Leo thought he was having a strange dream. He didn’t have any of his senses, but at the same time he could kind of feel how the surroundings looked and the peculiar scent in the air. He couldn’t hear anything though, but it was also fine since this was a dream and he was floating in the middle of a room with many pretty rune markings on the walls.
For a while Leo observed the markings, obviously without a clue what anything meant, but then got bored and was ready to wake up. Unfortunately, no matter how hard he tried, the best he could manage was to chaotically fly around the room while bumping at the walls.
Just when he was about to start to panic, a blurred figure of a familiar person appeared and began to talk to him, but they sounded as if they were shouting from the bottom of a deep well and in a different language at that. At first Leo couldn’t recognize them or understand a word they said, but after focusing for few moments things began to make sense.
Obviously it was Theodore Shaw who was explaining that Leo’s physical body was destroyed by the Heavenly tribulation lightning and now only his nascent soul was left behind. Such result came as a surprise for the immortal, but Leo kind of guessed he should be fine, at least regarding the part of the survival of his nascent soul.
Seeing Leo was capable of comprehending what he was saying, master Shaw explained that he brought Leo’s soul to a special facility within the Golden city. The formations in this advanced recovery room allowed cultivators to reconstruct their bodies in more effective manner, much faster, albeit costing a mountain of immortal spirit stones. Of course, in Leo’s case the latter part was no problem and the city would gladly cover the expenses.
Contrary to master Shaw’s expectations, Leo wasn’t worried one bit. He had no clue how painful the procedure of reconstruction of ones own body was, but the common knowledge was that it was possible for a Nascent soul stage cultivator like him. He didn’t need to know much more than that, at least that was Leo thought.
After he thanked Leo for saving the city, master Shaw instructed him to ‘get well’ quickly and vanished again, leaving Leo’s clueless nascent soul alone in the recovery room. It all would’ve been great if Leo had the slightest idea of what he was supposed to do now, but after pondering for a while, he decided that since he was in a ‘recovery room’ with special formations all over the place, the reconstruction of his physical body had to happen on its own. He just tried to focus on his self invented cultivation technique and let the things proceed naturally.
When master Shaw came to check on Leo’s condition two months later, he was not sure if he had to feel utterly disappointed or totally shocked by the youth. While normally this period was more than enough for a Nascent soul stage cultivator of an average talent to completely reconstruct their body under the effect of the expensive rune formations, what met the immortal was not a person, but a lump of pulsating flesh, partially covered in feathers and with six protruding tentacles that somewhat resembled either extremities or dried up wings.
Master Shaw didn’t even try to resist the impulse and disintegrated Leo’s ‘new’ body in an instant and, while the youths nascent soul was in a dazed state, carefully inspected it. Fortunately there was nothing wrong with it – just a ‘regular’ ethereal floating object, except contrary to most souls it had a hue of a purple color.
After Leo came to his senses, if one might call it this way in his current state, master Shaw began to remind him that Leo had to focus on reconstructing his body according to how it was before, cell by cell, starting with the skeletal system and followed by Qi pathways, just like he was taught in the academy. And only now Leo realized he was in deep sh*t.
He had never been to advanced anatomy classes or even read anything about the reconstruction of a body! He knew the physical body had a heart and some inner organs, tendons and bones, but even if all of it was piled up in front of him he wasn’t certain he could put all pieces together on his own. This was a true disaster! And worst of all he had no way to voice any of it! His soul just floated there in ethereal form while master Shaw reprimanded him and after the immortal left … continued to float.
Master Shaw didn’t know what difficulties Leo had, but guessed he should come and take a look at the youth’s progress earlier than the last time. And when he arrived ten days later, he was met by something that inevitably was about to become a similar monstrosity he saw the first time.
After destroying Leo’s creation again, master Shaw patiently waited for a while till he was certain Leo was listening and asked, “Do you even know what to do?”
Despite the embarrassment, Leo was delighted master Shaw guessed the reason for his predicament. The problem was – he couldn’t make a sound to explain himself. After a brief moment of inner struggle, he began quickly darting left and right as if imitating a person shaking their head and even though he already knew the answer, master Shaw got the confirmation.
He thought for a bit and said, “Alright! I’ll send someone over. And don’t take forever – you have no clue how expensive this is!”
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Surprisingly it took only few breaths of time for another person to arrive. It was an older gentleman, dressed in a neat dark robe and it looked like just a moment ago he was reading a lecture or giving a report since he still held a small stack of papers in front of him in his both hands.
The scholar glanced around in confusion, then his eyes lit up and he inspected the rune markings on the walls more closely. Then he noticed the ethereal nascent soul in the middle of the room, coughed a couple of times to clear his throat and took a more elegant position with both hands behind him.
“I was told to maintain confidentiality of this endeavor therefore I won’t ask any questions.” He said, ignoring the fact that Leo had no means of replying, “My name is Locke, you can call me master Locke. I’m supposed to give you a crash course on human anatomy.”
