Chapter 668: Silent Stream Stellar-Iron Body
A few minutes later.
Lin Mo’s heart, cleansed and built anew by the liquid essence, beat once.
THUMP.
His lungs expanded, drawing in the searing plasma of the simulation room and filtering it effortlessly.
The agony began to recede, replaced by a sensation of unbearable density.
The blinding light surrounding him shrank and sank back into his skin. With a slight movement, the stone platform beneath him instantly cracked, seemingly unable to support his resting weight.
He gasped and coughed up a mouthful of black, foul-smelling impurities. The last remnants of his mortal weakness.
"Is it over?" Lin Mo tried to sense the internal workings of his body. He flexed his hands, opening and closing them slowly.
Crack! Snap!
His eyes lit up as the sensation and sound didn’t feel like the breaking of fragile bones. Instead, it was the metallic shifting of a perfectly lubricated, unbreakable machine. His skin, which only looked fair, had transformed into something akin to an unblemished jade as though he had gotten some skin therapy.
Although it probably didn’t turn him into a dashing young man, it should be enough to say that Liu Xiaoyu and the other women would have something to say about it.
Beneath the skin, he could sense that his bones appeared jade white. It didn’t look metallic at all but... he could tell how dense it was. The faint, starlight-silver sheen pulsed beneath his epidermis, which somehow synchronized with his blood pulse.
As for his internal organs, he couldn’t truly judge them since he hadn’t inspected his body thoroughly before this tempering. But given the process and the baptism of the liquid essence that melted and formed them anew, it should be stronger than before.
He could feel the blood in his veins running smoothly and if he could control its flow at will. An ability he lacked before.
Furthermore, the spiritual energy circulating through his body tripled. It didn’t feel like his dantian expanded. Instead, his individual cells now harbored a microscopic reservoir of spiritual energy.
"This is simply impressive. I don’t know how strong I’ve become, but I can feel that if I return to the Jade Hollow Conduit Tower now, I’ll be able to climb up to Floor 10 and complete the challenge without any difficulty."
His lips pressed into a thin smile as he continued inspecting the changes in his body.
At the center of his chest, he could sense some kind of essence. A root of his... Acquired Physique.
It was metallic blue, containing stellar and water properties... And the Physique’s effects are increased physical density and energy conductivity.
Although the chances of getting an Acquired Physique weren’t exactly low after completing the tempering process, he couldn’t help but feel awed at the slight changes.
Right. The Acquired Physique didn’t only encompass his intake of Star-Forged Iron’s liquid essence, his core cultivation technique also played a part, giving that water properties.
As if waiting for his self-diagnosis to conclude, the cultivation room’s system panel flashed before his eyes.
[Stage 1 of Stellar Iron Forging Physique, Skin Refining, Completed]
[Stage 2 of Stellar Iron Forging Physique, Bone Forging, Completed]
[Stage 3 of Stellar Iron Forging Physique, Viscera Cleansing, Completed]
[Acquired Physique Unlocked: Silent Stream Stellar-Iron Body]
[Grade: Low Earth-Grade (Evolvable)]
[Description: A physique forged in the crucible of extreme heat and pressure, utilizing the essence of a fallen star and the flowing adaptability of water.]
[Passive Effects:
- Unyielding Mass: Base physical density and weight increased by 500%. Physical attacks deal negligible blunt-force trauma.]
- Starlight Conductor: Efficiency and potency of Starlight Qi increased by 50%.
- Abyssal Coolant: The body naturally regulates internal temperature, rendering the user immune to standard extreme heat and cold environments.]
- Kinetic Conversion: Enhances the [Stillwater Body] trait. A portion of kinetic energy absorbed from enemy attacks is automatically converted into raw stamina and stored spiritual energy.]
Lin Mo exhaled a long, steady breath. The cloud of vapor that escaped his lips was tinged with a faint, silvery frost that instantly neutralized the remaining plasma heat lingering in his immediate vicinity.
"Unyielding Mass... increased by five hundred percent. This is absurd. Did I just become too heavy?" He murmured.
He didn’t need to test its effect. He only needed to look down. The floor beneath him had already cracked.
He stood up and found his balance off. With a frown, he spent a few seconds regaining his balance. Since he needed to move his foot, two more indentations appeared on the floor.
