Chapter 599: Unexpected Failure, Encountering Li Baobao Again |
The instant the Five-Element tribulation qi detonated inside the Golden Body, tearing, burning, poisoning, flooding, crushing—different kinds of pain inflicted by the Five Elements surged into Xia Hong’s mind at once. He felt every nerve in his body being ripped apart, on the verge of fainting, even death.
Unlike before, logging, digging, resisting the cold, and even the recent Sun Manifestation breakthrough—all four previous breakthrough pains stayed at the physical level. The Battle Body Golden Body, to put it plainly, was Xia Hong’s soul body manifestation. This piercing pain that struck the depths of his soul was easily a hundred times worse than the previous ones.
“Ah.........”
Somewhere deep in Misty Marsh Forest, the wailing scream continued for who knew how long. Xia Hong’s whole body was caked with bloodied mud, writhing and rolling on the ground. His conscious awareness had already dimmed. The Battle Body Golden Body floating above him shrank from thirteen zhang at the start to just over one zhang, its aura no longer as mighty as before. Like his physical body, it had been ravaged by the tribulation qi and lay battered and listless.
The protective membrane on the Golden Body’s surface was riddled with holes; the Five-Element tribulation qi inside had even begun to leak out. If this had been a normal person, they would likely have given up on the breakthrough, torn the membrane open, and released the energy within.
But Xia Hong did not.
Even though his consciousness had nearly vanished, he clung to instinct and stubbornly held on, sealing the remaining intact membrane to prevent the tribulation qi from escaping. Correspondingly, the Golden Body kept being shredded by the tribulation qi, and the backlash slammed into his physical body—the bone-deep, soul-drilling pain never stopped.
Sizzle, sizzle....
After an unknown stretch of time, amid Xia Hong’s continuous screams, a faint abnormal sound suddenly mixed in. It came from inside the Golden Body, like a tiny flame beginning to sputter.
After that faint sound, the pain Xia Hong felt while writhing on the ground seemed to intensify even more. He lay with his belly facing up and his body arched backward at a grotesque angle. A plume of black smoke laced with fire shot from his mouth.
Crack!
The membrane over the Golden Body’s left chest—the location of the heart—split open.
With Xia Hong’s heightened screams, the torn membrane area began to turn translucent. A thread of flame glimmered behind the thin film.
Thump.........
That faint flame suddenly began to flicker rapidly, sometimes extinguishing, sometimes flaring. As that repetitive flicker continued, a heartbeat, like drumbeats, slowly rose in volume.
As the heartbeat grew louder and louder, Xia Hong’s previously listless Golden Body slowly rallied and began to expand. It quickly reached two zhang, then three zhang.... the expansion accelerated, and in a short while it exceeded ten zhang, continuing to swell.
It was curious: Xia Hong’s screams were enormous. Fortunately, in the Dark Realm, light and sound range were severely limited. If this had been the Ice Abyss, such noise might have been heard for tens of kilometers. Yet even such roaring screams couldn’t drown out the heartbeat inside his Golden Body.
Pulse..............
After an indeterminate length of time, the flame at the heart finally stopped its flicker after yet another extinguish-and-flare cycle. The tiny flame, only the size of a fingertip, remained motionless for several breaths, then suddenly surged, rising to three cun and illuminating the entire Golden Body a deep red.
At the same time, dense blood-colored threads began to sprout from the three-cun flame, rapidly spreading outward like bodily meridians. They extended in a spiderweb pattern and soon covered an area the size of a fist.
“Heart houses spirit, and the Five Elements assign fire to the heart. So the first organ my Golden Body must produce is the heart. Next I must direct all the tribulation qi to the heart to let it solidify quickly!”
Do not get me wrong—my own recovery hadn’t happened; I was still screaming. But just then, when the three-inch flame’s blood-colored threads spread to roughly a fist’s size, a sliver of clarity flashed through my pupils and my consciousness briefly returned.
Xia Hong dared not slack off. The bone-deep pain remained. To endure it, he bit his tongue hard. When his teeth sank in, he could feel his tongue being pierced halfway through.
If this were an ordinary person, that single bite would likely have killed them.
But I am not ordinary; I was in a precarious state, and my awareness actually sharpened.
“Heart houses spirit, and it also governs the tongue. Back when Dragon Flame’s disciples used the Flame Fusion Pill, they had people hold it on the tongue to activate it. Any sensation produced by the tongue can stimulate the heart. Keep biting, it’s useful!”
While Xia Hong gnawed desperately at his tongue, he steered the tribulation qi gathered in the Golden Body’s seven other organ regions into his right chest, pressing it down onto the nascent, not-yet-formed heart.
