Listen While Reading: Lethal Fist

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The Heavenly Demon’s crimson eyes shone brightly. He conjured his powerful acupuncture techniques as he pierced Anna’s body with a dozen different, intricately crafted needles imbued with his Demonic Ki.

He extracted all the accumulated “impurity” within Anna’s physique, which would slowly kill her if she kept it there for much longer. And then he decided to rearrange her Ki Pathways, the river-like growths where Ki flowed, which were connected with each Dantian.

Usually, a body had three Dantians. The Dantian of their head, their heart, and the stomach. When all three of them reached pure harmony, the amount of Ki that the cultivator could produce, and control would increase drastically as a result.

At the same time, he injected into her body the essences of dozens of Martial Treasures he had harvested inside his Inner Realm. Using the Treasures, he decided to refine Anna and help her inherit a fragment of his own legacy.

Of the almighty physique he possessed!

“You’ve done good; you’ve done enough. You deserve this, my only and one disciple.” He spoke, spreading out his wings.

Anna’s entire body flared with new power, overflowing with several different energies coming from her. First of all, he healed her broken Dantians.

Dantians appeared as glowing ethereal spheres inside the body’s spiritual projection. Naturally, physical attacks wouldn’t easily break them.

However, attacks imbued with supernatural energies could reach them and even break them if the cultivator was not careful.

The thing is, aside from all the damage Anna has been taking constantly, it was because of her extremely powerful energies conflicting with one another inside her body that her Dantians broke.

Large cracks slowly started to heal back; the glowing spheres regained their light, completely unblemished, as if they had never been damaged to begin with.

“Your Dantians were rather weak, so it wasn’t hard to heal them... However.”

His mystic eyes glanced through Anna’s spirit projection, a “second body” every person with special supernatural abilities possessed, which was merged with their real body. It presented the special “spiritual organs” they possessed.

The Ki Pathways and the Dantians represented such "organs," and there were also things such as Mana Hearts, Internal Magic Circles, and other types of supernatural spirit organs that other people capable of wielding different energies could develop within them.

Anna was wearing her clothes as usual; he was not peeking into her physical body at all. His eyes glanced deeper than that, into her spiritual body and her astral projection.

“This is… What is this?”

His crimson eyes shone with intrigue as the Heavenly Demon found something strange inside Anna’s Spiritual Body, which was also connected to her physical body. It was not her Inner Martial Core, but that was also connected to it, creating a strange synergy and harmony.

“A blue jewel inside her body, replacing her heart… It contains within- Ungh?!”

And before he could see deeper, a powerful wave of cosmic power surged from within. He saw a vision: a gigantic, infinitely large, and monstrous divine god-like millipede. It only glanced at him once, and he almost froze.

He had confronted their Avatars before, but never one of them directly. With the Heavenly Empress, they even killed some through their Avatars connection, shattering them into pieces.

It was a Constellation!

However, this Constellation was different from those that invaded his world. It was sealed inside Anna’s own artificial heart.

And this heart’s cosmic powers surpassed her own body and soul’s powers greatly, yet she was somehow living and harmonizing with a power that should have otherwise vaporized her body.

“How fascinating.”

It has been many years since the Heavenly Demon felt so intrigued before. Anna, his new disciple, was a bundle of new and interesting things.

“The Cosmic Heart Core she possesses also counts as a fourth Dantian.” He spoke, discovering what made Anna so special. “A fourth Dantian! That is simply not something that should exist.”

Anna’s body was simply too exceptional. The Cosmic Heart Core she had exuded a powerful aura of cosmic energy, that, with its connection with her Inner Martial Core, created a completely unique circumstance.

Her Spiritual Body materialized a fourth Dantian, right below the Heart Dantian. This Dantian, which was blue unlike the others that were gold, seemed much larger. At least three times as big as the others.

It was an endlessly swirling sphere of cosmic essence and of all the powers connected to it. The Heavenly Demon smirked as he suddenly realized why Anna was hurting herself so much.

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It wasn’t just because her Physique “was not enough”; it was because her Dantians could simply not keep up with her fourth, much larger Dantian.

“To put this into comparison, it would be as if a normal mortal was suddenly given a second heart, one three times as big as their original one.” The Heavenly Demon thought. “The mortal would at first believe he has become much stronger, faster, energetic, and powerful. And to an extent, he did! However, this would eventually come from biting his tail. The blood pumping through his body would be several times faster than before, and his body would be constantly heating, wasting energy and calories. Eventually, he would die off, withering away after all his energies were consumed by his own body, enchanted by a super metabolism!”

It was the very same thing for Anna!

Her second Heart Dantian was so tremendously powerful that, at first, it gave her amazing powers.

But over time, it started to destroy her internal Pathways and Dantians because they simply couldn’t keep up with its intensity.

“I think I know what I must do now.” He said several more treasures were pouring out of a black and red portal leading to his Inner Realm. “I need more treasures, but even then, that’s not enough. We’ll be using these for that as well.”

His crimson eyes sharply glanced at two floating clouds. One white, another black. These were the clouds that robot Anna had destroyed and left behind—tiny fragments of White and Black Heaven.

“I planned to devour them both... But if I can do this properly, my disciple might one day surpass me—no, everyone in this world.” He smiled. “I simply cannot waste the opportunity to brag about that later on, kahahaha! I’m going to make my little monster of a disciple into a true monster!”

