Spirit-Rhino Body

Chapter 30: Spirit-Rhino Body

"This..."

The smile froze on Chen Lin's lips, and his body went rigid. A moment later, an exasperated, helpless look appeared in his eyes. He hadn't expected the little girl to be so timid.

Yang Qianqian's delicate, pretty face was streaked with tears. Her large eyes beneath those lovely lashes were red and swollen, and she bit down hard on her neat row of pearly teeth. Her face was pale with grief, and she looked so pitiful it made one's heart ache.

As Chen Lin gazed at the tear tracks on the girl's cheeks, his eyes suddenly grew unfocused.

For some reason, the girl's tears seemed to hold a strange magic, gradually stirring a scene buried deep in his heart...

A girl crying, just the same.

A bitter wind howled across the mountaintop. A graceful figure stood at its peak, dressed in white as pure as snow. The cutting wind pierced to the bone, and beneath the lonely moonlight, her silhouette looked especially frail. After a long while, the little figure finally crouched down, wailing and sobbing as bitterly as a helpless child...

"Heart Piercer..."

A dull ache stirred in Chen Lin's heart, and he found it hard to breathe. He quickly rubbed his nose and drew a deep breath, as if trying to ease his feelings. The smile had vanished from his face.

Chen Lin slowly stood up and remained silent for a long while. At last, he patted the Storage Bag at his waist and took out a loose robe meant for a man. Then he silently communicated with the Main God Coffin and spent Death Energy points on a healing pill. He tossed it and the robe beside the girl, then said wearily, "All right. Change your clothes. I still have some questions for you."

It turned out that before the girl had been abducted, she had been injured—perhaps in a fight—and her clothes were in tatters. She looked utterly bedraggled.

Yang Qianqian stared blankly at the clothes and pill beside her, and finally stopped crying. After a moment, the girl came to her senses. She lifted her tear-streaked face, her delicate nostrils twitching as she sniffled again, and asked softly, "Hey... you stinky demon... you're not going to... do anything to me?"

"What? You want me to do something to you?" Chen Lin's voice was plainly weary, with a trace of impatience. But when he saw the girl's pitiful expression, his heart softened a little. He rubbed the bridge of his nose and said, "All right, I promise I won't touch you. But you have to help me with a few things. After that, I'll let you go."

"Really?"

A glimmer appeared in Yang Qianqian's swollen eyes. She still seemed a little doubtful, but she hastily wiped away her tears and asked suspiciously, "Stinky demon, what do you want me to help you with?"

"First, tell me what kind of Sacred Body you have."

Yang Qianqian was clearly taken aback by Chen Lin's question. She hesitated, but in the end answered honestly, "My constitution is the Spirit-Rhino Body, but I've only awakened its mortal-rank innate ability."

"Spirit-Rhino Body?"

Chen Lin's eyes flickered. He had clearly never heard of it before. After thinking for a moment, he communicated with the Main God Coffin and quietly looked it up.

"The Spirit-Rhino Body is a special constitution. It possesses the innate abilities of perfect recall and flawless deduction..."

After a long while, Chen Lin finally understood what made Yang Qianqian's constitution so special.

Special constitutions could also appear among human cultivators, just as Demon Race cultivators possessed Heavenly Demon bloodlines and innate abilities. But such constitutions were exceedingly rare among humans, and every person who possessed one was a cultivation prodigy.

The Spirit-Rhino Body could bring anything under its control down to the most minute detail. For instance, when refining pills, someone with this constitution could instantly run through the process in their mind several times. The intensity of the true fire used to control the pill furnace, the precise amount of each ingredient, even the subtle changes caused by the way their medicinal properties interacted—all could be calculated with pinpoint accuracy.

Put simply, the Spirit-Rhino Body wasn't suited to combat. Instead, it was like a sophisticated, precision instrument, capable of calculating the many consequences and changes an action might produce. It was a genius constitution born for pill refining, artifact crafting, and talisman making!

No wonder the Valley Master of Forget-Emotion Valley had personally taken her as a disciple to inherit her legacy, then secretly kept her hidden away!

Chen Lin stared at the girl, and his eyes began to glow green again...

"Hey! You stinky demon! You're going back on your word, you treacherous bastard?!"

