Physical Rebirth (1)
I sat in a room together with Zhuge Yang and Yeon Hwa.
Now twenty years old, Zhuge Yang's Moon Spirit Freezing Sword had long since passed its fifth stage and reached the eighth, and as a result her hair had turned from black to silver. Her sapphire eyes carried a frosty light at first glance, but within them dwelled a warmth that could not be hidden. Whenever a smile spread across her cheeks, now free of their baby fat, clear dimples appeared — mysterious and captivating enough to make her seem less a woman of this world than a celestial maiden descended from the Moon Palace.
Hers was a beauty that set my heart racing no matter how many times I saw it. And what made her exquisite looks shine all the more was the overwhelming presence that made itself known whenever her gaze dipped ever so slightly — one that her loose-fitting martial robes could do nothing to conceal.
I hurriedly returned my wicked gaze to where it belonged.
"You're going to take it right now, aren't you?"
Zhuge Yang asked, staring at the black pill the size of a small child's fist that sat before me.
"O-of course I am."
My voice trembled slightly. I had finally succeeded in combining the five elixirs according to the Rebirth Scripture.
The Rebirth Pill!
The name was nothing special, but its value was anything but. Its treasure value was a staggering 99 — the same value as the Heavenly Demon Divine Art. A treasure among treasures, one that could raise even an ordinary person's body to the Transformative Realm in a single stroke.
"If anything goes wrong, I'll help you!"
Zhuge Yang clenched both fists, steeling her resolve. She meant that if any unforeseen problem arose after I swallowed the pill, she — a Super-Peak master — would somehow see me through it.
"Thank you. Yeon Hwa, I'll ask you to stand guard as well."
"Y-yes."
Likewise, Yeon Hwa — standing at the very edge of the Peak Realm — took up her position. Perhaps from nerves, even her usually composed voice was trembling.
I picked up the black pill and studied its appearance. No wonder Yeon Hwa was tense. Selling off every elixir that had gone into this thing might well be enough to found a kingdom and still have change left over.
It had taken an age to make this single pill. Even knowing exactly where it was, it had taken three years to catch the Ten-Thousand-Year Fire Carp as it constantly roamed the waters — and since the sword qi of a Peak master couldn't pierce the One-Horned Fire Python's hide, another full year had passed waiting for Zhuge Yang to reach Super-Peak.
Sitting cross-legged, I placed the Rebirth Pill in my mouth. It was quite large — a child's fist, after all — but the moment it entered my mouth it melted away and slid down my throat. The taste that lingered on my tongue for a moment was cold and sweet. Strange, considering it had been made from nothing but bitterly harsh elixirs.
That was as far as my stray thoughts got.
"Hah...!"
A fire-like energy had begun to flow slowly through my body. The fiery heat coiling through my veins hammered at my chest as if it might explode. My skin prickled and tingled, and it felt as though every cell in my body were being born anew — as if my muscles, bones, and organs were being rewoven one by one.
There was pain, but it felt like the process of shedding my human shell and being reborn as something new, and so I could bear it.
I could feel my body changing, but the passage of time slipped away from me. How long had it been? Two hours? Half a day? A full day?
Gradually my body grew lighter, sensation awakened in each fingertip, and I could feel my strength surging explosively. It felt as though everything in the world lay within reach of my fingertips. Along with it, my mind cleared, and memories from my childhood began to stir awake, one after another.
Some were trivial, some were shocking, but I set the complicated thoughts aside for later and, awash in a feeling of fullness, slowly opened my eyes.
... And the first thing I saw was Zhuge Yang, flustered, her face flushed as red as a ripe persimmon.
Zhuge Yang watched Ma Won swallow the Rebirth Pill.
Honestly, right up until this very moment, she had doubted whether that thing would actually work. Thanks to Ma Won's uncanny sense, they had managed to gather every last elixir, but she could never quite shake the thought that the Rebirth Scripture might be a lie. It was only because Ma Won had hoped for so much that she hadn't let it show.
But as if to prove her doubts wrong, changes began to appear in Ma Won's body at once.
First came the heat haze rising from his body, so intense that the air around him shimmered and blurred. At the same time, his clothes began to fray apart. The moment she saw them start to fall to pieces, Zhuge Yang shot to her feet.
"Sister Hwa! Out, now!"
Yeon Hwa scrambled awkwardly to her feet, and Zhuge Yang pushed her by the back toward the door.
"Then we shall wait outsi—"
"I'm staying here!"
Yeon Hwa tried to say something more, but Zhuge Yang shoved her out and slammed the door shut with a resounding bang.
... This was bad. Thinking of the expression she'd glimpsed on Yeon Hwa's face through the crack just before the door closed, she suddenly felt mortified. Seen through the discerning eyes of a Super-Peak master, Yeon Hwa had been smiling. A very, very lecherous smile.
She had indeed been startled enough to send Yeon Hwa out at the sight of Ma Won gradually turning naked, but Zhuge Yang had impulsively stayed in the room.
If qi deviation strikes, I'll have to intervene right away!
The ceiling might come crashing down!
What if the floor caves in!
Every excuse under the sun came to mind, but the truth was that Zhuge Yang wanted to look closely at Ma Won's body — an opportunity that might never come again if not now. Even the parts she would absolutely never want Yeon Hwa to see.
