Scraping the Bone
Xiao Yan's seclusion began.
From that day on, the people of the Luo Shen Residence quietly surrounded the secluded courtyard. Outside its gate, skilled clansmen personally selected by Elder Luo Cheng stood guard day and night, allowing no one to approach. Even Elder Luo Cheng himself came by twice a day to inspect the place. The haughty look had vanished from his gaunt face, replaced by a measure of caution. The people of the residence whispered among themselves, wondering what sort of background the country youth picked up from the outer city had to make Elder Cheng, who had always looked down his nose at everyone, guard his door like a gatekeeper.
Only Luo Lan knew it was because of his granduncle, but he did not breathe a word of it.
Every day, he brought a stool to the door of the side room and sat there with his knees hugged to his chest, staying for the entire day. When he was hungry, he gnawed on the dry rations the servants brought him; when he was sleepy, he leaned against the doorframe and dozed. His earnest manner made the clansmen guarding the courtyard click their tongues in wonder. Was this really the same Young Master Lan who spent his days gorging himself and drinking in the outer city, never behaving properly?
Inside the side room, Xiao Yan sat cross-legged with his eyes closed. Several jade bottles stood before him. They contained medicinal herbs that nourished the meridians, which he had asked Luo Lan to buy from the Luo Pill Pavilion with the Spiritual Liquid he had earned selling pills, as well as a bottle of pills Elder Qin had sent over as an extra, said to calm the heart and settle the mind. But he had not yet used any of them, because before he began, he first had to do one thing: find that reef.
Xiao Yan's mind slowly sank into the deepest reaches of his body. The power of his Emperor Realm Soul became countless threads of delicate perception, sweeping inch by inch over his meridians, his dantian, his bones, and even every strand of Dou Qi in his flesh and blood, searching for that most fundamental thing. Luo Tianshen had said that if he judged wrongly and cast away the core as though it were a scale, all his cultivation would be ruined. Xiao Yan did not dare be careless in the slightest. From early morning until late at night, for an entire day, he did not dare miss a single inch.
During that day, he saw many, many things. He saw the meridians that had been tempered like fine steel through decades of circulating the Flame Mantra, the bones that had been scorched countless times by fierce flames when he devoured Heavenly Flames, only to grow back anew, and the sea of Dou Qi in his dantian, still burning slowly but much dimmer than before. These were all things he had spent his life cultivating, but none of them was the core.
Not until late that night did Xiao Yan's perception finally touch something. In the deepest part of his sea of Dou Qi, at the very center of that flame, was an extremely tiny point of light.
The light was not bright; it was even somewhat dim. Yet it radiated a heart-stopping heat, the purest origin of "fire" born from the fusion of countless flames. Within that light, Xiao Yan could sense the vitality of the Green Lotus Core Flame, the violence of the Fallen Heart Flame, the enduring nature of the Sea Heart Flame, the chill of the Bone Spirit Cold Flame, the domineering force of the Three Thousand Burning Flame, the strangeness of the Purifying Lotus Demon Flame, and... that trace of Emperor's Origin from Tou She Ancient God.
This was his core, the accumulation of decades of the Flame Mantra, what remained in the deepest part of his life after countless burnings by fierce fire.
At that moment, Xiao Yan's heart settled completely. As long as he guarded this one point, even if everything outside it was washed clean by this world, he would still be himself, the Xiao Yan who had journeyed all the way from Wutan City to the summit of the Dou Qi Continent.
"Let's begin."
He murmured to himself, then condensed that soul power into a needle as fine as a gossamer thread. The first reverse scale was carved around the outside of that point of light.
In that instant, Xiao Yan's body trembled violently, and an indescribable agony exploded from the deepest part of him. It was a pain more terrifying than being burned alive, as though someone were slowly scraping his bone marrow with a rusty knife. His teeth clenched in an instant, biting through his lips. Blood dripped down his chin, but his soul needle did not tremble in the slightest. The second reverse scale, the third, the tenth...
Layer upon layer of reverse scales took shape in circles around that point of fire's origin. Each scale brought another bout of bone-scraping pain. Xiao Yan's face went from pale to deathly white, then from deathly white to ashen gray. Sweat soaked his clothes, only to turn into white mist in the heat radiating from his body. It rose in wisps, shrouding the entire side room in a haze.
