Chapter 93 - Trio of Accelerated Agony
To test the effect of using his astral power during the usage of body tempering medicines, Yaan decided against using the Blood Essence Pills.
The Blood Essence Pills were more mentally taxing than expected. He wasn’t completely exhausted, but three more pills would result in him needing to rest for the following week to recover properly.
Yaan retrieved a sealed golden plated bowl from his spatial ring. The bowl was painted white and there were golden dragon carvings all across it.
This was something that he purchased from the old man in the 1st level pagoda for quite the price.
After sitting down on the wooden floor, he carefully tilted the white lid up by a fraction. At the same time, he took hold of a pair of chopsticks which were loosely attached to the bowl. Like the bowl, these chopsticks were laden with gold and jewels.
A brief puff of golden gas leaked out, before Yaan stabbed into the bowl with the chopsticks. He narrowed his eyes, grabbed three particular pills with the chopsticks, then pulled them all out and closed the lid. In all, the lid had been open for around seven tenths of a second.
It was necessary to store these three pills together, and they better retained their medicinal strength when stored in bulk like this. The three pills were needed for what Yaan was about to do, and fortunately, he hadn’t left the lid open for a full second.
If these pills were exposed to open air for more than a single second, the top layer of pills within the bowl would rapidly wilt, potentially causing the pills to lose 50% of their medicinal effect!
“The best part about body tempering cultivation, is the potential for making rapid improvements in a short period of time. Unfortunately, certain crucial body tempering medicines actually last for weeks, or months, and the worst can drag on painfully for years!” Yaan muttered to himself, and his gaze brightened as he stared at the three pills.
These three pills were called the Trio of Accelerated Agony Pills. When used correctly in combination with one another, this trio of pills had the effect of dramatically reducing the required duration of other body tempering resources. Not only that, but these three pills could also extract a superior effect from other body tempering medicines!
As the name implied, using these medicines was a painful ordeal, but Yaan knew what to expected, and he was fully prepared.
Two of the three pills were beginning to release a golden gas, showing that they had been compromised. However, that wasn’t a big problem.
The pills would become corrupted if exposed to the open air for more than a single second, but it took at least three minutes before the deterioration of medicinal energy actually began to take place. It was fine for Yaan to leave them to the side temporarily, as he grabbed another few pills from various boxes and satchels.
After organising everything that he would be using in this session, he swallowed the first and most splendid of the golden pills. He felt an eruption of golden energy within him, shooting up through his throat!
Immediately, he utilised his Astral Tattoos, urging the Astral Power to subdue the explosive medicinal energy. Like this, he was able to prevent the loss of one third of the pill’s effect!
For the following 20 seconds, Yaan focussed diligently on using his 18 Astral Tattoos to restrict and seal the chaotic golden gas.
This gas was seeming able to phase through the flesh and body like nothing, making it beyond difficult to contain. Normally, someone with Yaan’s Vital Energy cultivation would be lucky to retain 3-5% of the pill’s true effect and duration. By utilising the Astral Power contained within his Astral Tattoos however, his efficiency was far superior!
After finally compressing all of the golden gas into a floating ball within his empty stomach, Yaan resolutely picked up another pill, a pill he’d been meaning to use for some time now…
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This was the Rank 3 Organ Hardening Pill, the last of the Rank 3 body tempering pills that he needed to use! Yaan stared down at the pill as an insane gleam entered his eyes. If others saw him right now, they would definitely feel like he was about to do something seriously dangerous.
After Yaan swallowed the Rank 3 Organ Hardening Pill, he controlled its descent into his stomach. Once the pill entered his stomach, he used his Astral Power to suspend it within the centre of the golden cloud, away from his stomach lining.
Immediately, shockwaves began emanating outwards from the pill which was suspended within the golden cloud. Yaan grimaced, but waited. As time passed by, the shockwaves created by the Organ Hardening Pill sitting within the golden cloud were beginning to rupture his organs. The shockwaves tore apart his flesh, fractured his bones, and caused his blood vessels to burst!
These shockwaves were to be expected.
Each shockwave was sudden and rapid, releasing a portion of the Rank 3 Organ Harding Pill’s effect. Every shockwave reduced the remaining time left to endure the medicine by between 1-5%, depending on how perfectly the first golden pill was refined into a golden cloud.
Yaan ground his teeth together as the pain increased, becoming borderline unbearable, until finally, his body lurched and he fell face down towards the ground.
The shockwaves injured his muscular skeletal system so badly that he could no longer move. Worse than that however, his tendons were being torn apart, and his blood was on the verge of drying up…
Using his last strand of energy and his last functional muscle, Yaan painfully pushed the second of the trio of pills into his mouth. This pill was also golden in colour, but it was a much darker gold compared to the first.