Seeing Chen Lin approach slowly with a sinister grin, Yang Qianqian shrieked in fright, thinking he had changed his mind. Her delicate body scrambled across the bed, and she cried out, trembling, "Stinky demon... you awful demon... what... what are you going to do now?"

"Heh heh, don't be afraid. I won't do anything to you... I just need to draw your first drop of blood, that's all... heh heh... heh heh..."

Yang Qianqian's lips curled downward, and tears nearly welled up in her eyes again. She huddled up and trembled like a helpless girl cornered in a dark alley by a lecherous old man, waiting for an unknown ordeal and violation...

Yang Qianqian was utterly frustrated. At first, she'd misunderstood what Chen Lin meant, thinking he intended to do something vile and despicable to her. Now she finally understood: the damned stinky demon really did only want her blood.

And he hadn't just wanted it once. From last night until nearly midday the next day, Chen Lin had drawn her blood a full seventy-seven times! Now the damned stinky demon looked impatient and annoyed as he kept urging her to bleed for the seventy-eighth time!

Luckily, cultivators had much more abundant blood and energy than ordinary people. More than seventy bloodlettings in a row had only left the girl a little tired and hadn't done much harm to her body.

Who knew someone could have such a disgusting fetish? What a perverted, despicable, lewd, shameless stinky demon!

As the girl silently cursed him in disgust, she obediently held out her fair, tender wrist. Her slender fingers tightened, squeezing out several more drops of vivid red blood.

"Drip~"

The blood fell through the air and landed on the back of Chen Lin's hand. In the blink of an eye, it strangely seeped into his skin and vanished.

Chen Lin was frustrated too—more frustrated than Yang Qianqian, in fact. He hadn't expected the innate ability Gene Theft to have such a low activation rate. It was ridiculously low. He had absorbed a good deal of Yang Qianqian's blood. Though his senses had sharpened and his mind had become a little quicker, he still hadn't managed to obtain her innate ability.

As the blood entered his body, Chen Lin hadn't expected much, but he still forced himself to focus. He closed his eyes and carefully felt for any changes in his body.

But just then, a cold, mechanical voice rang in Chen Lin's mind, sounding like a heavenly melody.

"Innate ability 'Gene Theft' successfully activated..."

"Warning, warning. Contract holder's genes have changed... Recombining and rearranging genetic sequences..."

Chen Lin suddenly groaned. His whole body convulsed, and bluish veins began to writhe slowly beneath his skin, making him look especially frightening. Yang Qianqian shrieked at the sight and stumbled backward in panic, staring at Chen Lin, completely at a loss.

"It actually... worked?!"

Chen Lin's heart leapt with excitement. After more than seventy failures, it had finally worked on the seventy-eighth attempt!

He had no time to breathe a sigh of relief before another groan of pain escaped him. His brows knitted tight as he gritted his teeth, his entire body trembling uncontrollably.

Pain! Pain that went to the very marrow of his bones!

How could fusing foreign genes into one's own body be easy? New sequences and information had to be introduced into the bloodline, altering the original traits of the organism before it could undergo fusion and transformation.

After a long while...

"The contract holder's bloodline has undergone an irreversible change. The contract holder is awakening an innate ability... The system will reassess the host..."

"The contract holder has awakened an innate ability: Perfect Memory (Mortal Rank, Evolvable)."

"Perfect Memory (Mortal Rank, Evolvable): Anything seen once, whether an object or a process, can be imprinted completely in the mind and never forgotten."

Chen Lin closed his eyes and absorbed the information passed down through his bloodline.

After a long time, he suddenly opened his eyes. His gaze gleamed brilliantly, like the stars. But soon, the light in his eyes gradually faded, and they became as still as a deep well.

"Perfect Memory..."

Chen Lin murmured to himself, a thoughtful look in his eyes.

It turned out that, like the Demon Race, the bloodlines of human Sacred Bodies were divided into mortal, earth, heaven, and immortal ranks. Unlike the Demon Race, however, human innate abilities awakened gradually with the passage of time and the right opportunities. With each rank they awakened, their innate abilities would improve.

For example, Perfect Memory was only the ability manifested at the mortal rank. Upon reaching the earth rank, it would develop into the special ability Multi-Tasking.