Chapter 4: Ch. 2 - The arrival of the Cheat
As Mike gazed inside the huge cavern that suddenly appeared before him, he noticed that the "room " seemed to be man-made. Even though it looked as if it has been abandoned for thousands of years, there were obvious signs that showed that this place was man-made. The most glaring sign was the numerous carvings made on the walls of the room. The carvings were extremely well made and didn't look as if they were created using hammer and chisels. They radiated dangerous energy that seemingly had preserved these millennia-old sculptures to this day. This level of power was unprecedented for Mike who has never met anyone stronger than Elder Shou.
The carvings depicted the life story of a man - his cheerful childhood in a village, his adventures as a teenager, his struggles as an adult. The sculptures depicted many places but Mike couldn't recognize even one of them. The sculptures also depicted the various friends he made, the beauties he chased after and the enemies he fought over hundreds of years. The paintings showed the day his first child was born, the day he became a sect elder and the leisurely time he spent with his wives.
At the end of the story, the tone of the sculptures turned dark as it began to show the various partings the man had to endure. His friends, wives and children grew old and died but the man kept on cultivating. His sect grew weak and was annihilated but all the man could do was take revenge. He had grown old and his vigour and adventurous spirit had waned. He could not make anything new. His disciples and their disciples made a new sect but the man was not interested anymore. The hero of a foregone era had grown old and the only purpose left in his life was cultivation. Unkown number of years passed and the man kept cultivating. The continent forgot his name and his glories but the man kept cultivating.
The old man had lost everything and could not bear to look at the new and unfamiliar world. He had become blinded by his experiences and could only reminisce about his glorious times. So he started sculpting. The man knew nothing about sculpting so at first, he was very bad at it. But it was a nice way to relive and visualize his memories so the man continued to sculpt. Slowly he became better at it and his cultivation grew along with his proficiency in sculpting.
The man felt that he was going to make a breakthrough into a realm that was beyond the limit of this dimension. So he isolated himself and began to sculpt his final piece - his own life story. As he finished the last scene - which depicted his ascension, clouds gathered and a rift opened in the sky. His soul was liberated from his mortal flesh and merged with his Wanxiang Manifestation. His primal fire burned his mortal flesh and turned it into a pool of endless vitality. Then it merged with his new body which was now free from the five elements. The man had become a celestial immortal. The man took one last look at the mortal realm. He raised a finger and swiped it in the air. The ground split apart to create a rift thousands of kilometres long which became a river. He then turned his palm and the place he made his last work got buried underground. After that, the man stepped into the rift and left for the celestial realm.
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Mike woke up from his trance. The last scene he experienced was an illusion, more like an echo of the distant past. Mike looked again at the sculpture and the last scene was still the scene of the ascension. It was the same sculpture he saw in his vision. He then looked below the sculpture. As expected, there was a small pool there. In his vision, Mike saw the man shed a single tear before burying his last work. Every cell of his existence contained unimaginable power. His single tear had turned into a large pool that had existed for thousands of years. The pool contained endless vitality and Mike was sure it would even be able to revive a critically injured person.
Alas, it seems Elder Shou was fated to die as he did not search the cave when his salvation was mere metres away from him. It was the first time Mike had stumbled upon such a bizarre event in his life. He used to ridicule the protagonists of xianxia novels for stumbling upon one lucky encounter after another. But when the same happened to him, he was not happy.
Mike was well aware of the cycle of karma. Every absurd lucky encounter meant that Mike would have to pay the price somewhere down the road. It seems the reason why everyone seemed rather eager to kill the protagonists was due to their absurd luck. Mike needed to be careful lest the same fate befalls him.
But risk or not, Mike had to take this opportunity as it was not only a chance to heal his legs quickly but also to change his fate. As Mike gazed at the pool, a crazy idea began to form in his mind.
In this world, the spiritual root was a real physical organ like heart and kidney. His roots were the legendary 5 elements roots but because they were broken, they were as worthless as mortal roots. It was one of the biggest regrets of Mike that he was not able to cultivate even after coming to this wonderful world. Mike did not know if roots could be regrown after being removed, but his current root was as worthless as having none. Also, this pool seems to have magical properties which made Mike more hopeful of the possibilities.
