68: Complete transformation

"Ugh... aah—!"

A roar, suppressed to the extreme as if squeezed from the depths of his Soul, shattered the dead silence of the underground chamber.

Lin Jingyu abruptly sprang up from the icy meditation cushion, his body arching like a bow drawn to its limit before collapsing like a puppet with its strings cut, crashing heavily onto the hard ground.

"Hah... hah... hah..."

Curled into a ball, he gasped for air in ragged, heaving breaths. Each inhalation brought a searing, tearing pain, as if his lungs were packed with red-hot coals.

Even though he had already left that accursed place, his mind was still enduring an endless, scorching agony.

It pierced straight to the marrow, straight to the depths of his Soul.

Cold sweat didn't seep out—it gushed forth like a breached dam, instantly soaking his thin, coarse-cloth garments.

On his forehead, temples, and back, the icy liquid surged out madly, winding down his skin before *plip-plopping* onto the cold stone slab beneath him, spreading into small, dark patches of dampness.

He looked as if he had just been fished out of water, or perhaps had just leapt from a scalding oil vat.

His head felt stuffed with ten thousand frenzied hornets. The sharp, piercing buzz threatened to rupture his eardrums, making his vision darken at the edges. Countless distorted golden stars flickered madly at the periphery of his sight.

His temples throbbed violently, blood vessels bulging. Each pulse brought a hammer-blow of excruciating pain, as if his battered head was about to explode like an overripe watermelon the next second.

"Fuck... fuck... fuck..." Broken, tuneless curses rasped from his throat. His teeth ground together with an audible grit, and he tasted the faint metallic tang of blood on his tongue.

A wave of inexplicable bewilderment washed over him. It was over, wasn't it? He was back in the real world. Why was the torment still continuing?

Strangely enough, the brain-melting, Soul-eroding pain had arrived like a mountain collapsing and a tsunami crashing, but it receded just as abruptly, like the tide going out.

After just a few breaths, that heart-rending burning sensation and the skull-splitting buzz were suddenly severed, as if by an invisible hand, vanishing without a trace.

It happened so fast it was utterly disorienting.

As if that hellish torture moments ago had merely been an overly vivid, overly immersive nightmare.

"Did... my brain... really get fucking... roasted?" The thought, both absurd and terrifyingly plausible, flashed through his mind, accompanied by the palpitations of a narrow escape.

What the hell was that place just now? What the hell was that fire?

The agony of being roasted alive on a Soul-forge, every inch of his consciousness licked and tempered by flames, felt so real that even now, the memory made him tremble all over.

Subconsciously, he raised a trembling hand and felt his own forehead.

Good. The skin was still there. Warm. Not scalding hot.

Lin Jingyu's eyes were vacant, filled with the dazed confusion of one who had narrowly escaped death. He slowly turned his stiff neck, scanning the chamber that was all too familiar.

The soft glow of the night-luminescent pearl remained unchanged, illuminating the two recently planted "Master Grasses" in the corner with perfect clarity—the six withered, drooping "tails" of the foxtail grass, and the three huddled-together "lanterns" of the mutated lantern fruit, exuding an air of shabby poverty.

With a few more breaths, his mind gradually began to settle.

That cold, dead, star-spinning Void Realm of the Universe, those nine towering, ancient, primordial stone steles, and especially that terrifying flame that transformed into a fire Dragon and violently crashed into his mind, nearly incinerating his consciousness completely...

Every detail was etched with horrifying clarity into the depths of his memory, impossible to shake off.

Especially that final line of tiny golden characters that had appeared on the stone stele.

Enduring so much pain had merely allowed him to pass the preliminary trial.

He was still far, far from gaining that stone slab's acknowledgment.

The thought of having to endure that boundless agony every single time made him shiver from head to toe.

No more. He wouldn't go back even if beaten to death.

I, Lin Jingyu, have never been weaker than anyone in my life!

Why must I seek the approval of others!

Struggling, he used his still-weak arms to push himself up, swaying unsteadily as he rose to his feet.

The moment he moved, a strange, unprecedented sensation, like an electric current, instantly surged through every limb and pore of his body!

Lightness!

Unparalleled lightness!

It was as if an invisible shackle he had carried for years had been lifted overnight, or as if the finest lubricant had been injected into a rusted, antiquated machine. Every joint, every muscle brimmed with a vitality he had never known before.

If manipulating his body before had been like trudging through a muddy swamp—each step sluggish, heavy, requiring mental effort to "command"—

Then now, with the slightest thought, his body responded!

Think of curling a finger, and the fingertip curled with agility. Think of lifting a leg, and the leg lifted with lightness.

Not the slightest delay. Not a hint of strain. It was like wielding one's own arm, perfectly smooth and unimpeded!

Where the mind went, the body followed.

That feeling of perfect synchronization between body and will, as if he had broken free from some invisible constraint, was so exhilarating it made his scalp tingle!

If asked to write calligraphy with a brush before, he might have produced a bunch of scribbles.

But if asked to do it now, he could rely on the memory of various font styles in his mind and produce a passable imitation.

Forget about capturing the spirit of the characters, but the similarity would absolutely be over ninety-nine percent.

"This... this is..." Lin Jingyu looked down at his own hands in disbelief, then tried hopping lightly in place a couple of times.

His body moved with incredible coordination. He landed without a sound, as if springs were attached to his feet.

With this level of control alone, even in the mortal world, he could become a Martial Forest master.

His eyes erupted with a light of both shock and wild joy!

"Reborn anew... This is definitely being reborn anew!" A massive wave of ecstasy, like a raging tsunami, instantly washed away all the previous confusion, anger, and frustration.

He couldn't help but grin, laughing soundlessly. His shoulders trembled slightly with extreme excitement, the corners of his mouth stretching almost to his ears.

The gloomy weight that had pressed on his heart like a boulder—the despair over the harsh conditions for a Trainee Alchemist, the inferiority complex over his Four Spiritual Root Aptitude—was utterly crushed in this moment by an overwhelming surge of confidence!

He abruptly lowered his head, his gaze burning with tangible intensity as it fell upon the cold, ancient, utterly unremarkable "brick" Jade Slip in his hand.

His eyes blazed as if beholding a rare and priceless treasure!

No!

This thing was infinitely more precious than any rare treasure!

So *this* was the true Legacy!

Those absurd requirements for a "Trainee Alchemist" he saw earlier—Mind Dividing into Three Uses, mastery of flame control techniques, memorizing the properties of eighteen thousand medicinal herbs...

That was basically slapping the ultimate unsolved problem of mathematics in your face and telling you to figure out the solution yourself!

Who could possibly figure that out? Even a peerless Genius would be left scratching their head!

But this true Legacy? It provided you with a complete set of textbooks from elementary school all the way to a Ph.D., plus a god-like mentor who could break down the knowledge, dissect it, even chew it up and feed it right into your mouth!

In his heart, he felt immensely grateful that so much seemingly useless introductory material and the like had been placed at the very beginning.

Without that protection of over a million words...

Lin Jingxie would have been able to see this "Mental Energy cultivation method" the moment he obtained the Jade Slip!

If this method of tempering Mental Energy, this rebirth, had fallen into his hands...

Then Lin Jingyu would have been completely and utterly crushed, with not a single chance of victory.