Apotheosis – Ascension to Godhood

Chapter 465: Refining Acupoints

Zen had gotten himself ready to experience the agonizing pain of body refinement, but never would he have thought that it would be extremely intolerable.

His soul had already set foot inside the Fighting Soul Realm, and his willpower had also gone up a couple of notches. However, his mind and body just couldn't bear the excruciating pain, causing him to pass out.

Holding a freshly brewed pot of hot tea, a girl dressed in green silk entered. Possessing a set of eyes so pure, the girl didn't look half bad at all. Her bangs had been cut short.

“Oh, you finally came to.” Upon seeing Zen open his eyes, she immediately poured hot tea over a cup and handed it over to him.

Zen shot the girl a bit of a reluctant gaze, but it didn't take too long for him to understand that she was just a regular person who had nothing to do with martial arts whatsoever, so he was able to ease up on her in no time. He nodded politely toward the girl, carefully grabbed the cup and gulped a mouthful of refreshing hot tea.

“I noticed how your face looked as if you were under so much pain. Would you like for me to fetch a doctor for you?” Although Alice Bi was aware that the bodies of warriors could be quite different from those of the common folk, she still felt like Zen was in need of medical supervision as he had been racked with pain and so much torment.

Zen simply let out a faint smile and shook his head in refusal, “No, thanks. That wouldn't be necessary. The doctor wouldn't be able to treat me anyway.”

“How can you be so sure? I know of a talented doctor who has Wang as his last name. His clinic is just around the bend. For decades now, he has been a seasoned doctor. He's the one who used to...” Alice Bi remarked in a tender and comprehensible voice. Surprisingly, Zen didn't find her irritating at all.

The whole time that the girl was giving her explanation, Zen just silently wore a soft smile on his face. He didn't bother stopping her in her tracks. Instead, he just let her continue.

But Alice was quite intuitive. The second she realized that Zen wasn't listening to her, she became quiet, and she just kept staring at Zen. “Well, you made an oath to keep my father's courtyard intact back when you rented it, but you went ahead and laid waste to the rooms and floors inside. I'm gonna have to ask you to pay for the damages.”

During the time when Zen was receiving training in the courtyard, not a single one among the members of the Bi family had the guts to take a peek. But Alice Bi hadn't been fazed at all, to the point that she even extended a helping hand in cleaning up the mess.

Her father used to tell her all the time how a lot of martial artists felt like they were above the law and would go on to rape any girls they might like, but something of Zen told her that he couldn't be one of those wretched types of men.

Her father had been heartbroken upon seeing so much destruction in the courtyard, but he was much too afraid to ask Zen to pay for the damages, so Alice decided to come in his stead.

Zen suddenly recalled what he had done and realized that he had just wrecked some of the rooms, so he pulled out more than ten low-grade life vitality crystals stored inside his space ring and handed them over to Alice. “Would these life vitality crystals be enough?”

These were the low-grade life vitality crystals Zen received as change from back when he bought some materials for drawing divine textures.

As the sight of more than a dozen low-grade life vitality crystals in Zen's hand, Alice couldn't believe her eyes. Shaking her head repeatedly, she blurted out, “This is a bit too much.”

An overwhelming gap existed between ordinary people and the warriors. The Bi family could be considered rich in Oracle City. However, the gold they allotted for food consumption and clothing throughout the year wouldn't even be worth more than one, or possibly, two low-grade life vitality crystals.

Half a low-grade life vitality crystal would actually be more than enough already to fix the damages to the rooms and walls. The low-grade life vitality crystals Zen offered was such a large amount of money for the Bi family no matter how one might look at it. If Alice's father were to find out that Alice even tried to refuse, he would be raging with intense anger. But Zen insisted and placed the low-grade life vitality crystals in Alice's hands.

Alice was sincerely so hesitant to accept it, but pondering on it, this could make her father so happy, so she gladly left holding the crystals in her hands. The second she walked away, she informed Zen that she'd bring dinner over to him when night fell.

Immediately after Alice left, Zen sprung up from his bed. It seemed that luck wasn't on his side, as he hit his head on the wooden ceiling.

“Oww!” Zen cried out under intense pain.

Hearing the clamor, Alice hurriedly went back and poked her head through the door's opening, feeling quite curious.

Zen rubbed his head in embarrassment. He simply laughed it off and said, “Sorry about that. I'll make sure to pay for anything I might break.”

In the past, Zen had always been under the assumption that the warm current could only be able to help him get rid of the impurities inside his body. The first step one would have to take in order to reach the nature level was to get rid of the impurities in his body and make it absolutely pure. Upon attaining the nature level, however, the aforementioned warm current had little to almost no effect on him whatsoever. ʀ𝐀ΝօᛒƐ𝓢

It wasn't until today that he finally learned how to utilize the primordial energy. This was something essential for training one's body refining skills.

