Morning sunlight filtered through the broken window lattice, spilling into the wooden hut in mottled patches.
Lin He snapped his eyes open, gasping for breath.
The inhuman torment of having every bone in his body crushed bit by bit and reassembled last night still seemed to linger, making him shudder involuntarily.
That was fucking intense. I nearly bought it, Lin He cursed inwardly.
He raised a hand and clenched his fist a few times.
An extremely faint yet crisp series of cracks accompanied the movement, as though some explosive power lay within his joints.
He could distinctly feel a swelling fullness and strength in his flesh, something he could never have experienced in his previous life, when he had spent over twenty years as a programmer too weak to truss a chicken.
"Is this what the cultivation world calls body tempering?" Lin He felt his strength grow, yet the corner of his mouth couldn't help twitching.
It felt great, sure, but when that wisp of essence of the sun had burrowed into his body last night, he had genuinely thought he would explode on the spot.
After all, he still had nothing but a mortal body, with narrow meridians utterly incapable of withstanding such violent power.
Fortunately, he had always been cautious and had used only a single wisp, without getting greedy.
If he had gotten hotheaded last night and gone straight for two or three wisps, Su Qiuran would probably have been digging a hole for him on the back mountain by now.
"I'll have to take this one step at a time. Take too big a stride and you risk tearing your balls." Lin He let out a long breath of stale air and climbed out of bed.
Having suffered agonizing pain and broken out in a full-body cold sweat last night, he now had his underclothes plastered tightly against him, sticky and thoroughly uncomfortable.
Strangely, however, he felt exceptionally alert, without the slightest fatigue.
He glanced at the bed beside his.
Su Qiuran was still asleep, breathing evenly.
She lay curled beneath a thin, yellowed quilt, her brows faintly furrowed, as though she were dreaming of something unpleasant.
Her pale, delicate face looked rather endearing in the morning light.
Lin He tiptoed outside and gave himself a quick rinse with cold water.
As the icy well water poured over him, he actually felt no chill at all.
The little wounds on his skin, the scratches left from climbing rocks to cut green-spike grass yesterday, had now completely vanished without so much as a scar. His skin was as firm as a piece of tough cowhide.
"That's fucking incredible." Lin He felt his arm, clicking his tongue in wonder.
By the time he finished washing and returned inside, Su Qiuran was awake. She was sitting in her wheelchair, struggling somewhat to comb her long hair with a wooden comb.
When she saw Lin He enter, she rolled her eyes and said irritably, "You're up? Go get that half sack of coarse rice. I'll see if I can make some porridge."
Looking at her bossy little manner, Lin He suddenly felt an urge to play a prank. He wanted to test just how strong he had become.
Ignoring Su Qiuran's words, he instead slipped quietly behind her wheelchair.
"Lin He, I'm talking to you. Are you deaf?" Seeing no response from him, Su Qiuran turned her head to snap at him.
The instant she turned, Lin He reached out with both hands and firmly gripped the two main wooden supports at the back of the wheelchair.
He took a deep breath and abruptly exerted his arms.
"Up!"
There was none of the weight he had imagined, much less the strain he had felt carrying a water jug in his previous life.
With a whoosh of air, Lin He actually hoisted the cumbersome solid-wood wheelchair over his head, Su Qiuran and all! And without the slightest effort!
"Holy shit!"
Su Qiuran's vision blurred, and an intense sensation of weightlessness instantly swept over her.
Her pretty face drained of color in fright, and she clutched the wheelchair's armrests for dear life, sending the wooden comb in her hand flying.
"An earthquake?! It's an earthquake! Lin He, help!" She squeezed her eyes shut and screamed like a pig being slaughtered.
"Hehehehe..."
An utterly punchable, obnoxious laugh came from beneath her.
Su Qiuran snapped her eyes open and looked down, only to see Lin He looking up at her with a grin, his hands holding the wheelchair perfectly steady.
"Lin He! You bastard!" Su Qiuran immediately realized what had happened, her face turning green with anger. "Put me down right now! Will you take responsibility if I fall to my death?!"
Laughing, Lin He set the wheelchair steadily on the ground, even dusting off his hands with ease to spare.
"Don't be so nervous, wifey. I was just giving you a taste of a human-powered elevator."
Still shaken, Su Qiuran patted her chest, her peach-blossom eyes wide and round.
She looked Lin He up and down as though he were a monster.
"Did you... did you take a strength pill?" Su Qiuran swallowed and pointed at Lin He's arms.
"This crappy wheelchair and I must weigh at least a hundred and seventy or eighty jin together, right? Yesterday, carrying a sack of rice left you panting forever. How come lifting us today was like lifting a wad of cotton? Come clean. Did you awaken some cheat like an ancient desolate sacred body or a firmament tyrant body?!"
Su Qiuran's imagination raced.
Lin He pulled over a bench and sat down, smugly crossing his legs, making the nearly broken bench creak in protest beneath him.
"What ancient desolate sacred body? You've been reading too many fantasy novels." Lowering his voice, Lin He leaned closer with a mysterious air. "It was the essence of the sun."
"The essence of the sun?" Su Qiuran froze for a moment, then caught on. "You ate it?!"
"I didn't eat it. I dripped it into my hand and absorbed it," Lin He corrected her, then embellished his account of the entire process: how he had secretly tried it last night, how the pain had made him wish for death, and how he had finally been transformed down to his very bones.
Su Qiuran listened in repeated astonishment.
When Lin He finished, her expression suddenly grew somewhat strange.
"No wonder..." She bit her lip, a suspicious blush creeping onto her cheeks. "No wonder I felt a huge wet patch on the quilt while I was sleeping last night."
"Huh?" Lin He was completely baffled.
"I thought..." Su Qiuran's voice grew quieter and quieter, her gaze wandering. "I thought I'd been disabled for so long that my bodily functions had deteriorated, and I'd accidentally... accidentally wet the bed! I was too embarrassed to ask you all morning. I was even trying to figure out how to wash the quilt in secret later!"
She abruptly raised her head and glared at Lin He. "After all that, it turned out to be your damn cold sweat from the pain! You might as well disgust me to death!"
Lin He froze at first, then burst into wild laughter.
"Hahahaha! Su Qiuran, you actually thought you'd wet the bed? Oh, shit, you're killing me..."
"You're still laughing! Shut up!" Su Qiuran snatched up a wad of rags beside her and hurled it at him.
Lin He nimbly tilted his head to dodge, only to notice that although Su Qiuran was scolding him, her eyes were gradually reddening.
Once that thin layer of anger faded, it could no longer conceal her lingering fear and worry.
"Do you have any idea how dangerous that was?" A sudden catch entered Su Qiuran's voice. "You're a mortal. You don't even have a Spirit Root, yet you used that unknown, violent power to temper your body. What if your body had exploded and you'd died?!"
She took a deep breath, tears welling in her eyes, but forcibly held them back.