Chapter 128: The Metamorphosis of the Inner Realm (Two Chapters Combined)

As the dream slowly consumed them, the old men’s already feeble souls soon dwindled to their final wisps of vitality, ending in complete spiritual dispersal.

Without the Buddha light sustaining the body of his First Life, Liaowu was no different from an ordinary man. His soul and consciousness, however, had been cultivated over several centuries. Even grievously wounded, he was far beyond the ability of any mortal to withstand.

Huang Su’s idea had been excellent. Against anyone else, it might truly have offered a sliver of hope. But against a Buddhist cultivator who had attained the First Fruit, such methods were far too simplistic.

In a sense, however, he had already succeeded. At the very least, within this hot spring, their bodies could remain vigorous indefinitely.

Perhaps because of his overwhelming unwillingness to accept defeat, Huang Su had barely managed to retain a fragment of consciousness. Yet under the searing flames of Yin Fire, his ambitions and aspirations were reduced to ashes.

Zhou Bai was slightly astonished. As he digested the memories, another martial art appeared on the system panel.

“Imperial Medical Classic of Universal Treasure.”

This medical art, written through Huang Su’s lifelong efforts, had actually been recognized by the system through the memories he had absorbed.

Zhou Bai gave a bitter smile. Unless he took someone’s life, it was difficult to obtain their memories intact. Was this, in effect, forcing him to devour people in order to cultivate?

He was still wary of killing people and absorbing their memories at will. Attracting the attention of others was one concern, but more importantly, he feared that wanton slaughter might cause him to lose control and suffer cultivation deviation in the True Soul realm.

Besides, he found it difficult to treat human lives as worthless, even though he possessed power far beyond that of ordinary people.

Still, this was another way to acquire martial arts and techniques. If someone was his enemy, Zhou Bai had no objection to burning them to ash with Yin Fire.

He came before the First Life clone and drew his Tang saber, driving it straight through the glabella and into the skull.

The body, though already bereft of consciousness, felt the pain and began struggling. Unfortunately, every inch of it was bound by iron chains.

The old men beside him wore pained expressions as well. Zhou Bai had no intention of torturing them. Once he sent Yin Fire along the blade and into the skull, the First Life clone was engulfed in ghastly white flames.

His eyes flew open, and his former confusion vanished. He fixed Zhou Bai with a furious stare.

“How dare you kill me? Do you know who I am—”

It seemed that he had reached the end of his life. Liaowu had barely recovered a trace of reason, but Zhou Bai’s expression remained impassive. A mocking smile touched the corners of his lips.

“Tell me in your next life.”

“Oh, I forgot. You won’t live to see another one.”

The power of the Yin Fire abruptly intensified. After several breaths, the corpse had been reduced to ashes. The other old men immediately exhausted the last of their vitality. Their souls had long since perished, and Zhou Bai found no memories within them.

He climbed out of the hot spring and sat cross-legged on the ground, carefully searching through the First Life memories for anything useful.

Because of the calamity, the other two clones were both in the three towns of Xu Prefecture, which saved Zhou Bai the trouble of traveling far. The Second Life was still manageable, but the Third Life was somewhat special, and even he would not be able to deal with it easily.

These, however, were only minor problems. As Zhou Bai digested Liaowu’s memories, the man’s identity gradually surfaced.

He was actually a member of the White Lotus Sect, and judging by his status, he might rank far higher than the corpse Zhou Bai had encountered before.

The memories were still excessively chaotic, however, and even seemed to be sealed away. Zhou Bai could glimpse only a fraction of them. The method for rapidly attaining a fruit position was probably hidden within the other two clones.

He already had a vague premonition that the matter must be closely connected to the White Lotus Sect.

Thinking back, the corpse he had encountered earlier in Hangdu might also have been related to Buddhist cultivation. But its original body had already been destroyed, and the truth was now impossible to know.

Zhou Bai tidied up, then burned the old men’s corpses together into ash, lest they transform into ghosts or corpses after lying there too long. He then retraced his route through the cavern.

The death of the First Life clone could buy him at least a month or two. He was in no great hurry now, and planned to undergo his demon-path heavenly tribulation.

With A-Huang at his side, Zhou Bai passed through the waterway and climbed out of the well once more. By then, it was broad daylight on the following day.

The lean horse was grazing on weeds in the distance. The moment it saw him, it rushed over and rubbed its head against him.

Zhou Bai stroked the lean horse and surveyed his surroundings. Inwardly, he murmured, Just as I thought.

Compared with the day before, the vegetation was indeed slightly denser, though the difference was not obvious. Before the calamity had ended, the whole of Xu Prefecture had probably looked different from one day to the next.

