Martial World (Web Novel)
chapter-73

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Lin Ming took a deep breath, and then crumbled the ‘Lower Spirit Cure Symbol’ in his hands. At that time in the dark room, a beacon of light lit up as the flame symbol blazed to life. A wreath of flames wrapped around the Golden Snake Scarlet Pill, and this continued for several blinks of the eye, before it finally coalesced into beautiful lines of fire and formed a tiny flame brand on the golden red colored pill. A brilliant flash of light lit up the entire room for a brief moment, and finally the room was restored to darkness.

Done.

Lin Ming slowly raised the pill and placed in into his mouth, then swallowed.

With such a potent and dangerous pill like this, after eating it, it was impossible to be relaxed like when he had taken the Golden Deer Pills. The effects of the drug would suddenly leap in his body, and attack him like a violent, fierce storm. This utterly painful process was what Lin Ming had psychologically prepared for.

The pill was cool like a piece of ice as it easily slid down his throat and into his stomach. There it subsided quietly, without anything occurring.

Lin Ming knew that this was only because the pill had not melted. He silently revolved the ‘True Primal Chaos Formula’ in his body.

After a quarter hour, Lin Ming’s body began to turn cold, and a chilly current converged in his blood and spread through his whole body along his bloodstream. His body felt as if it were lost in the Icy Pond Waterfall of the seven major killing arrays. The deep arctic chill broke out in all directions of his body.

Cold sweat dripped down from Lin Ming’s forehead, and flowed past his arms and shoulders. It was as if Lin Ming’s body had become a leaking water bag.

The Golden Scarlet Snake was a cold-blooded animal. Its nature was that of the extreme cold elements, and the snake’s gall bladder was where all this frosty cold air converged in its body. To cultivate with a pill made with this snake gallbladder was to feel an incomparably intense frosty chill!

To suppress this wintry chill in his body, Lin Ming began to revolve the ‘True Primal Chaos Formula’ again. However, it was as if his true essence had been frozen, and his entire body was shivering with cold trembles, and the operation of his cultivation art slowed significantly.

At the Icy Pond Waterfall, Lin Ming had felt the numbing chill of the icy pond enter through his pores and permeate his body, but this Golden Snake Scarlet Pill was eaten directly! The cold energy melted in his insides and infused through even his marrow!

If this was a normal Golden Snake Scarlet Pill, Lin Ming would have easily been able to resist this bone penetrating chill with his thick and deep true essence. However, Lin Ming had used the ‘Lower Spirit Cure Symbol’ to enhance the efficacy of this Golden Snake Scarlet Pill by several times. If another martial artist with this cultivation had eaten it, they would probably have already died from having their blood freeze.

Facing such potent side-effects, even with Lin Ming’s amazingly strong will, he found it hard to resist!

If true essence was like water that flowed through the pipe, this chilling cold was freezing that water! The circulation of true essence was blocked everywhere!

Lin Ming’s mind was clear on this, if he could not supply the flow of true essence to his entire body, then some parts of his body would freeze, and they would begin to necrotize and rot.

Although Lin Ming was able to defend the majority of his body with true essence, if even a small part of his body necrotized from freezing, then it would be a waste of the efficacy of the pill. Not only that, but if with those injuries, even if he managed to prevent a permanently debilitating disability, he would also need to temper his body with true essence again and would waste a massive amount of time.

Thinking this, Lin Ming clenched his teeth and forcefully stimulated his true essence to vibrate through his entire body. With the vibration of true essence throughout his entire body, he would break the chilling cold which had halted the flow of true essence in his body.

Originally Lin Ming thought that his whole body would be in agonizing pain, and he would be in a situation where he would find it difficult to focus and concentrate his consciousness to cause all the tiny units in his body to achieve true essence resonance. However Lin Ming didn’t think that at this moment he would smoothly enter into that elusive state of Strength Training’s ‘Flow like Silk’!

This was because the frost chill had penetrated into his marrow, and all the countless tiny units in Lin Ming’s body had to spontaneously resist this invasion of cold energy. Together, they shared hatred for a common enemy!

