"Again," I sat up, blood-covered, bruised, and exhausted. The motion alone felt like punishment. Every muscle in this body screamed the moment I forced myself upright, and several bruises that had barely begun healing split open again from the strain.

Blood dripped from my jaw onto the fractured stone beneath me while my breathing came rough and uneven through swollen lungs.

The training hall looked like it had survived a battlefield rather than a sparring session. Entire sections of the reinforced floor had caved inward from repeated impacts, the walls were webbed with cracks despite countless reinforcement formations layered into them, and splintered chunks of stone still rolled across the ground from the latest collision.

At points in times you’d think you’d rather be undead, at least not to feel this type of fatigue and pain. But life has too many things to give up humanity. Pain was miserable, exhaustion even worse, but they were also reminders that you were alive enough to suffer. The dead didn’t feel fatigue. They also didn’t feel warmth, ambition, or the satisfaction of clawing strength from your own limits.

"No," the Red Sun said, "This is enough for this week. Your perseverance is commendable, but your body can’t take it anymore." He said as he stood with a wooden staff over his shoulder.

Even now, after weeks of this insanity, it remained absurd that he was fighting me using nothing but a wooden staff. Granted, the thing barely qualified as wood anymore. The surface was scarred black from repeated Qi clashes, deep cracks crawled through its length, and parts of it looked compressed from impacts strong enough to pulverize mountains.

Yet the Red Sun carried it casually over one shoulder while looking barely winded. Meanwhile I looked like I’d crawled out from under a collapsed fortress after losing an argument with gravity itself.

"I’m not gonna lie, yes, I can see improvement in the Roaring Fist martial art. But, I don’t think I’ve gained any level up."

The frustration behind those words had been building for days now. I could feel changes happening.

My strikes were cleaner. My footing sharper. Qi circulated through this body with less resistance than before. Yet cultivation itself remained stubbornly fixed, as though all this suffering was refining me without rewarding me. Considering how many times Red Sun introduced my ribs to his staff lately, I would have appreciated at least a little enlightenment in return.

"You’re rushing too much. Also, who said you didn’t have any achievements? Try to rotate your Qi now."

I frowned slightly but followed the instructions. Complaining to a Yin Stage monster who used my body as a martial arts teaching aid seemed unlikely to improve my situation.

I sat down straight in the lotus position. And took a deep breath, despite the displeasure of it being mixed with the tang of blood, it was still fine. The metallic scent filled my lungs while the bruised muscles across my chest tightened painfully with each inhale. I forced the body into stillness despite the throbbing aches running through it, letting my breathing gradually slow until the chaos inside me settled enough for proper cultivation.

I then dove deeper into my own consciousness and began rotating the Qi of this body.

Unlike Shen Bao’s body, which needs a constant supply of poison and the aid of the Primordial Serpent God to climb, this one is attuned with the heavens. The difference became obvious every time I cultivated through Shen Mo instead of my main body. Shen Bao’s cultivation path felt violent and parasitic, like dragging strength out of venom and forcing evolution through dangerous substances. Shen Mo’s body, however, felt frighteningly compatible with natural heavenly Qi itself.

This body is capable of harnessing the heavenly Qi. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

The Demonic Soul here, or the Dark Soul as I call it, began greedily consuming it, as if every pore in my body became a sinkhole of Saint Qi. The moment I fully opened my channels, the surrounding Qi reacted instantly.

Vast streams of Saint Qi surged toward me from every direction, drawn inward with such force that the air itself began to distort around my body. It wasn’t ordinary absorption anymore.

The Dark Soul devoured energy with monstrous hunger, dragging it inward faster and faster until even the Red Sun’s eyes narrowed slightly while watching.

It flooded in, to the point of Rampage, but I had to reign the Qi in otherwise it’ll destroy my channels. The sheer volume was terrifying. Qi crashed through my meridians violently enough that weaker channels would have ruptured instantly under the pressure. I tightened control immediately, forcing the flow into proper circulation patterns before the uncontrolled energy shredded the inside of this body apart.

There was just too much, too abundant, and too powerful Qi here.

Before the week battle with the Red Sun, I wouldn’t have even been able to amass a fraction of this Qi. That realization became increasingly obvious the longer I cultivated. Weeks ago, attempting this level of absorption would have crippled me before I managed even a tenth of the current intake. My body simply lacked the refinement necessary to control energy at this density. Now the process still strained me, but it no longer felt impossible.

Now I’m doing much more, much easier.

That improvement wasn’t coming from increased reserves alone. It was understanding. The Red Sun had been right from the start.

Every brutal exchange over these past weeks had sharpened not only my body, but my instinctive understanding of force itself. My channels responded differently now. My Qi moved cleaner. My strikes no longer wasted motion the way they once did.

Some time later, I had to stop. Because I felt the heavens trembling.

The sensation arrived subtly at first, like distant vibrations brushing against the edge of awareness. Then the pressure deepened. Qi throughout the training hall began fluctuating strangely, and somewhere above us, I felt the heavens themselves reacting.

"Oh, looks like you’re about to breakthrough to the Origin Realm." The Red Sun said.