The Mirror Fortress sprang to life, reflecting the Chaosfiend’s twisted fangs and redirecting the piercing and slashing damage right back at it.

But it wasn’t only the fangs of the lion-maw that attacked Youjin Chao.

Mixed in with the bloody saliva of the Chaosfiend was the Imperfect Heaven 3rd Grade acidic poison from the Voidfiend. It had contaminated the former’s system, creating a deadly mixture that would have rendered any other renyao dead.

The moment the Chaosfiend’s maw enveloped Chao, he was awash too with this poisoned mixture.

The effect was immediate, and the unexpected counterattack resonated with multiple high-pitched whine that transformed into echoey roars - like some abysmal horde wailing in reverse.

A reptilian hiss, a wolven whine, and a feline mraow!

Just like with the Dusk Valley Lion King, the two fiends did not even know what hit them.

Large holes appeared throughout the Chaosfiend’s body, puncturing vital organs and smashing bones as if they were twigs. Its neck was twisted too, pushing the protected form of Youjin Chao further inside.

The Four Fears Chimera groaned in confusion. It was a smart beast after all. All its eyes showed doubt and confusion as they rolled over. It had bitten down on prey. So why did it feel like it was bitten instead?

The Bone-eating Putrid Python felt as though it had been dumped into a vat of acid. Its scales sizzled and exposed flesh burnt. The fiend felt as if it was being ravaged by its own poison, to which it should have been immune, and there was nothing it could do to mitigate the pain.

Its innate physique had allowed it to not even feel a sting when parts of its skull were caved into its brain.

But now, it felt as though the damage and pain from the mysterious assailant were etched into its very soul.

While its fangs remained firmly lodged in the Four Fear Chimera’s neck, it wriggled and twisted in a frenzy of pain. Its sabre-like fang cut through the Chaosfiend’s neck like scissors through cloth, separating sections of skin from flesh haphazardly. From the area between the Chaosfiend’s bird neck and wolf neck, directly into the base of the lion’s neck.

Youjin Chao was unlucky.

The moment the effect of the Mirror Fortress ended, and he was about to be knocked unconscious because of the feedback, the Hundred Yang Bloodroot in his stomach sent a rush of Yang qi that woke him right back up.

Just in time to feel the toxic-laden fang of the Voidfiend puncture the back side of his right leg, which was dangling quite inside the Chaosfiend’s crushed throat.

The acid from the fang turned that area of his flesh to char, while the poison, albeit minuscule in amount, spread through his bloodstream faster than wine in water.

The insides of his veins and arteries turned purple, his blood curdled into a green tofu-like consistency. All his organs and even his brain, eyes, and bones felt as though they were being bitten by a horde of murderous ants.

That were poisonous.

And breathed fire.

While laying eggs under every single one of his nerve cells.

“ARGHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA—”

Youjin Chao had no control over his dying body. The scream came out without his consent. He did not know why the ruins of his decaying throat could even make such a sound.

He felt every single sensation, every iota of pain.

What made it even worse was the maddening itch that drove him to the brink of insanity. Every nerve under Chao’s skin begged to be scratched. Even the place up his nostrils and behind his eyeballs.

He thought about his missing parents, his maternal Xuehou clan, Su Nanya, Brother Yung, Brother Lihou, and Chiri.

Was it better to die?

No!

How was he still conscious?

It was the Hundred Yang Bloodroot!

The moment the snake’s poison damaged his flesh into unrecognisable, burnt meat, the Yang qi from the treasured herb would heal it back up!

It was miraculous. One instant, Chao looked like a blackened tumour leaking pus and bile, while the next, the blackened flesh would fall off like flakes of dried paint, and new baby-smooth skin would appear underneath.

The cycle repeated over and over again.

It was as though Youjin Chao was a medicinal pill, being refined into a noxious treasure by the thousands of poisons and medicines inside a mad alchemist’s cauldron, fuelled by the scorching alchemical fire that was the Hundred Yang Bloodroot.

Wrong!

This potency, it was too strong for this herb to merely be that.

Within the clarity that came with a constant stream of unending, soul-crushing, mind-breaking pain, Chao realised.

The herb was a Thousand Yang Bloodroot! A bona fide Unfolding Heaven Realm treasure at the High Grade, perhaps even Top Grade!

The process continued.