“In breaking down this pill, my body actually had this sort of change?” Lin Ming was too busy to be joyful about this. He started to urge his true essence to break past the frost chill that had gathered in his body. At the same time, these tiny units in his body also independently began to absorb true essence and temper his body.

This change wasn’t only on the surface of his muscles, but also in his organs.

True essence Viscera Training!

Lin Ming had already touched the threshold of the Third Stage of Body Transformation, but after taking this Golden Snake Scarlet Pill, Lin Ming was finally able to take that final step and pass into and officially enter the Third Stage of Body Transformation

In the Third Stage of Body Training, true essence would temper the organs and protect them. One’s fighting capacity would increase, and not only that, but a martial artist’s internal organs would be moistened by true essence. The heart and lungs would be strong, and blood and vitality would be rich. Breaths would be long, and endurance would greatly increase. With the muscles under the irrigation of such rich blood, one’s strength would also gradually increase!

After the breakthrough into Viscera Training, true essence began to pass into his internal organs. Lin Ming felt the pressure on him plummet at the same time. The impedance of the cold energies on his true essence’s circulation was also broken one at a time. The cold, chilling energies within his body were dispersed and absorbed by him to use to temper himself.

At this point, Lin Ming had survived the cold air’s attack on his body. The Golden Snake Scarlet Pill’s efficacy had been perfectly absorbed.

The only step left over was the consolidation process.

After about two hours, Lin Ming opened both his eyes. He let out a long breath, but because this breath was too cold, as soon as it touched the outside air, it immediately turned the water humidity in the air into a white fog. This single breathe of Lin Ming’s had unexpectedly formed a straight, gassy arrow in the air that reached out five to six feet.

Breathing in was like a serpent, breathing out was like an arrow; this was exactly the sign of Viscera Training. However, not all Viscera Training martial artists could achieve this step. Some martial artists’ Viscera Training was not thorough or complete, and their true essence only covered a small part of their body’s internal organs, or might even just be on their surface, and not throughout. With martial artists like these, even though they were also at the Viscera Training stage, their strength was far weaker than those whose Viscera Training was complete.

Strength Training, Flesh Training, Viscera Training, Altering Muscle, Bone Forging, Pulse Condensation; these six stages were all the basis for the foundation for every step ahead of them, and had to be done step-by-step in an orderly fashion. Drawing an analogy, if a martial artist’s Flesh Training was not thorough and complete, and then the true essence on the surface of their muscles would be limited. This limited true essence would be a major weakness and flaw that would cause even more problems down the road in Viscera Training. As a result, with each mistake on each step, it would be worse and worse, and finally it would be impossible to step into the Pulse Condensation Period. This was the fundamental reason that the majority of martial artists in the Sky Fortune Kingdom were unable to achieve the Pulse Condensation Period for their entire lives.

Therefore, with the Sky Fortune Kingdom’s martial artists, even if they were at the same stage, there would be massive disparities between their individual strengths. To the disciples of the Seven Profound Martial House, jumping past these challenges was not an unusual occurrence. If instead you couldn’t do that, then that was simply just too disappointing.

For seven days after reaching the Third Stage of Body Transformation, Lin Ming didn’t go anywhere. He stayed in his dwelling to digest the remaining effects of the Golden Snake Scarlet Pill, and to consolidate his cultivation. During this time, Lin Ming had completely and cleanly consumed all the rest of his ten true essence stones.

Seeing these true essence stones that had completely lost their luster, Lin Ming forced a smile and shook his head. These things, he feared he would need hundreds, if not thousands, and even that might not be enough. If he wished to reach the higher levels of martial arts faster, then these true essence stones were essential! But if he wanted to exchange for more true essence stones, then he would need unbelievably massive sums of gold. It was most probably a futile attempt to get that much gold by selling ‘Overwhelming Rune’ inscriptions.

‘The date of the match with Zhang Cang is getting closer and closer. I wonder how much my strength has increased. How high can I reach on the ranking stone?’

Lin Ming was faintly anticipating the next ranking war at the Ten Thousand Killing Array assessment. He didn’t have an opponent now to test his strength, so he could only go to the strength measuring room.