Chen Yan covered Fukada's forehead with his palm as the [Internal Furnace] silently churned.
Countless fine, pale bone threads extended from his palm, burrowing deep into the corpse and precisely coiling around the remaining Gu worms still writhing in its flesh.
The next moment, invisible furnace flames kindled within Chen Yan and surged along the bone threads into Fukada's body, flooding his meridians and acupoints.
"Fss—"
Amid the barely audible hiss of burning, the sinister, vicious Gu worms didn't even manage to struggle before they were thoroughly refined in the pure furnace flames.
They became streams of pure, gentle energy that flowed back along the bone threads and into the Golden Core Embryo in Chen Yan's dantian.
When the flames died out, the bone threads withdrew.
Fukada's corpse had withered completely, not a trace of its sinister aura remaining.
Chen Yan's consciousness sank into a torrent of jumbled memories. As if leafing through a battered dossier, he quickly skimmed Fukada's twisted life.
Useful information was soon sifted out and surfaced in the depths of his mind.
First came an image of a totem.
A giant snake biting its own tail, forming a closed ring and symbolizing the cycle of life and eternity.
Then came the name: the Eternal Life Cult.
Its central doctrine was simple and insane:
Worship an Evil God who granted "eternal life." The way to receive its blessing was to embrace "mutation" and turn one's flesh into a vessel for the Evil God's power.
The Gu worms inside Fukada were proof of that "blessing."
He had refined himself into a living nest of worms, nourishing the Evil God's offspring with his flesh in exchange for this sinister power.
There was never any shortage of people chasing shortcuts in this world.
The path of martial arts was long