..........
The Metal, Wood, Water, Earth, and Fire tribulation qi surged in ferociously. The tender new organ was nearly wrecked by the onslaught.
Thankfully, it held!
That newborn heart, though still only the size of a fist, contained heart fire and nascent meridians. As massive tribulation qi flooded in, the meridians slowly produced meat buds. Those buds grew quickly and developed into flesh and blood. A complete heart was forming at high speed.
Huff....
The dense tribulation qi assault scattered Xia Hong’s awareness again. Just before slipping back into unconsciousness, he sensed the internal tribulation qi was insufficient. Gritting his teeth, he took out the second set of Five-Element Tribulation Qi Beads from the Yellow Mustard Bag and had the Golden Body rapidly absorb them, placing them into the corresponding five organ locations.
“This again... this breakthrough is going to kill me. If this doesn’t work, I absolutely can’t endure it—I’ll have to rely on the Sacred Cauldron to protect me...”
As Xia Hong detonated the second set of tribulation qi beads, he quickly produced the Sacred Cauldron from his body, set it in front of him, and then dove into it.
The Sacred Cauldron was already active, burning with a roaring blaze. Because it had been inside his body before, it had only affected his physical form. Now that Xia Hong jumped into the cauldron, his Golden Body was engulfed by the flames as well.
Sizzle sizzle sizzle.
The Golden Body—already back to thirteen zhang—was not destroyed by the cauldron’s fire. Instead, it began to swell at an outrageous speed.
Fourteen zhang... plus five... plus...
In less than a hundred breaths, Xia Hong’s Golden Body had expanded to thirty zhang, and it kept increasing.
Unfortunately, he could no longer see it.
Indeed, as the massive tribulation qi detonated, the flesh around the heart grew at incredible speed, but the pain intensified even more. Xia Hong’s awareness was swallowed again as a new round of screams began.
But this time, with the Sacred Cauldron’s flame supporting him, Xia Hong’s reactions were markedly better than before. As the pain intensified, he started beating the cauldron’s inner wall unconsciously, trying to dilute the agony the tribulation qi brought.
However, his punches grew ever faster and more frequent—what began as one punch every three breaths increased to three punches in one breath, then four, five, even eight, ten punches... until finally his fists became so dense that the cauldron’s echoes merged together and no one could tell how many blows he had struck.
The force behind his punches also grew. The shockwaves first spread for a dozen meters, then dozens, then over a hundred meters. By the time the punch count was indistinguishable, the farthest shockwave had reached three kilometers.
After a long time, Xia Hong’s fists came to an abrupt halt. The three-cun flame at his heart normalized. The outer portion of the newborn heart had already formed more than half; only a few blood fissures remained unhealed. With subsequent tribulation qi inflow, it would be only a matter of time.
“The Sacred Cauldron didn’t interfere from beginning to end. It can’t offset this pain with resources like before. That means the Sacred Cauldron isn’t omnipotent and has its limits. From now on, I’ll have to be careful when breaking through...”
The moment he stopped punching, Xia Hong’s consciousness fully returned. He sat cross-legged inside the cauldron, closed his eyes to observe the Golden Body, and watched the newborn heart—now only thirty to forty percent from completion. A hot light flared in his pupils despite his effort to suppress it.
Once the heart fully forms, the Tribulation Body will be established!
From then on, he and the top experts of Mo'ao Chuan’s Four Feudatories would be in the same realm. The key point: Chu Longteng, Cai Qianshan, Fu Wanhe, and Li Gangfeng were already three to four hundred years old; the eldest, Fu Wanhe, had even passed four hundred.
How old was he this year?
Adding the six years he’d spent in the Dark Realm, he was only thirty-nine—less than one-tenth of Fu Wanhe’s age.
He had plenty of time to push toward the Revered Form Realm, even higher. Including the Great Sage Realm the Six-Armed Evil Abomination mentioned earlier, one day he might very well reach it!
Xia Hong took a deep breath, tamped down the fiery feelings in his chest, and continued watching the heart’s growth.
“........”
However, after observing for a while, he quickly realized something was wrong.
The flame on his chest, originally three cun high, had now risen to nine cun. Correspondingly, the heart grown from that flame had swelled threefold—from fist-size to head-size.
Not only had it reached the size of a head, it was still expanding!
Xia Hong immediately ceased internal observation and shifted his attention outward. His expression froze.
“How did my Golden Body get so huge?”
He remembered clearly that at Sun Manifestation peak, his Battle Body Golden Body had been only thirteen zhang. After being ravaged by tribulation qi, it dwindled to just over one zhang. After surviving the hardest stage, it recovered to thirteen zhang.
