Jiang Zhaoye let out a long, turbid breath.
Like a heavily polluting factory chugging out a burst of dense, pitch-black smoke, it even made him choke himself awake.
Jiang Zhaoye coughed for quite a while, then suddenly caught whiff after whiff of a foul stench.
He gagged. Looking down, he discovered that his entire body was coated in a layer of pitch-black, sticky, greasy, disgusting grime. His white short-sleeved shirt was intimately matted together with the sludge, inseparable and indistinguishable from one another.
Jiang Zhaoye let out a tragic wail, “My clothes!!!”
Immediately after, he realized this was the impurities forced out of his body by the Marrow Cleansing Pill combined with practicing 《Ice Muscle Jade Bone Art》.
“P... Pores shooting shit?” Jiang Zhaoye muttered blankly, an inexplicable grief and indignation welling up inside him. This was his only set of clothes!
The jade slip clearly stated that the Marrow Cleansing Pill would cleanse the meridians and temper the marrow, and that Body Refining would expel impurities from the skin, flesh, and bones. Having read so many web novels, how on earth hadn't he thought to strip off his clothes before starting?
Now he was in a fine mess—either wear shit-stained clothes, or streak naked...
Just thinking about it made Jiang Zhaoye lose all will to live, but the foul stench relentlessly assaulted his nose at every second. The unfortunate kid had no choice but to scramble and crawl in search of water.
He still remembered there was a puddle back by the ice cavern where he had first arrived. Stinking and thirsty, he needed to drink some water and get cleaned up before considering anything else.
Before he had walked many steps, Jiang Zhaoye belatedly realized that he was actually not so cold anymore!
To be precise, he could still feel the chill all around him, but it was no longer bone-chilling. It had turned mild—shifting from a winter of howling blizzards and piercing cold to a late autumn of heavy dew, light frost, and a bracing nip in the air.
The autumn wind was desolate, but it wouldn't freeze someone to death.
His hands and feet were no longer numb, and his joints had regained their flexibility.
Jiang Zhaoye looked down at his arm and wiped away a handful of the repulsive layer of impurities, revealing a patch of skin.
The fine hairs were gone, and his skin had become a shade paler. Because the residual spiritual energy was still circulating by momentum within his body, that patch of skin even radiated an extremely faint luster, as though dusted with body glitter.
Invulnerable to cold and heat?
“Holy shit—this Dao master made it!” A teenager’s emotions were like June weather, changing on a whim.
Just the thought that he had mastered a body-refining technique—one described as exceedingly difficult even in the jade slip—without having awakened psionic energy made him grin from ear to ear. Although it was merely initial results, he had successfully crossed the threshold! He wouldn't freeze to death!
“I really am a fucking genius!”
...
Jiang Zhaoye made his way back to the cave entrance and found an icicle dripping water. Standing beneath the icicle, he opened his mouth, craned his neck, and tilted his head back, catching several icy drops in his mouth.
Cool and crisp with a refreshing taste, he smacked his lips. Only then did he feel safe enough to use the empty jade bottle he had brought with him to scoop up half a bottle of water from the small puddle beneath the icicles and gulp it down.
The water was freezing, like ice sliding down his esophagus, making Jiang Zhaoye shiver. But it quenched his thirst, and his throat finally didn't feel so dry. As he continued scooping water, still craving more, his peripheral vision caught sight of something seemingly frozen within the ice layer beside the puddle.
He shifted his crouched body, leaning in closer to take a careful look.
A white... cicada?
Like a bolt of lightning striking his mind, Jiang Zhaoye dropped flat against the ice, staring in disbelief at the cicada beneath the ice that was strikingly similar to the one inside the blue amber he had worn for eight years.
No, it wasn't completely identical... This cicada was slightly larger, and its wings weren't spread; at this moment, they were folded quietly, utterly still, like a sleeping white jade carving. It was even encased within a blue “amber,” but because the blue bead blended in with the faintly blue-glowing ice layer, one could hardly tell the difference without looking closely.
Jiang Zhaoye suddenly remembered that when he first woke up, it had seemingly been right here!
