Chapter 234 - The End of Body Refinement and Beyond
Su Bai did not immediately continue pushing his Qi cultivation after reaching Golden Core Ninth Stage.
For an ordinary cultivator, reaching this point would mean preparing for the final accumulation before attempting Nascent Soul. Su Bai had considered it as well, but the thought disappeared almost as soon as it appeared.
His Golden Core had never been normal. His physical body itself had become part of the greater Golden Core structure.
If a normal cultivator transformed the Golden Core into the foundation of a Nascent Soul, Su Bai could not even predict what his own breakthrough would do.
Experimenting with that inside the Fallen-Star Sanctuary would be reckless even by his standards.
More importantly, the amount of refined Qi required for every advancement had risen enormously.
The Myriad-Path Meridian Web could absorb Ashen-Blood Miasma at a terrifying speed, and the Infinite Dantian had no shortage of space, but absorption was no longer the problem. The Black-Ice Golden Core demanded increasingly greater quantities of refined Qi before its density would change again.
Even the miasma throughout this part of Layer Two was beginning to feel insufficient.
Su Bai therefore stopped forcing the issue.
There was another path he could improve first.
His body.
The ancient weapons soon discovered that this decision involved them.
Su Bai sat among the ruins while the saber, hammer, bow, and several younger artifact spirits surrounded him. Needle-shaped streams of Qi continuously flowed from his body and entered the weapons, replenishing the power they spent while releasing their spiritual pressure toward him.
The hammer contributed the most.
Its oppressive artifact pressure descended steadily upon Su Bai, while the saber occasionally added its own sharp spiritual suppression from another direction. The bow was subtler, concentrating its pressure into narrower areas that made maintaining circulation considerably more difficult.
Su Bai endured all of it while circulating the Calamity-Reversal War Body Scripture.
Hostile spiritual pressure entered his cultivation and began working against his circulation. The moment those effects became harmful, Reversal transformed them, and the body scripture immediately redirected the resulting benefit into physical tempering.
After several rounds, the hammer finally asked, "Do humans normally cultivate like this now?"
The saber answered before Su Bai could.
"No."
Su Bai kept his eyes closed.
"You’re both distracting me."
Neither weapon spoke again.
For once, they seemed to agree that the human was the strange one.
As the tempering continued, Su Bai also gained a clearer understanding of the War-Ghost Iron Body Scripture from which his current method had evolved.
Body cultivation had never ended with merely making one’s flesh harder.
The Body Refinement Realm itself contained nine conventional stages. The first three focused primarily on forging the skin and flesh, the middle three strengthened the muscles and bones, while the final three tempered the internal organs and blood.
A conventional body cultivator progressed through those layers one after another.
Once the ninth stage was perfected, every major part of the mortal body had been tempered at least once and the ordinary Body Refinement Realm reached its limit.
Beyond that was the Vajra Body Realm.
At that level, the purpose was no longer simply strengthening individual parts. The body began breaking through the ordinary limits of mortal flesh as the different tempered structures became a stronger unified vessel.
The War-Ghost Iron Body Scripture contained only limited information about realms farther beyond, but Su Bai had seen enough within the memories of the ancient remnants to know that body cultivation did not stop there.
In the ancient era, genuine body cultivators had walked all the way toward immortality.
Some had forged bodies capable of contending with cultivators far above their Qi realm, while the truly terrifying ones had relied upon their flesh itself as the foundation of their path.
Su Bai found that interesting.
Body cultivation in the present era was nowhere near as prosperous.
Most cultivators treated it as auxiliary training. Complete inheritances were rare, the resources required were excessive, and the amount of suffering involved was enough to discourage most sane people.
Su Bai could understand the last part.
What he could not understand was how such a complete cultivation path had declined this badly.
Perhaps something had happened between the ancient era and the present.
For several moments, Su Bai considered the possibility that the decline had not been entirely natural.
Then he stopped.
He had enough ancient conspiracies around him already.
There was no reason to invent another one before finding evidence.
Su Bai returned his attention to cultivation.
His own body refinement was also clearly different from what the War-Ghost Iron Body Scripture described.
A normal first-stage body cultivator mainly strengthened skin and flesh before moving deeper. Su Bai had never progressed that way.
From his very first transformation, the strange interaction between his cultivation method had forced the tempering through everything at once.
Every major transformation improved his entire physical structure.
The difference had only become greater after Macro-Taiji Circulation and the Calamity-Reversal War Body Scripture were added.
His eighth transformation had already tempered structures that a conventional practitioner would normally associate with several different stages.
Su Bai wondered what would happen when he reached the ninth.
He did not need to wonder for long.
...
Two more weeks passed.