So what was he seeing now?
His Battle Body Golden Body had swelled to over forty-three zhang!
“Opening organs in the Golden Body is for breaking through to the Tribulation Body. The cultivation process at the Tribulation Body revolves around the internal organs. Specifically, according to the Five Elements’ nurturing cycle, you must complete the remaining four organs. During this process, the Golden Body’s scale only grows with each newborn organ. In other words, including this breakthrough, there are only five opportunities.”
Recalling the descriptions he’d once read of Tribulation Body cultivators, Xia Hong looked at his forty-three-zhang Golden Body with both shock and a sliver of joy.
Of the Four Feudatories’ Tribulation Body cultivators whom he’d sparred with, he had seen only two with visible Golden Bodies: Chu Tianxu and Cai Qiuhu. Both were Second Transformation Tribulation Body cultivators—the former’s Golden Body was roughly thirty-five zhang, the latter slightly less at thirty zhang.
When he had been at Sun Manifestation peak, his Golden Body had been thirteen zhang. Now, breaking into the Tribulation Body, the first explosive growth had tripled his Golden Body.
No—more than tripled!
“Gulp....."
Xia Hong swallowed and watched the Golden Body continuing to expand. His expression grew increasingly excited. But as soon as he turned his attention back to the newborn heart, his excitement vanished.
A dramatic increase in Golden Body scale meant the organs were enlarging in sync. The fist-sized heart becoming head-sized required many times more tribulation qi energy.
“So, the two sets of tribulation qi beads I prepared still aren’t enough...”
Watching the tribulation qi energy inside the Golden Body thin out, a shadow crossed Xia Hong’s eyes. An inexplicable surge of anger rose within him.
“Of all places, I got stuck in the Dark Realm. There aren’t even Frost Beasts here, let alone Five Luminaries Realm beast emperors. This place is nothing but soul bodies. Where am I supposed to find tribulation qi beads? So this Tribulation Body breakthrough...”
This was a success, yet not fully a success!
After enduring six days—which equated to six years in the Ice Abyss—he reached the final step only to be undone by insufficient tribulation beads. Xia Hong’s inner vexation was obvious.
“My strength...”
He tried to force himself calm, but remembering the previous pain stoked his fury again. Clenching his fist tightly, he decided to test his own power.
With tribulation qi nearly exhausted, and no way to fully break through, he could only head to White Bone Mountain ahead of schedule.
He made a fist. He could feel abundant force inside, yet for some reason his mood refused to lift. Anger still simmered as he prepared to swing his fist forward.
“Got them!”
Before his punch left, a crisp voice called from the east. The interrupted Xia Hong’s brows knit tightly. Looking up, he saw two streaks of spiritual light speeding toward him.
Not only that—the two streaks were followed by a tremendous cluster of light points.
“Lord Xia, run!”
The Soul-Illuminating Lamp above Xia Hong’s head had been on the whole time; when they were far off he couldn't make out details, but as they closed to within a hundred meters, he recognized them. The two streaks of light were two women in white.
The first girl gave him a strange sense of familiarity, though Xia Hong was sure he’d never met her before.
As for the one behind her, he recognized her at a glance: it was Li Baobao, who had earlier stolen gold in the Dragon Palace and was the reason he had inexplicably come to the Dark Realm and been trapped for six years.
Behind the two of them, tens of thousands of spirit lights formed a gleaming army of soul bodies in armor. According to what the Six-Armed Evil Abomination had said earlier, soul bodies that can condense and wield underworld weapons and don underworld armor are Demon Soldiers—higher than Scattered Spirits by two levels. These were Dark Realm Demon Soldiers in massive numbers.
“You still dare to come after me!”
Xia Hong’s chest already boiled with anger. Seeing tens of thousands of Demon Soldiers brought here by Li Baobao and the other woman, his rage surged. He took the woman’s warning to run—meant to lure trouble eastward—as a perfidious feint.
“Get lost!”
Xia Hong didn’t waste words. He retracted the Sacred Cauldron, drew the Star Shattering Sword, slashed a river-of-stars blade toward the two women to slow them, then turned and ran without hesitation.
Even with the Tribulation Body breakthrough, he wouldn’t dare stand and fight tens of thousands of Demon Soldiers. He didn’t even know yet if he could, like Chu Tianxu or Cai Qiuhu, manifest his Battle Body and directly engage them.
So running was the only option.
As for the slash he made, it was meant to slow Li Baobao and the other woman. Xia Hong understood the logic: better to wound than to die.
Besides, those two women were troublemakers luring calamity eastward—hardly to be trusted.