After leaving the Ten Thousand Medicine Pavilion, Huo Yuhao did not head straight back to the secluded little courtyard.
He kept walking, weaving through the bustling crowds in the eastern district of Shrek City. The coarse robe he wore had faded white along its edges in the sunlight, but it could not conceal the composure and steadiness utterly at odds with his age.
He had a clear ledger in his mind.
The ingredients for twenty portions of Body Tempering Powder cost a little over thirty Gold Soul Coins at market price. After the ten-percent discount, the total came to twenty-eight.
He had paid forty. The extra twelve were both a token of appreciation for Yao Sheng's friendly overture and the truly superior quality of the ingredients, and a quiet show of goodwill.
He did not want to owe anyone a favor, especially a merchant he might work with for a long time in the future.
And right now, he needed more than just ingredients.
The medicinal properties of Body Tempering Powder were extremely potent. If swallowed directly, its violent medicinal force would be like hundreds upon hundreds of daggers, piercing the esophagus, stomach lining, and small intestine in an instant, tearing the internal organs to shreds before the body had any chance to absorb it.
At best, it would cause bloody vomiting and severe injury. At worst, it would shatter the bones and meridians, leaving the victim crippled for life and unable to cultivate.
This was a lesson learned through bloody experience in his previous life.
A Body Sect disciple, confident in his own strong physique and eager to become stronger, had swallowed an entire bottle of Body Tempering Powder without diluting it as prescribed. The result was blood pouring from his seven orifices and a collapsed breastbone. By the time he was carried before Du Busi, even the Limit Douluo could only shake his head and sigh.
The only proper way to use it was to dilute it with water and soak in a medicinal bath.
That way, the medicinal force could pass through tens of thousands of pores, seeping slowly and evenly from the outside in, into the skin, flesh, bones, and blood.
It was like tempering steel in a blazing furnace: the iron had to be placed in the fire and repeatedly heated and hammered, not doused directly in molten lava.
So he made his way from one shop to another.
First, he visited an old store that specialized in alchemical equipment and picked out a fine brass medicinal cauldron. Its walls were evenly thick, it conducted heat steadily, and it was unlikely to crack.
He also bought a fine-mud filter, a jade pestle, a porcelain grinder, an ebony medicine spoon, and a few other odds and ends.
The shopkeeper was a lean old man. Seeing how young Huo Yuhao was, yet how precisely he chose and how carefully he asked his questions, he could not help giving him a few extra looks.
Next, he went to a woodworking shop that made bath barrels and tubs.
Huo Yuhao passed over the expensive models adorned with carvings and gold paint. Instead, he asked for a plain cypress bath barrel a little over half a zhang wide and three chi deep, with thick walls.
Cypress was resistant to rot and prolonged soaking. Its fine grain made it unlikely to warp when wet, and it carried a mild, bitter herbal fragrance that would not interfere with the medicine.
He paid an extra three Silver Soul Coins and asked the shopkeeper to plane and polish both the inside and outside until smooth, without leaving a single splinter.
The shopkeeper took the money and thumped his chest in assurance. "Don't worry, young sir. All the regulars in western Shrek City know Old Zhou's work. I guarantee you'll be satisfied!"
Huo Yuhao nodded, left his address, and arranged for the delivery to arrive at the end of the Shen hour.
By the time he carried all his equipment back to the secluded courtyard at dusk, a brand-new cypress bath barrel was already standing neatly by the gate.
Its walls were smooth as a mirror. Up close, it gave off only a faint woody scent.
He opened the door, put away the equipment, and carried the bath barrel into the empty room he had set aside as a "medicine room."
Then he began making the Body Tempering Powder.
He took one portion of the ingredients from the wooden box.
The Body Tempering Flower was a deep russet red, with thick petals and intact roots. When he lightly pinched it between his fingertips, he could feel the fierce, scorching medicinal force within.
The Bone Refining Grass had thick, sturdy joints and a pale gold cross-section. It was a premium specimen.
