Artificial Growth

Staring at the tree in front of him, Xue Chang couldn't help but feel amazement at what he saw. Ever since he woke up, the world had completely changed for him. Things were no longer simply objects and colors but now had a fundamental difference in his eyes.

It was as if he discovered a diamond in a chunk of coal, everything before him now held endless secrets and possibilities. Even a common stone that he could see on the street was no longer so simple.

"The aeon is something humans usually can't comprehend, but when you do get some insights to it then your eyes can truly be considered opened."

These were the last word Yong Heng said to him before he woke up. Time within purgatory passed differently than in real life. A week or so passed in there while three sprays passed on the outside. But according to Yong Heng, time in purgatory wasn't always set in stone. It changed depending on different situations.

Within Xue Chang's hand was the book he had been scribbling in for the past couple of days. Although it was a bit weird writing with only one arm now, he was somehow able to barely succeed at it.

This book was something very important to him. What he was writing inside of it should've taken months or maybe even years to write but now he would only need hours at most!

What he was making was in fact his own cultivation technique. In the past he showed some talents when creating skills and martial arts, and because of that he had the brilliant idea of creating his own cultivation manual.

The ones Xue Heng had given him so long ago had some good points, but none of them really interested Xue Chang at the time. But then Tian Hai and Tian Kai came along and suddenly an idea began brewing within his mind.

He could not cultivate himself, but that didn't mean others also weren't able to!

And with that he started working. First reading all of the manuals he got from his brother, Xue Chang's understanding of the basics of cultivation rose to a frightening level. Yong Heng had the right idea to be incredulous at Xue Chang's comprehensive ability. If he were to say he was second in learning something, no one would dare say they were first!

As such it didn't take long for him to begin developing his own ideas on cultivation. But as his knowledge grew, so did his requirements.

Most people who made their own techniques would require trial and error that could take several mortal generations, and the cultivation families with extremely deep roots have techniques that span back possibly thousand of years!

Meanwhile Xue Chang's basics were at the peak of knowledge, but he didn't have the experience needed to fix the mistakes on his first cultivation manual. He couldn't go through the process of trial and error due to his situation, and he didn't dare give a half finished technique to those around him.

His only hope was to be inspired and enlightened overtime or find a way to obtain higher level cultivation manuals. Both of which could take up to years, and by that time he might already be dead.

But now things were different, the aeon did not only encompass the world itself but spiritual force as well. Everything was a part of the aeon, and the aeon was within all. And now that he could see things from a completely different perspective, of course his understanding of spiritual force would change as well.

Walking through the forest while scribbling in his pages quickly, he soon reached his destination. After healing up from their injuries, the three friends chose to leave the house and head back to the scene of the battle. They needed to make sure their spoils of war were still there. Luckily it seemed that the group within the village bought the act of the brothers exaggerating their story. No one seemed to have touched any of the corpses luckily.

"Let's collect parts from the wild beasts first, we need to report this event to the guild and ask for compensation. Not only that but that bear was definitely under some weird condition. There is no way a lesser intelligent beast like it would be able to learn a cultivation technique by itself. Something strange is definitely going on."

The guards nodded and began the work of collecting animal parts. Usually the guild didn't need the entire beast carcass to verify authenticity, just unique body parts were enough. Anything else useful from the monster would be given to the hunter themselves.

But the bear was different. It was not a wild beast but a demonic one. As such it had something special.

Unlike human cultivators who stored their Qi in the dantian, demonic beasts were unique as they had beast cores. They were basically the dantians of humans but unlike a dantian, beast cores contained pure spiritual force that could be absorbed by cultivators to enhance themselves. It was a rare commodity in the mortal realm.

And such a treasure was just a short distance away from him. Although the beast wasn't not in the third realm of Qi refinement, its dual internal and body cultivation made it extremely close. A bit of time and it would undoubtedly reach that level without much effort.

But now that it was dead, a beast core of something nearly at that level was going to fall into his hand. Just thinking about it made his head swim.

He could not use the core himself but he could sell it, or even better, give it to Tian Hai and Tian Kai to train with.

And there were a number of other uses as well. Although the strength of the bear's was sorely underestimated, the rewards were well worth it. As the saying goes, great rewards come with great danger.

