A muffled, agonizing scream erupted from Lican's throat, sending a violent plume of bubbles tearing through the boiling jade water. The pain surpassed anything he had ever experienced. It felt as though a thousand spectral blacksmiths had crawled inside his flesh, wielding white-hot hammers to systematically smash his skeleton into powder. Every strike reverberated through his body, leaving him trembling beneath the turbulent surface as the jade water churned around him.
This was no ordinary recovery. It was a forced physical evolution.
Lican's body was far too weak to contain the raw, unrefined sea of Spiritual Essence he had plunged into. The medicinal energy had detected the limitations of his flesh, and rather than allowing his soul to burst beneath the pressure, it began to tear his body apart and rebuild it from the foundation up.
Crack!
Snap!
Shatter!
Beneath his skin, his bones fractured one after another. Before the fragments could settle, the flower's medicinal energy surged forward, devouring his old, fragile bone marrow and replacing it with a glowing, crystalline structure. The transformation spread through his skeleton like a wildfire, leaving no bone untouched. Each fracture was followed by an unbearable surge of heat as the new structure formed, stronger and denser than the mortal framework it replaced.
At the same time, the rampaging Qi left behind by the beast met its end. The sheer volume of Spiritual Essence in the pool overwhelmed it, crushing its violent remnants into emerald-green shards of energy. They tore through Lican's muscle fibres as they were forcefully driven out of his cells, leaving his flesh twitching uncontrollably beneath the surface.
His body had become a battlefield, and the medicinal energy showed no mercy to the very flesh it was trying to save.
Then his skin began to split.
Thin cracks spread across his body, peeling away layers of dead tissue like the shedding scales of an ancient dragon. Crimson blood seeped from his pores, curling through the jade water in long, twisting ribbons. The clear pool gradually turned a deep, ominous violet as blood mingled with the countless impurities being expelled from his body. Corrupted beast poison, accumulated filth, and the weaknesses embedded in his mortal flesh were dragged out with it.
The water bubbled violently around him. Wisps of steam rose from his exposed skin, and beneath the churning surface, faint flashes of green light flickered through the blood-stained pool.
Yet the transformation was far from over.
The overwhelming energy coursing through his body suddenly changed direction. Rather than spreading evenly through his flesh, it converged toward his lower abdomen, gathering there with terrifying intensity.
Then it struck.
The impact felt as though an invisible hammer had slammed into something buried deep inside him.
"Cough!"
Lican spat out a mouthful of blood. The crimson liquid dispersed through the water, but he barely noticed it. His entire body convulsed as another wave of energy crashed against the obstruction inside his lower abdomen.
What was it hitting?
The energy struck again, showing no concern for the fragile body that contained it. Each impact sent violent tremors through his stomach, forcing him to curl inward as the pressure threatened to tear him apart from within.
The energy could not pass through whatever was blocking its path. Instead, the immense force compressed against the obstruction until the surging current began to split apart, branching into countless smaller streams that scattered throughout his body.
They rushed into his veins and tendons, forcing their way through every narrow passage they encountered. Some streams collided with the energy already circulating inside him, while others tore through his flesh with enough force to make his limbs jerk violently.
"Ahhh!"
Lican's scream escaped as a cloud of bubbles, his voice swallowed by the boiling water.
His eyes had turned bloodshot, and his teeth sank into his tongue until blood filled his mouth. He tried to endure it, tried to hold himself together, but the pain was too immense. A tear slipped from the corner of his eye, tracing a path down his bloodstained cheek before disappearing into the jade pool.
He had never experienced anything like this.
Then, amid the agony, he remembered.
His meridians.
Even a child who had taken the first steps toward cultivation knew what meridians were. They formed a network of channels throughout the body, carrying spiritual energy to where it was needed. Like the branches of a tree or the intricate veins beneath a leaf, they connected the body into a single functioning whole.
But Lican's meridians had never been particularly strong. They were narrow, fragile channels, poorly suited to the tremendous volume of energy now flooding through him.
The scattered streams were tearing through those very channels.
Then—
Tear!
The faint sound reached his ears.
It was so small that, under any other circumstances, he might never have noticed it. Yet to Lican, it was more horrifying than the cracking of his bones.
His spiritual meridians were tearing apart.
The pressure had become too great. Their delicate walls could no longer contain the surging Spiritual Essence, and one after another, they split open. But instead of allowing them to collapse, the medicinal energy flooded into the ruptures, forcing the torn channels to expand before sealing them anew.
His meridians widened to nearly three times their original size.
Their former smooth, delicate appearance vanished, replaced by rougher, thicker channels that looked as though they had been carved through stone and reforged in fire. The medicinal energy continued to wash through them, strengthening their walls and reinforcing their structure until they could withstand a volume of energy that would previously have torn them apart.
It was a brutal reconstruction.
Every expansion brought another wave of pain, but each healed rupture left behind something stronger than what had existed before. His meridians were no longer the fragile passages of an ordinary mortal. They were being rebuilt into resilient channels capable of carrying a tidal wave of Spiritual Essence.