After the dark gold pill entered his stomach, it fused into the golden cloud, creating a vortex of gold mist which was continually travelling inwards.
Yaan lay on the ground, unmoving and with a thoroughly exhausted expression, until his injuries started to recover.
It took around 20 minutes before his skeletal system recovered enough that he could just barely move. As soon as Yaan felt a twitch in his wrist, he focussed on moving that hand with his full focus. Eventually, he was able to move that hand, which was clasped around the last of the three golden pills, and pushed the pill into his mouth.
The last pill was heavy, looking at it would make people think that it was actually made from solid gold. This pill released no golden gas, nor did it seem to possess any sort of aura. However, as soon as it entered the vortex of golden mist in Yaan’s stomach, all of the pain, exhaustion and injuries from before miraculously subsided in an instant.
Yaan sat up straight, before using his Astral Tattoos to examine his current internal condition.
Using this trio of pills was nearly 100% safe so long as they were used correctly.
The first golden pill resulted in the major damage throughout the body, especially after the body tempering resource was added to the mix. The second golden pill was used once the body reached its limit, negating the damaging impact and rapidly calming down the internal situation. After consuming the final golden pill, all of the remaining medicinal energy within the stomach was absorbed into the solid golden pill. That pill then formed a golden orb in the stomach which just sat there, doing nothing at all, until some time later.
This was the stage that Yaan had now reached.
Originally, the Rank 3 Organ Hardening Pill should have taken 99 days to reach completion. Also, he couldn’t fall asleep in this time, or else Yaan risked suffering from a fatal injury.
Before he was forced to consume the second golden pill, he managed to endure all the way through 19 shockwaves. The fact that this almost destroyed his body didn’t matter, because combining the final golden pill into the mix rapidly healed any and all injuries. Truthfully, the deeper and more severe the injuries, the greater the benefit he would obtain from the golden pills!
Yaan examined his internal condition carefully. In theory, he should have reduced the duration of the Organ Hardening Pill by 90% already!
Whilst this still left Yaan with enough time to complete the refinement of the remaining pill before his next fight, Yaan naturally wouldn’t leave things so close, or with so much chance at play.
This process was not yet finished. Whilst he managed to endure through 19 complete shockwaves of sheer body shattering agony, how could those few minutes of torture compared to 99 days of seemingly endless pain and insomnia?
Naturally, this was far from over, it wasn’t so easy to reduce the duration of a 99 day medicine like this. Six to twelve hours later, the process would resume.
At this point, Yaan’s body would be racked with a torture the likes of which very few people would willingly endure.
Around 10% of medicinal energy from the Rank 3 Organ Hardening Pill remained, but it was now contained within the solid golden orb within his stomach. Yaan could already feel that his absorption of the Organ Hardening Pill had barely even touched his Vital Energy, because the full effect was successfully absorbed into his physical organs!
Truthfully, he felt some trepidation toward the continuation of the process, but Yaan wasn’t one to hide from a challenge.
He had researched the Trio of Accelerated Agony pills and knew that they were no joke. Honestly, the fact that he managed to form the golden cloud with 90% efficiency, was both impressive and terrifying. The pain would certainly be far more awful because of this ‘success’.
“Once the process continues, the golden orb within my stomach will release the contained medicinal energy, doubling its rate of release every ten seconds. This will continue endlessly, until everything has been absorbed. This increases the pain by so much that most body temperers won’t even consider this method…”
Yaan pondered his thoughts out loud as he organised the medicines and items that he thought might be necessary a few hours from now. He already more or less knew what to expect though, so in the end, his attention shifted elsewhere.
He took out a small booklet. This small booklet was sold to him for 25 3-Star Astral Crystals by the old man in the 1st level pagoda. He bought this some time ago, but he had been busy and hadn’t yet read through it.
“The 2nd pagoda seer mentioned that this book would be a cultivation godsend, but only if I could comprehend the strange scroll which depicted the four paths of cultivation. Based on their reactions, I most definitely comprehended it to a sufficient degree…”
When Yaan remembered how the devil spirit had interrupted his enlightenment for an unknown reason, his expression became dark. In the end, he shook his head with a sigh and returned his attention to the book.
It was only 72 pages in length, so he expected to finish it quite quickly, but this book was so complicated that he was forced to reread each page multiple times.
Even so, it was a good distraction, temporarily taking his mind away from the coming ordeal that would continue in a few hours time.
In the end, he barely managed to finish this book in time. Yaan placed the book down with a strange glint in his eye as he started to feel the Trio of Accelerated Agony process kicking in slowly once again.