The Reforging of the Martial Body

The Paradise Lost faded from view. The crowd watched in shock, powerless to intervene. Gradually, nothing within could be seen—only several massive black holes sealed before the divine stele.

What were they connected to? The far side of the nebula? The edge of the primordial void? Or were they prisons for unimaginable demons and ancestral gods? No one knew.

The great caverns seemed to hold a strange, hypnotic power, as if they could devour the hearts of all who looked upon them. Some cultivators found themselves stepping forward involuntarily. When they drew near, they burst into patches of blood and dissipated into nothing.

Sharp intakes of breath. Everyone recoiled with a jolt.

Truly, this was an abyss of death. Bereft of divine abilities, those caverns were a zone of absolute annihilation.

Inside the Paradise Lost, Keke had stopped weeping. It was now completely unconscious, specks of light gathering from all directions and surging into its body.

So this was it. The Paradise Lost really was a gift from Keke’s parents. Xiao Chen watched in silence, sighing for the little beast’s fate, yet glad it had received the Paradise Lost. His heart could not remain calm.

He saw radiance ceaselessly converging from all around, pouring endlessly into Keke’s body. After a long vigil, he sensed the little beast had entered a strange, deep state. He quietly withdrew from the hut.

He did not know where the road ahead lay. Killing so many demi-gods meant he was now the enemy of the whole world. The moment he stepped out of the Paradise Lost, he would have no place to die—only death. The only option seemed to hide here and cultivate in silence.

But he was not a man given to despair. He believed that one day he would carve his own way out.

To live—that was his only wish now.

The Martial Imprint had already fused into his mind. Xiao Chen now immersed himself completely in that mysterious, profound martial realm. A new path of cultivation—one that needed no divine abilities, one that surpassed them.

To shatter the sky with a single hand was no myth. On this martial path, there was only the endless excavation of the self, elevating the body above the entire world. One man’s strength could sunder heaven and earth, could shatter the starry void.

Was this the ultimate limit of martial cultivation? No, it was not. The great realm descriptions within the Martial Imprint were so terrifying that Xiao Chen wondered if they were merely a dream.

He would walk this path—the martial path. But a grave problem had arisen.

Martial cultivation, when pushed to its extreme, forbade the use of supernatural powers. The two were mutually exclusive.

Could he bear to let them go?

He had a feeling that the Eight-Aspect World divine art, if cultivated to its final stage, might truly have the power to shake the Six Paths of Reincarnation. How could he abandon that? How could he bear to?

Divine powers merged with heaven and earth, borrowing the world’s force to channel inconceivable might.

Martial cultivation relied solely on oneself—a single human frame performing heaven-defying feats, transcending the very power of the world.

Standing before a great choice, Xiao Chen hesitated. In the end, he gritted his teeth. He would not discard his supernatural powers. He would walk the martial path as he was, and find a way when he met resistance.

What connection did the heart-method of the Heavenly Stele have with the Martial Imprint? When he decided on his course, this question surfaced. Both came from the Heavenly Stele—were they ultimately of the same root? Or was the Heavenly Stele heart-method the foundation, and the Martial Imprint the final direction?

For now, he could not understand. But one thing was certain: the two did not conflict.

At that moment, the Heavenly Stele heart-method began to circulate, far more smoothly than before. Bones and flesh shifted with a crisp crackle. Divine radiance flowed through his blood vessels.

The further refinement of the method brought astonishing changes to Xiao Chen’s body. The sixteen divinized acupoints within him blazed with light, like sixteen brilliant stars, piercing through flesh and blood with shafts of radiance.

Moreover, true divine meridians began to grow—no longer the insubstantial, energy-based channels of the past. They extended in solid form, connecting the sixteen divine acupoints as if forging a new circulatory system.

At the same time, the Martial Imprint emerged in Xiao Chen’s mind, and he began to attempt true cultivation. This was not a basic heart-method, but a series of imprints bearing the profound mysteries of martial arts, crashing into the sea of his heart. Yet they blended seamlessly with the Heavenly Stele heart-method, as natural as water mixing with milk.

Light rippled across his skin. Xiao Chen sat motionless in meditation for three days. But on the fourth day, a problem arose. Cracking sounds came from his body—his bones were fracturing. Blood seeped through his pores. His physical form seemed on the verge of collapse.

The divine art of Weapon-Melting was tearing apart the structure of his treasure body. It was about to shatter.

Martial cultivation and supernatural powers were in conflict—so soon. It was beyond Xiao Chen’s expectations.

When he opened his eyes, twin beams of resolute light shot forth. There was no turning back. Only advance. The Martial Imprint filled the sea of his heart.

