Chapter 141 (Patreon)

Chen Haoran thought he was being funny, imagining what Xie Wangmu’s face would be if she knew the level of Banquet Peach he was eating. Now he had a good idea of what that face might look like. He’d returned to the top of the pyramid and left Phelps on guard outside while he prepared himself to take the peach. Only after he took the first bite did he realize the thing he should’ve watched out for wasn’t the fruit’s energy but its taste. What felt like 80 thousand years worth of sour decided to violate the Geneva Conventions on his taste buds. Did the 800-year one taste this bad? Phelps didn’t give any indication it was any sour. Was he tough, or was Chen Haoran just weak? No, that didn’t matter. What mattered was that the sour taste screwed his mouth more shut than if he tried to throat two packs of saltines dry.

Then the kick hit.

Peach-gold energy rushed into his core and exploded throughout the rest of his body. Just one bite flooded him with more energy than all the pills and cultivation supplements he’d taken since he entered the Liquid Meridian Realm. Through his sense, he could feel his entire body dyed the color of peach, and he still had more of the fruit to go.

Chen Haoran took a deep breath, flooded qi to his mouth, and wrenched his jaws open. The second bite was no better than the first in terms of taste, even worse actually. He could taste blood on his tongue. An equal amount of energy poured into his body like before, filling him up till, to his sense, he looked more like a blob of peach liquid than a human. He could feel the Banquet Peach’s energy take up every available space it could find and, when there was no more to be had, start seeping out his pores into the air. He could feel even more leaving the peach itself in his hand. This was untenable.

“Yellow Dragon.”

The Yellow Dragon had been leisurely swimming within the peach energy. At Chen Haoran’s call, however, it seemed to wake up from whatever relaxed stupor the energy had put it in and roared. Yellow liquid qi-tinged peach flooded out from him and wrapped around the Banquet Peach to arrest the escaping energy. Chen Haoran immediately brought the peach back to his mouth and he and the Yellow Dragon bit as one. There was no sour taste this time. There was no peach either. All that was left was the Yellow Dragon, or maybe Peach Dragon would be more appropriate now, considering it was glowing the color like a lamp.

The Yellow Dragon roared and began to dance a cycle around his meridians. As it did, the energy within his body began to swirl. Instead of pressing outward, it now turned inward, centered around his core. As the Yellow Dragon completed its revolutions around his body, the peach glow around it began to fade and be replaced with bright yellow. Another revolution saw yellow qi emerge further. The revolution after that saw the Yellow Dragon leaves behind a thin trail of yellow qi. Amidst the overwhelming ocean of peach-colored energy, the contrast of the yellow trail was stark, and Chen Haoran watched the Yellow Dragon trace it all around his meridians before connecting the ends together. Even so, it was not done and followed the trail it had laid out unerringly, letting it grow wider and brighter with each revolution.

There was something hypnotic about watching the Yellow Dragon at work. It was far from the first time Chen Haoran had seen it cycling through his meridians, and yet, seeing the outline of yellow qi, it had made felt like he was seeing it again for the first time. It wasn’t. Even the trail wasn’t. The Yellow Dragon had done it when he’d advanced to the Liquid Meridian Realm after all, and yet. Something just felt different. Chen Haoran lent his will to his qi and followed the path the Yellow Dragon laid out, adding his own efforts to refining the Banquet Peach’s energy. He quickly found himself lapped by the Yellow Dragon. It was a uniquely embarrassing feeling to be left to bite the dust in his own arteries. Chen Haoran doubled down his focus, clinging to the trail like it was a lifeline and using it as a crutch as he directed the attention he’d usually spare on visualization to speed. It worked for a time. He did indeed go faster, then the Yellow Dragon twisted and coiled and danced another lap around him despite his effort. The Yellow Dragon cast an arrogant eye backward and huffed, Chen Haoran has the distinct impression it was mocking him.

