Chapter 251 - Vajra Body and the Vanishing Tribulation
Time passed as the solidified Ashen-Blood Miasma continued to thin.
This time, Su Bai did not refine all of it.
A large portion was guided through the Myriad-Path Meridian Web and stored inside his ten Dantians, filling the nine Gateway Dantians alongside the Infinite Dantian without disturbing their unified circulation.
Su Bai had not forgotten about his future Nascent Soul breakthrough.
If Golden Core had already demanded an absurd amount of energy from him, he had no intention of discovering how much worse Nascent Soul would be only after the breakthrough began.
The reserves could wait.
For now, his attention remained on his body.
The Calamity-Reversal War Body Scripture circulated continuously as streams of Ashen-Blood Miasma entered his flesh.
The corruption that would have ruined an ordinary cultivator became something entirely different once it reached Su Bai.
Heat spread through his muscles and bones. His blood surged faster. Every hostile trace carried by the miasma became pressure for the body cultivation method to seize and turn against itself.
Su Bai had already pushed beyond the normal limits of Body Refinement Realm.
That tenth transformation had given birth to the Innate Unified Body, allowing every part of his physical structure to cooperate as a single whole rather than a collection of separately tempered parts.
The next step was different.
Vajra Body Realm.
A body cultivator who crossed that threshold would no longer merely possess stronger flesh and bones. The accumulated tempering would crystallize into a true bodily nature of its own.
A True Body Constitution.
Some developed Bronze Bodies capable of enduring tremendous blunt force. Others formed Jade Bodies known for purity and resilience, Iron Bodies built around hardness, or Blood Vajra Bodies that strengthened themselves through powerful vitality.
The exact result depended on the cultivator, the method, the foundation, and what they had endured before the breakthrough.
Su Bai had no idea what his would become.
He only had one modest hope.
’Please fix my complexion.’
He had spent far too long looking like a sickly scholar who might collapse after walking up a flight of stairs.
If Vajra Body Realm could not solve that after everything his body had endured, Su Bai was prepared to consider it false advertising.
The thought disappeared as another wave of heat erupted through him.
His emergency robe had already dissolved sometime during the prolonged absorption.
The artifact spirits finally seemed to understand why Su Bai had been naked when they first encountered him.
None of them commented.
Su Bai’s breathing gradually deepened.
The Calamity-Reversal War Body Scripture accelerated.
Cracking sounds began emerging from inside his body, faint at first before spreading from his spine into his shoulders, ribs, arms, and legs.
This was not the sound of bones breaking.
His entire skeletal structure was adjusting.
Muscles tightened around them before relaxing and reforming. Tendons became denser, while his blood seemed to grow heavier with every circulation.
The changes quickly spread deeper.
His organs contracted slightly under the mounting pressure before the Innate Unified Body pulled everything back into balance.
Every change in one part forced an adjustment through the rest.
Su Bai finally understood what the breakthrough demanded.
Body Refinement had strengthened the pieces.
Vajra Body Realm demanded that those pieces stop being pieces at all.
His entire physical existence had to become one complete vessel.
The Ashen-Blood Miasma continued pouring into him.
Heat rose rapidly.
Su Bai’s skin turned red as though he had been submerged inside boiling water, yet the sensation came from far deeper than the surface.
It felt as though someone had placed his entire body inside a furnace and sealed the lid.
Even the ancient artifact spirits began retreating.
The saber floated several meters farther away.
"Is he supposed to be doing that?"
The hammer remained silent for a moment before answering.
"I have stopped guessing what he is supposed to be doing."
That was probably wise.
Su Bai heard none of it.
The pressure inside his body had reached a point where even thought became secondary.
His heartbeat struck like a hammer.
Every pulse forced dense blood through pathways that seemed too narrow to contain it, only for the vessels themselves to expand and strengthen.
The Calamity-Reversal War Body Scripture continued drawing the hostile nature of the miasma, using it to grind against every weakness that remained in his physical foundation.
The Innate Unified Body held everything together.
Su Bai could feel the boundary of Vajra Body Realm directly now.
Another surge of Ashen-Blood Miasma entered him.
Something changed.
The muscles around his arms tightened so violently that the veins beneath his skin stood out. His bones released a series of deep, muffled sounds while an enormous pressure compressed his entire body.
For several breaths, Su Bai felt as though he was being crushed from every direction.
The pressure did not destroy him. Instead, everything began drawing closer together.
The boundaries between separately tempered systems blurred. The Innate Unified Body was no longer merely coordinating them. It was becoming the foundation of something greater.
Su Bai clenched his teeth.
The heat inside him suddenly doubled.
A violent aura began gathering beneath his skin.
At almost the same moment, a deep rumble rolled through the Fallen-Star Sanctuary.
The artifact spirits stopped moving.
Another rumble followed.
This one did not come from the altar. It came from above.
Su Bai recognized the pressure almost immediately.
Heavenly Tribulation.
He was not particularly surprised.