Subsequently, after the red dragon lent him a hand in refining his body with the use of the primordial energy, his body went through a mind-blowing transformation. The moment he sprung up from the bed, there was a sensation rushing through his body, brimming with an unfamiliar force which seemed to be different from life vitality. He somehow knew there was something within him, but he just didn't know how to draw it out.

That was the reason he accidentally hit the ceiling surprisingly when he jumped up.

“It looks like you've managed to form your own forceful energy right on your very first body refining. The primordial energy is quite powerful in my opinion. Ha-ha,” the voice of the red dragon appeared without a warning.

“Did you just say 'forceful energy'?” Zen's eyes were gleaming with anticipation.

“Mm-hmm, this is what people commonly refer to as a martial art of body refining,” the red dragon affirmed.

The system of body refinement and that of life vitality refinement were two utterly contrasting fields of martial arts. The two might have started with body refining, but after the five realms of body refining, they would branch out much differently. With that in mind, the warriors of the life vitality system should logically begin training from the nature level, and then the Illuminating Soul Realm, and the Internal Elixir Realm after that, and eventually, they'd reach the Virtual Tribulation Realm and even much higher levels.

That being said, after finishing their practice in the five realms of body refining, the warriors adopting the body refining system would have to begin the refinement of their 108 acupuncture points, or acupoints for short. The next step would then be to build an indestructible body, succeeded by the Eight Path Platforms, and then finally, the Nine Divine Stars.

“The body refining system is truly an enormous training system, much more perfect as opposed to the life vitality refining system. If you're interested in improving your martial arts and refining your body at the same time, you would have to put in more work and train harder than every other warrior out there before you could accomplish anything. Given that you have already undergone body refining, by now, you should be well aware just how grueling this road could be,” the red dragon mentioned carefully.

“Well, I know that full well,” Zen responded in a calm manner. Because this was the path he decided to take, there was no way he'd ever hesitate to move forward no matter how hard it was.

Noticing that Zen looked just the same as he usually was, the red dragon exclaimed, “That's great. I was a bit anxious that you might not be adamant enough before. If you could somehow pull off practicing martial arts and refining your body simultaneously, you'll have the potential of becoming a dominator in some field one day and end up producing wonderful accomplishments. From what I could tell, the warriors who practice martial arts and refine their bodies are significantly stronger than their peers, so much so that they could be beyond compare. I think you're more than prepared enough, so let's proceed. Ha-ha!”

“Proceed?” Zen's eyelids quivered after he heard the red dragon's statement.

“What I just did was refine your body. You could think of it as transforming life energy into life vitality when you are practicing the life vitality system. Now, I'm going to start refining your acupoints. Normally, the power of thunder and fire will have to be used for this purpose. You didn't put into practice the cultivation methods of thunder or fire system, but as luck would have it, you have been baptized by the laws, so you have the basic understanding of the first layer of the laws of fire and thunder. Nothing could be better than utilizing pure thunder and fire to refine acupuncture points,” the red dragon explained.

Upon hearing all of that, Zen came to realize that his body refining was just at an early stage, quite like the nature level of life vitality refining. He had just started to refine life vitality back when he entered the nature level.

For that reason, he went back to the courtyard and sat cross-legged. A flame materialized right in front of him. The flame was rather small and seemed to possess insignificant power, but it was exceptionally pure, much like a dancing flame spirit.

Meanwhile, a bolt of lightning also popped up in front of him. The lightning was sparkling with blue light, akin to that of the light of the flawless sapphire. And it was dancing as well.

Under the guidance of the red dragon, the flame and the lightning bolt in front of Zen suddenly intertwined, darting toward his eyebrows.

That was one of the main acupoints in the human body, the 20th point on the Governing Vessel.

Zen's body began quivering after the flame and lightning darted into his first acupoint. Then, beans of sweat began to form, streaming down from his forehead.

The refining of acupoints was as painful as body refining, but, in contrast, body refining caused severe pain in every single part of the human body, while the pain of refining acupoints, on the other hand, was focused in just one point.

The pure flame and lightning continued spreading on his eyebrows, making him feel as though his eyebrows were about to burst.

The strength of his will had been put to the test at such a great extent at that moment. In spite of the fact that the flame and lightning came from his own understanding of the Fire Law and the Thunder Law, at that point in time, they were being refined in his eyebrows.

It would spell trouble for him if he carelessly allowed them to slip into his mind, so he simply couldn't allow himself to lose focus.