of events of misfortune, followed by an opportunity, would soon come to an end. Since he had already severed the negative connection, he shouldn't be drawing in any more sin.

It was very scary to think just how much damage just one such connection could cause when refined by his cultivation, but it didn't deter Ren from wanting to keep building connections. He had already started to plan for the future when he made other such poor choices to develop karma with. Especially considering how connections could form by themselves, as they did during his last breakthrough. He needed to verify his theories still, but Karmic Cultivation was an esoteric path.

There were scarcely any records he could study. He had even absorbed all he could from Meditations on Karma, the book given to him by elder Yun Peng. He wanted to consult with him again, but as before, he wondered what he could bring to the elder to balance the debt he would surely incur. Uncertainty disturbed him enough that he decided to leave the decision for later. He gathered Yu Ran and placed it around his shoulders and neck and left his cave.

From this point forward, he would be practicing a new body cultivation manual, meaning he wouldn't be sleeping outside under the stars without preparing. He would have to set up new formations so he could cultivate his body under the stars without the prevalent elemental qi of his mountain infringing on the process. Absorbing more yin qi at night, which he no longer needed, without a way to get rid of it would quickly prove unhealthy and dangerous. His mountain looked lush and green after the previous day's rain.

He performed the sutra before the fields while Yu Ran clung desperately to avoid being thrown. After the first few times of being dislodged, the little snake had grown annoyed and nipped his ear. That first time, Ren thought he had been bitten and pumped full of venom and panicked, but the little snake was only acting out, not seeking to kill him. It hadn't been fun spending much of the day impressing upon the young snake just how dangerous it was to bite things unless it wanted to kill them.

At first he thought it either lacked venom or was too young to produce it, but he had underestimated the level of control the snake had over its bite. Because as he discovered later, the little one did have venom. One of the corpse silk moths had flown too close, and out of instinct, the tiny snake had lunged. It had been horrifying to watch the moth melt into a dark, foul-smelling mess within a breath. The loss of one moth was a worthy trade to learn just how deadly the venom could be.

At that very moment he had resolved to show Yu Ran to Mei Ling so she could help him come up with an antidote. But allowing the snake to continue riding on his shoulders was helping them build trust, so he didn't stop doing that. Ren continued on with his morning errands as he looked over his mountain peak. Another batch of the Mutating Bamboo was nearing maturity. That had turned out to be one of his best purchases.

The quick-growing spirit plant could grow to maturity in a little over a month, and since he started to use one as a parent plant and transplanted the shoots it sent out, he had started to really pick up the pace. His sword array was perfectly suited to using up to 108 blades, and he was far from reaching those numbers. In fact refining the swords before he could use them was difficult enough to find time for.

But it was well worth the effort as Ren started to really expand his capabilities with the Turning Seasons Sword Array Technique. He looked forward to sparring with Bao Hua when he returned and displaying his new might! As he continued his examination, he noticed a change in the cocoons of the corpse silk moths. The caterpillars had grown fat on the leaves of the Ghost Face Tree and, once ready, finally spun their cocoons. Within another few months, he would finally be able to harvest the silk.

As for why he had to wait so long? Cultivators had long since figured out better ways to harvest silk. Ren had learned one such method from the Intermediate Insect Control manual. Instead of killing the transforming creatures using boiling water, he needed to wait until the transformation was complete. Then in that brief period between the completed growth and the emergence, he would strengthen the silk thread and unspool it with his qi.

It would allow for a single unbroken silk strand and an unharmed moth to emerge! On Ren's part, it would require watchfulness to identify the right moment. Then he needed to act swiftly to unspool all the cocoons before the moths within harmed themselves trying to break out of the strengthened cocoons. It would be a fine line to walk, requiring delicate control over his qi.

Practicing the sword array helped, but Ren was prepared to practice on a few underdeveloped cocoons if it would ensure the majority of them were successfully harvested. Once he was done with his errands, Ren settled to work on compiling his notes on herb growing and formations into books. It was something he would work on irregularly, but he was close to finished anyway. Since he planned to release them in the outer sect as well, he had made revised versions of his older books.

With his foundations being far stronger and with his incisive insights, he could instruct more capably while keeping the language simple and easy to comprehend. He finally stopped around midday and decided to go on an adventurous hunt to test his body's new limits. As he prepared to leave, he felt a small force persistently nudging his foot. He sighed and smiled as he scooped up the tortoise now waggling its legs in the air. Placing it on his head, he wondered when he had become a conveyance for adorable beasts.

After the hunt he had intended to go to the inner sect to study and pick a few new techniques, but if the little one was insisting, he didn't have the heart to refuse. He would just have to smuggle it into the inner sect! He laughed at the image as he took off.