Gradually, the relentless pounding began to subside.
The violent currents coursing through his body slowed, and the medicinal energy that had once rampaged through his flesh began to settle into a more harmonious rhythm. The unbearable heat remained, but it no longer felt as though a thousand hammers were trying to pulverize him.
Instead, the warmth spread beneath his newly formed skin, settling into the crystalline bones and widened meridians.
The jade pool continued to bubble around him, its surface obscured by thick curtains of steam. Crimson and violet currents drifted through the water, swirling around the small, motionless figure floating at its centre. His old skin had peeled away, exposing the reddish inner layer beneath, which glimmered faintly whenever the light caught it.
Above the pool, steam rose in twisting columns before disappearing into the darkness of the cave. Droplets gathered along the uneven ceiling and fell at irregular intervals, striking the water with soft plinks that echoed through the otherwise silent chamber.
The cave had returned to stillness.
Only the occasional bubble breaking against Lican's body disturbed the surface, and the faint glow beneath his skin revealed that the transformation had not entirely ended.
His eyelids began to droop.
The pain had drained him of nearly everything. His limbs hung motionless in the water, and his breathing became so faint that it was almost impossible to distinguish from the bubbling of the pool.
At last, Lican's eyes closed.
But he did not fall into darkness.
Instead, he found himself standing within his soul space.
The familiar, mysterious Buddha stood before him, its immense presence filling the strange expanse. Its unusual eyes were closed, and its lips moved slowly, releasing a voice that seemed to resonate through the very foundations of his soul.
"Vanquish the demon, or be the demon!"
"Merciful is He, yet ruthless are You!"
"As your suffering birthed peace, let your pain birth freedom!"
"The world shatters; the Golden Heart awakens!"
With each line, golden runes and ancient symbols emerged around the Buddha. They spiralled through the air, forming intricate patterns that illuminated the darkness of the soul space. Their shapes were unlike the ordinary inscriptions Lican had encountered. Each symbol carried an indescribable weight, as though it contained a fragment of a truth far beyond his understanding.
The final words faded.
The golden runes suddenly surged forward, shooting out of the soul space and plunging toward his corporeal body.
BANG!
Lican felt as though he had been struck by an invisible hammer.
His consciousness lurched, and the world around him shattered.
When his vision returned, he was no longer in the cave.
He stood in the middle of a battlefield.
The air reeked of blood, sweat, and freshly overturned earth. Dust rolled across the ground in thick clouds, obscuring the distant figures locked in combat. The clash of weapons rang through the air, accompanied by the screams of wounded men and the furious shouts of those still fighting. Bodies lay scattered across the trampled earth, some motionless, others twitching as blood seeped into the soil beneath them.
Steel flashed through the haze.
Men in battered armour fought desperately among overturned carts and shattered crates, their weapons colliding with enough force to send sparks flying. Splintered wood littered the ground, and the remains of torn banners fluttered weakly in the hot wind. Beyond the fighting, several loaded wagons stood surrounded by armed guards, their wheels half-buried in churned mud.
"Don't let those bastard bandits get to the goods!" a man roared.
The voice cut through the chaos with such force that Lican instinctively turned toward it.
His eyes widened.
A large man stood amid the carnage, his long hair flowing behind him as he strode through the battlefield. He appeared to be in his late twenties, with copper-coloured skin stretched over a powerful frame. His muscles rippled beneath his clothing, and the sunlight glinted off the sweat coating his broad shoulders. There was an unmistakable pride in his sharply defined brows, but beneath it lay something far more ruthless.
His eyes held no hesitation.
In his hands, he gripped a great sword almost as tall as he was. Its broad blade reflected the sunlight in a cold, merciless gleam, and the earth beneath his feet trembled as he shifted his weight.
"Motherfuckers!"
The man bellowed and swung.
His great sword swept through the air, generating a violent gust that tore through the dust surrounding him. Loose stones skittered across the ground, and the robes of nearby fighters snapped in the sudden pressure. The blade descended with terrifying speed, its edge cutting through the haze.
SHRIIK!
The sound of steel slicing through flesh was sickeningly clear.
A fully grown man was cleaved in two.
For a brief moment, the severed halves remained upright, as though the body had yet to understand what had happened. Then crimson blood erupted from the wound, spraying across the ground and spattering the great sword as the two halves collapsed in opposite directions.
The copper-skinned man barely glanced at the corpse.
"Weak cunts."
He lowered his blade, allowing its edge to strike the earth with a heavy thud. Blood slid down the steel and dripped from its tip, darkening the soil beneath him.
Lican stood frozen.
The battlefield continued to rage around him, but the sounds seemed to recede into the distance. He could no longer hear the clanging weapons or the cries of dying men. His attention remained fixed on the man holding the great sword.
His lips trembled.
His eyes widened until they began to water, and a name struggled to escape his throat.
"D-Da…d…?"
The word came out broken, barely more than a stammer.
He stared at the large man, unable to believe what he was seeing.
His father.