Outside the door, Luo Lan listened to the utterly suppressed gasps inside the room and the muffled groans occasionally forced out between clenched teeth, his face white as a sheet. Several times he stood up, intending to push open the door, but each time he forced himself to stop and sat back down. Xiao Yan had told him to guard the door for him, so he would guard it.
On the third day, Luo Su came by once. She stood in the courtyard, sensing through the door the strange fluctuations in the room, now strong, now weak, at times scorching and at others icy cold. Her usually tranquil face was full of shock.
"He's carving patterns inside his body?" she asked Luo Lan, turning to him, her voice trembling slightly. "He's been carving them for three days?"
Luo Lan nodded. Luo Su fell silent for a long while. In the end, she merely sighed softly, took a bottle of ointment from her medicine chest, and handed it to Luo Lan. "When he comes out, apply this to him. I'm afraid he'll have bitten his lips to pieces."
Late on the fourth night, a gray figure silently appeared atop the ancient tree outside the courtyard. Luo Tianshen stood with his hands behind his back, gazing at the side room shrouded in white mist. A rare gravity filled his cloudy old eyes.
He could sense that the fluctuations within the young man in the room were changing in an astonishing way. The reverse scales were being carved quickly and steadily, with not a single one superfluous or out of place. It was as though the young man had not just encountered this ancient method for the first time, but had practiced it for decades. Yet he knew even better what sort of pain lay behind that speed. Over the thousands of years of the Luo God Clan's history, it had used this ancient method to tame countless descendants with violent bloodlines, and had also helped several people from the Lower Plane. Of those people, the fastest had taken a full month to finish carving the first layer of reverse scales, passing out more than a dozen times along the way. This young man, however, had taken only four days, and had not passed out once.
"This boy's bones... are tougher than I thought," Luo Tianshen murmured. He shook his head, and with a flicker of his figure, vanished into the night.
On the fifth day, the fluctuations in the side room suddenly subsided, and Luo Lan's heart leaped into his throat.
Inside, Xiao Yan was still sitting cross-legged. His body had grown much thinner, his cheekbones jutted high, and his eye sockets had sunk deep, making him look like someone who had been gravely ill for months. But his eyes slowly opened, and a glint shone faintly through the weariness in them.
Inside his body, three hundred and sixty reverse scales had formed in overlapping layers around that point of fire's origin, like a silver lotus in bud, tightly protecting the light at its center. Beyond the lotus, the Dou Qi and Spiritual Energy that were still entangled had finally begun to grow orderly. Guided by the reverse scales, the Spiritual Energy pouring in from outside no longer battered about in every direction. Instead, like water whose flow had been channeled, it slowly washed along established paths over the Dou Qi on the outside. The Dou Qi it washed over was then gathered by the reverse scales and condensed anew against the point of fire's origin.
Xiao Yan could clearly feel that the power condensed anew was no longer Dou Qi, but Spiritual Energy. Yet it was not entirely the Spiritual Energy of this world either. That Spiritual Energy carried a faint heat, a hint of devouring, and the shadow of the Flame Mantra. It was like a fish whose scales had changed, but which was still the same fish.
Xiao Yan slowly raised his hand, and at a thought, a faint wisp of flame rose from his palm. Its color was somewhat strange. It was neither any of the Heavenly Flames he had known before nor the radiance of this world's Spiritual Energy, but a pale gold somewhere between the two. In the depths of that pale gold, a point of pink flickered faintly, almost imperceptibly.
Xiao Yan gazed at the wisp of flame in his palm, and a smile slowly appeared on his haggard face. With a slight movement of his mind, the pale-gold flame gave a gentle leap, becoming a fine thread of fire. It circled once in the air, then obediently returned to his palm, responding as readily as his own arm, with none of the sluggishness he had felt before when resisting the world. Moreover, he could sense that when this newly born Spiritual Energy circulated, it faintly carried a rhythm of layers building upon one another. That was a property of the Flame Mantra itself, something called "amplitude" in this world's Spiritual Energy system.
The first layer was complete. Although he had assimilated only a tenth of his Dou Qi, that tenth was Spiritual Energy that truly belonged to him.
Just then, deep within his heart meridian, the wisp of pink flame that had remained dormant all this time suddenly flickered. The movement was much more noticeable than last time. Xiao Yan was slightly taken aback, and then his smile grew a little gentler.
"Little one... did you feel it too?"