Molting the Mortal Coil

Despite his impressive initial showing, Hou Hei was only able to make it an hour before he was sent back to the Inner World to recover. On the plus side, because of the time dilation, Hou Hei could recover for a few days in just a few minutes and then come back to explore for another hour. A short five minutes was more than a full day on the Inner World, so Hou Hei was constantly leaving and returning again. The Warp Worm kept traveling down one path, while Hou Hei would head back to prior crossroads to check the different paths.

The Fire Eater Cultivation Technique the man practiced was from the Timeless Master’s Library, and was named quite literally. The cultivator would literally eat flame, and using the closeness of stomach and dantian, filter the power and cultivate with it. Quite interesting, but its strength was also its drawback. Eating fire was not easy on the throat. It took a lot of body hardening to strengthen the throat enough to handle swallowing flames. Theoretically, it was a technique that could consume energy and progress at an astounding rate, but in practice it became impossible to consume flame without causing internal injuries. Both Tujiu and Juzui had considered the technique, but even with their powerful Demonic Beast physiques with a fiery nature they still chose otherwise. Even a powerful outer body could only strengthen the inner body so much. While they had an advantage, the training path for the Fire Eater Technique was pure torture. The constant damage to the throat heavily restricted the cultivator’s diet while they were in recovery, which also applied to their throat. In essence, a practitioner would spend much of their early career unable to speak and living on a purely liquid diet.

Everytime Hou Hei returned from his exploration, he’d be completely mute, with chapped lips and hoarse breathing. Only after his recovery was complete was he able to describe what he’d seen and experienced. Sage tried to use a Messaging Jade, but just like the Messenger Flying Sword, it was blocked. They were barely able to maintain their own bodies while trapped inside the body of the giant tortoise, so these cheap magical devices had no chance to operate. If he had a really powerful communication device it might work, but he’d never had the funds to get something like that. The most powerful magical devices in this world were priced in the hundreds of millions, and so he’d never bothered to look into them too much, given how far out of his reach they were.

The navigation of the inside of the tortoise was slow, but on the plus side they hadn’t run into any signs of outside interference over the first few days of searching. None of his other enemies had been able to catch up to him so far. All for the low low price of losing my body.

Sage was pretty sure he could still use the Soul Spawn technique to possess a new body, but the newest egg he’d created had been stolen by Hei Bai when she escaped. He had other backups, but they were from before he’d forged his Body of Laws and he wasn’t sure if that would make a difference. Worse yet, he was fearful of what happened last time. Would his cultivation regress back to nothing? Would his mental state regress back to a child? Last time he’d spent years just living in the wild, eating other monsters and slowly growing up. There was no way Hei Bai and the Nascent Souls outside would just let him peacefully hide for a few years while he grew up from a child again.

Forcing Metamorphosis only took a few months, but even if he had the time, that was a way to rebuild and evolve his body. Right now he had no body at all, he’d already abandoned it. At the moment the only benefit he had over the Soul Clone was the Inner World. The Heavenly Treasures that powered it gave him an edge in ability as well as a greater Qi production. Everything the clone knew, he knew, so he was also able to use the Spirit Powers it studied. Normally, this wasn’t a big deal since he could then combine with the Soul Clone to attack from different angles, but now that he was left with just his Nascent Soul, he was glad to have Telekinetic powers to protect himself and interact with the physical world.

Especially, when they first encountered things inside the Living Disaster. Hei Hou first spotted them and the Warp Worm doubled back to investigate. They were actually quite similar to the Warp Worm, large red worms squirming upon the walls of a large cavern. That’s right. A cavern. The presence of which being the main impetus to change course and investigate. The Warp Worm was useless in a fight, but Sage moved it closer to act as a place to recover. Hei Hou was allowed to wait on standby while Sage took the Soul Clone up close. As he’d hoped, the red worms weren’t intelligent. They also didn’t have any eyes, seeming completely oblivious to Sage’s approach. They continued to wriggle in and out of the lava veins flowing on the walls until the Soul Clone attempted to pick one up with a use of ‘Third Hand’. Upon feeling the physical contact, the red worm released a loud hissing sound.

At the same time, it began to sweat a red liquid that turned almost instantly into a burning red steam. The other red worms in the area responded to the hissing sound and started to squirm towards the distressed worm. Since this was a test, the Soul Clone used more strength switching from careful handling into a full blown attack. The invisible fist coming down on what was the most head-like part of the red worm. The burning red steam parted where the third hand passed, sizzling slightly against the invisible object, but then there was a loud squelching sound and the front end of the red worm was pulped against the hard stone wall.

They ran a few more tests against the other red worms and learned a few things. The burning steam was pretty powerful, but it didn’t do much damage to an invisible telekinetic hand. The worms were pretty easy to kill, but the problem was that they were very social. When one of them was in trouble, all the others nearby came inching their way over. That wasn’t so bad as long as they could be avoided, but unfortunately the red worms were very sensitive to sound and vibration. For the last few days, the Living Disaster seemed to be sitting still, which meant the ‘tunnel’ was quite calm. As soon as the Warp Worm or Hou Hei got too close, the red worms heard them and started hissing for backup.

In short, if they wanted to pass through a section of tunnel inhabited by the red worms, they had to carefully kill each and every one of them. The task really wasn’t too difficult, but it was a big waste of time, and there was no telling how much time they had in here. Would he run out of mature Warp Worms? Would the Nascent Souls bust in and finish him off? Or would the Living Disaster realize he had a few new parasites and kill them off in some unusual manner?

No sense in worrying. Forward we go.

They cleared the cavern that the red worms inhabited, finding nothing of value on their bodies and taking them as some sort of giant parasite in the tortoise’s body. The cavern had a much higher concentration of energy than the tunnels they were passing through before, which meant the Second Skin Barrier was worn out much faster, as were Hou Hei and the Warp Worm. The greater energy density was probably why the worms were there, but there didn’t seem to be anything else of interest to see.

Wait, what’s that feeling?