He controlled all the needles as they floated over Anna, leaving no wounds behind at all. Then he started to control the two Heaven Fragments with his powers. At this point, the Heavenly Demon was overexerting himself, growing more and more exhausted.

But he couldn’t stop once he began! He had grown fascinated by his disciple’s incredible potential. And as someone who once strived to reach the pinnacle, he would naturally want the same for his disciple.

The two Heaven Fragments slowly dissolved into fluffy threads that looked to be made of black and white cotton. He then directed them towards Anna, both of whom were led by sharp needles that pierced her flesh.

But instead of piercing her actual flesh, the needles became ethereal, reaching her Spiritual Body, and using the White and Black Heaven Threads to sew through her spiritual body.

What the Heavenly Demon was doing was something he only imagined just now—an inspiration, an insight he gained after seeing Anna’s endless potential.

Using the threads, he sewed together the Pathways, which were still damaged, and then connected them with her Fourth Dantian. Later, he used these very threads to connect with the rest of her three Dantians and her Fourth Dantian.

And lastly, he used these threads again, sewing them through her Physique’s own Runic Construction, further connecting everything, which showed over Anna’s skin like black and green tattoos resembling circuits.

“Hahh… Hahhh…”

The Heavenly Demon was gasping for air, growing more and more tired. All the energy he had regained was already gone, and he was feeling the ever-growing pain of the nanomachines slowly eating his body away.

“I-It’s… It’s done…”

The needles went back to his hands as the Heavenly Demon fell to his knees, vomiting blood. He used all his strength to resist the nanomachines from advancing further, as he almost passed out. His consciousness comes in and out constantly.

“Ugh… Hahh… Hahahahah…”

A smile surged on his beak as he looked at his flawless creation.

Anna glowed with a Heavenly, Demonic, and Cosmic Essence, harmonized, and without clashing against one another or hurting her internally anymore.

Above all, a deep black sphere was also glowing there as all the energies converged.

“You better wake up soon, my disciple. I am eager to learn and see you learn from me.

He slowly stood up, walking away and gently covering Anna with white blankets.

“But for now, rest.”

He closed the door behind him, walking to his own room.

As all of this had happened, Anna herself was not just unconscious.

Her subconscious had not gone anymore, in fact. It was in a place between her dreams and reality.

It was a limbo of sorts, where she had been suddenly dragged into.

“Where… Where am I?”

She felt completely free from everything—the weight of her body, the weight of her thoughts.

Anna felt like she was slowly drifting away across an endless river of cold water.

“Ahh… I get it now.”

Her eyes looked rather sleepy as she stared into the skies.

There, she saw it.

A large sphere of pure cosmic energy.

There were white and black threads connecting it with several other spheres—three, to be exact.

And also, large rivers of golden light are flowing everywhere.

And lastly, a giant black and purple orb, overflowing with dark shadows.

It even resembled a black sun.

“Am I looking at my own Spiritual Body?” She wondered. “But why does it feel so strong? Something is happening to me…”

The light and darkness of the skies slowly bathed her entire body, engulfing her and drowning her within a sea of blue, gold, and purple light.

“Ugh…!”

She swam through it all, until finally appearing over the water, splashing it away.

“What’s… happening to me?”

She felt her entire Spiritual Body beginning to change. First, it drowned. Cosmic essence, the liquid she found herself swimming through, “drowned” it all, dissolving itself into the Spiritual Body.

Lastly, the threads of black and white she saw above the skies descended and spread themselves across everything, forming endless rivers of black and white energies.

Later, all four spheres descended, splashing into the water and mixing together, moving around, and then stabilizing.

The giant blue and purple-colored one slowly gained a blacker color, floating in the middle of the cosmic sea.

And then the other three golden spheres rotated around it.

“It is as if a Solar System was born…”

Anna gasped in utter disbelief at what she saw.

But that wasn’t all.

The black sun above the skies, the crystal orb, quickly placed itself below the blue sphere.

Streams of darkness surged from it, connecting the sphere with the seas below.

The cosmic seas splashed everywhere as they slowly started to swirl upward.

A large tower made of this cosmic sea reached the black crystal orb, and then the blue sphere, and then the three golden spheres.

Everything became connected without conflicting interactions between the elemental energies.

“My Spiritual Body…” Anna gasped. “It is in complete harmony?”

She sighed.

“I do admit it was a mess before, but I really didn’t have time to think about it…” She thought. “I was sooner or later going to heal it with another method. But I guess it deteriorated even faster than I imagined.”

As she wondered that, the seas slowly started to pull her down.

She drowned in its depths but was fine.

She felt relaxed, letting go of everything.

The exhaustion and pain created from all the accumulated impurities were gone, and her cracked Dantians were gone.

And finally, she was able to sleep well, her consciousness fully drifting off into the realm of dreams.

Yet, in those last moments, as her eyes closed, she couldn’t help but feel surprised over what she saw.

Swimming in the cosmic sea, there were countless other beings.

She didn’t know if they were Astral Projections or something else…

Some had more familiar appearances than others for her, which quickly made her realize what this truly was.

“My… Egos…?”

Before she could even interact with them, she fell completely asleep.

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