"My Inner Qi accumulation is far from reaching the saturation point of my body’s capacity, and just now I was rely using the effect of the Dust-Transforming Elixir to break and then establish, nurturing that sliver of Innate Qi. I didn’t expect it still to be unsuccessful,"
He also knew that reaching the Innate Realm wouldn’t be so easy to achieve, especially since the Inner Qi he produced was from the practice of the Blood Pill technique, which he estimated would make it even more difficult.
"It looks like I have to use the Human Face Fruit now...." He gently took out the pale yellow fruit that resembled a human face from his waist pouch. The fruit was oval in shape, only the size of a palm, but it looked like a miniaturized human head carved out of wood—a mu-lu’s head. It had complete facial features, emotionless, with its eyes wide open as if it had just been cut off from a human body. Aside from the absence of hair, it was strikingly similar in every other detail.
"To eat it raw with vinegar...." As Lin Xin looked at the miniature human head, he felt a bit nauseous....
He checked his condition and, fortunately, even though he hadn’t broken through to the Innate level, his symptoms of unstable Inner Qi had been thoroughly resolved.
Shu Ruoyun indeed hadn’t lied to him; the guy was just too honest.
In the following days, Lin Xin didn’t go out. Instead, he had Dongyue help him purchase a large variety of materials, which included the hidden components for concocting the dicine required to consu the Human Face Fruit.
Everything was ready in three days.
The potion was easy to prepare. As per the thod, Lin Xin steeped the Human Face Fruit in the potion for an entire day and night.
Then, on the fifth day, the surface of the Human Face Fruit indeed shed a layer of extrely hard skin, revealing the tender texture inside, just like human skin.
Lin Xin sat upright, regulating his breathing and focusing his energy. At noon, after hanging a self-made "Do Not Disturb" wooden sign outside, he finally picked up the Human Face Fruit to eat it raw.
Holding the now pale Human Face Fruit, Lin Xin dabbed it in the vinegar sauce laid out in the white porcelain dish in front of him.
Without looking at it, he directly brought it to his mouth and took a big bite.
Crunch.
A crisp sound followed. The outside of the Human Face Fruit was soft, but the inside crunched like a radish. He bit off more than half of the mu-lu’s head in one go.
Lin Xin chewed vigorously. The fruit was almost tasteless, very much like eating a radish. He quickly finished off the rest, dipping it in vinegar with each bite.
After eating, he even burped, feeling slightly bloated in his stomach.
"It doesn’t seem to have any effect...."
No sooner had this thought crossed his mind than Lin Xin suddenly felt sothing was wrong.
There was a thunderous noise in the area of his heart, as if his ears were about to be deafened by the blast. A stream of exceptionally rich Inner Qi surged into his heart like a dam-bursting flood.
The cluster of Inner Qi in his heart expanded at an incredible rate, then started to dissipate. Strands of vast amounts of Inner Qi began to spread continuously throughout his body.
To the torso, the limbs, then the head, and even the most delicate eyeballs, and finally even reaching the surface of the skin. Every place capable of storing Inner Qi was filled to the brim with the dispersing Inner Qi.
By then, Lin Xin was entirely flushed red and unable to speak. The storage of Inner Qi was determined by one’s physique. The maximum Inner Qi one’s physique could store was the limit, and any excess would slowly seep through the skin. During this process of dissipation, the physique was also being transford, enabling it to store even more Inner Qi.
This was normally a long process of adaptation, but now, it had been compressed into this brief mont by the Human Face Fruit’s imnse and incessant supply of Essence Qi.
The Human Face Fruit continued to unleash a terrifyingly large amount of Inner Qi, heedless of Lin Xin’s body which was starting to struggle to cope. This rich Inner Qi would have been the best supplent for restoring Inner Strength at any other ti, but now, it had beco a deadly force.
Everything is best in moderation. Too little is insufficient, too much is toxic. It’s like eating good food or taking supplents; the right amount is beneficial, but too much becos a burden. The body can’t absorb so much all at once and must work hard to expel it. Otherwise, the excess, if retained and turned sour inside, becos needless poison.
At this point, Inner Qi was just like that.
Lin Xin struggled to control the rapid circulation of Inner Qi within his body, following the Return to Origin technique.
The massive amount of Inner Qi made his body swell increasingly larger, and his skin slowly began to bulge. In just a short mont, his figure looked as if he had gained more than ten pounds of weight.
Hiss.
Finally, a stream of blood spurted from a vein in Lin Xin’s neck.
The skin’s blood vessels couldn’t withstand the huge amount of Inner Qi any longer and began to relieve the imnse internal pressure in this way.
The blood that hit the wall even made a noise like a stick striking it, scattering everywhere with red dots.
The fact that the blood could produce such a sound clearly indicated it was filled with Inner Qi.
Hiss, hiss, hiss!
In an instant, Lin Xin’s entire body spurted successive blood jets from all over his skin, penetrating his clothes and striking the interior of the stone house violently, filling the entire room with the stench of blood.
Lin Xin concentrated and held his breath. His spirits were better than they had ever been before.
He began to forcefully strike at previously unbroken ridians with the Cultivation Technique of Small Return to Origin, taking advantage of this enormous pressure. ridian after ridian was blown open effortlessly, and even so ridians he hadn’t noticed before were passively expanded under the pressure.
