Lin Xia looked down and saw that his exposed arms and the skin on the backs of his hands had taken on an incredibly faint yet unmistakable black-rock-like sheen beneath the torchlight!
The sheen did not merely float on the surface. It radiated from deep within his skin, making it appear tighter and tougher, as though covered by an invisible, exceptionally dense layer of callus.
Lin Xia could not help rubbing the skin of his arm hard with his fingers.
The sensation... had changed!
It was no longer just the soft elasticity of a flesh and blood body. It now possessed an indescribable toughness and hardness!
It was like touching the inner layer of the finest supple leather armor, tempered a thousand times over, or the surface of a hard pebble polished by countless ages of flowing water—smooth, dense, and filled with an inner strength.
Lin Xia tried scraping his arm with his fingernail. In the past, it would have easily left a pale mark, but now it only left an extremely shallow trace, one that visibly faded and vanished before his eyes!
His skin's defensive power, toughness, and that solid sense of resistance against physical impacts and energy erosion were all increasing at an astonishing rate!
"This..."
Lin Xia's eyes were filled with delight. He moved his body, and the muscles beneath his skin still moved freely, yet the "outer garment" wrapping them had become completely different, as though he had put on a perfectly fitted, invisible suit of treasure armor he had been born with.
"Teacher! These scales... they aren't strengthening my bones or muscles. They're strengthening my skin! My skin... has become as tough as its scales!"
Lou Gao had been staring intently at Lin Xia's reactions and changes. When he saw that fleeting black-rock sheen on