He was doing something wrong. Even if the Yellow Dragon was a living fragment of his cultivation technique, it was still his body. Being this much better than him was ridiculous. He had kept pace with the Yellow Dragon before. How? The Yellow Dragon, unfortunately, didn’t seem keen on answering him and ignored Chen Haoran’s attempts to merge their presence’s, deftly dancing around him and speeding off.

It was….wait….

….dancing?

Chen Haoran didn’t quite know what kind of realization he had at that moment, but he began to wiggle to and fro in an awkward attempt to ape the Yellow Dragon’s graceful movements. Immediately he faltered, and his speed dropped to a standstill. It was hard to envision. How did one imagine themselves tap dancing inside their own veins? Worse, in this case, he wasn’t really dancing. It was more treating his meridians like a twisting waterslide he was sliding through. That wasn’t quite right either, though.

The Yellow Dragon snorted, perhaps tiring of Chen Haoran’s fumbled copying, and abruptly merged with his will. In that moment, Chen Haoran had the feeling the Yellow Dragon was exasperated with him, but before he could explore the feeling further, the trail of qi they’d been feeding finally filled his meridians. After a period of buildup, his qi seemed to reach some kind of critical mass because when the Yellow Dragon roared, his qi broke the banks of his meridians and spilled into the rest of his body—drowning and mixing with the Banquet Peach’s energy.

When Chen Haoran had eaten the Stygian Lotus, he’d experienced two things. First, it tasted like dirt. Second, its energy made him feel like he was scraped raw with a physician’s scalpel. Now the Banquet Peach tasted even worse, but its energy was…. intoxicating. It felt like waking up after the most comfortable night’s sleep, like doing shots of energy drinks and shooting caffeine up your veins. It felt like the spurt of energy that came when you imagined doing something productive but really wouldn’t. It was energy. It was life. It didn’t insert itself into his cells like a knife. Instead, it covered them like a peach-scented balm and slowly, inexorably, worked itself in.

Chen Haoran shivered from head to toe and shot up from his meditative position. His sudden movement saw him fly into the air and bash his head against the ceiling. It didn’t hurt, however, not even when he landed in a heap rather than trying to land properly. He felt itchy. So very, very, itchy. He rolled along the smooth stones of the floor in an attempt to scratch himself but found no relief. His hands fumbled at his robes, gently trying to remove them, but despite his efforts, ripped the silks clear off. With the effort wasted, he ripped the robes off entirely and dragged his fingers across his skin. It peeled away in layers, and beneath it was new, flawlessly smooth skin. It wasn’t the only thing growing either. Chen Haoran bit off six-inch fingernails and used the stone floor to grind down toenails the same length. His long hair became a veritable mane and went all the way down to his feet.

It was too much. He needed to move. Chen Haoran bent his knees and leapt for the doorway. Even without putting qi into the movement, he went flying off the pyramid and into the jungle, startling Phelps something fierce as it was now Chen Haoran’s turn to soar overhead. Chen Haoran crashed into the ground feet first and sank at least a foot into the dirt. Disturbed by his landing, the trees rained down a hail of knife-like leaves onto him. Liquid qi burst out of Chen Haoran like a cannon and cleared a 200-foot radius around him. It still wasn’t enough, though. He needed more.

Phelps floated over, and Chen Haoran’s eyes lit up. He beckoned Phelps with an outstretched hand and flexed his qi. “Phelps, attack.”

Perhaps it was because Phelps always wanted to stretch his muscles, but he instantly responded, sending a wave a blue liquid qi down on Chen Haoran’s head. Chen Haoran clenched his fist and flooded qi to his arms. First, it was just the qi already in his arm. Then it was the qi from his shoulder stretching to his other arm. Then it was qi from the upper half of his torso. Chen Haoran’s arm bulged as he filled it far beyond what would have been safe for him before. Phelps’s liquid qi was only a hairsbreadth away.

He swung.

There was a loud crack as the air was displaced, and Phelps’s liquid qi was blown away. Phelps himself tumbled wildly through the air from the aftershocks. Chen Haoran stood still, his arm trembling. He stared at his fist and whistled.

