Chapter 204 - The Flesh Banquet and the Unripe Bud
Su Bai ate slowly.
This was not because he was calm. It was because the roasted flesh fragment was too good.
The cold flame had charred the outer layer into a dark crust that cracked softly between his teeth. Beneath it, the meat was dense, rich, and strangely tender, filled with a deep flavor that seemed to carry both ancient vitality and forbidden medicinal strength.
Su Bai chewed in silence.
His expression behind the Glacier-Lung Bone Mask was solemn.
After a long moment, he gave the only review he could offer.
"Five stars. Would not recommend to anyone with a normal body."
He took another bite.
This was the first time in this world that Su Bai felt he could properly savor a cooked meal.
He had already forgotten what the original creature looked like.
That was probably for the best. Remembering that while eating would ruin even the strongest appetite.
So Su Bai did what mature adults did.
He ignored the origin of the meat and focused on the flavor.
The trench was dark and narrow. Far away, the Returnees were still searching. The exit portal had already closed. Su Bai was still trapped inside the Fallen-Star Sanctuary.
For a brief period of time, however, none of that reached him.
There was only cold-roasted meat, rich aroma, and the faint warmth spreading through his body with every swallow.
It was enough to make a grown man tear up.
Of course, the taste was not the only reason he felt this way.
The benefit was even greater than he had expected.
The moment the flesh entered his stomach, its remaining essence tried to unfold. To a normal cultivator, that unfolding would have been disaster. The dead fragment still carried source-level Ashen-Blood essence.
But the moment that harmful force met Su Bai’s Reversal Body, its direction changed.
What should have contaminated him became nourishment.
What should have rotted him became tempering.
What should have planted corruption became material.
The dead flesh fragment dissolved slowly inside him, and every strand of its essence was pulled apart by his abnormal foundation.
The Reversal Body seized the harmful parts first. The Crystalline Tree Spirit Root drank the purified vitality. The Soul-Bloom Bud absorbed the origin traces. His Golden Core rotated quietly, while the nine Qi reservoirs accepted the refined force in controlled portions.
Su Bai did not rush. He ate, refined, waited, and ate again.
The process was almost pleasant.
When the last piece disappeared between his teeth, Su Bai chewed carefully, swallowed, and then stared at the empty Qi needle in front of him.
A faint regret appeared in his eyes.
"It ended too quickly."
He sighed.
After the final mouthful completely dissolved, Su Bai closed his eyes and observed the changes inside his body.
The first change came from the Soul-Bloom Bud.
The closed black-red crystalline bud on the Crystalline Tree Spirit Root had changed again. Its color deepened until it looked almost like frozen blood sealed inside dark crystal. The vein-like patterns beneath its petals became clearer, spreading in thin lines like roots, threads, or cracks.
Just then, he saw one tiny movement appeared.
A petal shifted. It loosened slightly, as if something inside had pressed outward for the first time.
A fine crack appeared along the edge of one closed petal. Within that crack, Su Bai glimpsed a faint black-red glow. It did not resemble ordinary plant life. It looked less like a flower preparing to bloom and more like a sealed weapon slowly remembering its shape.
Su Bai’s expression became serious.
The dead flesh fragment had helped the Soul-Bloom Bud far more than the bloom eruptions he had devoured earlier.
That made sense.
The bloom eruptions came from Returnees. They were stolen identities wrapped around miasma and soul fragments. Useful, yes, but already separated from the true source.
The flesh fragment was different. Even dead, it came directly from the sealed source.
Its quality was higher.
The Soul-Bloom Bud was still not ripe, but it had clearly taken a large step forward.
Su Bai continued looking inward.
The second change came from his mind and spirit.
The flesh fragment should have polluted his sea of consciousness. Instead, after reversal, the harmful residue became a strange strengthening force. His thoughts felt clearer. His spiritual awareness felt heavier and more stable. Even the edges of his sea of consciousness seemed to have been reinforced by a thin layer of cold, dark resilience.
It was not dramatic, but Su Bai could feel the difference.
His mind had become harder to shake. His spirit had become harder to stain. His soul seemed to have eaten something it absolutely should not have eaten and somehow become healthier from it.
The third change came from his flesh.
This was the deepest and strangest one.
His body cultivation had improved. That part was expected. The flesh fragment contained dense corrupted vitality, old source essence, and Ashen-Blood power far richer than ordinary miasma. After reversal, all of it became extreme tempering material.
His muscles, bones, organs, meridians, and blood absorbed the refined force slowly. But this was not only strengthening.
It was changing familiarity.
Su Bai frowned slightly.
The Ashen-Blood Miasma outside the trench had always been something he could refine after reversal. It harmed others. It benefited him. That had been the basic rule.
Now, however, the feeling was different.
The miasma no longer felt merely like hostile material waiting to be reversed.
A faint part of his body had begun to respond to it as if his flesh had learned a small part of the language of Ashen-Blood Miasma.
As if the miasma had become slightly easier to draw in, slightly easier to separate, and slightly easier to digest.
The change was faint.
If Su Bai had not been extremely sensitive to his own body, he might have missed it.
The dead flesh fragment had given him a trace of incomplete compatibility with the source of the miasma.
Su Bai opened his eyes. For a long time, he did not move.
The dead fragments had already given him this much.
What about the sealed source?
The thought appeared before he could stop it.
If the dead fragments could do this, what would happen if he ate the whole thing?
Su Bai gulped.
That was a dangerous thought.
Not dangerous like "this pill might have side effects."
Dangerous like "immortals failed to kill it, so perhaps I should bring a bowl."
He immediately looked away from the thought, then slowly looked back at it.
’What if?’
If he could refine the sealed source itself, would his body cultivation evolve completely in a new direction?
Would his flesh become fully compatible with Ashen-Blood Miasma?
Would the Soul-Bloom Bud finally bloom?
Could his body one day accept Ashen-Blood Miasma as naturally as Qi, using it without needing to reverse and refine every strand first?
The possibilities were terrifying.
The fact that they were tempting made them worse.
Su Bai pressed his fingers against his brow.
Relying only on eating was not enough.
If eating solved everything, pigs would have ruled the cultivation world long ago.
Su Bai looked toward the deeper battlefield beyond the trench.
The weapon intents outside still moved faintly in the dark. These things were dangerous.
But Su Bai had already memorized parts of them. The Dao-Shattering Jade had simplified their traces earlier. The dead soldiers’ memories had shown him pieces of the battlefield when these forces had still been alive.
He could not just hide.
Hiding kept him alive for a day. Understanding might keep him alive for a hundred years.
Inside his mind, many things already waited.
All of them were separate for now. Su Bai needed to make them useful together.
He lowered his gaze to his own fingers.
Needles were small.
That was why many cultivators underestimated them.
A sword could split mountains. A spear could pierce armies. A bell could suppress souls. A pagoda could seal demons. A chain could bind worlds.
A needle looked insignificant beside them.
But a needle had its own path.
It did not need to cut everything. It only needed to find the one point that mattered.
Su Bai’s expression gradually became calm.
He had learned many things by surviving.
Now he needed to understand what those survivals had taught him.
He closed his eyes again.
This time, he did not focus on the Soul-Bloom Bud or the flesh fragment essence.
He focused on the needle, and the meaning behind it.
The trench became silent.
In Su Bai’s mind, countless battlefield traces began to gather toward a single point.