The other supporting ingredients—the Red Flame Root, Dragon Blood Vine Shavings, Maidenhair Fern, Tiger Bone Glue...—were all rich and full in color.
Huo Yuhao washed his hands, burned incense (in truth, he lit an ordinary mugwort stick to repel insects), and sat cross-legged before the worktable.
First, he took three Body Tempering Flowers, removed the stems, and placed the petals in the jade grinder, slowly crushing them into a paste.
Deep red juice seeped out, giving off a pungent, fiery scent, as if it had trapped within it the fiercest heat of late summer.
Next came the Bone Refining Grass.
He held down the stalk with the ebony medicine spoon and caught it in the fine-mud filter. With a slight pulse of Soul Power, he crushed its fibers before grinding them finely.
The medicinal properties of Bone Refining Grass were more subdued. Its fibers had to be broken before it could release its full potency.
One ingredient, two, three...
His movements flowed smoothly, precise to the point of near severity. The preparation, order of addition, and heat required for each ingredient were all engraved deep in his soul.
He set the brass cauldron over a charcoal stove.
He filled it seven-tenths full with clean water. Once tiny bubbles like crab eyes appeared at the bottom, he added the Maidenhair Fern and Red Flame Root.
These two ingredients had potent medicinal properties and needed to be boiled over high heat for a long time, drawing out every last trace of their power for the bones and muscles.
The water boiled three times, and the broth gradually turned orange-red.
He added the Bone Refining Grass shavings, Dragon Blood Vine Shavings, Tiger Bone Glue... one by one. With each addition, he stirred precisely forty-nine times using a measured amount of Soul Power, clockwise, neither too fast nor too slow, ensuring the ingredients blended without scorching.
Once the liquid had reduced to seven-tenths of its original amount, he turned the heat low.
Only then did he slowly pour in the bowl of deep russet Body Tempering Flower paste.
"Hiss—"
A soft sound rang out, and white vapor billowed upward.
The orange-red liquid instantly turned a rich, deep scarlet, like molten rock, like congealed blood.
A fierce, pungent, almost wild medicinal aroma burst forth, filling the entire room in an instant. It was no gentle, inviting fragrance; it charged forward and plunged straight into the lungs.
Huo Yuhao's expression did not change as he stirred steadily for one hundred and eight turns.
The liquid in the cauldron gradually thickened and cleared, finally becoming a translucent red, like a ruby, yet as still as a deep pool.
He scooped up a drop with the jade spoon. It clung to the side like honey, stretching into a thread more than an inch long without breaking.
It was done.
He put out the fire and, while the liquid was still hot, divided it among the twenty small bottles of mutton-fat jade porcelain he had prepared.
The jade bottles were cold. When they met the scalding liquid, they made a faint "pop," and he immediately sealed their mouths with beeswax.
Twenty bottles of blood-red Body Tempering Powder sat quietly on the worktable.
Each bottle contained a "blaze" potent enough to blister the skin of an ordinary Soul Master and send them howling and rolling across the floor.
Huo Yuhao looked at them calmly, like a blacksmith examining a blade fresh from the forge.
These bottles would be enough for two months of body-tempering cultivation.
He took nineteen of them and carefully placed them in the temperature-controlled compartment of his Storage Ring, arranging them in a special staggered pattern to keep their medicinal properties stable.
He left only one bottle in his palm.
The cypress bath barrel, a little over half a zhang wide, stood in the center of the empty medicine room, filled with clean water. The surface was still, reflecting the moonlight through the window lattice in a bright, silvery sheet.
Huo Yuhao stood beside the barrel and pulled away the beeswax seal on the jade bottle.
He slowly poured the bottle of scarlet Body Tempering Powder, red as molten rock, into the water.
"Hiss—!!!"
A shrill, drawn-out hiss rang out, like red-hot iron plunged into ice water!
Thick white steam roared upward, instantly filling the room!
The water, clear to the bottom just moments before, was dyed red before his eyes. The medicinal liquid swallowed it up, churning and boiling as countless tiny bubbles surged wildly from the bottom of the barrel, as if the entire tub of water had caught fire!
