Ren Zu took out the two profound cores that had come from the Sovereign Profound Beasts and the thirty-five kilograms of Purple Veined Divine Crystals… Well, since he was not lacking in any resources, he even took out a little extra. Finally, he carefully retrieved the Underworld Udumbara Flower that was enveloped in a green light and gently placed it behind the Purple Veined Divine Crystals.
Four hundred and fifty kilograms of Purple Veined Divine Crystals were piled together, releasing an incomparably dense and rich spiritual energy. Jasmine made a quick gesture with her hand, and an invisible energy completely imprisoned all the spiritual energy being released by the Purple Veined Divine Crystals to prevent any outsiders from detecting it. Naturally, she was not worried that anyone would cause trouble for her; she was simply making sure that she would not cause any trouble for him.
"Are these items really enough?" Ren Zu asked casually.
"In the end, I will also require three drops of your blood essence."
After Jasmine finished speaking, her elegant finger shot forward without warning, touching the space between Ren Zu's eyebrows with absolute precision. Although he was fully capable of reacting, he chose not to. In response, three small drops of dark-red blood slowly detached themselves, emerging from his forehead and floating in the air, stabilizing right above the tip of her finger.
They were not ordinary drops. This was blood essence—the condensed manifestation of an individual's vitality and innate talent. The loss of even a single drop would be enough to cause significant damage to any ordinary person, directly affecting their foundation and future potential. Even so, for Ren Zu, this did not represent any real problem. Thanks to the [Great Buddha Path], his recovery ability transcended normal limitations, allowing even this kind of loss to be regenerated without any permanent consequences.
Even without resorting to this profound art, his body alone already possessed an abnormal regenerative capacity, capable of restoring the lost essence in a short time. However, with the assistance of the [Great Buddha Path], this process was drastically accelerated, reducing it to mere seconds...
"Don't worry. After I reconstitute my body and slowly recover my strength and vitality, I will give you a drop of Star God Blood as compensation," Jasmine said calmly.
Ren Zu shook his head, giving an ironic smile. "I don't need any compensation from you. If it's you, even if you wanted all the blood in my body, I would be happy and willing to give it to you."
"Hmph!" Jasmine let out a cold, disdainful laugh. "Starting with your insincere, flowery words again, I see. I'll say it one more time: those seduction tricks of yours will only work on stupid women! Don't even think that I will ever fall for any of your schemes!"
Although her words came out with coldness and contempt, her face clearly flushed, a soft shade of red spreading across her pale cheeks. Her eyes darted away for a brief moment, and something complex flashed in her gaze… something that even she seemed unwilling to acknowledge.
Ren Zu's lips twitched slightly upon noticing it. Then he spoke in a calm and natural tone:
"I was being sincere again." He tilted his head slightly, as if merely stating a simple fact. "Even if you really took all the blood from my body… there still wouldn't be any real problem for me. There would be no need for compensation, since it was to help you, and I would regenerate in just a few seconds..."
Silence.
Jasmine slowly turned her face back toward him.
"..." Her eyes stared at him completely flatly, without any visible expression. For a few moments, she simply observed him, as if trying to determine whether he was joking… or if that was, in fact, the truth.
Then, finally—
"What kind of monster… are you?" The question came out low, almost like a sigh. There was no sarcasm in that sentence. Only… incredulity...
Ren Zu smiled faintly—a tranquil, almost indifferent smile.
"One?" He raised his gaze to the sky for a brief moment, as if reflecting on the answer. "Probably… an existence even more terrifying than the Gods that existed in the Primordial Era."
Jasmine stared at him for a few seconds.
Her eyes narrowed slightly.
Then she let out a sigh.
"…Ridiculous." She turned her face away, crossing her arms with a light snort, clearly deciding not to pay any more attention to that absurd statement.
However, she could not completely deny it. After everything she had seen. After everything he had done… After personally witnessing a monster that defied any known logic… That possibility, no matter how absurd it seemed, did not appear… entirely impossible.
Jasmine closed her eyes for a brief instant, as if deciding to put an end to that thought once and for all.
"Enough useless talk. You can leave now, because I need to begin. Remember, I cannot be interrupted during this period. The barrier I will soon establish will block everything from the outside, including light and sound. So the only one capable of interrupting me will be you. Before I myself exit the barrier, even if something extremely important is happening, you must not send any sound transmission to me."
"Also, I will still need to maintain the connection I have with your life until my body is completely reconstituted. So during this period, you must remember that you definitely have to remain within a ten-kilometer radius of me. If you have no choice but to exceed that distance, you must not exceed it for more than a hundred breaths! Otherwise, it is possible that my soul will disperse."
Ren Zu committed those words to heart before speaking solemnly, "You don't need to worry. I guarantee that nothing will happen… Oh, right, Jasmine, there's something I want to ask you."
Jasmine, "?"
Ren Zu gave Jasmine a look from bottom to top before beginning to speak casually, "Since you're reconstituting your body, is it possible to change the appearance of your new body… Err, what I'm trying to ask is this. Will your appearance be exactly the same as before once you obtain your new body?"
Jasmine disdainfully turned her face away from him. "When the body and soul merge into one, the soul forms the main substance of a person, while the body is merely its container. If your soul is destroyed but your flesh remains, it will be impossible to reform your soul. But if your soul survives while your flesh is destroyed, as long as the power of your soul is sufficiently strong, you will be able to reconstitute a new body. Moreover, reconstituting a new body does not mean you are borrowing a body for rebirth; it is born from the soul, so naturally it will not be different from the spiritual body of the person who is reconstituting it!"
