The command was given. The 50 UP vanished.
[Upgrading Host to Level 6: Marrow Cleansing (Purification)...]
Lin Hao braced himself for a rush of power, for the forging heat, for the explosive expansion of his muscles.
Nothing happened.
For a full five seconds, he sat in the cold, dusty darkness, his heart thumping. He felt... nothing. "Did it...?"
And then it began.
It wasn't a rush. It wasn't a jolt.
It was an itch.
It started in the center of his spine, a small, tiny, prickling sensation, as if a single fire ant was crawling on his vertebrae.
Then, it spread.
A second ant, a third, a thousand, a million. In seconds, the itch exploded outward, a wave of unbearable, agonizing, deep-in-the-bone torment. It was in his ribs, his skull, his femurs, his finger bones. It was a billion insects, burrowing inside his skeleton, a place he couldn't scratch, couldn't reach, couldn't escape.
"Ngh!"
A low, choked groan was torn from his throat. He gritted his teeth, his jaw muscles clenching so hard his [Bone Forged] skeleton creaked in protest.
This wasn't a power-up. This was an exorcism.
His [Blood Vitality] was at war with his own body. The new, pure Qi was surging into his marrow, identifying every last speck of ancestral, genetic junk, the dross of a million mortal lifetimes, and was burning it out.
And then, the filth began to ooze.
His skin, which he had just washed clean, which he thought was pure, opened. A black, foul-smelling, and incredibly thick grime pushed its way out of every pore.
It wasn't sweat. It was tar.
It smelled of burnt hair, old-world pollution, and rotten metal. It was the physical manifestation of his body's "Mortal Root," and it was being forcibly, painfully, ejected.
It caked his arms, his chest, his legs. It pooled on the concrete floor beneath him, a viscous, black puddle.
He had to endure.
This was the price of a flawless foundation. This was the ordeal the rushed "young masters" would never, could never, pass.
He lost track of time. His world shrank to the concrete floor, the smell of the filth, and the all-consuming, maddening itch in his very core. He focused his mind, his will, on a single point: endure. He was a fortress. This was just a renovation.
It felt like a decade. His phone screen, lying on the floor, told him it had been just over an hour.
Then, as gradually as it began, the itch receded. The flow of black grime slowed, then stopped.
He was left in the dark, gasping, his body caked in a drying, crusty, and disgusting shell of his own impurities. He felt violated, scoured, and hollowed out.
His hunger, which had been a demanding ache, was now a raging, bottomless, screaming void.
But he was clean.
He needed water.
He pushed himself to his feet. His new, crusty shell cracked and flaked, falling away. He stood in the dark, his senses no longer overwhelmed by the itch.
He listened.
His hearing, which he thought was already perfect, was now a high-fidelity instrument. Across the 12,000-square-foot emptiness, past two concrete walls, he could hear it.
Drip... drip... drip...
The sound of a single, leaking faucet.
He followed it, his feet light on the floor. He found a small, derelict maintenance room. In the corner, a single, rusted, cast-iron utility sink jutted from the wall. A single tap was leaking, just as he'd heard.
He turned the rusted, squealing handle.
With a groan of ancient pipes, a stream of water gushed out. It was brown, freezing, and smelled of iron.
He didn't care.
He stuck his head under the stream, washing the filth from his hair. He used his hands to scrub the black, crusty tar from his skin. It came off in sheets, revealing the new, pure, almost luminous skin underneath.
He stood there for ten minutes, the icy water cascading over his body. But he didn't feel cold. His new, purified body was a vastly more efficient furnace. He felt... balanced.
He finally turned the water off. He stood in the dark, dripping, naked.
And he felt light.
He felt as if his bones, now scoured clean, were made of hollow crystal. He took a breath, and the Reiki in the air... it was different.
Before, it had been a sea of floating "motes."
Now, he could see the currents.
He could see the "rivers" of blue energy as they flowed through the broken skylights, how they eddied around the concrete pillars, how they were drawn, in a slow, perfect vortex, into his body.
His new, cleansed marrow was a beacon, a vacuum for spiritual energy.
He looked at his status.
[Cultivation: Level 6: Marrow Cleansing (Purification)] [Upgrade Points (UP): 540]
He was Level 6.
He thought of the news. He thought of Elder Chen, the "pinnacle" of human power, the man who had crushed a cinder block and awed the world.
That man was Level 4.
Lin Hao was Level 6. He was two entire stages beyond the strongest known man on Earth.
The gap was no longer a step. It was a chasm. He wasn't in a different league; he was playing an entirely different sport.
He had 540 UP left. He was rich in power and in potential.
But this new power... it wasn't a trophy to be shown. It was a secret. A secret that could get him dissected by the new, desperate BSA, or hunted by "wolves" far more terrifying than the ones he'd already met.
He had to hide. He had to become a ghost.