Within the Star-Gazing Pavilion, at the heart of the Chaos Sword Domain, the temperature had dropped to freezing, only to surge at times to terrifying heights capable of melting metal. These alternating extremes came not from outside, but from the fierce clash between the true demon qi within Han Li and the essence of the eighth eighth-tier Demon Core.
Crack, crack, crack...
This time, the sounds no longer came from the restructuring of muscle and fascia. They were dense, explosive reports from deep within his bones, as though billions of fine needles were piercing them, as though heavy hammers were forging them over and over! The Ten-Thousand-Year Warm Jade cushion beneath Han Li had actually been crushed into a ring of spiderweb cracks by the slight trembling he could not suppress.
The second layer of the Brahma Saint True Demonic Art, "Tempering Sinew and Bone," was far more painful-and far more perilous-than the first layer, "Refining Skin and Flesh."
The true demon qi was no longer content to circulate through his flesh and meridians. Guided by the cultivation art, it bored madly into all two hundred and six bones in his body and deep into the sinews connecting them, like countless icy venomous snakes! Its purpose was to "corrode," to "remake"-to stain even the supporting framework of this flesh-and-blood body with the essence of a "true demon," forging a golden body of demonic bones capable of bearing greater "true demon power"!
"Aaargh-!"
Indescribable agony crashed against the defenses of Han Li's divine soul like a tide, each wave stronger than the last. It was not merely the physical pain of his bones being forcibly reshaped. There was also a "demonic nature" inherent in the true demon qi-cold, deathly still, and ravenous-which battered his Dao heart, seeking to drag him into