The second day began.
Mo Xuan never noticed the sunrise. He no longer knew whether his eyes were open or closed.
Pain had erased every sense of time.
Every heartbeat felt like an eternity. Every breath carried fire through his lungs.
The crimson medicinal liquid continued circulating around his body in slow, powerful currents, as though an invisible force guided every strand of medicinal essence into the exact place it was needed.
His flesh had long since gone numb.
Now...
The pain had reached something much deeper.
Crack.
A muffled sound echoed inside his body.
Then another.
Mo Xuan's pupils contracted violently. The sound had come from neither the cauldron nor the floor beneath him. It had come from his own bones. His breathing immediately became ragged. Every bone in his body felt as though it had been shattered into countless fragments before being forcibly pieced back together.
His shoulders.
His ribs.
His spine.
His legs.
Every part of him screamed. For a brief moment, he truly thought he was dying. Mo Xuan's body had stopped trembling.
Instead...
It had become frighteningly still. Only the occasional twitch of his fingers betrayed the unimaginable struggle taking place beneath the surface.
Inside his Sea of Consciousness...
Mo Xuan suddenly found himself standing within endless darkness.
At the centre of the darkness, a tiny silver droplet remained suspended. It shone more brightly than ever, as though responding to the changes occurring within his body. Mo Xuan took a step forward. The moment he raised his hand to touch the silver droplet—
Pain erupted once more. The illusion shattered. His consciousness returned to reality.
"Cough!"
A mouthful of dark blood spilt from his lips. The crimson medicinal bath immediately swallowed it. The liquid surrounding him became noticeably clearer.
Hour after hour passed. The medicinal bath continued changing. The liquid's deep crimson colour had gradually faded until it became almost translucent. Nearly half of its medicinal essence had disappeared.
Meanwhile...
Thin streams of black impurities continued flowing from Mo Xuan's pores. The foul-smelling substance spread briefly across the water before dissolving into nothingness. His skin, once flushed red, slowly returned to its natural colour.
Yet within him...
Something extraordinary was taking place.
Every muscle fibre destroyed by the medicinal essence reformed stronger than before. Tiny fractures throughout his skeleton healed with astonishing precision. His meridians widened.
His organs grew noticeably tougher. It was not cultivation in the ordinary sense.
It was reconstruction.
The Revolution Connecting Mantra was rebuilding his mortal body from its very foundation.
As evening approached, the pages of the book turned on their own. A fresh passage slowly revealed itself in glowing golden script.
"The first day tempers flesh.
The second day tempers bone.
The third day tempers will.
Many possess talent.
Few possess resolve.
Those who cannot endure deserve no future."
The words lingered for several moments before settling into the page.
Mo Xuan never saw them.
His consciousness drifted between waking and unconsciousness, sustained only by a single thought that refused to disappear.
His obsession.
No matter how unbearable the pain became...
No matter how many times his body begged him to stop...
He remembered the first promise he had made to himself after awakening with a defective soul.
If Heaven closes one path...
Then I'll carve another.
Outside, the second night quietly descended over the Mo Clan.
Inside the abandoned hut...
The first true step toward that impossible path continued.
The medicinal liquid continued to swirl around him. Its once deep crimson colour had faded into a translucent scarlet, while countless threads of golden essence still flowed into his body without pause.
Each strand seemed to possess a will of its own. Some entered through the pores of his skin. Others travelled directly into his meridians.
Inside his body...
The transformation continued. The muscles that had been torn apart throughout the first day had already regenerated. Now they were denser.
Stronger.
Every fibre possessed a resilience it had never held before. His bones followed.
Tiny cracks spread across them before immediately sealing shut beneath the medicinal essence. Each fracture made them harder. Each restoration made them purer.
It was painful beyond imagination. Yet it was also unmistakably effective.
Within the depths of his consciousness...
Mo Xuan found himself standing once more beside the silver droplet.
Only now...
It had changed. Hairline cracks spread across its brilliant surface. Tiny rays of silver light escaped through them before disappearing into the surrounding darkness.
Mo Xuan slowly approached. Just as he approached, the cracks widened slightly. Mo Xuan instinctively reached out. Just before his fingertips touched the droplet—
A deafening scream erupted throughout his consciousness.
His eyes snapped open. "AHHHHH!"
The cry echoed through the hut. For two days, he had endured the pain in silence.
Now...
