Chapter 17: 17. Discovery and Elemental Resistance
'Now that I have reached the peak of the skin-tempering realm, it is time to start tempering my bones.' Kai immediately made his decision.
He slowly started absorbing the fire elements into his body and letting them enter his bones. He did not temper all of his bones at the same time.
The human body has 206 bones, and Kai had planned to temper them one by one to perfectly refine them. He calmly guided the fire energy into his fingernails to start; it was not that painful since he had already acquired some resistance against the fire element by tempering the skin.
Kai took his sweet time to temper every bone to perfection, and now he is refining the last bone. The last bone was the skull, which is in a very dangerous place. So, it took him three full days to temper his skull without doing any damage to the brain.
As soon as he finished tempering, Kai's whole body started to heat up, and a lot of impurities emerged all over his body. It caused him a lot of pain since the impurities were being removed directly from the bones.
But the benefit of using the fire element is that it burns the impurities in his body and washes them away. If Kai used any other element to temper his body for the first time, removing impurities would be a very hard process, or it may not even occur.
The other elements will directly make his body stronger, and in the process, the impurities will get assimilated into his body. But the fire element will not make the body stronger; it will burn the impurities from the body in the form of tempering.
So, the impurities in his body will get released, and it can increase his potential on the body training path.
Due to the musky smell, Kai immediately went to the bathroom to clean himself. After a thorough clean-up, Kai felt very refreshed, and he could feel his bones becoming very strong. Even steel won't be as strong as his bones.
After the fire element, Kai started the earth element in the same order as the skin tempering; it was relatively easy compared to before. This time, when tempering the skull, it did not take him three days because he had some experience when tempering with the fire element.
Kai finished it in two days, and his bone defense also increased a lot. It became a lot harder, and defense also increased. Then Kai started tempering with metal elements.
It was still very torturous, even though he had acquired some resistance, and he had to be very careful when tempering with this element since he had a chance to damage the cartilage.
It took him a week to complete this tempering; it was hard because of the pain, and he had to rest in between. It only developed his strength of the bones a little, and nothing happened.
Next, Kai started tempering his bones with water elements, and it was very easy to temper with them. It was also comfortable, and he completed the tempering in just one day. The flexibility of the bones increased a lot.
He can now do a lot of weird movements, which will help him in his footstep training in the future.
The final wood element is also easy, and it is very warm, like a hot spring. The wood element increased his regeneration speed, and he completed it in half a day because of his familiarity with tempering.
'Now that I have completed my bone tempering, it is time to start the blood tempering.' thought Kai.
The fire element tempering in the blood did not bring out any impurities in the blood, but it made his blood concentrated, i.e., increased the purity of the blood.
The earth element's tempering made his blood denser and also increased the flow of blood. The metal-element tempering also increased his blood concentration.
The water element tempering made a qualitative change. It increased the number of cells in his body as well as its strength. 'It is a very good function.' thought Kai. He had a general idea about the working of cells, so he was about the increase in number.
An increase in the number of cells can increase the regeneration speed indirectly, and it also increases the disease resistance. Since Kai is a cultivator, he won't have any disease, but the resistance here not only inculcates mortal disease but also poison, drugs, etc.
It directly increases the strength of white blood cells, which means his body cells can easily fight against foreign invaders.
The wood element also brought him a good change in blood; it increased the vitality of the blood. It is a direct increase in source, not a regenerative factor.
For a person to regenerate, they need blood. Whether it is a small wound or a cut-off limb, the blood is the source of healing factors.
'So it would be a very good thing if it increased in this way; I have the possibility of doing rebirth from the blood.' thought Kai.
Now that Kai has completed all the tempering, he can advance to the Qi gathering realm. But he did not do that since he feels that this realm is still incomplete.
The body-tempering realm involves tempering skin, bones, and blood, but why did they not include the internal organs of the body? A fragile organ cannot function for a very strong body; everything in the world works in the way of balance, even the heavens.
So a strong body must have strong organs to support it. It is also possible that organ tempering is common knowledge in the upper echelon of the world, and it is a way for them to stop the common people from rising.
"Whatever the situation may be, I don't care about that; I only want to become stronger, and I will do anything to achieve that." Kai expressed his desire to reach the peak.
For this specific realm, Kai is not going to use all the elements to temper a single organ. He plans to use a single element for each vital organ in the body.
While doing my master's on Earth, Kai did a project on Chinese medicine theory and had a very good idea about this theory.
According to the theory of the Five Elements, the elements are fire, earth, metal, water, and wood and are represented by the five vital organs, which are the heart, spleen, lung, kidney, and liver, respectively.
Kai is going to use this theory as a base to temper his organs. First, he decided to temper the heart. Kai slowly absorbed the fire elements in his surroundings into his heart. He was very careful with the amount of energy that he was absorbing, since one wrong step may cause him to die.
A very small amount of energy is slowly integrated into his heart, and after that, it slowly tempers his heart. Kai had to bite his teeth to stop himself from shouting, since shouting would probably interfere with the process.
After a few hours of this torture, he finally completed this process. Now Kai can easily control his heart, and it is a very good feeling to control your heart. He is very satisfied since he has a lot of ideas for using this.
Next, Kai started absorbing earth element energy into his spleen, and it is easy compared to the heart. In just four hours, he completed the whole tempering process, which increased his body defense at a base level and purified his blood since it was the job of the spleen.
He can now actively purify my blood and develop it to a higher level.
Then Kai absorbed the metal element in the surroundings into his lungs, and it did not even hurt a little bit, unlike my previous tempering with the metal element.
Kai completed this very easily, and it gave him a very heaven-defying ability. He finally got an ability with metal elemental tempering, but the ability is broken. The lungs in his body will also absorb the energy in the surroundings with the addition of oxygen.
The basic function of the lungs is to allow oxygen in the air to be taken into the body, but with this ability, it is equal to 24-hour cultivation. Even a saint can't passively cultivate, but Kai is now able to do this, and all the abilities he obtained are only in their basic form.
It needs a lot of time to develop to its full potential.
'I wonder how much the ability of my organs will develop in the future,' wondered Kai.
Then Kai absorbed the water elements in the vicinity into the kidney with anticipation, which he completed in three hours.
But the result is just okay; he obtained the ability related to endurance, and he needs to check in real practice to experience the effect of this ability.
For the final liver tempering, Kai slowly absorbed the wood elements into his body and guided them to the liver. It is also an easy process since the wood element is very gentle. The whole process took him six hours.
Kai was a little surprised by the time it took since it was only a second to his fire element tempering. But when he saw the ability that he had obtained, Kai started going crazy with happiness.
But this time, he controlled his laughter and calmed himself. The ability he obtained was called Evergreen; the name seems relatively simple, but its function is a cheat. By using the surrounding wood element, he can restore anything, even a severed limb.
This ability has the potential to develop into the [immortal body].
Now Kai can understand why the upper echelon of this world did not want to disclose information about the organ-tempering realm. This realm develops the hidden or locked potential of the body, and there is also a chance to get heaven-defying abilities.