The Postnatal Cultivation Practice of Small Return to Origin was mainly about opening more ridians in the body. The ridians required for the Fourth Layer were swiftly opened. Not only that, so of the ridians for the Fifth Layer were also violently breached. It wasn’t until about half of the Fifth Layer’s ridians were opened that the imnse pressure gradually subsided with the jets of blood.
Vast amounts of postnatal Inner Qi continually filled his body, and Lin Xin faintly felt as if many cool, innate threads were inside, moving about like little fish.
He easily gathered these threads together, channeling them through the ridians that had just opened according to the Return to Origin Technique, all converging in the lower Dantian region.
As ti passed, the pressure quickly subsided.
Lin Xin’s body was almost entirely covered in blood, his clothes torn and tattered, and even the bed beneath him was stained crimson.
A small cluster of Innate Essence Qi quietly gathered in the ridians around his lower abdon. This was the harvest from consuming the human-faced fruit...
"Finally... I’ve achieved it...." Lin Xin opened his eyes, and as the effects of the dicinal herb faded, so too did his spirits slowly drop. Casting a final glance at the bloody ss that was the stone room, he couldn’t hold back any longer, and, feeling groggy, he lay back and fell asleep.
*****************
After an unknown period, Lin Xin slowly awoke from his deep sleep.
He opened his eyes in so confusion, still lying on the filthy bed. The blood around the stone room had dried and congealed, and he had no idea how much ti had passed.
Faint white light shone through the cracks of the window, falling on the ground in front of his bed – it seed to still be dayti outside.
His nose was full of a strong, sour stench, which was quite unbearable.
Lin Xin sat up, tore off his ragged clothes, and discovered in shock that the wounds from which blood had spurted previously had all miraculously vanished, with only the deeper and larger ones leaving a faint red mark.
"This is the Innate Realm, truly wondrous...."
In the world of internal martial artists, the Innate Realm is a clear dividing line. There is a complete qualitative transformation between those below the Innate Realm and those above it.
Lin Xin couldn’t help but recall their siege on Zhou Jing. Zhou Jing had just entered the Innate Realm, and ordinary moves, when executed by him, could take on three opponents at once, even though he was poisoned at the ti. Had it not been for Lin Xin’s unexpected attack with the exploding Talisman Sword, combined with Kong Yuhui’s hidden trump card, they probably would not have won if Zhou Jing had been prepared for a direct confrontation.
Afterward, he also heard Kong Yuhui say that Zhou Jing was just a very ordinary Innate practitioner, the weakest of them.
Then he thought back to his encounter with Shu Ruoyun.
"Shu Ruoyun must also be a high-level practitioner in the Innate Layer," Lin Xin judged in his mind.
Without further thought, the first thing he did was to look at his attribute panel.
’Damage – 3, Defense – 3, Evasion – 1, Constitution – 1. Free Attributes 1 point.’
’Return to Origin Technique – Fourth Layer. (Completion 99%), (Damage 4, Constitution 4)’
"As expected... there’s no significant change in physical attributes..." Lin Xin carefully reflected on this, recalling that many of the internal martial artists he had encountered were the sa, their natural physical attributes were fairly ordinary when they didn’t exert their Inner Qi.
After entering the Innate Realm with the Fourth Layer of the Return to Origin Technique, he felt an increase in the amount of Inner Qi. The Innate Essence Qi gathered in his lower abdon wasn’t for consumption but for accumulating and using it to transform the body and impact more ridians.
"I’ve now partially opened even the ridians of the Fifth Layer, but it still displays the Fourth Layer, probably because I haven’t accumulated enough Innate Essence Qi," he understood clearly in his mind. "That’s why it shows a 99% progress. As long as the amount of Innate Essence Qi is sufficient, I’ll naturally progress to the Fifth Layer."
"No wonder it’s the human-faced fruit for a thousand people..." He looked conflicted, such an evil treasure made from the essence of over a thousand people indeed had an exceptional effect, albeit being incredibly cruel.
"Then there’s the attribute point; I won’t add it yet. After entering the Innate Realm, I must choose a main Cultivation Technique to focus on. I can then add the attributes to complent that technique."
Finally, he glanced at the ssy room.
"First, I’ll take a bath..." he silently sighed to himself, realizing the room was no longer habitable.
He got up, scooped so water from the water tank, and wiped down his body with a towel. Then, he found a clean set of clothes from the wardrobe to wear.
Standing in front of the bronze mirror, Lin Xin realized only then that his hair had unknowingly grown long again. He had trimd it just a short while ago, yet now, breaking through to the Innate Realm, it had unexpectedly changed.
He sat in front of the mirror and, this ti, didn’t imdiately cut it short. Instead, he took a lock of his black hair, tied it up with a black thin string, and ford it into a ponytail that hung down his back.
The man in the bronze mirror, after washing up, had an even more handso face, but his eyes held a depth of profound aning, no longer as naive as when he had been on Earth.
Casually arranging his long hair with a comb, Lin Xin got up, took all his important items, and planned to go out and find a nearby spring to properly bathe in.
Pushing open the stone door, he looked up to see a woman in white standing not far outside the stone house.
The woman had average looks, wore a white longsword at her waist, and her face was gentle with a hint of a smile.
"Junior Brother Lin Xin?" The other party turned toward the sound, facing him directly.
"I am Sun Zhiwen, a disciple of the Elixir Hall. Uncle Master Ji Lu has sent to take you to the Elixir Hall," the woman spoke, her voice as soft as the breeze of spring, very gentle.
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