He could no longer suppress it. Every vein beneath his skin bulged visibly. His muscles tightened so violently that the cauldron groaned beneath the strain.
Crack.
Another fracture appeared along its rim. Mo Xuan gritted his teeth. His entire body arched backwards as another wave of pain tore through him. It felt as though every bone inside him had been pulled apart by invisible hands.
Then the bones were forced back together. Again. And again.
Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. Yet even through the agony, he resisted the urge to jump out of the cauldron. His fingers tightened until fresh splinters broke free from the cauldron. His breathing came in ragged gasps.
If Mo Xuan's resolve broke before dawn... Then every sacrifice made over the past two years would end here.
The third day arrived without ceremony. No sunlight reached the abandoned hut.
No birdsong.
No sense of relief.
Only silence.
The kind of silence that settled after two days of unending suffering.
The medicinal bath had changed completely. Gone was its deep crimson colour. Gone was the rich fragrance that had once filled the hut.
The liquid had become almost transparent, faint streaks of pale gold drifting lazily beneath its surface like tiny rivers of light. Nearly all of the medicinal essence had already been absorbed into Mo Xuan's body.
Only the final refinement remained, and according to the book, it was also the most dangerous.
Mo Xuan looked as though he had aged years. His lips were dry and cracked. His face had become frighteningly pale. Dark circles rested beneath his closed eyes, while countless beads of sweat rolled continuously down his forehead despite the cold winter air.
Yet...
His breathing had become noticeably steadier. The violent trembling that had tormented him during the first two days had finally subsided.
Inside his consciousness...
The silver droplet finally dissolved into countless tiny specks of silver light. The entire world exploded as the darkness was swept away. Towering waves rose toward the heavens, revolving around a central point. The entire Sea of Consciousness transformed into an enormous celestial vortex.
Then—a voice. Soft and ancient.
It seemed to come from everywhere at once.
"Even in misfortune, Heaven favours you, child."
Mo Xuan's eyes widened. He searched the vast white space, but found nothing. The voice came from within—his Sea of Consciousness.
He tried to speak, but his throat was tight with pain. "Who... are you?"
A faint sigh answered him.
"Though unintended, I caused your suffering. Allow me to turn this curse into fortune."
A sudden force seized Mo Xuan and pulled him forward. By the time it released him, he was standing in a vast world of white light—the manifestation of his Sea of Consciousness, a Spiritual Space that few below the Soul Master realm could access.
Before him appeared an old man with snow-white hair and a presence like an unsheathed sword. He was neither weak nor fragile; he seemed ancient, but not in the way of decay. He looked like someone who had survived far beyond the years ordinary men could bear.
Mo Xuan instinctively took a step back, his heart pounding. "Who are you?" he asked again.
The old man smiled faintly. The expression cut through Mo Xuan's mental resistance like a blade through silk. "Do not panic. You are not possessed."
"Let me tell you what happened," the spirit said. "I was once the sword spirit of a cultivator named Xi. He died while fighting another cultivator over a medicinal treasure, and I was shattered alongside him."
"I should have disappeared from this world. Yet fate had other plans. The treasure itself broke apart, and a fragment of my essence was drawn into the pill."
"That pill possessed the ability to steal fortune from the Heavens. When your awakening began, it was attracted to your Soul Foundation. The moment the two came into contact, an unexpected fusion occurred."
Mo Xuan's expression tightened. "The fusion nearly killed me?"
"Your body was too weak to withstand it. Your Soul Foundation cracked, and your Sea of Consciousness became unstable. I sealed most of the power to keep you alive."
The spirit sighed softly.
"Fate is difficult to understand. Perhaps the fragment of my essence was drawn to you precisely because it prevented your death."
His gaze travelled over Mo Xuan's exhausted body, lingering with faint disapproval.
"And then you began swallowing elixirs without understanding your condition."
Mo Xuan flushed with embarrassment.
"Do you have any idea how close you came to wasting my effort and losing your life?"
Mo Xuan stared at him, dumbfounded. What else could he have done? With his cultivation crippled and his future uncertain, who would simply lie down and wait for a miracle?
The spirit seemed to read his thoughts. However, instead of becoming angry, he merely continued:
"Even if you had done nothing, you would eventually have become a late bloomer. In time, you might have shone more brightly than those who surpassed you in their youth."
He paused, then smiled faintly.
"Still, this is not necessarily a bad thing. Your reckless attempts merely accelerated the process—and allowed me to complete my task sooner."