The Third Body Tempering

With a bang, the courtyard gate of the wooden house on the western side of Golden Lake Village was shut tight.

Lin He pulled off the black robe that had been slashed open by a wind blade and let out a long, stale breath. Today's trip to the market had certainly been full of twists and turns. He had turned the tables on a bandit cultivator, bought an advanced talisman manual, and picked up an admission ticket to a black-market auction along the way.

Su Qiuran was clearly even more excited. She had not even bothered with her wheelchair, sitting straight on the edge of the bed and eagerly opening the True Explanation of Elementary Talismans, worth thirty-five spirit stones, by the dim oil lamp.

"Spirit-Clearing Detoxification Talisman... Vajra Protection Talisman... tsk, tsk, these patterns, this flow of Spiritual Qi-they're so much more intricate than that lousy beginner's book!" A feverish light shone in Su Qiuran's eyes. She muttered to herself, her fingers already tracing shapes in the air.

"All right, my Fairy Su, save some mental strength. You just broke through tonight, drew four talismans, and fought a battle out in the wild. Even a production team's donkey wouldn't dare call that resting." Lin He walked over, poured a bowl of cool water, and handed it to her. He pointed at the clothes in his hand. "There's a hole in this black robe. I'll have to trouble Heroine Su to patch it another day. I can't keep baring my pecs every time I trade with that old man."

Su Qiuran took the bowl and drained it, then rolled her eyes at him. "What do you know? This is called seizing the market advantage! Didn't that old man say it? Detoxification talismans and protection talismans are going for five spirit stones apiece, and he'll buy as many as we have. My head's full of dancing spirit stones right now. Nobody's stopping me from getting rich!"

Lin He grinned. He liked precisely this practical, pure money-grubbing streak of Su Qiuran's.

"All right, all right. Take your time studying. I've got some proper business to handle too."

Lin He turned and headed into the backyard. Under the moonlight, Ingot lay comfortably on the mud in the pond, blowing bubbles, while Goudan chased his own tail in circles nearby. The moment Goudan saw Lin He, he quacked, shoved Ingot aside with his rear, and rushed over to rub madly against Lin He's trouser leg, vying for affection.

Lin He rubbed the yellow-and-black down on Goudan's head, but his gaze gradually grew profound.

Counting the days, it had been eight full days since he had last tempered his body with pure essence of the sun.

Over those eight days, he had spent every day adapting to the dormant, nearly explosive strength within his body. From crushing a wooden bowl at first, to later casting a coarse fishing net into a perfect circle, to taking a wind blade head-on without a scratch and cleaving a bandit cultivator apart today, he could clearly feel that his flesh had fully absorbed the medicinal potency of the second tempering.

"Time for the third." Lin He rubbed his chin.

He made his practiced way to the backyard woodshed, shut the doors and windows, and, after confirming that no one was around, took the emerald-green Jade Gourd from his robes.

He pulled out the stopper. A drop of essence of the sun, like liquid gold, slowly rolled out and hovered above his palm. Its scorching presence instantly raised the temperature in the woodshed considerably.

Through his first two ordeals, Lin He had vaguely discerned a pattern.

"The first time tempered the skin and flesh. My strength surged, my reactions sped up, and my wounds healed incredibly fast."

"The second tempered the tendons and bones. My skin became as impervious to blades and spears as rhinoceros hide. I could even take a Qi Refinement Realm wind blade head-on."

Lin He drew a deep breath and stared at the golden droplet in his palm. "This third time ought to go a little deeper, shouldn't it?"

Without the slightest hesitation, Lin He tipped back his head and swallowed that drop of pure essence of the sun straight into his belly.

Boom!

Without warning or prelude, a ball of golden flame seemed to explode directly inside his stomach!

Lin He fiercely bit down on the rag he had prepared beforehand. The veins in his neck instantly bulged like coiling earthworms. His knees buckled, and he dropped straight onto the woodshed's dirt floor, his hands clawing desperately at the ground, his nails digging deep into the soil.

If the previous two times had been an external tearing apart and reconstruction, this time was entirely an internal remolding!

That utterly domineering, scorching power surged madly from his stomach toward his heart, liver, spleen, lungs, and kidneys. Lin He felt as though his internal organs had been thrown into the Eight Trigrams Furnace and were being fiercely roasted by Samadhi True Fire.

The sound of his heartbeat swelled endlessly in his ears, like a war drum struck by a heavy hammer-thump! Thump! Thump!

Every breath his lungs took felt like working an old bellows. The air he exhaled was astonishingly hot, even turning into white steam in the early-winter night.

"Holy shit... this fucking... is seriously killing me..."

