"Yue Yin," I said, my voice barely cutting through the deafening hiss of steam erupting from the dying girl. "Give me a pot or some thing. Now."
Yue Yin emerged from the shadows of the canyon wall, her face pale beneath the soot. She moved with a terrified urgency, dragging a massive stone trough—a feeding vessel looted from the Hei camp's beast pen, carved from a single block of black granite. It scraped loudly against the ice, a harsh, grounding sound in the surreal, superheated fog.
She shoved it next to me.
I knelt. The heat radiating from Hei Ziyu was no longer human; it was industrial. It felt like kneeling next to an open blast furnace. The air shimmered so violently that her form was distorted, a mirage of suffering. The hair on my arms didn't just singe; it curled and crumbled into ash within seconds. My skin turning red i was going to burn with her in no time if I did not succeed in whatever luck was guiding me to do but for now I could put my faith on fate as it is protecting me for now and offering the best for me unless i rebel against it.
Her condition had deteriorated past the point of medical or healing gu usage return. Her skin was a bruised, hypoxic purple, stretched taut over muscles that were vibrating with lethal kinetic energy. Her veins were black ropes pulsing against her neck, visible roadmaps of a circulatory system that had become a pressurized bomb.
She was seconds away from a biological detonation that would not only kill her but erase this entire ravine from the map. That's how powerful an extreme physique's detonation was.the blessing and the curse,.
I drew a Rank 1 Razor Gu.
The blade hummed, its edge sharpened to a molecular degree.
I grabbed her wrist.
Sizzle.
The sound of my own flesh cooking filled my ears. Her skin blistered my fingers instantly, the heat bypassing my defenses. I didn't flinch. I didn't pull back. I gripped her harder, locating the radial artery through the boiling flesh.
Slash.
I cut deep, severing the artery with surgical precision.
Blood didn't flow. It didn't drip.
It jetted out.
Pressurized by the immense, chaotic Qi of the Great Strength True Martial Physique, the arterial spray erupted with the violence of a ruptured hydraulic line. It hit the stone trough with the force of a firehose, creating a deafening drumbeat against the granite.
The blood wasn't red. It was a dark, heavy crimson, viscous and metallic, moving with the weight of mercury. It hissed as it hit the cold stone, instantly boiling the frost at the bottom of the trough.
"Pour the stones," I commanded, my voice flat, holding her thrashing arm steady with all my strength.
Yue Yin poured over the primival essence stones we had stolen from the Hei camp.
Thousands of translucent, glowing Primeval Stones cascaded into the bowl, a waterfall of wealth tumbling into a sea of blood.
Hiss. Crackle. POP.
The reaction was violent and immediate.
The blood of a Ten Extreme Physique in critical condition was not merely biological fluid; it was liquid catastrophe. It was so corrosive, so saturated with chaotic Strength Qi, that it acted like a hyper-acid.
The primeval stones didn't sink. They dissolved upon contact.
It was a terrifying sight. Stones that were the bedrock of the cultivation world, objects that mortals would kill for, were melting like snowflakes in a volcano. They released their stored Heaven and Earth Qi in frantic bursts of white light, trying to neutralize the red rage of the blood.
The liquid in the bowl began to swirl on its own, a vortex of red and white turning into a luminescent, bubbling orange.
"It's not enough," I observed coldly, watching the bubbles pop with the scent of ozone and iron. "The pressure is still rising. The Qi is unstable. It's eating the essence too fast. It needs more mass to dilute the power."
"That was fifty thousand stones!" Yue Yin cried out, her voice cracking.unwilling to part with the large amount of wealth "That's a lot of fortune!"
"It's a drop in the bucket,compared to what is to be gained it's nothing" I roared over the noise of the reaction. "Empty the storage! All of it!"
I grabbed the pouches from my own belt—the spoils of the rear camp, the savings of the Ju Tribe, the hard-won profits from my gambling den. I didn't count them. I didn't hesitate. I ripped the bags open and dumped them all.
A rain of currency fell into the boiling cauldron.
Yue Yin gritted her teeth. She looked at the dying girl, then at the primival essence stones in her storage gu, and finally at me. She made her choice.
She opened her Theft Path Storage Gu.
A river of primeval stones poured out. It was a shimmering, endless cascade of light.
One Hundred Thousand.
The bowl glowed brighter, the orange liquid churning violently, splashing over the sides and melting the ice beneath us.
Five Hundred Thousand.
The ravine was illuminated by a blinding gold-red glare, casting long, dancing shadows against the canyon walls. The air tasted of metal and burnt sugar. The energy density was rising so fast the air began to ionize, creating static shocks that snapped against my skin.
"Still unstable," I calculated, my golden eyes analyzing the mixture. The blood was still too dominant. It was swallowing the essence and demanding more. "If we stop now, the reaction collapses and she explodes."
Yue Yin hesitated for a fraction of a second. Her hands trembled. Then, with a scream of frustration and fear, she dumped her own personal savings—the hoard of a master thief collected over years of risk.
One Million Primeval Stones.
An unimaginable fortune. Enough to buy several Rank 5 Gu worm. Enough to solve all costs of a medium-sized tribe for a year. Enough to build a city for a small sized tribe.
And we were dissolving it in a trough of blood in the middle of a frozen wasteland.
The mixture turned a blinding, molten gold. It was heavy, dense, and vibrating with a low frequency hum that shook the marrow of my bones. It was no longer liquid; it was plasma.
"It needs a stabilizer," I realized, sweat stinging my eyes. "It has the energy, but it lacks the structure. It needs a base to keep in check and control the uncertainty of sudden explosion."
I took the Razor Gu and slashed my own palm.
My blood although Rank 2 Red Steel quality welled up. But the most important part, it must have carried the dao marks of an Otherworldly Demon which i gussed should be luck or blood . It carried the soul signature of a man who did not belong to this fate.
I let it drip into the volatile mix.
Drip. Drip.
"Connect."
Inside my aperture, the Dog Shit Luck Gu buzzed violently. It sensed the opportunity. I pushed my primeval essence into it, injecting a stream of my own golden luck into the mixture.
This was to be Blood Path's progeniters first blood path related gu even if it had dao marks of other paths involved in it .
By using the massive energy of a million stones as a catalyst, I sensed it was creating a biological bridge. It was building a siphon to drain the excess "talent" from her and integrate it into myself.
"Fuse."
I slammed my bleeding hand into the boiling bowl.
BOOM.
The sound was absolute silence followed by a shockwave of light.
A pillar of blood-red light shot straight up, piercing the smoke clouds above, visible for miles across the Northern Plains. It was a beacon of defiance.
The liquid in the bowl vanished instantly. It didn't evaporate; it condensed.
Resting at the bottom of the black granite trough was a single object.
A gu shaped like a coin.
It looked like a coin. It was minted from crystallized blood ruby, glowing with an inner fire. On the heads side, a relief of my face—calm, commanding, a golden halo. On the tails side, Hei Ziyu's face—angry, roaring , a red halo.
I picked it up. It burned my skin, pulsing with a double heartbeat. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
"Eat it," I whispered,feeling what my dog shit luck gu was meaning to tell me, pressing the coin to my chest.
It didn't dissolve like a normal Gu. It fractured.
Crack.
It split into two beams of concentrated red light. One beam shot into Hei Ziyu's chest, sinking into her heart. The other shot into mine, fusing with my core.
The Million Stone Refinement was complete. The contract was signed in blood and protected by wealth.