"So the appearance you see now is exactly how my new body will look! I couldn't change it even if I wanted to!"
"Ah, so it's just as I thought..." Ren Zu hurriedly nodded. A relieved expression appeared on his face before he spoke sincerely, "Ah, that's great to hear! Earlier, I was worried that your appearance might change after your new body was formed..."
In truth, the situation in Jasmine's original story was different. For the complete reconstruction of a perfect body, an entire Underworld Udumbara Flower was required—something extremely rare and difficult to obtain. However, Yun Che had only managed to gather four petals, an amount sufficient to allow her to reconstruct her physical body, but not without consequences. The limitation in the material used resulted in subtle yet significant deficiencies: although her body was functional and stable, it remained stuck in an incomplete state, unable to "mature" naturally with time as would occur in a perfect reconstruction.
Naturally, everything Jasmine had just explained was not new to him. He already understood the principles behind body reconstruction from the soul, as well as the limitations imposed by the conditions and resources used in the process. His question, therefore, had not been motivated by ignorance, but by directed curiosity. He wanted to confirm whether she knew of any alternative method, any path that would allow the reconstruction of a body with characteristics different from the original spiritual form. After all, unlike the traditional method she described, there existed rarer and more complex variations capable of altering the final appearance… and he himself knew some of those means as the greatest physician of the Primordial Chaos...
"…" A strange fluctuation passed through Jasmine's eyes, and for some immeasurable reason, she became distracted for a moment. After that, she turned around and stood with her back to Ren Zu. With a cold snort and a wave of her small hand, a curtain of light suddenly materialized in front of Ren Zu, completely blocking his view of her.
Ren Zu unconsciously moved gently backward, and the moment he stopped, a three-meter square barrier had already materialized before his eyes. The barrier was a light white color, simple, and radiated neither light nor any aura; it looked like a curtain standing upright in place. He did not utter another word and slowly withdrew from the barrier, a complex expression on his face as emotions began to surge in his heart.
Unconsciously, his mind returned to the last two years spent by Jasmine's side: sometimes irritating, sometimes unpredictable, but never boring. He remembered her guiding him in profound arts with that arrogant impatience, as if teaching were a favor the entire world should be grateful for, and also the rare simpler occasions, like when he cooked and she, even while trying to maintain her composure, let slip reactions that ranged from genuine surprise to something almost… childish, to the point of nearly drooling without realizing it. Also came to mind the casual comments he made about her appearance, always met with surface-level contempt but accompanied by small reactions she clearly did not want him to notice—such as tiny smiles and her cheeks turning red. And, above all, there were those quieter moments, gazing at the starry sky, where they had deep conversations about life. They were unforgettable moments... Finally, he let out a long sigh, lightly passing his hand across his face as if brushing all of it away, and set those memories aside. His expression returned to its usual state: calm, steady… and difficult to read.
From the moment Jasmine reconstituted her body, she would no longer have to depend on his life to survive, and she would no longer remain inside the [Sky Poison Pearl]. Then they would no longer be able to feel each other's presence or the sound of each other's heartbeat, which they had grown accustomed to before, when they were bound so tightly that they could not separate even if they wanted to...
He had helped Jasmine reconstitute her own body, and at the moment he handed her all the items he had gathered, his heart had filled with joy at seeing how happy she was. But now that the moment they had both been waiting for was finally approaching, he realized that that joy was no longer so simple, nor so absolute. On the contrary, his heart was filled with a complex emotion, something difficult to define… and even more difficult to put into words.
Ren Zu shook his head as he forced himself to clear his heart and mind of all distracting thoughts. He sat down and crossed his legs, beginning to calm his heart as he prepared to make his final preparations before heading to the God Realm.
And those preparations consisted of opening the last two Internal Gates, elevating his body to a state that could be considered even closer to invincibility.
With that in mind, he took out two pills from the [Sky Poison Pearl].
These two pills were not ordinary even by the highest standards of cultivation. The [Esoteric Pill of Immortality] and the [Esoteric Pill of Mortality] were essential for opening the last two Internal Gates: the Gate of Life, located in the heart, and the Gate of Death, situated in the Sea of Consciousness. Only by opening both would it be possible to establish the necessary foundation to reach the third stage of body transformation: the Nine Dao Palace Stars, a realm where the body surpassed mortal limits and approached a truly absolute state.
Under normal circumstances, even for someone like him, this process would take a considerable amount of time to complete. However, since he was determined to tread the path of true immortality—something that could only be achieved through cultivation—he did not allow himself to advance slowly. In the last few days, he had devoted himself intensely to gathering resources and recreating these two pills based on the formulas recorded in the "Heavenly Tyrant Manual." Although the original materials did not exist in this world, his knowledge as the greatest physician of the Primordial Chaos had allowed him to adapt the recipe with precision, replacing each component with local equivalents without compromising the essence of the effect. At first glance, the two pills looked simple, with their discreet golden coloration… but they concealed within them a profound and dangerous power.
Without hesitation, he brought both to his mouth and swallowed them at once. His eyes slowly closed, and his breathing began to become deeper and more controlled as his body entered a state of absolute stillness… and the process of opening the two gates finally began...
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