Novel Full Chapter 53—Skin and Muscle Tempering
Chapter 53: Chapter 53—Skin and Muscle Tempering
Chapter 53—Skin and Muscle Tempering
The skin under Lei Cheng’s palm had turned black and begun to peel.
Zzz!
"Ahhh!" The prisoner shook violently, screaming in pain.
"Stop! Stop!"
His voice tore through the garden silence. The other prisoners winced at the sound but said nothing, watching in frozen silence.
Lei Cheng pulled his hand away. The arm underneath was burnt, still emitting thin trails of smoke.
He clicked his tongue and frowned.
’Too much power.’ The technique hadn’t failed. His understanding of its limits had. He had input Bizarre Blood Qi along with Supreme Nine Yang Intent at twenty percent. Clearly excessive.
"I’ll lower the output," he muttered.
His palm glowed with green light as he placed it over the blackened skin.
"Heal."
The green light spread over the arm, and the prisoner’s screaming stopped almost immediately. He felt the soothing effect settle into the wound as it closed visibly, the damage reversing before his eyes.
The prisoner took a series of deep, uneven breaths—still shaken from what had happened.
Lei Cheng waved his fingers, signaling for the other arm. The prisoner instinctively backed away, hair standing on end. Lei Cheng stood and waved again—green vines shot up from the ground.
Crack! Crack!
They coiled around the man, binding him tightly.
"No—you can’t do this!" the man shrieked. "I want to die by the executioner’s hand! You’re torturing me!" His voice echoed loudly through the garden.
Neither the guards, servants, maids, nor the other prisoners raised their voices in protest.
Lei Cheng did not care.
He recalled the man’s crime record. A former constable. He had framed innocent people and thrown them in jail whenever they failed to pay his personal protection fees. When he couldn’t solve a case properly, he would randomly select a citizen and torture them until they confessed to a crime they had never committed.
Lei Cheng had specifically chosen this man for the skin-and-muscle-tempering experiment. After all, he wasn’t going to use this harsh method on ordinary prisoners who deserved better.
"You call this torture?" Lei Cheng said coldly. "What do you call what you did?"
The former constable froze.
"You made innocent people confess by torturing them too... Didn’t you?" Lei Cheng spat.
The man swallowed hard. "It’s—it’s—" He couldn’t finish.
"What?" Lei Cheng’s voice sharpened. "When it happens to you, it’s torture. When you did it to others—to the innocent—that was fine?"
"Shut up," he snapped.
A thin vine rose from the larger coil and wrapped across the man’s mouth, silencing him completely.
Lei Cheng exhaled. "Better." Silence returned to the garden once again. The man had been cruel to begin with, so Lei Cheng saw no reason to sympathize with him or let it interfere with his research.
He pulled the man’s other arm free and held it firmly, injecting Bizarre Blood Qi and Supreme Nine Yang Intent at ten percent this time.
Less smoke appeared. No blackened, bone-deep burns like before—just tired, strained skin, and because the Blood Qi carried Life Intent along with it, the tissue was visibly recovering even as the process continued. Small golden flames flashed.
Lei Cheng withdrew his hand and examined the area closely, running a thumb across it.
’Similar to before, but not identical.’ The only real change was a faint vein now visible beneath the surface.
He bent down and picked up a semi-sharp rock.
Scratch!
He dragged it across the tempered patch.
Not a single tear.
’Good. The tempering succeeded.’
The former constable hissed and roared behind his sealed mouth, but no sound escaped.
Lei Cheng continued methodically. Over the course of an hour, he tempered a modest patch of the man’s arm completely. He raised it closer for inspection—nearly identical to normal human skin, aside from a few more visible veins beneath the surface.
He then placed his other palm beside the tempered patch and injected Bizarre Blood Qi once more. A faint sound echoed from the area as the skin turned a pale gray, the veins thickening and beginning to protrude visibly beneath the surface.
Lei Cheng grinned. "So that’s how it works."