When the steam had thinned, the water in the barrel had turned a thick, deep red, glimmering faintly with an eerie light. Its surface still trembled gently, like a sleeping Ferocious Beast breathing.
Huo Yuhao took off his clothes.
Moonlight passed through the window lattice and fell across his tall, slender, slightly gaunt frame.
The boy's bones had begun to lengthen, but years of malnutrition had left his muscles thin and his shoulder blades slightly protruding. His waist looked so slender it might snap in two.
His skin took on a faint, unhealthy bluish-white in the moonlight, with pale blue veins just visible beneath it.
His expression unchanged, he lifted a leg and stepped into the barrel.
He sat down.
Everything below his neck sank into the boiling red liquid.
The next instant, scorching pain far worse than boiling water exploded across his skin!
First came a stinging burn on the surface, followed by the medicinal force seeping into his flesh like countless fine needles stabbing into it. In moments, the agony drove deeper, straight into his marrow and internal organs.
Every inch of him burned with pain, as if he had been thrown into a blazing furnace.
Any other Soul Master his age would have already screamed and leapt from the barrel. They would not have lasted even a single breath.
But Huo Yuhao merely sat cross-legged at the bottom of the barrel, his back straight as a rock unmoved for ten thousand ages.
His face remained perfectly calm. He did not even furrow his brow, as if the soul-rending agony had nothing to do with him.
In his previous life, he had risked his life to fuse with the Ice Jade Empress Scorpion's four-hundred-thousand-year Soul Bone. The pain of forcibly merging a Soul Bone with his flesh had been like falling into the Avīci hell, his soul and body torn apart and remade over and over again—ten thousand times more horrific than this.
This little pain from a medicinal bath was no more than the nibble of a mosquito to him.
Huo Yuhao slowly closed his eyes and sank his mind into his body. A steady thread of Soul Power circulated, guiding the medicinal force in the air and water, strand by strand, as it slowly seeped into every limb and bone.
His once rather thin and frail body was gradually becoming firmer and stronger under the constant nourishment of the medicine, its contours growing more defined at a speed too subtle to notice.
An hour passed in silence.
The blood-red medicinal liquid in the barrel had completely faded, returning to a basin of clear water. He had absorbed every last trace of its medicinal power.
Huo Yuhao slowly opened his eyes. A glimmer flashed in them as he rose to his feet.
Water droplets slid down his taut contours. He took a clean towel, dried himself, and walked over to a bronze mirror.
The boy in the mirror no longer looked as thin and malnourished as before. His shoulders and back had broadened, his muscles had grown firm, and he looked several times more vigorous.
He nodded slightly, quite satisfied with the results of this medicinal bath.
After a short rest, he made his way to the rooftop terrace of the courtyard.
His medicinal bath was over, but the medicine was still circulating through his body. He had to guide it with a specialized cultivation method to refine the remaining medicinal power completely and truly make it part of his foundation.
Huo Yuhao took a deep breath, bent his knees slightly, and slowly lowered his body. His arms twisted and stretched behind him at an extremely strange angle.
Each movement was slow and steady. His posture was unusual, yet somehow it followed the body's natural principles.
As he moved through the bizarre sequence, the medicinal power still lingering in his body seemed to be drawn along, surging wildly into every limb and bone.
A fierce yet gentle current of warmth rushed through his meridians, nourishing every inch of his bones, flesh, and organs. The comfort that spread from within was so soothing he could hardly keep himself from letting out a soft sigh.
The method he was practicing was not any known body-tempering art on the continent. It was a top-tier body-tempering method he had created in his previous life: the Myriad Tribulation Indestructible Body.
He had gathered the Body Sect's body-tempering arts, the secret techniques of Shrek Academy, and the peerless arts of many hidden sects across the continent, melding them together to create this supreme path of body refinement.