Crack… Crack…

Bones split, flesh tore. His physical body suffered unimaginable trauma.

Silently, Xiao Chen gritted his teeth. The Seven-Colored Sacred Tree floated above his head as he sat alone in the Paradise Lost, enduring agonies beyond words.

For seven full days and nights, every bone in Xiao Chen’s body was shattered and then reassembled. His flesh burst apart repeatedly, layering the ground with a horrifying crust of dead skin and blackened coagulated blood.

His soul seemed to float upward at times; he saw his own skull shatter. Over those seven days, the cruelest torments befell his body.

The divine art of Weapon-Melting was completely destroyed. This had been Xiao Chen’s first art—now it was utterly broken.

But his physical form underwent an unimaginable change. The old divine art was gone, replaced by a true Martial Body. His flesh was now far tougher than before, a qualitative leap. Rather than the destruction of his treasure body, it was a new metamorphosis. His physique was stronger than ever.

This calmed the sinking feeling in Xiao Chen’s heart. The words—martial arts do not yield to supernatural powers, they surpass them—were no empty boast.

However, some objects that had been refined into his body were forcibly expelled: the black iron chain that had bound the white-shelled turtle, fragments of the eggshell from Keke’s birth, and others. His body could no longer contain external objects.

Yet the Golden Divine Halberd and the Dark-Iron Seal remained within him. When Xiao Chen looked inward, he was astonished to see that the broken stone man had stepped on them, pinning them beneath its feet. The stone man slowly sat down, fixing the two baleful weapons under its soles.

The stone man! Xiao Chen had nearly forgotten about it, having paid it no attention, for it had been so still for so long. Now it had finally moved again.

But the stone man did not touch the sixteen War Swords that had merged into Xiao Chen’s body. Whether because the swords were too powerful or for some other reason, he did not know.

Ten days of cultivation ended. Xiao Chen stood and walked to the hut. Keke lay sleeping beside the two white skeletons, pitiful and curled up.

He shook his head and walked out of the hut, heading into the distance.

Once again, he arrived at the place where the demi-gods had fallen. The mutilated corpses of the supremacies still lay there, their blood now black. Not a single body had decayed, for they were all undying forms—invulnerable to harm save by the terrible War Swords.

The Paradise Lost had become a sealed space, cut off from the outside world. He did not know if the cultivators beyond had departed.

A faint tremor came from the broken stone man within Xiao Chen’s body.

Tongtian Jiaozhu’s headless corpse quivered, and Xiao Chen immediately retreated several steps. This was… truly terrifying.

A flash of light. A War Sword appeared in his hand. He strode forward and gently pushed aside Tongtian’s corpse. A smooth, rounded odd stone rolled out.

Xiao Chen recognized it at once. This was one of the two stone artifacts that had flown out of the Celestial Palace of Youchao. A stone dagger had been taken by the Martial Saint Sun Wu. This polished round stone had been claimed by Tongtian.

No sooner had his hand closed around it than a suction force came from within his body. With a flash, the smooth stone vanished into him. Looking inward, he saw it had reached the stone man’s hand. Suiren’s Fire-Drill and the Youchao odd stone now appeared together in that single palm.

Xiao Chen regarded the stone man very seriously. He suspected it might be a set of unimaginably ancient artifacts of incalculable power. Since the Ancestral Gods had each kept a piece, they must serve some unfathomable purpose.

Afterward, he collected the Four Immortal-Slaying Swords and the formation diagram. He walked to Zhunti Daoren’s corpse and picked up the Seven Treasures Wonderful Tree. Approaching the Buddha’s golden body, he took the Twelve-Petal Lotus Throne.

These were absolute sacred relics. If he returned to the outside world to face enemies on all sides, these holy objects would unleash unimaginable power.

It was a sight that would drive anyone mad with greed. The Buddha, Laozi, the Original, Tongtian, the Holy Sun God, Zhunti Daoren, the Three Western Saints… which of them had no treasures?

In the end, Xiao Chen draped a Taiji Diagram over his shoulders, donned the Three Holy Spirits Crown, bore the Immortal-Slaying Formation Diagram on his back, wore the four swords at his waist, carried the Sun Holy Stone in his bosom, held the Seven Treasures Wonderful Tree in his left hand, the Satan’s Staff in his right, and stood upon the Twelve-Petal Lotus Throne…

A host of sacred artifacts that would make anyone go mad!

With so many holy relics gathered on his person, Xiao Chen felt that even if he charged out now, unless he encountered a demi-god-level figure, killing him would be nearly impossible.

It was like a dream—so unreal.

If one day he truly appeared in the World of Immortality bearing all these sacred artifacts, it would surely cause a monstrous upheaval.

