CHAPTER 13: CHAPTER 13

The pain increased.

Ethan bit down on his teeth so hard he thought they would shatter. His entire body convulsed violently, every fiber trembling as though fighting an unseen current. Yet, this wasn’t the heavy-handed brutality of a hammer striking iron; it was far worse—sharper, colder, precise.

This was refinement, not destruction.

Threads of celestial energy, impossibly fine, slithered through him. Each strand shimmered in the dark, thin as spider-silk yet keener than divine steel.

They slipped into his bones with surgical precision, scraping away flaws hidden so deep within his marrow that Ethan had never imagined they existed.

Every mesh of weakness, every hollow imperfection—it was exposed and carved out, leaving behind both intolerable pain and a strange sense of release.

The agony was crystalline. It didn’t feel like brute punishment anymore. It was pure... exact. He realized in a dazed, fevered clarity that this was the sensation of being made flawless.

It was not simply pain; it bordered on something indescribable, the ecstasy of transcendence wrapped in torment.

Ethan howled, his fingers digging trenches into the wooden floor. His body rocked back and forth, sweat cascading down his forehead, soaking his clothes until they clung wet against his skin.

Time ceased to move the way it should. Every second stretched endlessly, contracted only into the rhythm of his pulse roaring in his ears.

Half an hour. Thirty minutes.

It felt like thirty eternities.

By now, Ethan was certain his body should’ve collapsed, his mind shattered into formless madness. Yet still, he endured.

His endurance wasn’t strength—it was desperation. To collapse now, after all this, would mean everything ended here.

I can’t give this up... I’ve already endured all of this! I’ve already suffered this much! To fail now would be more painful than death itself.

And just when the despair was about to overwhelm him—

A tide of harmonious Qi descended into his body, drowning him in its divine embrace.

It felt like the very starlight of the universe had descended—silent, cool, and ethereal. The threads of pain didn’t vanish as much as they transformed.

They polished. Smoothed. Instead of destruction, there was creation.

The agony became a radiant friction that glowed with purpose. It was still pain—but it taught, refined, and uplifted.

Deep within his bones, Ethan heard it: faint crackles, delicate and sharp—like porcelain fracturing. At first, fear struck him. My marrow is breaking apart...

But almost immediately after, molten gold light gushed forth, searing yet firm, flooding the cracks, mending them. What emerged wasn’t the same brittle bone—it was strengthened, reborn, perfected.

Again and again, fractures riddled his skeleton, spreading across his ribs, his spine, his femurs—every cornerstone of his being. Again and again, golden Qi filled them all, sealing them newly stronger than before. His bones rang out softly, a crystalline hymn echoing within, until he realized—

He wasn’t being broken. He was being prepared.

He was the raw stone. And the universe itself—through the elixir—was cutting away, polishing, sculpting him into something beyond mortal flesh.

Ethan gasped raggedly, body trembling as the transformation ignited across him.

His bones glowed subtly within his perception, like translucent jade filled with flowing starlight. The marrow—once fragile and mortal—now pulsed faintly, forging rivers of vitality that promised resilience, promising a body that could endure calamity.

His pain subsided, not gone, but steadier, like the sting of a wound already scabbing over.

But the Spirit-Eye Brew wasn’t finished.

The last surge of its terrifying energy condensed—focused like the blade of a divine knife—and shot upward, into his skull. The pressure gathered behind his eyes.

The sensation was different this time. Not searing flames. Not cracks through his bones. No—this was... clarity.

A scouring, scraping clarity, as though a lifetime of grime was being peeled from windows he hadn’t even realized were dirty.

Ethan squeezed his eyes shut, groaning as the pressure built. His mind swam with weight and light. His brain boiled with sensations he couldn’t place—yet deep down, he understood this wasn’t his destruction.

It was awakening.

Within his skull, the pressure bundled, crystallizing, collapsing, shaping. As if diamonds were forming behind his retinas, compressing from formless energy into something sharp, eternal.

The weight became unbearable.

Ethan’s entire body spasmed as his fingernails splintered against the floor, his scream breaking into muffled sobs and gasps. Then—like floodgates bursting open—the pressure released.

His eyes flashed. His vision changed.

He blinked slowly, opening his eyelids—and sucked in a breath.

The hut had become another universe.

The dirt floor wasn’t dirt anymore. His Spirit-Eye saw deep, brown waves of earthy essence, pulsing like a heartbeat with stolid, ancient rhythms beneath his feet.

The clods and grains of dust connected like veins in flesh, earth breathing with solemn power.

The stale air inside the hut swirled—not still, but alive with faint strands of translucent Qi, winding in ribbons too subtle for mortal eyes to ever perceive. They wove around him like invisible threads of heaven and earth itself.

His gaze drifted toward the wall—a crack in the wooden frame. There, a humble blade of grass pushed through into the room, unimpressive in size, trifling in shape.

But to Ethan’s Spirit-Eye, it was a living miracle. A radiance hummed around it, gold-green life force bubbling, surging. It wasn’t just a plant—it was a sunburst of vitality squeezing into existence despite the lake’s oppressive yin aura.

Ethan lifted his hand next.

He choked.

It wasn’t skin he saw anymore. His flesh gleamed faintly, shining with transparent, jade-like brilliance. Through it, rivers of celestial power coursed—streaks of radiant light twisting like living constellations through his veins, pulsing with every heartbeat.

He could even faintly see his bones beneath—the pristine framework now touched with golden traces, shimmering faintly like marbled jade forged by light itself.

His body was no longer what it had been. It hadn’t fully transformed, but it was evolving, already beyond mortal limits.

Ethan’s breath trembled.

The world... had revealed its heart to him.

He wasn’t simply looking at the ground, the air, or life anymore.

He was seeing their souls.

The Spirit-Eye was open.