When I swallowed the mist ball I expected to only have to deal with heart demons, I miscalculated. An explosion of qi traveled through my body. In the beginning, I tried to rotate my cultivation to refine it but it backfired and I almost exploded. Activating the regeneration skill with all my might and with blood dripping down my mouth I tried to use the rampaging qi to refine my muscles.

It worked.

The qi that continued to rampage into my body started to placate and flow into my muscles.

[Reached 7th layer muscles refinement realm]

The muscles started to increase in mass and then decrease every time maintaining the ever-growing strength.

[Reached 8th layer muscles refinement realm]

The qi continued calming down and the regeneration started to keep up with the destruction.

[Reached 9th layer muscles refinement realm]

The qi has almost been depleted and my body is now properly healing.

I swallowed the muscle-refining pill that I had in my inventory and a new controllable surge of qi spread through my body’s muscles.

[User has broken through the body limitation. Initiating assisted evolution. Displaying options]

[Due to the high potential of the previous evolution you have obtained the following mutation]

YinYang skin

A skin that perfectly blends yin and yang, allowing an incredible defense and raising dramatically the qi proficiency during the attacks.

‘Wow, I didn’t expect to mutate, and it sounds so useful too. With this, I should be able to use the Yin Paw and the still undeveloped Yang Paw as much as I wish.’

[Choose an evolution]

Gigantic

A gigantic bear has taken the path of increasing one size to increase his might. At a high level, a gigantic bear can surpass 50 meters in height.

YinYang

A YinYang bear has muscles adapted to the YinYang energy that he possesses, granting him attack and defense equal to the qi spent on them.

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Adamantine

An adamantine bear has perfect control over his muscles allowing him to tense and tighten the muscles, increasing the solidity and density of the user's body, thus preventing the impact of outside physical attacks from inflicting much, if any, damage. The attacks are also enhanced.

‘Hmm, I didn’t expect to evolve this soon. Oh well, let's see my options.’

‘The first is out, while a size up would be useful in a fight it would be too impractical for everything else.’

‘Both the second and the third are tempting. One increases everything but with an expense of qi while the other increases the attack and provides a near-perfect physical defense without the expense of qi.’

‘It’s a no brainer’

‘I will pick the YinYang evolution. After all, I don't have a problem with the quantity of qi with my 8 discovered hidden meridians.’

[YinYang Bear selected. Commencing evolution]

…

When I woke up I was still in the cave, the blood was gone and except for Gray, all my companions were still there. Just as I raised my head to look around, Thai Hai looked at me. Then she quickly got up and with a shout launched herself to me.

(Thai Hai) “Zhao, you woke up. We were so worried when you risked yourself eating that thing to save us. You have also changed, you are no longer white and black but a mix of gold and black: you are so cool. Though you're no longer so cute.”

I watched myself using my spirit sense and noticed that I was indeed uniformly a dark golden color with some black nuances. I am also 2 meters tall standing on four feet.

Before I could look at my status and check my other changes Red and Long arrived and complimented me for my bravery. From their talking, I also understood where Gray went.

He had to contact the Sect and, since communication talismans don’t work in this cave, he had to get out and then wait to give them the devil.

Just as they were talking about him, Gray entered and seeing me awake said:” Ok, now that we are all here let’s go back to the Sect.”

We all nodded and so we departed. While on the flying ship, I looked at my status.

Name:

Kuma Zhao

Race:

YinYang Bear

CULTIVATION

Qi

13th layer Qi gathering realm

Mental

5th stage Spirit Sense realm

Physical

1st layer bones refinement realm

SKILLS

Spirit Sense (Lv 5) - Crystal mind lake (Lv 5) - Bear combat style(Lv 7) - Elemental Qi infusion (Lv 4) - Stealth II (Lv 1) - Regeneration(Lv 7) - YinYang muscle core (Lv -)

‘There have been improvements in pretty much everything except my qi cultivation. So it’s true that battles are the best method to refine oneself. With this level of regeneration, I feel that I could pull off a Yang Paw attack.’

I concentrated on the YinYang muscle core skill and a surge of information entered my mind. It’s a method to control the yin and yang qi in my muscles in equal proportion and maintain the muscular system at the top at all times with a little qi expense. It practically means that as long as I have qi I will not need to worry about stamina.

‘So in a prolonged battle, I will not end up exhausted like the last one.’

The last thing that I checked was my mind lake. It seemed all at its place but looking better I noticed that the koi fishes had doubled in size and tripled in length. They now had sharp teeth and elongated muzzles and… they seemed to start to resemble flood dragons!?