"Good thing this is just a simulated environment." He let out a sigh of relief.
With that, he deactivated the environment, returning the room to its usual white walls. He also turned off the time acceleration before sitting back down to stabilize his condition.
He needed to digest his gain, after all. If he left right away, he’d probably collapse from the sudden changes in his body as well as the stress caused by the accelerated time.
Ten minutes later.
"Alright," Lin Mo coughed, looking down at the gradually healing cracks of the room’s indestructible floor tiles. "Let’s see. I’ll probably still need to recalibrate my motor functions for the next twelve hours. Furthermore, I feel like I’m wearing the [Decanus Set] without the armor. If I pat Xiaoyu on the head right now without suppressing my weight, I might accidentally bury her into the floor. Not that she’d let me do that."
He spent another ten minutes doing nothing but simple exercises. Walking. Bending. Stretching his arms.
He had to actively circulate his [Vein of the Silent Stream] to create a buoyant layer of spiritual energy around his own bones just to offset the terrifying mass and move normally.
It was a strange dichotomy. He felt impossibly heavy, yet his muscles possessed a spring-loaded, explosive power that made him feel like he could leap over the city walls from a standstill.
"This should be enough for what I was planning to do." He concluded pragmatically.
With a thought, he accessed his system inventory. His previous uniform had been incinerated during the Viscera Cleansing phase. He materialized a fresh set of the store’s green-and-white striped uniform.
As he pulled the fabric over his shoulders, it felt absurdly flimsy against his skin, like wrapping a tank in tissue paper. Still, he could tell he didn’t really become bulky. Rather, his whole being became compact.
"The Crimson Flow Phantom Steps might be more difficult to activate now... I should have Xiaoyu teach me that new movement technique she created."
As he stepped out of the cultivation room, Lin Mo found himself staring dumbstruck at the sight before him.
"Wait. Where am I?"
The expected view of the second-floor hall was nowhere in sight. Instead, he found himself in a vast, multi-tiered atrium that looked less like the second floor of a convenience store and more like the grand concourse of a modern, high-end shopping mall.
The cozy, wooden-paneled corridor lined with Premium Cultivation Rooms had been sorted into a dedicated space like the Celestial Hot Spring and the Divine Arena. There was even a reception desk and a waiting hall. That way, even if patrons lined up for their use, they wouldn’t stand and wait outside each room.
And more importantly, from the former six available Premium Cultivation Rooms, it expanded to one hundred which would accommodate more Golden Patrons.
The control panel was now more comprehensive, allowing the patrons to tune it to their needs. Of course, time acceleration and spiritual density remained capped at 10x.
As for the rates... it didn’t change much.
Naturally, if this one expanded, Lin Mo thought about the normal cultivation rooms downstairs. It would definitely be expanded as well.
"Yeah... I should’ve expected this change. The store reached the next tier. It’s now like a department store downstairs. As for this floor and above..."
He looked up and saw the ceiling that vaulted to an absurd height, supported by elegant pillars of translucent, glowing jade that pulsed with a faint, rhythmic spiritual energy.
The entire space was bathed in a warm, natural-feeling light that seemed to emanate directly from the air itself.
The middle pillar had a winding staircase that went up and down. But there were now sweeping escalators made of solidified, flowing spiritual light that gently cascaded towards different floors on four different sides.
Lin Mo walked out of the ’Premium Cultivation Hall’ and returned to the now-expanded Golden Patron lounge. It was still placed in the middle, near the winding staircases, but the floor became clear, allowing a clear view of the store proper below.
"Now I really feel like I’ve returned to the Earth... The convenience store has now evolved to a department store..."
Setting aside the current desolate state of the other rooms which would be equivalent to ’mall spaces’ on the floor, Lin Mo found his usual seat as he reviewed the day’s evaluation.
Heavenly Blessed Emporium...
"So, this is not a store anymore, huh? And there are no clear goals for the next tier anymore, only a percentage."
As for what it encompassed, he had no idea.
Before he could delve deeper into the changes in the store, he saw Liu Xiaoyu, Wu Meiyu, and Yu Qingyan emerging from one of the escalators, heading towards him.
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