He had no intention of searching for another place to undergo the heavenly tribulation. Although finding something resembling a Yin meridian could increase his chances of success, doing so would take far too much time and effort.

Besides, Zhou Bai had already survived the ghost-path heavenly tribulation. Facing the demon-path tribulation should not pose too great a problem. At the very least, he was fully prepared in both experience and strength.

Nor did he intend to arrange the formation himself. The Ghost Tree could handle that without troubling him.

Perhaps because plants were naturally absolutely calm and precise, the Ghost Tree possessed a remarkable talent for formations.

Zhou Bai found a somewhat open patch of ground and released the Ghost Tree. Through their mental connection, he conveyed everything related to the heavenly tribulation formation.

The Ghost Tree stood still and pondered for a moment, then extended countless roots to sort through the spiritual materials. It began planning the layout of the valley so that the materials could later be placed in their proper positions with greater efficiency.

Zhou Bai sat down to meditate and prepare. As with the ghost path, the demon-path heavenly tribulation was best faced at night.

Moonlight served as a medium for demonic aura. Although it did not amplify it as dramatically as Yin energy rose at night, it still increased its power considerably.

Moreover, he had expended a great deal of energy in the cavern. This gave him the perfect opportunity to recover while advancing the medical art he had just obtained to the level of a divine ability.

He invested the necessary points, and, as expected, it became a human-path divine ability called Self-Healing. Its effect was to consume his own vitality in order to rapidly heal his injuries or those of others.

If too much vitality was consumed, his lifespan would be shortened, though medicinal power could be used as a substitute.

For Zhou Bai, this was also a swift way to digest the Tiger-Dragon Bone-Strengthening Wine, and it provided a considerable boost to his ability to protect himself.

He could clearly sense that the human-path divine abilities were far more useful than the variant divine abilities. After reaching the True Body realm, the variant divine abilities had shifted from being his primary means of combat to secondary techniques.

Perhaps after several more advancements, the variant abilities would undergo an obvious transformation and gain a substantial increase in power. But the auxiliary functions of the human-path abilities were useful in every aspect of life.

Of course, only children were forced to choose. Zhou Bai wanted everything. As long as he had enough points, he would advance them all together.

He advanced the human-path divine ability Self-Healing once more. It soon responded, and the runes of the ability transformed within his lower dantian into a sika deer.

Its entire body was milky white, patterned with flecks of blue-green. Clusters of lingzhi mushrooms grew from its antlers. In terms of appearance, it was utterly unique within the small world of his dantian.

Zhou Bai did not stop. He intended to continue advancing his human-path divine abilities. From the advancement of the Fundamental Art, he had already seen that the third level, the fifth level, and every other level of that pattern brought the most obvious improvements.

He now possessed six human-path divine abilities in total. Advancing all of them to the third level would cost less than three hundred points, a burden he could still bear.

As one divine ability after another advanced, Zhou Bai suddenly trembled from head to toe. A mysterious sensation surged into his heart, and profound changes emerged from within and spread outward.

Countless runes appeared across his skin, flickering in and out of sight.

The small world within his dantian also began to shake violently. As the runes faded from his skin, an inexplicable aura gradually filled his dantian, like withered wood returning to life.

Zhou Bai quickly realized that something was wrong. The absolute control he had previously possessed over his lower dantian had vanished.

He felt as though an unfamiliar organ had appeared inside his body.

He tried to look within himself. The outer wall of his dantian seemed to be covered by a thin membrane, making it impossible to see through.

The Salted Fish and the Ghost Tree were both outside. Zhou Bai tried to draw them into his dantian, but there was still no response. It was as though some kind of transformation was taking place within.

He waited uneasily for a long while. After roughly the time it took for a stick of incense to burn, his lower dantian gradually regained its senses.

Zhou Bai immediately looked inside. Everything seemed unchanged. Water still flowed around the solitary island, but the life forms created by his human-path divine abilities were nowhere to be seen.

Demonic aura stirred the water into waves, while Yin energy settled into the soil.

Yet for some reason, he felt that an imperceptible change had taken place.

Zhou Bai could still control his dantian, but he discovered that he could no longer drive all the water and soil out of it as he once had.

As time passed, the human-path divine abilities appeared one after another.

The Blade-Nurturing ability emerged first. Once it reached the third level, the runes composing it had become more than twice as complex. They were so densely packed that merely looking at them made his head ache.

Then a bladefish appeared. Its exterior was no different from before, yet Zhou Bai sensed that it had become far more like a real living creature.

