Chapter 1863 - 599: Unexpected Failure, Encountering Li Baobao Again
Chapter 1863: Chapter 599: Unexpected Failure, Encountering Li Baobao Again
At the instant when the Five Elements Tribulation Qi was detonated inside the Golden Body, tearing, burning, virulent poison, drowning, crushing—every different agony born of the Five Elements Tribulation Qi surged into his mind at once. Xia Hong felt as if every nerve in his body was being ripped apart, on the verge of fainting at any moment, even dying outright.
Unlike before—woodcutting, earth digging, Cold Resistance, and the recent Xianyang—those four Breakthrough pains had remained only on the level of the flesh. But the War Body Golden Body, to put it bluntly, was Xia Hong’s Soul Body Dharma Body. This ultimate torment that struck straight at the depths of the soul was a hundred times worse than the former, and that was no exaggeration.
"Aaahhh..."
Deep within the Mist Swamp Forest, the shrill, miserable screams had gone on for who knew how long. Xia Hong’s entire body was caked in blood?streaked mud, rolling and struggling endlessly on the ground. The consciousness in his mind had long since dissolved; the War Body Golden Body floating above his physical body had shrunk from its original thirteen zhang to just over one zhang, and its aura was no longer as mighty as before. Like his fleshly body, it had been battered tattered by the Five Elements Tribulation Qi, its head drooping, withered to the extreme.
The Skin Membrane on the surface of his Golden Body was already riddled with a thousand wounds, and the Five Elements Tribulation Qi inside was even starting to seep out. Put this on any normal person, and they would have already given up on breaking through, torn open the membrane, and completely vented the Tribulation Qi from within.
But Xia Hong did not!
Even though his consciousness had already vanished, he still relied on sheer instinct to hold out in a death?grip, locking down the remaining intact portions of the skin membrane, not allowing the Tribulation Qi inside his body to escape. Corresponding to that, the Golden Body continued to be ravaged by the Five Elements Tribulation Qi, which then rebounded onto his flesh, turning into that bone?piercing, heart?boring pain that never once ceased.
Szzz szzz szzz...
After who knows how long, amidst Xia Hong’s continuous miserable screaming, a faint strange sound suddenly mixed in—that sound came from within the Golden Body, like the sizzle of a tiny flame igniting.
"Hhuh...... hhuh... aaah..."
After that strange sound, the pain Xia Hong felt as he writhed on the ground seemed to intensify by several degrees. His abdomen facing the sky, his body arched backward at an incredibly exaggerated angle; his mouth sprayed out a jet of pitch?black thick smoke laced with fire.
Crack!
The Skin Membrane over the left side of his Golden Body’s chest—right where the heart lay—actually split open.
Accompanied by Xia Hong’s worsening screams, the torn region of membrane began to turn transparent, and a thread of firelight flickered faintly behind the thin film.
Thump... thump... thump...
The faint firelight suddenly began to flicker at an extremely rapid frequency, now extinguished, now ignited. With this cyclical flickering, a drum?beat?like thumping of a heart gradually rose up.
As the sound of the heartbeat grew louder and louder, Xia Hong’s originally withered Golden Body slowly rallied and revived, and began to expand bit by bit. It quickly reached two zhang, then three... faster and faster, faster and faster; in just a moment it surpassed ten zhang, and was still continuing to recover.
Curiously enough, Xia Hong’s screams were thunderously loud. Fortunately, this was the Dark Realm, where both light and sound had their range of propagation greatly suppressed. Had this been the Ice Abyss, with such volume, one would likely hear it within a radius of over ten kilometers. Yet even such deafening screams still could not drown out the heartbeat within his Golden Body.
Bang... bang... bang...
After resounding continuously for who knows how long, the firelight in the heart region of the Golden Body, following one more cycle of extinguishing then igniting, finally ceased flickering. The flame, originally only the size of a fingertip, paused for several breaths, then suddenly flared up, shooting to a height of three inches, illuminating the entire Golden Body in a blazing red.
At the same time, dense blood?colored threads began to sprout from the three?inch flame. Those threads rapidly spread outward, just like the meridians of a human body, weaving into a spider?web?like pattern that quickly expanded to the size of a fist.
"The Heart Concealed God belongs to fire among the Five Elements, so the first organ my Golden Body is being forced to manifest is the heart. Next I have to channel all of the Tribulation Qi within my body to the heart region, to make it take shape quickly!"
Don’t misunderstand—Xia Hong had not recovered; he was still screaming. But just now, when the blood?colored threads sprouted from the three?inch flame and spread to fist size, a trace of clarity flashed across his pupils, and his consciousness actually returned for a brief moment.
Xia Hong dared not be negligent. The pain boring into his bones was still there; unable to bear it, he directly clamped down on his own tongue. With that one bite, he could feel that his tongue had been nailed through halfway by his teeth.
If it were a normal person, that one chomp would probably have killed them on the spot!
But he was not. Not only was he fine, his consciousness even grew sharper.
"The Heart Concealed God also governs the tongue. Back then Yan Long Master’s Fire Melting Pills only took effect when those people held them under the tongue, so any sensation produced by the tongue can stimulate the heart. Keep biting—it works!"
While Xia Hong clamped his tongue in a death?bite, he gathered all the Tribulation Qi dispersed across the other four organ regions of the Golden Body, and shifted it all to the left chest, pressing it in one go onto the newly formed yet still incomplete heart.
Boom...
The gold, wood, water, and earth four?element Tribulation Qi surged in a sudden assault; the frail newborn organ nearly failed to withstand it and almost collapsed outright.
Fortunately, it ultimately endured!
That nascent heart, though fist?sized, at this moment consisted only of Heart Fire and internal meridians. As the vast Tribulation Qi poured in, the meridians began slowly drawing out fleshy buds. The buds rapidly grew, then differentiated into blood and flesh—a perfect heart was being rapidly formed.
Whoosh...
The fierce impact of Tribulation Qi made Xia Hong’s consciousness begin to scatter once more. Just before he lost consciousness, realizing that the Tribulation Energy within his body was far too little, he grit his teeth and took out the second set of Five Elements Tribulation Qi Pearls from the Yellow Mustard Bag, had the Golden Body rapidly absorb them, and placed them directly in the corresponding regions of the five organs.