He released the arm, satisfied, and moved to sit cross-legged at the edge of the garden. Before closing his eyes, he waved his fingers—vines rose again and bound the remaining prisoners. None of them reacted anymore. They had grown used to being restrained.
He took a deep breath and turned his focus inward—testing on himself now, starting with his own left pinky finger.
He injected Bizarre Blood Qi and Nine Yang Supreme Intent directly into it. Ten percent.
He winced as smoke rose, small white-golden flames burned, and the skin and muscles burned away with a faint crackling sound, but the Life Intent embedded in the Blood Qi healed it almost as fast as the damage occurred.
Zzz!
After a few minutes, he opened his eyes.
His pinky finger had turned light gray, a prominent vein running down its length to the very tip.
’Done.’
’The pain was worth it. The theory had finally become a measurable reality.’ He exhaled, "Now, let’s start the entire technique."
He stood up and settled into a basic horse stance—thighs parallel to the ground, knees bent, spine straight as a rod, head level, fists raised in a boxer’s guard, left forward, right back.
He took a breath and punched.
"Supreme Nine Yang Fist."
His fist erupted with white-gold flame. "Supreme Nine Yang Kick."
His foot flared with the same burning flames.
"Young Master." Head guard Zhang Mo gasped.
A luminous blue panel flashed in Lei Cheng’s vision.
[ Ding! Cultivation technique detected! ]
[ Supreme Nine Yang Body Tempering Cultivation Technique! ]
[ Level One: Skin and Muscle Tempering—has been recorded! ]
[ Skin and Muscle Tempering: 0/100! ]
He worked through a sequence of punches and kicks, then returned to the horse stance and focused on his breathing. ’If even one movement disrupted the circulation, the entire technique could collapse.’ He slowly rotated his spine ninety degrees to the right, pushed it further to one hundred ten degrees, and exhaled.
"First movement," he muttered, taking three deep breaths, then shifted to the other side and exhaled again. "Second movement."
The flames began to spread around his entire body. His robes began to burn along with his skin and muscles.
He raised his right leg into a near-perfectly straight line, his upper body centered along that same axis, spine still rotated to the right side.
"Third movement."
He held the position, inhaling three times, exhaling once—a strict rhythmic pattern—while the Bizarre Blood Qi and Nine Yang Intent circulated through his body, tempering tissue as they moved.
He moved his left leg, raising it to a near-perfectly straight line, similar to before, except he rotated his spine to the left side this time. "Fourth movement."
He shifted into a handstand, legs spread in a straight vertical line, spine rotating to an extreme. "Fifth movement."
Thin streams of smoke began rising from every part of his skin. Soon, it covered his entire body. ’Crap! It hurts!’ He winced but did not break the breathing pattern.
’Inhale three... exhale one.’
"Five movements total," he muttered. "Five forms of the Supreme Nine Yang Tempering Technique."
Every movement refined a different flow of power, yet all five ultimately converged into a single cycle.
After completing one full set of five movements, his body flared with bright white-gold flame, smoke rising steadily, a faint crackling sound emanating from beneath his skin. There wasn’t a single part left untouched. His entire body was being destroyed and healed at the same time.
Pain and recovery had become inseparable parts of the same cultivation cycle.
’This was no longer ordinary tempering. Every cycle permanently reshaped his body.’ He mused.
His clothes burned away; he was naked. To onlookers, a flaming man performed the five movements one by one.
Insane heat spread from his body, and no one dared move close. There was at least twenty to thirty meters of distance between them.
Some servants and maids panicked.
"It’s fine," Hua Mingyue said loudly, lowering her book slightly and watching Lei Cheng. ’If he stops here, his skin and muscles will be burned down.’ Her eyes narrowed. ’But can he stay conscious through that kind of severe injury?’
She paused. ’If he doesn’t... I’ll have to heal him, but—’ She paused again and glanced at the sky. ’That would be too dangerous.’
The prisoners stared at him with open fury in their eyes—some with genuine murderous intent.
’Just die,’ many of them thought with chilling killing intent. ’Burn away.’