Chapter Ninety-Eight: Fattened by Others

Within the magnetic seal field, Mu Hui was trembling all over, and the flesh on his body was slowly peeling away.

A chain of thoughts flashed through Shi Yan’s mind. He caught the key point at once and confirmed that the reason he had not been swept into the frenzy of negative emotions was entirely because Mu Hui’s soul martial spirit had kept launching attacks.

Deep in his heart, faint traces of brutality and bloodlust were also stirring and spreading, but those thoughts were no longer very strong. By virtue of his tenacious will, Shi Yan did not sink into a state of mad slaughter.

Having understood this, he felt at ease and silently began to circulate his vital essence on the ground.

No one knew how long had passed before the stabbing pain within his body’s acupoints suddenly intensified.

Amid searing agony, threads of exceptionally pure and strange power slowly flowed out from within the acupoints, transforming into streams of warmth that wandered through his body.

The essence and vitality of so many human realm martial artists, after being transformed, became remarkably substantial. Most of that strange power circulated through Shi Yan’s entire body, then vanished into the flesh, bones, meridians, and internal organs, while only a small portion gathered at the center of his sea of vital essence, causing that essence to become far more abundant and powerful than before.

Calm as a clear mirror, Shi Yan did not try to fathom the changes in his vital essence. Instead, he sank his mind into the flesh, bones, and meridians of his body.

He could clearly sense those wisps of mysterious power, as though they had become wondrous nourishment, silently nurturing his whole being in a way he could not comprehend.

At this moment, Shi Yan felt as if he were bathing in a mysterious hot spring. Every pore in his body relaxed and absorbed that marvelous nourishment. His body was quietly changing. Those mysterious powers roamed through his meridians, disappeared into his flesh and bones, took root in his internal organs, and settled within his skull.

After carefully sensing it, Shi Yan’s heart brightened.

It was not the Stone Soul Martial Spirit.

He immediately realized that the mysterious power nourishing his body was not the Stone Soul Martial Spirit.

It was the Undying Martial Spirit.

A sudden insight rose in his heart. Shi Yan abruptly opened his eyes and looked toward his right arm.

That right arm, which had been struck by the Nether Spirit Blade, bore a deep wound. Yet at this moment, the flesh inside the wound was slowly writhing, healing at a pace visible to the naked eye.

Flesh and meridians seemed to possess life.

Under Shi Yan’s gaze, the wound, nearly two centimeters deep, healed bit by bit. Flesh rejoined flesh, cells gathered together, and the wound slowly contracted into a line before finally disappearing altogether.

Ten minutes.

In only ten short minutes, that two-centimeter-deep wound had healed completely, leaving not the slightest trace.

Where the wound had been on his right arm, the skin was smooth as a mirror, without the faintest thread or hint of blood. It was as if he had never been injured ten minutes ago.

Shi Yan flexed his right arm and found that he could not detect even the slightest pain. There was no abnormality at all; it felt exactly the same as his left arm.

His eyes shone brilliantly, his face filled with uncontrollable joy.

Only ten minutes, and such a deep wound had recovered as before, without a trace of pain or discomfort. When had this Undying Martial Spirit become so formidable?

Shi Yan clearly remembered that in the past, his wounds had never healed this quickly.

In the past, even when a wound had healed, there would still be some faint discomfort and pain. It would take at least half a day before it could truly return to complete normality.

This time, only ten minutes had been needed.

The Undying Martial Spirit had advanced to the next stage.

After only a brief pause, Shi Yan immediately grasped the crucial point.

The miraculous advancement of the Stone Soul Martial Spirit reminded him, allowing him to realize that after absorbing so much essence and vitality, those strange powers had, just as they had treated the Stone Soul Martial Spirit, mysteriously catalyzed the Undying Martial Spirit as well, pushing it into a higher stage.

No wonder so much of that strange power had poured into the flesh, meridians, bones, and internal organs of his entire body. It turned out that this time, the mysterious nourishment had been given to the Undying Martial Spirit.

Everything was now clear.

Shi Yan’s face was alight with joy as he carefully felt the changes in his body. Only after a long while did he calm down and continue sitting there, circulating his vital essence.

The vital essence within his sea of qi had also absorbed a portion of that strange power. At this moment, under the changes of his thoughts, that much more abundant essence flowed slowly along the meridians throughout his body.

With each cycle of the great circulation, the purest cluster of essence within his sea of qi became a little more refined.

Gradually, that condensed essence body seemed to become a dazzling sphere. With each great circulation, the sphere shrank little by little, yet the power contained within it did not lessen; instead, it grew even stronger.

Shi Yan was delighted once more.

The changes in the essence sphere were precisely the special sign of a breakthrough from the first stage of the human realm to the second and third stages.

Starting from the first stage of the human realm, each time one broke through a minor realm, the volume of the essence sphere in the sea of qi would shrink accordingly, while the essence contained within it would become more powerful.

This was a process of tempering and refining.

Only by tempering and refining again and again could the impurities within the essence sphere be cleared away. Only then would the essence become ever purer, and the power it contained would naturally grow stronger as well.

Realizing that this was a fortunate chance for breaking through from the first stage of the human realm to the second, Shi Yan did not dare hesitate. He focused all his attention on urging his vital essence.

Again and again, he completed the great circulation, tempering his essence again and again, making the impurities within it fewer and fewer and causing it to become ever purer.

In that mysterious space, there was no concept of time.

No one knew how long had passed before the essence sphere in Shi Yan’s sea of qi slowly shrank from the size of a fist to about half that, now only as large as a peach.

Yet the richness of the essence within it was thirty percent stronger than before.

Not only that, but the refined essence now flowed through his body at nearly double the previous speed.

Under a shift of thought, a thread of essence emerged from his fingertip, dazzling in brilliant white light and extraordinarily radiant, with a faint crystalline hue as if it were some mysterious crystal.

Shi Yan’s expression was joyous. Looking at that strand of crystalline essence, the smile at the corners of his mouth slowly widened.

Human realm, second stage.

Shi Yan suddenly stood up, refreshed and invigorated, his whole body indescribably comfortable, as if his flesh and blood were filled with boundless force.

This time, the martial artists of the dark nether world had truly fattened him up. Not only had they brought his Undying Martial Spirit into a higher stage, they had also allowed him to take another step toward the ultimate edge of martial dao, advancing all the way into the second stage of the human realm.

The three acupoints of Divine Gate, Heaven Gate, and Dark City suddenly throbbed violently.

This time, the frequency of the dark beads’ pulses was much faster than before, and the summoning force from the stone statue’s heart had become even stronger.

His heart stirred. Shi Yan could not help but gaze toward the place where starlight gathered in the distance. He was shocked to discover that the starlight of the sky full of stars seemed to have become chaotic, drifting like fireflies in that region, yet no longer pouring into that mysterious place.

Something had changed.

Shi Yan frowned. From the abnormal movement of the dark beads in his chest and the unusual behavior of the starlight, he sensed that something was amiss.

The dark beads beat even more rapidly, as if urging him anxiously, urging him to hurry to that region. There, it seemed, some object was waiting for him with extreme urgency.

A thunderous roar carried across a thousand miles and still stubbornly reached him from there.

Suddenly, the three acupoints of Divine Gate, Heaven Gate, and Dark City in Shi Yan’s chest ached sharply, as though someone were hammering at his acupoints, making his whole body feel terribly uncomfortable.

Dare not delay, Shi Yan drew in a breath and hastened forward at full speed, flying like the wind toward that direction.