"Uggh!" Gu Fan choked, gasping for air, only to inhale the acrid fumes of his own impurities. Tears streamed down his face, mixing with the grime.
"Did I write it to be so painful?" Gu Fan gasped, his body heaving dryly now, "Damn this body!"
The purge continued for hours, as he was emptying himself, hollowing out the vessel of "Gu Fan the Trash" of all the toxic to make room for something new.
And then, as suddenly as it had begun, the torrent finally slowed down and the river of fire in his veins cooled. The agony died down, leaving behind a dull ache in his body.
Gu Fan lay face down in the pool of black tar, panting.
[Ding!]
[Target Gu Ling: Breakthrough Successful.]
[Target Cultivation: 1st stage of Spirit Realm.]
Gu Fan didn't move for a long time, as he stared at the blue screen flickering in front of him, and silence returned to the dungeon.
"Finally!" Gu Fan muttered to himself, "The pain is over!"
[Ding!]
[System Alert: Host has acquired sufficient spiritual energy to breakthrough to the 2nd Stage]
[Entering the 2nd Stage of the Body Tempering Realm.]
[Evolution commencing in 3... 2... 1...]
"Ohhh! Damn!"
Gu Fan saw the notification in front of him and his butt cheeks could not help but clinch. He knew what was coming.
~~
"God! Please no more!" Slowly and shakily, Gu Fan placed his hands on the slippery, filth-covered floor below him and pushed his body to sit up.
While his body ached a little, he felt a surge of strength through his body.
He pushed himself up with frightening ease, his body feeling light, as if gravity had forgotten him.
He sat back on his heels, wiping the sludge from his face and his forearms.
And as he did, he looked down at himself in the dim light of the only dying torch in the corner of the room, his arms which were thin as a twig when he entered this crippled body were now lean and solid.
His skin was still pale like before but it did not look sickly or calloused anymore. The bruises were gone, and the scars from years of abuse had fainted or vanished, leaving smooth, unblemished skin.
As Gu Fan got on his feet and stood up, he didn't feel the slight tinge in his back. He stood to his full height, his spine straight as a spear.
Now that he stood like that, he felt taller, and his shoulders felt broader.
[Ding!]
The blue screen flickered to life, illuminating the hellish scene of the cell.
[Congratulations, Host.]
[Transformation Complete.]
[Host Cultivation: 2nd Stage of Body Tempering.]
[Host Strength: Equivalent to 5th Stage of Body Tempering]
[Anomaly Detected: Host possesses Creator Authority over 'Divine Poison Sovereign'.]
[Merging purged mortal toxins with Creator Authority...]
[Physique Awakened: Ancient Venom Physique (Tier 1)]
[Description: A physique born of toxicity and corruption. Your body is a vessel for all things poisonous.]
[Active: Corrosive Qi. When activated, your physical touch carries a latent corrosive effect.]
[Passive: Poison Immunity (High). You can consume poisons to restore Qi.]
[Passive: Venom Blood. Your blood is a lethal neurotoxin to those without resistance.]
[Current Stats]
Host: Gu Fan (Li Wei)
Cultivation: 2nd Stage of the Body Tempering Realm. (Comparable to the 5th Stage of the Body Tempering Realm).
Body Count: Nil
Harem: Nil
Parasite Hosts: 2
Active Quests: None
Random Spins: None
Inventory: Empty
Gu Fan looked at the stats in front of him and grinned.
"I am a 2nd stage Body tempering Cultivator" he whispered. His voice had changed too, "But I have the strength of a 5th Stage Body tempering Cultivator!"
"That means, I have the Protagonist aura!"
"So my breakthroughs are going to be harder and more solidified than others!" Gu Fan fell into a deep thought.
"But I absorbed all that Spirit Qi and only broke through the 2nd stage. This does not feel right. It can't be this hard."
"Am I missing something?"
"What about my Meridians?" Gu Fan's words echoed in the holding cell.
[DING!]
[Meridians Blockage: 99%]
"That solves the mystery," Gu Fan thought to himself.
"But what the fuck! All this energy absorbed and I only got 1% of my meridians unblocked. You fucking kidding me?" Thinking about the hellish pain he had to go through, Gu Fan felt like pulling his hair.
But he can do all that after getting out of here. His first point of action should be to leave before the guards came back.
Gu Fan mused as he looked up, but his mind started to imagine the scene above.
Gu Ling had successfully broken through to the 1st Stage of Spirit Realm. Along with the pride of Gu Chen she was another pride of the clan.
But only Gu Fan knew the truth.
The Spirit Qi assimilation from the Mana Gathering Array had been too much for her. She had been teetering on the edge of a catastrophic Qi Deviation.
She could have… It was not absolute, but with him, the anomaly of this world present, there was a chance that she could have failed and crippled her meridians by the backlash.
But she didn't.
You would ask why?
Because Gu Fan was there.
Like a leech, he had sucked away the excess Spirit Qi pressure in her meridians. He had drained the volatile overflow that would have killed her, using it to forge his own body.
He had saved her.
"But right now..." Gu Fan murmured, a mocking smile playing on his lips, "Right now, Gu Chen is probably standing next to her, looking noble".
He could picture it perfectly. Gu Chen, wiping the sweat from Gu Ling's forehead. Gu Ling, looking at him with gratitude, thinking his suppressive Qi was what stabilized her erratic flow.
"Brother Chen, you saved me," she would say.
"It was nothing, Sister Ling," he would reply, "How can I let disaster fall upon you."
"I merely guided the flow."
"Hahaha! The plot armour," Gu Fan spat the black slug residue in his mouth, "Lucky Gu Chen."
"But I don't mind. You take the credit, son. And I will take the pain... and the power."
"Because while you play hero in the light," Gu Fan whispered, "I will quietly survive and take over the whole clan."
[DING!]
[System Directive Updated]
[Directive: Escape the Dungeon.]
[Reward: 2 Random Spins]
"Oh! I am already getting such an easy quest!" Gu Fan muttered in amusement, "Then I must not waste time in this smelly dungeon."
As he tried to leave, his gaze fell on the puddle of black tar on the floor. It was smoking slightly, eating into the stone, "So this is the 'waste' that was clogging my body."
He stepped over the puddle, walked to the iron bars of the cell, and gripped two bars with his hands.
In his mind he thought of activating the Corrosive Qi, and just like that the cold metal bar felt fragile in his hand. He could feel the rust flaking off under his corrosive touch.
He released the iron bar. Four distinct fingerprints were etched into the metal, glowing faintly green as he watched the iron bars melt away slowly.
"Enjoy your glory, Gu Chen. Enjoy the applause. Enjoy the girl."
"Enjoy it all while you can!"