Jin Taiyi had exhausted a good deal of his strength and was already ravenous.
Without a thought for anything else, he instinctively ran over, plucked the golden fruits, and stuffed them into his mouth one after another, gulping them down whole.
"What kind of fruit is this? It smells incredible, and tastes even better..." That indescribable sweetness, which made him feel as though he were floating into immortality, left him unable to stop.
He ate nine of those little sun-like fruits in succession, filling himself so thoroughly that he could not help letting out a burp.
Squatting there, he cupped the sweet spring water in both hands and drank without pause.
"Aah-!"
Suddenly, he cried out in pain.
Sweat covered Jin Taiyi's head, and his face turned pale.
Yet his entire body shone with dazzling golden light, as though it were burning.
Every strand of his hair glowed, brilliantly radiant and astonishing beyond words.
Had anyone been there, they would have been shocked to discover that his brow was shining, with mysterious characters faintly flashing into existence there one after another before vanishing...
His face contorted in pain, and he passed out.
"Hmm? An ancestral bloodline awakening?"
No one knew.
Deep within the boundless darkness of the Desolate Antiquity Abyss.
Two blazing, brilliant beams of sight seemed to pierce straight through the void, gazing with slight surprise at the unconscious Jin Taiyi. "Not only is he a descendant of the Sun Saint Emperor, but he is also descended from a Sacred Body. Both astonishing bloodline powers have actually revived within him, blending together perfectly..."
A pair of terrifying eyes flickered in and out of existence.
Dreadful Dao laws and order interwove within them, as though they were deducing something.
The towering figure, shrouded in mist with an indistinct face like a demonic god, murmured to himself, "To think that a descendant of the Sun Saint Emperor and a descendant of a Sacred Body joined together, and after such long ages, one of their descendants could awaken his ancestral bloodlines, displaying the traits of both the Sacred Body and the Sun Body at once!"
"After all these long ages, aside from Great Emperor Wushi's unprecedented innate sacred body Dao embryo, yet another special physique never seen before has emerged!"
"Heh, a sun sacred body? What an extraordinary little fellow!"
Chapter 2: Awakened memories of a past life, the Sun True Scripture?
"Burble, burble..."
Within the Desolate Ancient Forbidden Land.
A pool of crystalline Divine Spring water bubbled forth.
Nine lush green plants climbed up along the wall.
Their roots held stubbornly fast there.
"Ugh..."
Jin Taiyi felt as though he had slept for a very long time and dreamed a very, very long dream.
There had been a little golden man.
He had appeared within Jin Taiyi's mind.
He was reciting a strange scripture, intricate and profoundly obscure.
He recited it only once, yet Jin Taiyi remembered it firmly, every character perfectly clear, without the slightest error or omission. Even if he wanted to forget it, he could not.
The little golden man had also explained the scripture in detail, demonstrating the mysteries of the human body and telling him what the sea of bitterness secret realm was, what the wheel of life was, and what the bitter sea was...
He seemed to be guiding Jin Taiyi in cultivation.
Yet, for some unknown reason.
A vast quantity of memories had appeared in his mind out of thin air.
And the sheer complexity of that information left him struggling to believe it.
In the dream, he had been an utterly ordinary university student, as well as a veteran bookworm of more than a decade who loved reading all kinds of webnovels.
A cultivation novel titled "Shrouding the Heavens" had caught his attention.
It described a magnificent, colorful, boundless world of gods and demons.
The human race, the demon race, the Divine Race, the Primordial Myriad Races...
The sea of bitterness secret realm, the Dao palace secret realm, the four extremes secret realm, the dragon transformation secret realm, the immortal platform secret realm...
Renowned elders, mighty experts, kings, sages, Forbidden Zone Supremes, ancient emperors and Great Emperors...
The Mythological Era, the Primordial Era, the Desolate Ancient Era...
Ancient scriptures of Great Emperors, Inherited Saint Weapons, Extreme Dao Emperor Weapons...
Wait, the desolate ancient sacred body?
Ye Fan? Pang Bo? Heavenly Emperor Ye?
"Whew..."
Suddenly.
Jin Taiyi's eyes snapped open.
He propped himself up and shook his somewhat swollen-feeling head.
Letting out a long breath, he stared blankly. "The Sun True Scripture?"
For some unknown reason.
A strange scripture had suddenly appeared in his mind-the Sun True Scripture Opening Chapter!
Moreover, everything that mysterious Golden Little Man had taught him remained perfectly clear in his mind.
"Wait..."
All of a sudden.
He looked at his little hands, which had shrunk several sizes. They were impossibly fair, like an infant's skin, about the size of a young child's hands, and inexplicably glowing.
Even the clothes and shoes that had fit him just moments ago now seemed especially loose.
"Is this me?" He froze completely.
Then, using his reflection in the spring water, he carefully examined himself.
In the reflection, an extraordinarily fair, impossibly handsome child of about eight or nine came into view.
He stared in a daze.
It was not that his suddenly younger self was so handsome that he had been stunned.
Rather, the child's entire body was glowing, as though a sun lay within him. Every inch of his flesh radiated divine light, brilliant beyond measure.
It was shocking, almost impossible to believe.
"The Sun True Scripture? Could I have the legendary sun physique?"
After a long while.
Jin Taiyi drew a deep breath.
He finished digesting that vast, complicated flood of information.
Having just awakened the wisdom of his past life and recovered his old memories.
He now knew what kind of place he had come to.
Apparently, he was also a descendant of the Sun Saint Emperor.
By sheer chance, he had eaten the Sun Divine Fruits borne by an offshoot of the Nine Marvels Immortal Medicine, activating his own sun physique.
As a result, he had undergone a transformation that remade him from the bones outward, and the text of the Sun True Scripture had manifested on its own within his sea of consciousness.
The scripture's opening chapter concerning the sea of bitterness secret realm had flowed into his mind in its entirety.
Those passages were exquisitely profound, mysterious beyond compare.
They left him awestruck and immersed in them.
Entranced and intoxicated, unable to tear himself away.
"Forget all that. Something feels wrong. I need to get out of here!"
He glanced at the Saint Medicine whose fruits he had already picked clean.
Without ceremony, he lowered his head and drank deeply, stopping only when he could not swallow another drop.
Then he took the two bottles of mineral water out of his backpack, poured out their contents, and filled both bottles to the brim with Divine Spring water.
He even took out the Divine Crocodile Meat he had collected earlier from his bag. Fortunately, it had not begun to stink yet.
He washed it with Divine Spring water, removed the innards, and put it away.
It was a little disgusting.
But he could not simply let it go to waste.
Although the Bronze Ancient Coffin might have drawn some of the energy out of this flesh, it had still come from legendary Divine Crocodiles. Perhaps it could rival ordinary low-grade spirit medicines.
In truth, he very much wanted to take the opportunity to snap off a couple of branches from the divine medicine as well.
Yet he vaguely sensed something staring fixedly at him from behind, like needles pricking his back.
It made his skin crawl for no clear reason.
Forget it. A person shouldn't be too greedy.
"Go..." His feet flew as he raced onward without stopping.
At that moment, he felt better than he ever had before.
He discovered that his strength had increased more than tenfold.
He sprinted back the way he had come.
"Hm?" Before long, he spotted a group of people in the distance.
Their hair and beards were grizzled, their faces covered in wrinkles, their bodies aged and decrepit.
Before you continue