Su Bai continued moving along Layer Two’s boundary while cultivating wherever the Ashen-Blood Miasma remained sufficiently dense.
The ancient weapons followed and continued supplying spiritual pressure whenever Su Bai began another period of body tempering. In return, he fed them enough Qi that none needed to worry about exhausting their reserves during training.
The weapons still could not repair the damage accumulated over thousands of years, but controlled spiritual pressure placed far less strain on their vessels than the battle against the Returnees had.
For Su Bai, the effect accumulated day after day.
His body became progressively denser.
Bones that had already undergone repeated tempering hardened again. His muscles and tendons gained greater resilience without becoming bulky, while the organs hidden beneath them grew noticeably harder to disturb with transmitted force.
Even his blood changed gradually beneath the repeated transformations, carrying increasingly dense vitality through the entire greater Golden Core structure.
On the fourteenth day, the accumulated pressure finally reached its limit.
Su Bai was sitting beneath a broken stone arch when the first tremor passed through his body.
The ancient hammer immediately withdrew part of its spiritual pressure.
The bow rose higher.
Several younger weapons moved away without needing to be told.
They had already witnessed enough of Su Bai’s breakthroughs to recognize what was beginning.
Macro-Taiji Circulation accelerated.
The change did not begin from his skin, bones, or organs individually.
It appeared everywhere.
His flesh tightened as his bones released deep muffled cracks. Blood surged through reinforced vessels while his organs trembled beneath a pressure originating from within the entire body.
The Myriad-Path Meridian Web spread the transformation through countless interconnected routes.
For a normal body cultivator, the ninth stage represented the completion of the final phase of Body Refinement.
Su Bai’s ninth transformation refused to remain confined to the internal organs and blood.
Everything changed with them.
His skin became denser. Muscles and tendons tightened. Bones hardened further. Marrow, blood, organs, meridians, and flesh all underwent another complete round of reinforcement as the whole-body Golden Core structure linked every transformation together.
The pressure continued for several breaths before gradually settling.
Su Bai opened his eyes.
His ninth major body transformation had completed.
He remained seated while carefully examining the result.
The strength of his body had risen considerably, but that was not what caught his attention.
Something felt wrong.
Or rather, something was missing.
Su Bai knew what the records said.
Nine stages completed the Body Refinement Realm. The War-Ghost Iron Body Scripture agreed.
Yet when Su Bai examined himself, he could not sense the feeling of completion that should have accompanied reaching the limit of the realm.
His body had become stronger, but it had not reached a wall.
There was still room.
Su Bai circulated the Calamity-Reversal War Body Scripture again.
The method passed through the Myriad-Path Meridian Web and spread across his entire physical foundation.
A faint response came from every part of his body.
Su Bai’s eyes slowly brightened.
The ninth transformation was supposed to represent the peak of Body Refinement.
His body apparently disagreed.
The saber noticed the change in his expression.
"You reached the last stage?"
Su Bai slowly stood.
"Apparently."
The hammer floated closer.
"Why do you sound dissatisfied again?"
Su Bai flexed one hand.
The floor beneath his feet gave a faint crack as he adjusted to the increase in strength.
"Because I don’t think I’m finished."
The surrounding weapons became quiet.
Su Bai closed his eyes briefly and felt the condition of his body again.
He was certain now.
His unusual method had never tempered the body according to the conventional divisions of Body Refinement. Every transformation had strengthened everything together, and because of that, the ninth transformation had not completed the same progression described in ordinary records.
There was still another threshold ahead.
Su Bai smiled. A ridiculous thought appeared.
The ancient saber immediately felt uncomfortable.
"You are making that expression again."
Su Bai ignored it.
If ordinary Body Refinement ended at nine stages, then he wanted to know what happened if he forced his entire body through one more transformation.
A tenth major body transformation.
The idea should have sounded unreasonable.
That had never stopped his cultivation before.
Su Bai looked deeper into Layer Two.
His Golden Core had reached the Ninth Stage. His body had now completed nine transformations, and the Myriad-Path Meridian Web had removed restrictions he had once considered natural.
He still remembered what it felt like when the Void-Shattering Returnee’s palm struck his body.
His expression became calm again.
If there was another transformation available, he would reach it before returning.
By then, he wanted to know whether those Returnees could still break his body as easily as before.
Su Bai sat back down.
The ancient weapons exchanged faint spiritual fluctuations before taking their positions around him once more.
The hammer released its pressure first.
The saber followed.
Ashen-Blood Miasma began gathering from the surrounding ruins as the Petrified Calamity-Magnet stirred beside Su Bai.
He had reached the conventional end of Body Refinement.
Now he intended to find out what existed beyond it.
And once he did, there were several enemies deeper within the Fallen-Star Sanctuary who would be the first to receive his answer.