Myriad Rivers to the Sea

Liquid ash tore through Li Yu’s meridians and throughout his body. It was not a physical substance but a corrosive energy that sought to break down his cellular structure into base nothingness.

Li Yu was now terrified. A cold spike of fear pierced through the rising agony. He made a mistake. A fatal and arrogant mistake. He scolded himself ruthlessly. In the cultivation cosmos, assumptions led directly to death. He had let his guard down and took on this risk. He believed his foundation made him untouchable to poison and now he was paying the ultimate price.

He forced his trembling arms to push his torso up off the floor. He crossed his legs and settled into a rigid seated meditation posture on the jade dais. If he was going to die, he would die fighting the affliction. He closed his eyes and turned his entire focus inward.

The liquid ash surged through his pathways but as the initial violent shockwave subsided, Li Yu noticed a shift. The pain was blinding but it was not getting worse. A tense and volatile equilibrium was being reached within his body.

The Devouring Abyssal Leviathan Physique was consuming and adapting. It recognized the invasive as a threat and activated its defensive properties. The poison attempted to rot his flesh but his natural resistance held the line. The liquid ash gnawed at his bones and his physique generated a dense consuming energy that gnawed right back.

It was a brutal internal tug of war.

Li Yu monitored his soul. The toxin possessed a dual nature designed to rot the flesh and corrode the soul simultaneously. The soul portion of the toxin was actually its more lethal portion. He felt the spiritual aspect of the poison reach up toward his soul and was seeking to unravel his consciousness.

But it crashed against his natural Soul defensive barrier like water against an iron fortress.

The soul corroding effects that had so severely impacted Queen Calyptra did not impact Li Yu at all. His mind remained perfectly clear. The Koi Soul swam lazily within his internal ocean, the Fisherman continued to fish with the grandma serving him tea, Muddy was eating spiritual grass and the Whale Soul was who knows where. They were completely unbothered by the spiritual corrosion attempting to breach their domain. The liquid ash could only attack his physical portions.

He stayed sitting there for a full week. The royal recovery chamber remained completely silent. Queen Calyptra rested on the jade dais during this time as well, her breathing steady as she recovered from her near death state. The Nine Paths Moth curled up beside her, its dull silver eyes watching the human who had taken their burden.

Emperor Xerxis lingered near the heavy stone doors for the first few days. He was pacing with quiet but frantic steps. He was terrified that the Young Master was going to perish and doom them all to the wrath of the hidden experts. But eventually, the demands of ruling two newly conquered empires forced the Hive Emperor to step away.

Li Yu ignored the room entirely and had no idea what was even going on around him. His world was reduced to the battlefield of his own body.

His skin cycled endlessly between a sickly grey and a faint green. The dark purple veins bulged and receded with his heartbeat. But as the long days passed, his body slowly got more and more used to the liquid ash.

The Devouring Abyssal Leviathan Physique was not just fighting the poison; it was actively eating away at it and it was winning.

The physique broke the toxin down into its rawest components and integrated its destructive properties directly into his flesh and bone. The cycle was excruciating. A cluster of his cells would succumb to the liquid ash and die. Instantly, his physique's natural regeneration would trigger, flooding the dead zone with vibrant green Qi and forcing new cells to grow.

But the new cells were different. They were slightly tougher, forged with a fraction of the poison’s own corrosive essence built in. When the liquid ash bit into the new cells, they died slower.

He felt himself growing more resistant to the corrosive energy with every passing hour. The poison itself was getting weaker and weaker, its liquid ash consistency thinning out as his body devoured its essence and claimed its strength.

A full month passed.

Li Yu remained seated in the dark room and his focus was absolute and unwavering. He did not eat, sleep or speak. He simply processed the grueling cycle of destruction and regeneration occurring within his own flesh.

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The process was pure agony at first and then slowly died down. However, the entire process was an extremely valuable experience. Through the endless repetition of his flesh rotting and healing, Li Yu was gaining insights.

He gained insights into death and destruction. He watched the liquid ash bring death to his cells, realizing that death was not an end but a violent transition of energy. The poison broke complex structures down into base fuel.

He gained insights into life and rebirth. He watched his own physique’s regeneration and life laws take the leftover fuel of death and build stronger structures. Life was stubborn. Rebirth was the act of refusing to yield, returning from the ash with tougher armor.