Once pieces from the other wild beasts were collected, the three of them moved deeper into the shrubbery. And there in the open clearing, the scent of charred grass and blood wafted the air. Despite being dead for over three days, there wasn't any rot forming on the beast. It was quite a sight really.

Xue Chang took a few steps closer to the corpse but stopped as he noticed Tian Hai and Tian Kai paused in their steps. They were trembling fiercely as if a biting cold was invading their body.

He didn't realize it at first, but Xue Chang finally noticed that the bear was passively giving off a powerful pressure that surrounded the area around him. At its level, even its corpse wasn't something mortals could deal with.

Xue Chang had lived his life with a huge weight on his shoulders, literally, so when facing the beast he never took notice of this. But seeing how his friends were reacting right now, he realized how much effort and will power they must've mustered up to grab his unconscious body away from here.

Without pause, he quickly stepped over to the beast and plunged his arm into its chest. With a grunt, he pulled out a round rough object from the cavity. It was like a white pearl with odd etchings and marks surrounding it, it was the beast core.

Satisfied with his findings, he tossed it over to Tian Hai, "Hold onto that for a bit. That's some good stuff right there."

Of course the brothers weren't stupid either. Even they knew of the existence of beast cores, and just holding onto one both brought a large amount of excitement to them and also equally have them a lot of pressure.

Luckily once the core was removed from the body, the pressure from the beast corpse almost dissipated immediately.

Seeing color return to his guards' faces, Xue Chang heaved a sigh of relief as he moved over to another spot.

There lying on the ground was a bloody severed arm. It was small and porcelain white, almost like a child's.

In fact it technically was a child's arm.

Reaching over and grasping his stump lightly, Xue Chang looked down at his own severed arm calmly.

Suddenly a soft pat landed on his shoulder as he turned to see Tian Hai and Tian Kai look grimly at the scene.

They couldn't help but feel guilty over the loss of his limb. If they were just a bit stronger and finished their battle sooner, maybe they could've prevented this from happening. Yet they were only able to arrive at the end.

This scene in front of hem and what happened in the physician's home back in the village made them all the more aware of how powerless they truly were.

The two brothers silently swore to themselves that they would get stronger, much stronger to protect the ones they cared about. Not matter the cost.

Xue Chang on the other hand wasn't exactly sure what was happening.

"Um are you okay? What's wrong?"

Tian Kai shrugged lightly as he said in a somber tone, "We just feel apologetic. We said we'd stick with you no matter what trouble you'd face, yet we couldn't even be there when you were going through such a tough battle. We couldn't even save your arm."

Hearing the answer to their odd behavior, Xue Chang raised his brow in wonderment.

"My arm?"

Shockingly, he brought his foot up over the arm on the floor and stomped upon it. The limb immediately shattered and became a pile of ash along with the blood around it.

And without pause, he ripped the bandages around his arms off fiercely. And to their shock and surprise, the stump exploded and reopened the wound in a gory display of blood.

From the open wound, a white substance poured out forming a skeletal hand, while flesh and muscle shot out of the stump and began wrapping itself around the skeleton before a sheet of porcelain white skin finally covered the entire area.

With that, Xue Chang completely regrew his arm!

What Xue Chang was doing was excessive and insane. He was basically taking his limitless life force and forcibly treating the wound as an undeveloped fetus. In other words he was not just regenerating the arm, but rebirthing it completely.

Treating his blood as a cell, he used his life force as a catalyst to go through the entire birthing process of a child.

In other word, he just artificially grew his arm from a baby's to a ten year old child's with no effort whatsoever. This was even better than regeneration!

If he was poisoned, regenerating would still leave the deadly substance in his body, but his method was equivalent to recreating a new body altogether, one free of toxins!

And it hadn't even been a minute since the process began and yet here he was with a complete hand.

"You were saying?"

Tian Hai's jaw almost touched the ground with how wide it was while Tian Kai's eyes just rolled back to the back of his head and he fell back and fainted in shock.

They never expected something like this to happen!

Laughing at their reactions, Xue Chang quickly picked up his robe which were left aside, probably due to the weight, and called for his guards.

"Let's leave this place quickly now, it'll hard to explain how I healed myself so easily to the villagers!"