He grew excited in an instant and eagerly reached out to scratch at it, but the ice layer was frozen solid, not looking like something that could be pried open anytime soon. Jiang Zhaoye’s mind worked fast, recalling the tutorial of 《Water-Ice Attribute Conversion》 that he knew by heart.
It had said that he had always been running the conversion from water attribute to ice attribute.
However, if water could convert into ice, ice could naturally convert into water as well!
Fired up, Jiang Zhaoye boldly made his move. He pressed his palm against the ice surface and tried circulating the meager bit of spiritual energy in his body, beginning to execute the techniques learned from 《Water-Ice Attribute Conversion》 to perceive and manipulate the moisture in the ice layer.
Under the guidance of his spiritual energy, the surface of the ice layer actually melted slightly. Overjoyed, Jiang Zhaoye immediately poured in more power.
After stumbling through his efforts for more than an hour, Jiang Zhaoye’s hand was completely submerged in the puddle of melted ice. Hooking his fingers around the object, he gave a hard tug, finally pulling the amber sphere out completely intact.
Panting for breath, Jiang Zhaoye sat on the ice, happily raising the blue amber sphere toward the light to examine it closely.
It really was extremely similar to the amulet he had worn for years.
However, this one in his hand was clearly slightly larger, and the cicada inside was bigger as well, carrying a firmer, more lustrous jade-like quality—unlike the little white cicada in his original pendant, whose wings had been so ethereal as to appear somewhat translucent.
Recalling the experience of being inexplicably teleported here, Jiang Zhaoye steeled his resolve. He bit down on the finger he had washed clean in the puddle, his canine applying force until a cut broke open with a sting of pain. Without delay, he pressed his bleeding finger against the amber sphere, repeatedly smearing the fresh beads of blood evenly across the sphere’s surface.
Nothing happened.
Yet the moment the ice spiritual energy—still circulating by momentum—reached his hand, the blue amber abruptly burst with a burst of immortal light, flying into Jiang Zhaoye’s left eye at lightning speed.
History was always strikingly similar.
Excruciating pain struck his brain with practiced brutality, but having experienced the exact same pain before and gone through the searing trial of Body Refining, Jiang Zhaoye surprisingly didn't pass out immediately this time.
A silver-white light flickered like an illusion, expanding until it enveloped him completely. Then, he felt as if he were a rag tossed into a tumbling, spinning washing machine.
The void tore open, time froze, and the silver-white light vanished from the ice cavern, taking him along with it.
When Jiang Zhaoye regained consciousness again, he found himself back in his room, lying on that familiar training mat.
Outside the window, the morning sun was slowly rising.
Jiang Zhaoye leapt to his feet. His dizzy head caused him to stumble several steps, retching against the wall a few times, yet returning as if having survived the eighty-one tribulations left him beside himself with joy.
“I'm back! I'm finally back!”
Jiang Zhaoye danced and jumped about in place with sheer delight. The jade slip, jade pendant, jade bottle, and bronze mirror in his pants pockets tumbled out with a clatter, hitting the training mat and startling the kid into sobering up considerably.
He looked down to see that his entire body was coated in black muck, a foul stench assaulting his nose.
“Ugh—”
Jiang Zhaoye, like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, sprang up from the floor and barreled into the bathroom like a runaway dump truck. He jumped under the showerhead and turned the valve; hot water rushed out of the showerhead with a whoosh, and pale mist quickly filled the cramped space alongside the sound of water.
In a flash, he stripped off his ruined T-shirt and boxers, standing barefoot beneath the showerhead.
Hot water poured over his head; Jiang Zhaoye felt so comfortable he nearly cried.
Praise Blue Star, praise the modern era, praise showerheads.
I love bathing; taking a shower is just pure bliss.
With his germaphobic instincts welling up, Young Jiang pumped out several dollops of body wash and scrubbed vigorously all over. The lather quickly turned a grayish-black, flowing along with the water onto the floor tiles, and before long, the dirty black water spread across the entire shower stall.
He scrubbed again and again, applying round after round of body wash until he had nearly rubbed off a layer of skin before finally stopping.
The floor drain worked tirelessly, the dirty water and foam swirling out round after round.
Rate on N.U.