Chao’s hairs and nails grew uncontrollably, digging into the flesh of the Chaosfiend’s neck that surrounded him, before being destroyed by the poison again.

And again.

And again.

It felt like centuries.

It might have been mere minutes.

Why was there still poison in his system? The Thousand Yang Bloodroot’s qi should have already burnt all of it away!

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“—AAAAAGGGNHHHHHRRAAAAA—”

The sabre-like fang of the snake was still touching the place it had cut. In fact, Chao’s skin seemed to have healed in such a way that the fang was stuck onto Chao’s flesh underneath.

He could move his feet, and the stream of poison would be cut off.

But then the Yang qi from the Thousand Yang Bloodroot would turn him to ashes.

No matter how awesome the potential of his awakened—no, awakening—physique was, it could not swallow the full amount of qi from the Thousand Yang Bloodroot.

He had to spend it somehow.

Right now, it was being used to keep him alive, awake, and healed from the onslaught of the poison from the fang.

Chao noticed another detail. The poison wasn’t coming from the fang alone, but also from the blood and saliva of the Chaosfiend in which he was now soaked.

That was obvious. The fangs of the Voidfiend was piercing the Chaosfiend too. But why could the Chaosfiend simply—

The Chaosfiend had died, Chao realised.

The slow thrum of the titan’s heart he could feel until just a second ago had stopped.

The wounds from the Mirror Fortress’s reflection, and the Voidfiend’s unobstructed poison had killed it.

Even through the unimaginable itch and pain, Chao knew for sure that if he passed out now, he would meet the same fate, whether it was from the poison or the Yang qi.

The tiny sliver of willpower he could use to somehow consciously divert the Yang qi flowing in his veins to the areas decayed by the poison was the only thing keeping him from either melting into a puddle of acidic corpse water or exploding like a renyao meatbomb.

So Chao meditated. His soul anguished in the pain, his flesh desired rest in death. He wanted to scratch his skin off. He was thirsty. The endless mixture of blood, poison, and saliva seeping into his throat did not quench it.

What would happen to Chiri if he died? Would Su Nanya even deign to remember his name?

‘… Huagou…Flower Dogs…!’

“—AAAAAAAAAAGGGRNGG.”

It was neither Su Nanya nor Chiri that helped him keep his focus.

It was the thought of revenge.

Youjin Chao willed his mouth to close. His pained and hoarse scream cut off forcefully. The obstructed sound seemed to echo inside his body, but he would not show such a shameful visage, even if none were there to witness it.

‘I. Can. Not. Die!’ The boy, bathed in fire, blood, and poison inside the maws of a dead beast, held onto that thought with every last fibre of his being.

Through crumbling bone, expanding skull, constricting veins, blistering skin, and twisting organs.

Chao withstood the despair. The hurt.

The madness.

And something miraculous happened.

Both his Navel Palace Dantian and his Temple Palace Dantian reacted to his unbending will, like sleeping dragons finally waking to conquer the world!

The constant refinement of Yang and Poison, after perhaps an eternity of this insanity, was finally enough to rouse his long, slumbering flesh and blood into wakefulness.

For a single second, his body expanded like a balloon. The fang dug even deeper into his leg, his body taking up all free space inside the dead Chaosfiend’s neck.

But it mattered not.

Chao’s unique vision activated fully.

He could see.

For that single second, Chao was a god.

He could feel, sense, touch, taste, smell, hear, and witness the knotted meridians in his body delivering the Yang qi to all places that needed it.

The cells slowly regrowing, the poisonous particles acting like a purging agent to kill off any unneeded element of his flesh and blood that would hamper the awakening of his body.

Single strands of fibre leaving his brain, into his neck and spine, to every part of his being like threads of a puppet.

Not just strands from his brain, but the muscle strands of his flesh too shone brightly in his vision.

And all the light, from the infinite mutations of his fleshy body, starting from the hair on his head to the linings inside his stomach, illuminated one structure as though it was a blood red star.

A new organ, regrown from a stem of cells that had once been poisoned and mangled, into the shape of a beating orb.

Three inches beneath and behind his navel, it pumped not blood but Origin Qi throughout his body.

His Navel Palace Dantian had been fully healed!

At the same time, that image overlapped with one inside his Sea of Consciousness.

A lake. Dried up into a barren, uncultivated desert. Far into the distance, a wall of fog that let no light filter through, forever disconnected from the Grand Dao beyond.

