Fang Yuan returned to his dilapidated room, locking the door firmly behind him. He placed the 57 primeval stones on the table. In the dim candlelight, the stones emitted a faint milky glow, but to Fang Yuan, they were merely raw "energy units."
Fang Yuan's Mental Calculations:
"57 stones. Each stone contains enough natural essence to boost cultivation efficiency by 5% for one hour. If I consume 10 stones for 'Soul Essence Refining' and 40 for 'Skeletal Tempering,' I will reach the middle stage of Rank 1 in 48 hours instead of 3 months. Risk: Pressuring the meridians may cause chronic rupturing. Solution: Use Blood Path techniques to repair the pathways as they are being destroyed."
Fang Yuan began the ritual. He didn't absorb the stones slowly like the others. Instead, he crushed two stones with his bare hands into a fine powder and drew a small refinement circle on his own skin using his blood.
The Forbidden Ritual: Dark Body Refinement
Fang Yuan utilized a primitive killer move called "The Silent Spiritual Hammer." Instead of gently feeding primeval essence into his aperture, he began striking it violently from within. The pain felt like thousands of heated needles piercing into his bone marrow.
He didn't blink. His eyes remained icy, monitoring his body's transformation as if watching a piece of metal being forged. With every strike, the impurities of his mortal frame oozed from his pores as a viscous, foul-smelling black liquid.
"Pain is just a neural signal," he thought clinically. "If the consciousness is detached from sensation, pain becomes mere background noise."
The Moment Heaven's Will Noticed:
At that moment, because Fang Yuan was bypassing the natural laws of growth with illogical speed, something strange occurred. The wind outside the room died down instantly. The clouds above Gu Yue Village began to swirl in an unnatural spiral, as if a giant eye in the sky was peeling open its lids to locate a "glitch" in the system.
Fang Yuan felt the sudden heaviness in the air. He paused for a fraction of a second, glancing at the ceiling with a mocking smirk.
"Do you feel me now, Heaven?" he whispered. "You are far too late. In this life, I am not running from your Fate... I am refining it."