In what seemed an eternity to Leo, but on the outside was only a couple of days, he learned that master Locke was not a simple scholar or a doctor, but a sadistic sociopath who had somehow achieved the immortality. At first he did explain the very fundamentals of the human body’s structure, but afterwards immediately proceeded to ‘practical exercises’ of body reconstruction and with a gentle smile across his face kept destroying anything Leo attempted to create.
The main problem was – if at first Leo’s soul got knocked out or became sluggishly senseless for a brief moment after each destruction of anything Leo created, he soon got used to the process and remained fully conscious. And while the nascent soul remained conscious, the destruction of the body, even an incomplete one, even one that has been in the very beginning of the rebuilding process, was hundreds if not thousands of times more painful than getting struck by lightning. Even the fact that the destruction was done in an instant, the pain echoed though Leo’s soul and after a while he was certain he would simply loose his mind.
The main problem was that it took master Locke almost a month to realize Leo couldn’t simply comprehend what he was talking about. The youth lacked the very basic knowledge any citizen of the Golden city learned before forming their cores, but an immortal scholar like master Locke could have never guessed it might be the case. His idea was simple – the person he was teaching was under the wing of master Shaw, therefore they had to be incredibly talented and important.
When after another fifteen days Leo realized the pain was becoming more and more dull almost to the point he didn’t notice it, he decided to make his life’s purpose to kill the man in front of him. He had never really hated anyone, apart from the people who killed his father, but that was a long time ago and he didn’t really remember what he felt back then. But now he learned what true hate was about and he was certain – he had to get out of this predicament, become a true immortal and then torture the bastard who called himself ‘master Locke’ for thousands of years. He would pull out Locke’s nascent soul from the body with his own naked hands and then fry, boil and freeze it for eternity.
Technically Leo knew Locke was here on master Shaw’s orders, but no matter what the scholar tried to teach, nothing made sense and no matter how hard Leo tried to reconstruct his body, there was no pleasing the inquisitor. At one point he even tried to quickly create something that could resemble a head with mouth so he could curse master Locke or, if he was given enough time, at least explain what he thought, but the merciless immortal never gave him a chance.
In the end Leo employed the dumbest and the worst learning technique there is – he began to reconstruct the body from a single cell while burning the exact process in his memory. And after the body was destroyed again, he repeated the whole process again until the last step and then tried to experiment until master Locke allowed to proceed him further by not destroying previous efforts again.
The problem was – while there are only seventy eight main organs and two hundred and six bones in the human body, the whole body consists of trillions of cells. And while creation of those mostly happened semi-automatically by the support of the rune formations, Leo was the one who had to direct the reconstruction process. In addition, he had to recreate the system of Qi pathways that additionally multiplied the difficulty.
Master Locke’s predicament was completely different though. Ignoring the fact that he was tasked by master Shaw, he already intended to do a perfect job, helping the ‘subject’ to create a flawless physical body, but Leo’s cluelessness and clumsiness only made him more demanding. He focused on every minute detail, forcing Leo to suffer even more, but on the other hand it ‘only’ took four months for the youth to stop creating monstrosities and build a ‘passable’ basic bone structure that any other person apart from master Locke would describe as perfect.
It was no wonder that the two, each for their own reasons, lost the track of time. During the next months master Shaw came over to take a look a few times, but in the end instructed master Locke to report to him when they were done. The cost of the process did pain him slightly, but the city was indebted to the kid so he decided to ignore that. Of course, the fact remained that while Leo struggled to recover, almost ten or even a dozen other Nascent soul stage cultivators could’ve reconstructed their destroyed bodies by using the recovery room thus it was kind of a waste.
When Leo was finished, he was not surprised a year had passed. In fact, he wouldn’t have been surprised if ten or even twenty years had passed – so long it felt at times. Despite that he had to agree – the body that he reconstructed with the help of master Locke was nothing to scuff at. Truth to be said, it was hard for him to imagine he could’ve become more perfect, physically that is.
Even his Qi pathways were finally of ‘proper’ structure and feeling the lighting Qi flowing through them Leo never felt more energetic and powerful. After throwing a complicated glance at his torturer, he gave up and politely bowed and thanked the immortal, who happily laughed and vanished from the spot. Leo, on the other hand, slowly walked out the room, enjoying the sensation of his naked feet touching the floor.
“Master Shaw instructed to give you these.” Right outside the door Leo was met by a giggling lady who passed him neatly folded clothes with the familiar amulet on top.
She measured him with her eyes, blushed and added, “This was the only size of the War Academy uniform I found … might be too small for you now I guess …”
Then she giggled again and turned around to leave, but once again she got the confirmation that all men were the same – the main change they made to themselves was always the same no matter their age. But Leo only now realized he was completely naked and it was not really ok. Of course, during the past months he had become so familiar with his own body it only felt natural to be this way, but the lady’s reaction clearly showed he had made the right choice by ‘optimizing’ the size of some parts of his older self.