A change happened here.

Slowly, droplets of golden water fell from the sky. Like a long-awaited rain in a land of famine.

It wasn’t enough to fill the lake up, not even close. But just enough to make the lake floor wet.

No fish would survive.

But perhaps worms.

Or perhaps dragons!

The wall of fog in the distance showed change, too. Creeping lines appeared in it like shadows of blood red constellations.

There was a pop, and a sound of glass forcefully being crushed together.

It hurt. A lot.

But throughout the pain, Chao felt it clearly. In a certain area inside his brain hidden from the physical world, an orb had been forcibly glued together from something. The orb was still cracked, but the cracks were mended with bloodred paste.

Like Kintsugi.

The repaired Temple Palace Dantian was far more potent than before. It was not healed as perfectly as the Navel Palace Dantian, but it was enough to—

Where am I getting the Spirit Qi?

Youjin Chao’s vision was painted red.

Was it because of his awakening? Or the overwhelming pain? He did not know.

He could not see anything but himself. The world that began where his skin ended was a red void now.

Something, somehow, was supplying him with qi that was not Yang.

Chao had enough clarity to remember that the Thousand Yang Bloodroot should not be able to provide him with it.

It was a pure Yang aspected Origin Qi treasure after all.

The poison from the Voidfiend, the Yang qi from the Bloodroot, and Chao’s own physique seemed to be at some sort of strange equilibrium.

But there were more elements at play here.

Though he had little control over his body, Chao braved the hurt that constantly warred to force him asleep and investigated the matter.

Blood?

It was blood. The blood of the Chaosfiend, and perhaps that of the Voidfiend too?

Somehow, his body was absorbing the blood from the corpse it was now embedded in! Through his nails, skin, and even hair!

It was his Yang-type Assimilation Bloodline.

But the absorbed blood should only augment his Origin Qi.

Again, it did not make sense!

Chao concentrated harder, and the red void outside of his being cleared a little.

If another person were here to see this, their mouths would have fallen off in surprise.

Here was a man who was being ravaged by many different types of Qi each three or four major realms above his level, and he still had the capacity to explore his situation, as though he was on a relaxed tour.

The cores…

The qi was coming from the cores of the two dead behemoths. Parts of it as Chaos qi through the Chaosfiend’s blood, and parts of it as Void qi through the Voidfiend’s poison.

It had mysteriously reacted with the Yang qi from the Bloodroot. They neutralised each other, leaving behind something so mysterious that Chao could only describe it as an unnatural qi soup. This unnatural qi soup was malleable to the extreme, and was absorbed and refined by Chao’s reawakened Temple Palace Dantian into a form he could use.

Spirit qi.

That’s the only explanation Chao had. He wasn’t sure if it was correct, but at this point, he couldn’t care less.

He was healed!

He had sensed that the dangerous phase was over. The Yang Qi and the Poison would continue cancelling each other out, as would the Chaos Qi and the Void Qi.

Although the latter process went far slower than the previous one.

And after this process was finished, Youjin Chao would truly be reborn, a phoenix rising from the ashes.

A double awakening, cultivating both Origin Qi and Spirit Qi.

It was still a shame, though.

He had no source of Heart Qi.

If he did, then Youjin Chao was sure that whatever process was going on inside his body would be able to awaken his Heart Palace Dantian too, pushing him to the ranks of one in a trillion genius.

Like Su Nanya.

He would be so superior to Brother Yung that the vixen would have no choice but to take him seriously.

“Ah, indeed. Young love is truly... so utterly selfish.” A voice came.

Chao recognised it. It had come from that strange foxmoth that had tackled into him. No, I’ve heard this voice before too.

“Youjin Fuqiang?” Chao asked. His mouth did not move, no sound had been uttered. But somehow, he could talk with—

A transparent spectre of the old patriarch suddenly appeared in Chao’s Sea of Consciousness, the barren but slowly refilling lake surrounded by the fog wall.

“You wish for Heart Qi?” the old man asked. His face was the image of kindness, his eyes warm and inviting. In his hand, there was a violet orb with shadows of foxes inside. It was an Occultic foxball, and it radiated a certain, intoxicating flavour of Heart Qi Chao could not ignore.

Extreme Yin.

“Let this dying old man help you with that.” Youjin Fuqiang said with a wide smile.