The bladefish merged into the water and began to swim. The current grew more lively because of it, and then the entire dantian began to expand.

Unlike the Ghost Tree’s forceful expansion, this time it was more like a storage pouch creating an independent space within itself.

The small pond grew broader and broader, becoming several times larger than before. Only a thin layer of water remained within it.

Zhou Bai drew the Salted Fish back into his dantian and ordered it to spit out a vast quantity of water. It took considerable time to raise the water level again.

The Ghost Tree also set aside its work arranging the spirit formation and voluntarily transformed into a beam of spiritual light, returning to the small world within his dantian.

It released an enormous amount of Yin energy, giving rise to Yin soil and causing the island to expand as well.

Next came Curse-Killing, which took the form of a hornet’s nest. As the dantian expanded once more, a faint chill swept through it. Before this, the small world had been nothing but a stagnant pool.

Once White-Worm Wine Refinement and Butterfly Disguise merged into it, Zhou Bai suddenly felt his heart jolt. To his immense astonishment, the small world had developed an independent flow of time.

It was roughly one ten-thousandth faster than the outside world. The difference was slight, but it represented a genuine, invisible change.

The tortoise-shaped Meridian Shifting ability gently descended onto the island. The moment it stepped onto the ground, Yin energy gathered of its own accord and slowly flowed toward the center of the island.

The black Yin soil turned yellowish brown as all the Yin energy concentrated beneath the island, forming a miniature Yin meridian.

The Yin meridian was only as thick as a forearm. Ordinary miniature Yin meridians in the outside world were at least dozens of meters long.

Even so, from that moment onward, the Yin energy within the small world no longer needed the Ghost Tree to maintain it. The meridian would naturally absorb and release Yin energy, and the Ghost Tree would benefit from it as well.

Finally came Self-Healing. The moment the white deer appeared, it radiated a faint green light and stood atop the highest point of the island.

The lingzhi mushrooms fell from its antlers. Before they could reach the ground, they transformed into green energy and merged into the dantian, causing a light rain to fall within it.

The rainwater flowed not only into the pond, but also into the soil. The vitality contained within the small world grew even stronger.

Zhou Bai had not expected such a development. With a thought, he casually plucked several blades of grass.

In the next instant, the weeds were planted on the island, and even after a short while, they showed no sign of withering.

The small world within his dantian could now support ordinary grass and trees, though spiritual materials still could not be stored inside.

Zhou Bai remained astonished and uncertain about the changes in his body, but he soon accepted them. Under the system’s influence, any kind of transformation could be considered normal.

The mountains had no shortage of vegetation, so he began gathering large quantities of weeds from the surrounding area and storing them in his dantian. He even found two wild peach trees to plant there, and tossed some aquatic algae from the well into the small world as well.

At this rate, the entire small world would soon take on a proper appearance. If he could one day grow spiritual materials inside it, Zhou Bai could open an herb garden there. Having the Ghost Tree manage it would not be impossible.

The changes in his dantian were, in truth, inseparable from the advancement of his human-path divine abilities.

The variant divine abilities were integrated into his two life-bound treasures, which was why their advancements manifested in the Salted Fish and the Ghost Tree.

The human-path divine abilities, on the other hand, were integrated into Zhou Bai’s dantian. Their advancement therefore caused the dantian itself to undergo a miraculous transformation.

In addition, every divine ability had improved tremendously.

The blade intent accumulated by Blade-Nurturing would no longer be completely depleted when Zhou Bai drew his saber. Each draw would consume only about a quarter of it.

Curse-Killing was no longer limited to eating meat. Even when Zhou Bai drank alcohol in his daily life, it would accumulate characters, and the rate of accumulation had increased considerably.

Disguise could now conceal the aura around his body, preventing others from seeing through Zhou Bai’s cultivation. This was effective only against those below the True Soul realm, however, and certain divine abilities, such as Eyes of Yin and Yang, could still penetrate it.

Meridian Shifting could gather Yin energy and form an acquired Yin meridian. Although this had been achieved with ease within his dantian, the difficulty increased more than tenfold in the outside world, so Zhou Bai had no intention of attempting it lightly.

The changes to Self-Healing were the most unusual. From now on, Zhou Bai would no longer consume excess vital essence in his daily life. It was somewhat like the Daoist concept of a body without leaks.

Put simply, the human body was like a porcelain bowl riddled with cracks. A body without leaks was one in which every crack had been sealed.

From then on, Zhou Bai would need only two or three hours of sleep each day to recover his energy. And barring unforeseen circumstances, he could continue living until he reached the absolute limit of his natural lifespan.