All of this seemed like an illusion.

He waited quietly in the hut for Keke to awaken. More than ten days passed, but the little beast showed no signs of rousing.

Xiao Chen continued his cultivation. Over the following days, he sensed his body undergoing constant change. The sixteen divinized acupoints and the extending divine meridians grew ever more brilliant.

Finally, on this day, a ringing metallic sound came from within his body. The sixteen War Swords sank into the sixteen divinized acupoints.

This… caught him completely off guard.

The wind blew softly. Bone dust scattered on the breeze. In the gloomy hell, millions of skeletons were vanishing. Countless white bones dissolved into snowy powder, carried by the nether wind to every corner of the underworld.

Deathly stillness. The hell that once held millions of skeletons now had few bones left. Over this past month, they had gradually cracked and weathered, as if enduring the ravages of a thousand ages. Beneath the wheels of time, all things must pass.

Bleak and desolate. The once-grand halls, the towering Senluo Hall, the small retreats opened by great demons in the underworld—all had collapsed in ruin. Broken walls and crumbling pillars lay scattered, steeped in utter frigid loneliness.

The whole hell was cold and empty, as if everything would soon fade to nothing. On the blood-red earth, aside from scattered patches of white bone dust, nothing else could be seen.

All seemed to be returning to nothingness, as if everything would vanish forever.

Yes. In the past month, the underworld had undergone catastrophic changes. The great demons had retreated. This place had become a true land of the dead, where even the bones had turned to ash.

Everything seemed to be starting anew. An incomprehensible force was coldly, mercilessly grinding everything to dust.

On the Demon Plain, nearly twenty million soldier souls had been gathered and taken away. Their soul-force had ultimately merged into the underworld, repairing the broken Heaven-Earth Furnace.

Some said a new hell was being opened, being re-refined. Was that true? No one knew.

The demi-gods had been nearly wiped out, shocking the world. The entire Eternal Continent trembled in turmoil. For a full month, blood rain fell ceaselessly from the heavens. The earth turned red. The name of Xiao Chen, the slayer of demi-gods, spread across the continent. Now, it was known to all.

A month ago, the Martial Saint Sun Wu had fought against otherworldly experts. Using his mighty soul-force, he had shattered thirteen flying swords in succession and driven the otherworldly experts back. But as they retreated, the otherworldly demi-gods had declared that the Twenty-Four War Swords had emerged, and that the experts of their realm would inevitably invade the World of Immortality to reclaim what was theirs.

The world was adrift. With the collective fall of the Eternal Continent’s demi-gods, and otherworldly experts poised to break through at such a time, the entire cultivation realm was gripped by fear and uncertainty.

On the Demon Plain, a voice drifted: “Could there truly be an Ancestral God who has not died? They want to re-refine the Heaven-Earth Furnace… That old immortal of a certain sect was driven back by Sun Wu; they will probably go to bring reinforcements. Heh heh…” It was the same voice that had spoken when the millions of souls were taken.

A butterfly fluttered softly into the sky above the Demon Plain. With a single beat of its wings, it transmitted a thought: “Heaven and earth are restarting. Do not throw yourself into the flame…”

“Zhuangzi, you…” The ethereal voice retreated into the distance.

Three months later, Keke finally awakened. The moment it opened its eyes, the Paradise Lost transformed into light and surged into its body. Xiao Chen and the corpses of the demi-gods fell out together.

In the state of Daxia, the instant a child was born, purple qi came from the east and vanished into the room. No one saw that when the infant opened its eyes, they were as deep as the ocean. It did not cry but smiled…

Within a wealthy family in Daxia, a baby was born without crying or fussing, holding a clot of blood in its small hand that looked exactly like four murderous swords. But the clot quickly disappeared. No one witnessed it.

In the Roman Empire, a fallen noble family was frowning over the birth of an illegitimate child. In a daze, the father saw a golden light flash within the room, as if a sun had descended.

In an ordinary family in the Buddhist Kingdom, a child, the moment it was born, pointed one hand to heaven and one to earth, walked seven steps east, west, south, and north, its eyes blazing as it looked around, and said: “Above heaven and below earth, I alone am honored!”

The terrified parents fainted on the spot. Apart from them, no one knew.

On this day, Xiao Chen, draped in the Taiji Diagram, wearing the Three Holy Spirits Crown, bearing the Immortal-Slaying Formation Diagram on his back, the four swords at his waist, the Sun Holy Stone in his bosom, holding the Seven Treasures Wonderful Tree in his left hand, the Satan’s Staff in his right, standing upon the Twelve-Petal Lotus Throne—shattered the cycle of reincarnation with the power of all the sacred relics and burst out of hell.