Crossing into Vajra Body Realm meant transforming the fundamental quality of his physical existence. A sufficiently powerful body breakthrough drawing the attention of the Heavenly Dao was hardly unreasonable.
What surprised him slightly more was that the Fallen-Star Sanctuary had failed to hide him completely.
The ancient seal was already collapsing, but enough of it still remained that ordinary perception should have struggled to reach this place.
Apparently, Heaven was less considerate.
Clouds began gathering somewhere far above.
Su Bai could not see the sky from Layer Three, but he could feel the pressure forming.
Something vast had noticed him. The sensation tightened around his existence. It was beginning to lock on.
Su Bai remained focused on the breakthrough.
His body was already at the most dangerous point. Splitting his attention now would only make things worse.
The heavenly pressure continued descending.
A faint awareness touched the edge of his foundation.
At that exact moment, the tenth Tribulation Mark on the Black-Ice Golden Core lit up.
Su Bai’s concentration nearly broke.
The Void Ring’s influence spread through his foundation almost instantly.
The aura of his breakthrough vanished. The violent transformation taking place throughout his body seemed to fall away from the world’s perception.
Su Bai was still there.
The Heavenly Dao simply could no longer find him.
Far above the Sanctuary, the gathering pressure faltered.
The clouds that had only begun to condense lost their focus.
For several breaths, the sensation lingered as though Heaven itself were searching for the person who had just been standing directly beneath it.
It found nothing.
The pressure slowly dispersed.
Su Bai nearly opened his eyes.
’It can hide me from the Heavens too?’
There was no time to think about it.
The final stage of the breakthrough had already begun.
Without the Heavenly Tribulation forcing part of his attention outward, Su Bai poured everything back into the Calamity-Reversal War Body Scripture.
The solidified miasma barrier trembled violently.
More dark-red currents tore free and rushed toward him.
Su Bai accepted all of it.
The pressure inside his body climbed beyond anything he had endured during his previous transformations.
His skin looked ready to split.
His muscles swelled and compressed in alternating waves, while every bone in his body seemed to vibrate under the strain.
The ancient artifact spirits retreated even farther.
Just then, a dull boom suddenly came from inside Su Bai’s chest.
His entire body jerked.
For an instant, the circulation of blood, Qi, and physical force aligned perfectly.
The next heartbeat carried that alignment through every part of him.
Another heartbeat followed. The same structure remained.
The transformation finally reached completion.
The Innate Unified Body had been reforged into a stronger, more complete physical foundation.
The force of the completed breakthrough erupted outward.
Dust blasted away from the ground.
Loose Ashen-Blood Miasma scattered outward before being dragged back toward Su Bai almost immediately.
The artifact spirits were forced several meters away by the sudden pressure.
The redness covering Su Bai’s body faded. The heat subsided soon.
For several breaths, he remained completely still.
Eventually, Su Bai opened his eyes.
He lowered his gaze toward his hands.
His skin looked smooth, healthy, strong, and... still extremely pale.
Su Bai stared.
After everything that had just happened, this was somehow the first thing that offended him.
’Seriously?’
He had crossed an entire body cultivation realm.
His physical structure had evolved.
He had nearly attracted Heavenly Tribulation.
And his complexion had apparently decided that none of this concerned it.
Su Bai sighed before finally turning his attention toward the things that actually mattered.
The first was the Void Ring.
The tenth Tribulation Mark rested within his Golden Core foundation as though nothing unusual had happened.
Su Bai became quiet.
The ring’s aura concealment was far more terrifying than he had realized.
Hiding from cultivators was one thing.
Hiding from Heaven was another matter entirely.
He stored that discovery carefully in his mind before examining his body.
The change was immediate.
His physical strength had risen tremendously, but raw strength was not what surprised him most.
His entire body possessed a strange sense of completeness.
The Innate Unified Body had not disappeared after the breakthrough. It had become the foundation of the new constitution born from it.
A name surfaced naturally through the comprehension carried by the Calamity-Reversal War Body Scripture.
Myriad-Calamity Vajra Body.
Su Bai repeated the name silently.
He searched through the memories he had obtained from the ancient remnant souls.
Nothing matched what he now possessed.
But then, the moment he understood what it can do, his expression changed.
The constitution did not merely make his body stronger.
It remembered calamity.
Whenever his body suffered an attack or endured a hostile force, the Myriad-Calamity Vajra Body would gradually adjust itself to that particular form of harm.
The first attack would still hurt.
The second might hurt less.
With repeated exposure, his body would continue adapting and building resistance.
It was not immunity. It was something far more troublesome.
His body could learn.
Su Bai stood silently for several breaths.
That was far beyond what he had expected from Vajra Body Realm.
The Calamity-Reversal War Body Scripture already transformed hostile forces into opportunities for tempering.
Now his constitution could adapt to the very things trying to injure him.
Su Bai slowly clenched one hand.
Power gathered naturally throughout the entire structure of his body rather than concentrating only in his arm.
A faint smile finally appeared on his face.
His complexion might still be hopeless.
At least the rest of the breakthrough had exceeded expectations.