"Reinforce!"
Deep within Zhang Chu's consciousness, that dark gold System Panel appeared as though branded by a hot iron, four large characters abruptly lighting up--[Reinforcing].
Ten million Merit Points instantly evaporated.
It was a very bizarre sensation.
It felt as though someone had pulled something extremely heavy from the deepest part of his body, and at that instant he even felt his body grow light, almost as though he were about to float away.
Then--
"Boom!"
A force fiercer than any previous reinforcement exploded from the deepest part of his Sea of Consciousness, much like a volcano suppressed beneath the earth for a thousand years having finally found an outlet.
The gray-white patterns of the Sickness Stele lit up within his body simultaneously, those thousands of fine vascular patterns resembling a ignited net, rapidly spreading from his chest out to his limbs.
A layer of gray-white luster surfaced across the surface of his skin, as though something were infiltrating outward from the inside.
"Ugh--"
Zhang Chu tilted his head back, emitting a low, muffled roar.
The sound was not loud, yet it carried a pain suppressed to the absolute limit.
His outer garment shattered in that single instant, exposing the bare upper body beneath it.
Those gray-white patterns had already spread to his neck and arms, but the speed of their spread was slowing down, stagnating, and fading.
"Are you... refining the Sickness Stele?"
Steward Gu's voice came from ten zhang away, carrying a vibration he had never experienced in his thousands of years of cultivation.
Those half-closed eyes opened completely, extremely complex light surging in the depths of his pupils--there was shock, there was disbelief, and there was something even deeper, which was...
Fear!
"You are actually refining four stone steles on the spot? What on earth... are you?"