In that instant.
Qing Chen felt as though his "heart" had stopped beating;
Everything fell silent.
Or perhaps that Baleful Core had already fused with his old heart, becoming his new core of power!
After indescribable agony;
Came unprecedented rebirth and transformation!
The Baleful Core shattered thunderously within his heart aperture, but it did not dissipate;
Instead, it transformed into hundreds of millions of dark-gold streams, tens of millions of times finer than strands of hair;
They surged wildly along his blood vessels, meridians, bones, and marrow toward every part of his body;
They flooded into even the tiniest places, fusing with them completely!
"Crack... crack... snap..."
A dense succession of teeth-grating sounds came from within him.
Those were his old bones breaking apart;
Then, supported by tremendous energy, they reassembled into a more perfect structure;
They became denser and harder, gleaming with a dark-gold metallic luster.
His meridians were forcibly widened and reinforced, their resilience reaching an inconceivable level;
Enough to withstand the impact of even more violent energy.
His internal organs were enveloped, permeated, and strengthened by the dark-gold streams;
Their strength increased at an astonishing rate.
On the surface of his skin, the foul blood and impurities that seeped out were rapidly expelled, congealing and flaking away to reveal the newly formed skin beneath;
It looked fair and delicate, yet faintly conveyed a toughness that seemed almost impossible to destroy;
Faint, ancient dark-gold patterns flickered beneath his skin, profoundly mysterious.
The process continued for a long, long time, seeming both an instant and ten thousand years.
When the final wisp of dark-gold energy had fused completely and perfectly into every particle of his physical body;
Qing Chen abruptly opened his eyes.
He slowly raised one hand, spread his fingers, then gently closed them.
"Bang!"
Utterly pure physical