Ze Tian Ji Chapter 124

Chapter 124 – Stainless

Translated by: Hypersheep325

Edited by: Michyrr

The Black Dragon did not do anything because it was well aware that it could not save Chen Changsheng. Even its royal father would not be able to save this youth. The process by which the star radiance of the natural world became the true essence of a cultivator’s world, and also the following flow of true essence throughout the body, had very high requirements with regards to the toughness of a cultivator’s body. Chen Changsheng had not cultivated, so his muscles, bones, and organs were all too weak and were simply unable to bear it. True essence was currently exploding outward from his body, innumerable tiny and sharp knives cutting at his body. Even the Ethereal Palace was destroyed in an instant, so who could save him?

Chen Changsheng’s face was getting redder and redder, not a healthy sort of red, but a terrifying one. His body was enveloped in scalding steam and he seemed in excruciating pain, his brow tightly furrowed and his face twisted. With a pop, the bulging vein at the corner of his eye burst under the pressure.

Blood spurted from his face like a flower, steaming as it shot off into the cold air. It was almost instantly frozen into crystals that clattered to the ground like coral. Soon after, more and more veins on his body began to burst, several dozen spurts of blood shooting out of his body with scalding heat, slightly warming the cold space before swiftly being frozen.

More and more red coral-like objects began to appear around Chen Changsheng. It was very beautiful, yet equally gory.

Once the veins burst, what followed right after was the skin, then the muscles. Blood was pouring out of every part of his body, and a bone could occasionally be glimpsed. He still kept his eyes closed despite his suffering, yet he could no longer keep his sitting posture. He collapsed to the ground and began to twitch. The entire process was a sight too terrifying to watch, one of absolute horror.

The Black Dragon raised its right foreclaw to cover its eyes, unable to watch this sight, and felt a profound regret. This rather decent human youth had just died like this and would be unable to help it with completing that matter. It could have stopped all of this, but Chen Changsheng himself had chosen death, and out of thanks for the roast lamb, it had respected his choice and not involved itself.

At this moment, the Black Dragon ceased thinking about escape, ceased thinking about its centuries of solitude and its oncoming repetition. It only silently prayed, hoping that Chen Changsheng’s death could come just a little faster so that he did not need to endure so much pain. When pain could just end a little faster, that was called joy, and only this way could it match with Chen Changsheng’s courage to calmly face his death.

(TN: The Chinese term for joy used here is 痛快, which is made up of the words ‘痛’ and ‘快’, which mean ‘pain’ and ‘quickly’/’pleasant’ respectively.)

This underground cavern was cold as winter year round and the ground was covered in snow and ice. Chen Changsheng lay collapsed on the ground, his flesh bursting and his bones breaking, his scalding blood hissing onto the frigid ice and instantly creating a cloud of steam. The star radiance in his body burned so fiercely that even his blood began to boil.

Just like that medical case recorded in the appendix to the ‘Four Classics of Meditation’, if he had not spent tonight in this cold underground space, perhaps Chen Changsheng’s final end would have been death through combustion. At present, thanks to the bitter cold brought about by the Black Dragon, he did not burn, but he had done nothing more than switch to a more beautiful method of death.

Time slowly passed.

After quite a while, the Black Dragon put down its right foreclaw, intending to mourn for Chen Changsheng’s death. After all, this human youth was the first person it had truly gotten to know in its centuries of imprisonment.

When it thought about this, it decided that even if Chen Changsheng’s corpse had become a repulsive pile of cooked flesh, it would still hold its nose and bury him.

When the Black Dragon turned to the center of the ground covered in bloody coral, its eyes instantly constricted, boundless shock surging in the abyss of its eyes.

Steam still wafted off the ground and the blood in the ice was still boiling, not swiftly cooling because of Chen Changsheng’s death.

Because…Chen Changsheng was still alive!

Why was he not dead yet? How could he not have died?!

Of course, the Black Dragon did not wish for him to die, but it was still stunned at the sight before it. This sight already surpassed the understanding the Dragon race held about this world—and anyone knew that the Dragon race had the most extensive understanding of this world.

When star radiance blazed out from the body, everything from the heart to the skin would be destroyed. This was an unstoppable and irreversible process. Why was he still alive?

The Black Dragon suppressed the shock and inexplicable fear in its heart and slowly drifted over.

As its massive body moved, a cold wind stirred in the cavern.

This wind blew about the bloody coral on the floor, blew away the steam produced by the boiling blood, blew away the bloody foam covering the horrific wounds on Chen Changsheng’s body, revealing the scene within.

The explosion of star radiance had truly exploded from the inside out. The majority of his organs had been heavily damaged.

But in his chest, there was still something forcefully beating!

His heart was still vigorously beating!

The Black Dragon’s pupils constricted.

It naturally knew what a human heart looked like.

But it had never seen such a clean and beautiful heart.

The blood on the heart’s surface would be jolted off with each beat, revealing the heart’s original appearance.

It was a clean, pink heart, seemingly made of colored glass. It gave off no repulsive feeling and looked more like a fruit that had been washed in a stream for a very long time.

The Black Dragon was stunned as if…it had seen a Bone Dragon in a desert.

Chen Changsheng’s flesh, skin, and even bones had all been destroyed and as time passed, that star radiance was still blazing, his body was constantly festering. So how was his body still functioning? What was this heart made of? It was actually completely undamaged!

The Black Dragon’s gaze fell on the scattered blood coral and the steaming blood, finding things stranger and stranger. It was clearly a scene of mangled flesh and blood, yet the sight did not stir any disgust in it—truly noble existences like dragons had never regarded other intelligent beings as food—and that blood did not seem like blood, but something else.

Yes, it was like coral or colored glass, clean and transparent.

The Black Dragon turned again to Chen Changsheng’s heart, faintly seeming to understand something.

Purification by starlight washed one’s body of filth, leaving behind cleanliness. Purification was a matter that cultivators did throughout their lives to pursue the highest realm: Stainless.

Chen Changsheng’s body was very special with many aspects about it that didn’t make sense, such as nine severed meridians. Then perhaps his flesh and bones were also different from the rest, perhaps even…naturally stainless. Even if he were to gain a few impurities on the following day from breathing or eating, it would be an extremely tiny amount, so when he began drawing in starlight for Purification, only an instant would be needed to complete the process.

Then what could the starlight still purify?

When starlight fell on a colored object, it could display its color, but when it fell on something absolutely transparent, what sort of color could it show?

To be transparent was to have no color.

The starlight would naturally not stop.

From spring until now, the starlight that Chen Changsheng had taken in every night for Purification had not been used on his hair and skin, nor had it effected any change to his flesh or bones. Instead, it had directly entered his body, following along the connection between the greater world and smaller world, and arrived outside his Ethereal Palace.

At the end of a winding path was a quiet and secluded place, a palace.

This was the Ethereal Palace.