In his previous life, Mike had extensive knowledge about medicine so he was proficient in doing surgeries. But in this cave, he neither had the right tools nor things like blood transfusion, anaesthesia or sterilization. His only hope was the magical pool could somehow compensate for these things. Mike did not know when the next opportunity for mending his roots would come and Mike was not a person who would wait passively for fate to provide him solutions.
Not wasting any more time, Mike took off his clothes so that they would not be stained by blood. He spent some time praying to the heavens for a successful operation. He then made a quick incision below his navel. This was where his dantian is located in which resides the spiritual root. Mike had already used acupuncture to numb his entire stomach so that pain doesn't interfere with his actions. The deep incision began to bleed profusely and Mike felt his body weakening but Mike could not stop now. He reached into the cavity with his hands and slowly pulled on the root. The root looked like a 5 petaled flower. By this time his body was not only leaking blood but also spiritual energy as his dantian had been pierced. Mike was on the verge of losing consciousness so he quickly cut off his root and threw it away. Mike was careful as to not let blood accumulate inside his body so the area around him had already turned into a pool of blood. Mike somehow managed to drag himself into the pool. Then he completely relaxed his body and tried to slowly absorb the pool water into his body through his acupoints.
A tremendous amount of raw vitality began to flow into his body but strangely it did not heal his wounds. Rather they began flowing into his bone marrow as if attracted by something there. Mike grew anxious as his body was still losing blood and spiritual energy. He could no longer hold onto his consciousness and fell unconscious. Suddenly an extreme pain passed through his body which forcefully woke him up. As he opened his eyes, Mike was met with a horrifying sight. His entire body was withered like a mummified corpse without a single hint of blood or spiritual energy. The only reason he was still alive was because of a broken teardrop-shaped crystal that was floating above him. The crystal was emitting golden energy which had formed a cocoon around him. Inside this cocoon, a strange force was continuously breaking apart his skin, bones, tendons, muscles, veins and meridians. The cocoon was then absorbing the pool water and using its vitality to reconstruct his body. There were a couple of times when even his eyes and eardrums were destroyed and reformed.
The entire process was extremely painful and Mike lost consciousness multiple times due to the pain. 3 hours later the process was over but there was still no hint of blood in his body. The broken crystal then reentered his bone marrow. Thick, mercury-like golden blood began forming at a tremendous pace and Mike's body began refilling with blood. Another hour later, Mike's body was completely recovered but he still had no heartbeat. Suddenly, a powerful heartbeat sounded as his heart began beating once again.
The golden cocoon then dispersed and Mike found himself lying in a crater. The entire pool had been absorbed during the process. Mike had numerous questions in his head but he calmed himself and first checked the result of the operation for which he had gone through so much pain. As he observed his dantian, a bitter smile formed on his face. It seems that he had used up too much of his luck.
He had reformed a new root but the quality of the root was barely any better than the previous one. It was the most common Earth-grade root of the water attribute. Previously, he had the Celestial-grade 5 elements root. This allowed him to absorb qi of all 5 elements and that too at a tremendous pace, but they were useless as it was broken. His earth-grade roots were barely one grade higher than mortal roots and many grades lower than the celestial roots. Theoretically, he should be able to cultivate, but the chances of him reaching the Wanxiang stage were slim at best.
"Well, one can't have everything", thought Mike. Soon he turned his attention to other parts of his body. What he observed left him stupefied. There was a common saying among the body refining cultivators - "Blood like mercury, marrow of gold, bones of silver... river-like meridian and all acupoints unclogged". This saying explained the perfection of Houtian stage. Only the most genius disciples of the body-refining lineage after spending massive amounts of resources were able to achieve such a feat. But Mike's body was now precisely in that stage. He had also opened up his sea of consciousness which meant that he had entered the Xiantian stage - the realm that was unreachable to his previous self.
Mike noticed that there was lots of unfamiliar information in his mind which had appeared abruptly. After slowly combing through the information, Mike's face grew extremely dark...
"It really pours when it rains...Ma Chen's mother has put a literal time-bomb in my body..."
Weekly Power Status
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Ranking 
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