The enormous skeleton, several thousand zhang long and several hundred zhang high, floated in midair, striking terror into anyone who saw it, as though it might fall at any moment.
Since he had decided to refine the skeleton, Gu He did not hesitate. With a sweep of his sleeve, an endless stream of dark cyan flames poured forth, linking together and clinging to the surface of the massive skeleton, completely enveloping it.
Scorching heat surged from the flames and began refining the encased skeleton.
Although the skeleton's owner had been at least a Seven-Star Dou Sheng, he had been dead for thousands of years. Moreover, his origin and power had been absorbed after death to cultivate the Dragon Phoenix Origin Fruit. Thus, the skeleton was not especially tough. Under the searing dark cyan flames, it softened in little more than ten minutes and turned into a pool of grayish-white liquid.
Once all the bones had softened, what appeared before Gu He was a huge grayish-white sphere of liquid nearly ten zhang across. An astonishing amount of energy radiated from within it. However, that energy contained far too many impurities—some from the skeleton itself, and some left behind by the external energy instinctively gathered by a Dou Sheng's bones.
Gu He wrapped the massive sphere of liquid layer upon layer in dark cyan flames, then abruptly intensified the Heavenly Flame.
"Sizzle, sizzle, sizzle!"
The surface of the grayish-white liquid suddenly churned. Bubbles emerged one after another, and as they burst, wisps of grayish-white vapor rose from the liquid, only to be burned into nothingness by the dark cyan flames surrounding it.
Under the fierce tempering of the Heavenly Flame, the grayish-white liquid sphere began shrinking rapidly. In merely an hour, it had been reduced to the size of a human head.