He gained insights into poison, corrosion and decay. Decay was merely patience. Corrosion was the slow wearing down of defenses. Poison was a natural law that tested the boundaries of a physical vessel.

He gained insights into resilience and toughness. True toughness was not possessing an unbreakable shield. True toughness was the ability to endure the breaking, survive the pain and reform into something sharper and better than before.

On the thirtieth day, the final trace of the liquid ash was consumed.

The volatile energy within his body settled into absolute stillness. A profound clarity washed over his mind. The ambient Qi in the royal chamber suddenly rushed toward him, swirling around his seated form like a localized hurricane. His meridians were drinking in the dense energy to fill the void left by the eradicated poison. They were pulling from the sphere within his innerworld and fueling him.

A sharp cracking sound echoed from his center. His cultivation base surged forward. He broke through the bottleneck and advanced from the fourth level to the fifth level of Divine Transformation. The volume of his Qi multiplied and his physical vessel felt impossibly dense.

He finally opened his eyes. The agonizing pain was completely gone. He looked down at his hands. A thick layer of dead, ash colored skin was flaking off his arms and chest. He ran a hand over his arm and was wiping the dead layer away to reveal fresh skin beneath.

He felt like a snake shedding its old skin after a long and arduous winter. He looked around him and saw that it wasn’t the first time he had shedded his skin. It looked like it had happened a lot during this month.

He was a completely new being. His body had grown and adapted. He felt a deep and resonant certainty that if he took that exact poison into his body again, it wouldn’t impact him at all the next time. His physique had deciphered its composition and integrated its lethal properties into his own blood.

He was now truly immune to the liquid ash and probably many other kinds of poison. He made a mental note to test the waters a bit more next time though. Li Yu stood up. His joints popped with a crisp sound that echoed through the quiet chamber.

He looked over at the jade dais. The Queen and the Guardian Beast were gone. Most likely to go into another chamber to rest and recover with treasures. Li Yu turned and walked toward the heavy stone doors. He pushed them open and stepped out into the shadow wood corridor.

To his complete surprise, the hallway was not guarded by the elite moth assassins. Garrick was there.

The Great Sage was sitting on the floor and leaning back against the dark wall with his thick arms crossed over his broad chest. His spiked mace rested on the ground beside him. He looked up as the heavy stone doors opened and his sharp eyes scanned Li Yu from head to toe.

Li Yu paused. He had assumed Garrick was back in the Hive capital, drowning in endless nectar wine and beautiful women. Finding the giant brawler sitting in a dark and under repair palace corridor was a jarring sight.

"You came here?" Li Yu asked, his voice rough from a month of disuse.

Garrick let out a gruff snort and pushed himself up from the floor. He grabbed his mace and rested it on his metallic shoulder.

"I had to make sure you were okay, kid," Garrick grumbled but his tone lacked its usual booming cheer. "I could not exactly enjoy myself knowing you might croak at any second. If you die, I die. I can’t enjoy myself with that fact in my head."

Li Yu smiled faintly.

Garrick was entirely honest about his self preservation motives. He had spent the entire month sitting outside a quiet room and had sacrificed his extreme fun simply because his own survival was directly tied to Li Yu's pulse. He had acted as a deterrent, ensuring the paranoid moth generals did not interrupt the delicate recovery process.

Garrick walked over and gave Li Yu a firm pat on the shoulder. The heavy strike would have bruised a normal Divine Transformation cultivator but Li Yu’s newly refined body barely registered the impact.

"Good to see you are still breathing and kicking," Garrick said with a genuine look of relief passing over his rugged features. "Now that you are fine, I am leaving. I have an entire month of lost time to make up for. Xerxis owes me a mountain of prime meat and a dozen new dancing girls."

Without waiting for a reply, Garrick completely disappeared. He was clearly returning to the Hive Empire to resume his extreme indulgences. Li Yu shook his head but a wide smile touched his lips.

Regardless of his stated selfish reasons, Garrick was here when he needed him. The giant brawler had stood guard in a hostile alien capital for a full month just to ensure Li Yu was safe. In the ruthless cultivation world, actions mattered far more than words.

That was what mattered. Li Yu adjusted his dark cloak and walked down the dark corridor. He was ready to find the local guards and inform them that he was out.