The Myriad Tribulation Indestructible Body had nine realms, each higher than the last. Once he reached perfection in the ninth realm, his body would rival that of a god. It was said to make him a god walking among mortals.
In his previous life, Huo Yuhao had never managed to reach perfection. He had stopped at the eighth realm, yet even then, his physical strength had rivaled that of an ordinary Limit Douluo.
If he had achieved the ninth realm and forged a demigod body, then even if Niu Tian, Tai Tan, and the Sea God's Great Enshrined had joined forces to bombard him with Sea God Divine Power, he could have taken the full force with his body and emerged completely unharmed.
Now that he had been reborn, he was starting from the beginning. He was cultivating the first realm of the Myriad Tribulation Indestructible Body.
The first realm had a total of thirty-six training diagrams, which he had specially created to build an unsurpassed foundation.
He likened the human body to an empty city:
The skin was the city wall, the flesh its rammed earth, the bones its beams and pillars, the blood its flowing water, the marrow its oil, and the organs its furnace.
The order of cultivation had to be followed strictly:
Skin → Flesh → Bones → Blood → Marrow → Organs
Every six diagrams completed one minor stage. Once all six stages were complete and all thirty-six diagrams mastered, the first realm would be perfected.
Each stage had clear signs to prove its completion:
Skin stage complete: Bronze Skin. The pores closed, and the skin turned a dark bronze. Blades left no marks; a sharp edge slid across it as if it had touched old oxhide.
Flesh stage complete: Golden Skin. Faint golden patterns appeared in the muscles. At rest, they were soft as cotton; when exerting force, they became harder than refined steel, with astonishing spring.
Bone stage complete: Iron Bone. The density of the bones tripled, and they turned a bluish-black. An ordinary iron rod would bend under a heavy blow, but the bones would not.
Blood stage complete: Blood Qi Like a Pump. The heartbeat thundered, and the rush of blood could be heard from three feet away. Wounds healed several times faster than an ordinary person's.
Marrow stage complete: Jade Marrow. The bone marrow changed from red to a lustrous jade white, and the power to produce and regenerate blood surged. A broken bone would mend in just a few days.
Organs stage complete: Thunder in the Six Organs. The six organs became as if forged from refined iron, and his breath stretched long and deep as an abyss. His Soul Power flowed without pause. Even after several days without food or water, he would remain energetic and untroubled by impurities. A low rumble of thunder would sound as his organs shifted, and his stamina and vitality would far surpass those of Soul Masters at the same level—by more than tenfold.
What he was cultivating now was the first diagram of the first realm of the Myriad Tribulation Indestructible Body.
He moved without hurry or agitation, stretching, twisting, sinking, and tensing over and over again.
Each change in posture precisely guided the medicinal power still within him, crushing and refining those fierce yet gentle energies strand by strand, then thoroughly merging them into his skin, flesh, bones, and meridians.
Under the method's guidance, the medicinal power, once a mere warmth flowing through him, transformed into nourishment as fine as spring rain. It seeped into every corner of his body, silently tempering his foundation.
The sun slowly sank below the horizon, and dusk spread across the courtyard. The last trace of golden light at the edge of the sky was swallowed by night. Cool moonlight fell over the rooftop terrace like a veil of gauze, covering him from head to toe.
Only then did Huo Yuhao slowly end his cultivation. A faint, crisp series of pops sounded from his joints, and his entire bearing seemed steadier and more composed.
He walked back inside. He had no intention of resting and went straight to sit cross-legged on the bed.
He closed his eyes and sank his mind within himself, immediately circulating the Dao Heaven Art.
Threads of Soul Power from heaven and earth were drawn in by the cultivation method, flowing into his body like fine rain and running slowly through his widened meridians, nourishing both body and soul.
For Huo Yuhao now, cultivation had long since replaced sleep. Only by cultivating day and night without pause could he steadily return to the peak in this world where the weak were prey to the strong.
The night deepened, and all was silent.
In the courtyard, only the boy sat quietly in meditation, merging with the Soul Power of heaven and earth as he silently built his strength.
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