“Thank you Xi Wangmu.”

————————————

Stronger. Tougher. More alive. Chen Haoran took stock of the various changes in his body. He flexed his arms and gazed down at his chest. The Stygian Lotus had cut out fine lines of muscle and left him lean. The Banquet Peach filled him out. His chest was broader, his arms thicker, and his back…. well, he couldn’t see it, but he felt cool when he flexed, so it must be good. He now looked like he could actually tank the hits he’d been tanking. Inside, his meridians shone brightly to his sense. They showed no sign or strain from the intense energy that had been flowing through them moments before. His body felt fresh and alive beyond what qi could already do. He had yet to really test the recovery ability Xi Wangmu said the peach would give, but he could take a guess.

Phelps hissed at Chen Haoran from a distance away, turning around with a pointed huff when Chen Haoran turned to pay him attention. He hadn’t quite liked being sent flying. Strange, given he had no problem doing it drunk. Perhaps it was an ingrained Liquid Meridian pride?

Chen Haoran ignored his sulking pet and ran through some simple exercises: pushups, jumping jacks, squats, and lunges. They weren’t for actual training. Workouts like these hadn’t done anything for him since he was a Qi Realm, but they were an effective way to adjust to his new changes. He tried lightly jogging over to a nearby tree and left furrows in the dirt as he skidded to a stop in front of it. He flicked the trunk with his finger, and the entire tree shook, dropping its knife leaves on his head.

Blossom-Picking Palm

Chen Haoran’s palms glowed green, and he plucked three hundred of the leaves from the air before letting his liquid qi vaporize the rest. He carefully jumped up to grab a low-hanging branch and proceeded to alternate between chin-ups, pull-ups, and swinging himself over the branch like a gymnast. After doing a hundred of each, he was finally satisfied and began to clean up. A quick flush of liquid qi removed the rest of his dead skin. His ungainly hair was roughly chopped to a more reasonable length. His nails were carefully filed using Li Mou’s shitty Profound-Rank sword. He mournfully gathered the scraps of his torn robe and put them in his storage bag before putting on a new red one.

After making himself presentable, he finally remembered Li Mou’s storage bag. Given the quality of his cultivation and his weapon, Chen Haoran wasn’t expecting much, and he was right. Inside the storage bag were just spare uniforms, some books, pills, of which some Chen Haoran recognized and others he didn’t and would thus not be feeding to Phelps, and a red and white eagle medallion. Besides the books, Chen Haoran wasn’t interested in anything else. The medallion, at least, he recognized as being the symbol of the Garrison. Perhaps it was for communication? He dumped the medallion onto the ground and pressed it into the earth till it was out of sight. The clothes were shredded and dispersed, and the rest of the things were transferred to his storage bag. He did have the idea to try and put Li Mou’s storage bag inside his own, but unfortunately, they seemed to have some kind of repulsive force that pushed them away from each other, sorta like magnets.

Oh well. Li Mou had said he was a son of the Li Family, not the son. Whatever status he thought he had in the Garrison obviously wasn’t enough to actually furnish him with some decent wealth.

“Man,” Chen Haoran said. “What a fucked up thing to think after killing someone.”

Not that Chen Haoran was overly bothered by it. Phelps floated over and perched himself on his back as per usual, finally having gotten over— oh, nope, he was still sulking. Phelps refused to lay his head on Chen Haoran’s shoulder. Chen Haoran helplessly sighed. “I’m sorry okay? Don’t be like this forever. I need you in top condition.”

Because try as he might, Chen Haoran didn’t think today would end without him killing a few more people.

He pushed aside those thoughts and moved toward the jungle. “Come on, bud, let’s go find our friends.”

Phelps grunted and tightened his grip.

Chen Haoran shook his head and continued on before suddenly pausing.

“I forgot to ask that asshole how we’re supposed to leave.”