Gulp—
Swallowing drily for no reason at all, Zhuge Yang slowly took in the sight of Ma Won, not a stitch of clothing on him. It wasn't just his face — his entire upper body was covered in burn scars.
Poor thing...
She'd heard that the pain of burning was the hardest of all to endure...
If she ever met the people who called themselves Ma Won's parents, she had no confidence she could forgive them. His body was that wretched.
Not just his upper body — his lower body was scarred too... Having let her gaze drift down for a moment, Zhuge Yang's pupils quaked at the massive presence at Ma Won's center, and she snapped her gaze right back into place.
W-well, Won does peek at me sometimes too...
Of course, back then she had been wearing clothes, and Ma Won was......
And then she lowered her gaze ever so slightly once more.
Th-that's enormous...
Zhuge Yang, cheeks burning amid her wandering thoughts, pulled herself together when the true transformation finally overtook Ma Won's body and turned her full attention to observing it.
Ma Won's skin suddenly began to clear. Like murky clouds parting in a night sky, his dull, burn-crushed skin gradually took on a faint radiance — and in an instant, it gleamed like white jade. His damaged scalp was restored as well, and short new hairs began to bristle up from his pores.
Crack... crack—
The frame that had shot up by his twentieth year already stood more than two heads taller than an ordinary grown man. As its skeleton settled with the sound of twisting bone, the great body grew sleeker and more powerful still, and energy overflowed from between his newly hardened muscles. It was the perfect human proportion.
Ma Won slowly opened his eyes. His face was no longer the wound-warped visage it had been; smooth, fine skin lay revealed beneath. His brows swept up in clean, sharp lines, and his features formed a firm yet harmonious balance. Above all, his deep, keen eyes overwhelmed anyone who met them at a single glance, and confidence dwelled within that gaze.
There sat a peerless beauty — a strange nobility and refined air drifting from his serene features, a firm jawline, and a straight, high bridge of a nose.
Stark naked, without a stitch on him.
"W-Won, a-are you... u-uncomfortable a-anywhere?"
I sprang up from where I sat and ran both hands over my face. Smooth skin. Not a single wrinkle, let alone any trace of burn scarring.
"It worked!"
I shouted with joy and turned to Zhuge Yang, wanting to share this moment with her. But the woman I'd expected to rejoice alongside me had both hands clamped over her eyes and spoke with visible effort.
"S-sorry, Won... um... c-clo..."
"What?"
"C-clothes..."
Clo? Clothes?
... Belatedly grasping the situation, I screamed.
"AAAH!!"
Zhuge Yang screamed too.
"KYAAAAH! I'm sorry!!"
Fuck... I hadn't thought about my clothes burning away during the rebirth. Some stories had that happen, some didn't, and of course mine had to be one of them... If I'd known this was coming, I would have taken the Rebirth Pill alone from the very start.
"Young Miss! What's happening!"
Just then, the door rattled along with Yeon Hwa's startled cry. The instant it began to swing open, Zhuge Yang flung herself at it, seized the handle, and shouted.
"It's nothing! You must NOT open it!"
Yeon Hwa, a Peak master, simply could not match the speed of Zhuge Yang, a Super-Peak master.
After all that commotion, Zhuge Yang and I calmed down a short while later. Our faces were still red, but we had both accepted that it had been an unavoidable situation.
I put on a spare set of clothes and sat down.
"I-I was s-standing guard, a-and then you s-suddenly turned into that!"
"I know. Thanks for guarding me. But when did Yeon Hwa leave, anyway?"
"I d-don't-don't-don't know?"
It was a suspicious reaction, but there were far more important matters at hand — namely, forming a dantian to contain the energies brimming inside my body.
"S-sit back down!"
Zhuge Yang pressed her palm to my back and poured her internal energy into me. My shattered qi core had been healed along with the rebirth, and in the blink of an eye, a dantian took form. Though I wasn't running a single technique, I could feel the energies brimming throughout my body being drawn naturally into it.
A Transformative Realm reached through forced rebirth was still the Transformative Realm. I could feel the flow of qi within my body with perfect clarity.
"H-huh?"
Zhuge Yang seemed flustered, but it didn't appear to be doing her any harm. Eyes closed, I calmly observed the phenomenon unfolding within my body.
Roughly half of the energies spread throughout my body were sucked into the dantian at tremendous speed before the flow gradually slowed, until now only the faintest trickle remained. By all common sense, elixir energy that couldn't be stored in the dantian should have slowly dissipated from the body — yet for some reason, it kept being drawn inward at a languid pace. I could only assume it was the miraculous effect of the Rebirth Pill.
Feeling things settle down at last, I opened my eyes.
"Won, that just now..."
"Ah, the energies were flowing into my dantian on their own. About half of them, I'd say?"
"That's ten Jia."
"Huh?"
"The internal energy filling your dantian right now is ten Jia. Half of the total was that much."
By the standard of the Three Calamities Heart Method, a third-rate cultivation art, it took sixty years to build a single Jia of internal power. Higher-grade martial arts shaved that time down bit by bit, but fundamentally, this was work measured in decades.
And yet my body held energies amounting to a full twenty Jia — ten of which were immediately usable.
And that was before I'd done a single bit of training.