Lin He swore furiously inwardly. Before his sweat could emerge, the intense heat on his skin evaporated it. A strange scorched smell filled the entire woodshed.

The agony lasted a full hour.

When the final trace of scorching heat gradually faded, turning into a cool, sweet breath that nourished his organs in return, Lin He collapsed onto the ground like a puddle of mud.

He panted heavily, then noticed something was wrong.

As his breathing gradually settled, he found that his dependence on outside air seemed to have become extremely slight. He tried holding his breath.

Ten breaths.

Half a cup of tea's time.

An incense stick's time.

Only after a full incense stick's time had passed did Lin He feel a faint tightness in his chest. Even more wondrously, while he held his breath, his internal organs seemed to form a tiny, endlessly renewing internal cycle. His lungs squeezed every last bit from the remaining oxygen, while the blood pumped by his heart flowed more slowly, yet with extraordinary force.

"This... is this fucking fetal breathing?" Lin He abruptly sat up, his eyes startlingly bright.

The third body tempering had indeed tempered his internal organs!

The following morning.

Morning mist still drifted over Golden Lake when Lin He, brimming with vigor, knocked on Old Man Sun's courtyard gate.

"Elder Sun! Come on, let's go fishing!"

Old Man Sun was squatting in the courtyard, polishing his treasured hunting bow. At the sight of Lin He, as vigorous as a dragon and fierce as a tiger, his old face crumpled. "Young man from the Lin household, these old bones really aren't cut out for making a living on the water. The moment I step onto that black-canopied boat, both my legs start shaking!"

"Oh, Elder Sun, what's there to fear? Just sit at the bow and keep watch for me, and handle the oars while you're at it. Leave casting the net to me! You'll get half the catch!" Without giving him a chance to object, Lin He hauled the old man up.

An hour later, the two had rowed their rented old black-canopied boat into Golden Lake's deep-water region.

They were already far from the reed beds here, and the lake water was an unfathomable dark green. All around was quiet, with only the occasional waterbird skimming over the surface.

Old Man Sun gripped the gunwale tightly, his face pale. "Young man, isn't this far enough? Old Man Wang said there are plenty of undercurrents in these waters, and things are downright uncanny down below..."

"Elder Sun, just sit tight up here. I think I saw a big black fish down below just now. I'm going down to have a look!"

Lin He tossed out a casual excuse, took off only his outer robe, and walked straight to the gunwale in his coarse-cloth short tunic and trousers. With a splash, he plunged into the dark-green lake like a heavy stone.

"Oh, my dear mother! Young man! Have you lost the will to live?!" Old Man Sun was so frightened that he nearly sprang out of the boat. He leaned over the gunwale, slapping his thigh in panic.

By then, Lin He was already diving swiftly toward the lakebed.

The instant he entered the water, Lin He instinctively held his breath. As he descended, the surrounding water pressure gradually increased. Previously, at a depth of three or four meters, he would have felt intense pressure in his ears and chest.

But now, the icy lake water felt like warm amniotic fluid.

His internal organs, strengthened a third time, withstood the water pressure perfectly. That marvelous internal cycle started again. He did not even need to deliberately hold his breath; his body automatically adjusted to an extremely steady, low-consumption state. His time underwater could be measured in two-hour periods, at the very least.

Lin He slowly opened his eyes underwater.

At first, his vision was still somewhat blurry. The light in the deep water was dim, with suspended silt and rotting waterweed everywhere. But after just two or three breaths, his eyes seemed to adapt to some special wavelength.

His eyesight was actually extraordinarily good underwater!

Five meters ahead, a school of palm-sized silver fish darted about in panic; ten meters to his left, a submerged log was covered with large shrimp bearing hard barbs; farther down, on the uneven lakebed roughly twenty meters deep, even the roots of waterweeds in the cracks between the sediment were perfectly clear.

"Not only can I hold my breath underwater, I can even keep my vision clear. Just what kind of divine stuff is this essence of the sun?" Lin He moved his arms underwater. Thanks to his inhuman control over his muscles, he felt no resistance in the water at all. Every movement was unimaginably smooth.

Like an agile fish, he continued diving.

Golden Lake was so vast-who knew how many good things lay hidden below? This was an enormous crater blasted out by a golden meteorite falling from the heavens! Rogue cultivators and mortals had been unable to retrieve them before because they could only hold their breath for so long, could not see clearly underwater, and had to contend with dangerous undercurrents.

But he, Lin He, was now practically a humanoid amphibious submarine. From this day onward, the vast, boundless bed of Golden Lake officially became Young Master Lin's private treasure-hunting backyard!