37: Chapter 25 Second Rebirth 37: Chapter 25 Second Rebirth Editor: Henyee Translations Late at night, the world was ink-black, all color drained from the land.
The entire village had faded into a blur of indistinct shapes.
Qin Ming was working on processing the blood snake.
The hide of this spiritual creature was incredibly tough with its scales harder than refined steel.
When he struck it with a cleaver, it rang out like tal on tal.
If he wasn’t careful, those crimson scales could easily slice a finger open.
They looked like pieces of forged fine gold.
If turned into armor, the defensive power would surely be astonishing.
Qin Ming tossed the cleaver aside and prepared to switch to a sharper blade.
Two days ago, apart from the long-handled black steel warhamr, Mu Qing had also given him a short sword.
He tested it.
While not as sharp as the long sword used by the bluish-faced man, it was just barely usable for skinning when he gripped it tightly and applied enough force.
Qin Ming focused intently.
Once he made an incision at one end of the snake’s skin, he grabbed and tore downward.
It was much easier than slicing the whole way through.
Several sunstones glowed softly, illuminating the blood snake’s body in a warm red hue, as if it were carved from crimson jade.
As the red skin was slowly peeled back, the at beneath, snow-white and tender, was revealed.
The snake gallbladder didn’t have the dull look of an ordinary snake’s.
It was luminous blue, clear as a gemstone.
Qin Ming could already sense both the at and gallbladder were brimming with potent spiritual energy.
They glowed faintly, clearly top-grade materials for cultivation.
“No wonder the people from Chixia City dropped their masks and ready to kill the mont they saw it.”
He sliced the at with the short sword, chopped it into pieces, washed them carefully, and imdiately set a pot to boil.
If he could undergo his second rebirth sooner, he wasn’t going to wait until morning.
In this volatile environnt, Qin Ming felt the urgency.
All manner of powers were gathering.
Nobles and sects from Chixia City were arriving.
Who knew what would happen next in these mountains?
They were all searching for “nodes”—special places with extraordinary phenona.
In particular, regions filled with five-colored mist were especially coveted.
People were offering rare cultivation texts in exchange for clues.
Since the magnetic field in the mountains had beco unstable, strange events were frequent: fire springs died and were reborn, and anomalies cropped up everywhere.
“There’s also a wave of high-tier spiritual creatures migrating in with their families, seizing resources in the mountains,” Qin Ming mused.
“But is it really a migration?
Could these elite creatures be searching for sothing too?”
The at was now cooking.
As ti passed, a rich aroma filled the room, snapping Qin Ming out of his thoughts and sparking his appetite.
Outside, the wind and snow howled, but inside, the fragrant snake stew made his mouth water.
He patiently waited for it to finish boiling.
“It slls amazing, so fresh,” he said, eyes lighting up after his first bite.
This spiritual creature’s at was vastly superior to ordinary snake at, like two different species entirely.
He had previously felt so revulsion toward eating snakes, but not anymore.
To him now, this was “dragon at.”
After just a few bites, he felt a warm current rise within his body.
The effects were almost imdiate.
The spiritual energy had already begun working.
“The gallbladder can be stead… or soaked in strong liquor,” he muttered.
“Ugh, no wine at ho.
Guess I’ve got no choice.”
As he ate, he placed the glowing blue gallbladder into a stear.
It contained a highly concentrated spiritual essence, so he had to watch it carefully.
Monts later, the snake’s gallbladder—like a lump of blue diamond—was fully cooked.
Qin Ming ignored the rest of the stew and turned to his true “main course.”
“Dear Mountain God… heavens above… this is so bitter!” he groaned after one bite.
His tongue went numb with bitterness.
Looking in the mirror, he saw his lips had turned a luminous blue.
He’d expected bitterness, but this blood snake’s condensed gallbladder far exceeded his expectations.
It was brutal.
Even the sll of the snake at lost its appeal.
He was overwheld by the bitterness.
He quickly drank so of the soup to flush it down, but it didn’t help much as the bitter taste still clung to his mouth.
Taste-wise, this stuff was inedible.
Even a dog would refuse it.
Even cultivators with golden roots couldn’t stomach it easily.
Qin Ming didn’t swallow it in one gulp.
The gallbladder was large, and he figured chewing it thoroughly would absorb the spiritual essence better, speeding up the rebirth.
His good mood was nearly ruined by the bitterness.
Looking at the rest of the gall, he gritted his teeth.
“No turning back now, might as well finish it slowly.”
After eating the whole gallbladder, he looked in the mirror.
His lips looked like they’d been painted with a flamboyant shade of blue, and he now had a strange, otherworldly aura.
“Good thing I ate this at night.
I’d scare people if they saw in this state.”
Still, the gallbladder’s effects were intense.
Not long after eating it, he felt heat flooding through his entire body, as if he’d co down with a fever.
Qin Ming remained calm.
He kept eating the snake at, both to suppress the bitterness and to fuel his body with a more spiritual fire.
Eventually, his body grew burning hot, like a roaring furnace that chased away the cold of winter.
His whole being seed to glow.
“Spiritual nourishnt and dicinal cuisine are now kicking in!” Qin Ming stood up, grabbed his black-steel hamr, and headed into the courtyard to practice the killing moves from his blade manual.
Snow exploded upward, scattering into the night sky.
White mist swirled around his body, a faint glow coursing over his skin.
His muscles and bones surged with vitality.
When he swung the hamr, it created peals of wind and thunder.
Qin Ming’s spirit, energy, and essence all climbed steadily.
He knew it had begun.
His second rebirth was underway.
It was a process, not an instant transformation.
But he could feel it clearly.
His strength was rising.
His tendons stretched, his senses sharpened, and his vision improved.
“Every rebirth is intoxicating.
Feeling myself grow stronger… Even the heavy darkness of night seems to be thin.”
Power surged through his body.
It felt like total purification.
His muscles and bones vibrated in harmony, rumbling with energy.
In the darkness, his body glowed faintly like a furnace.
It was as if a secret fla burned within his flesh, lting away the old, fostering the new, refining his spirit, and accelerating the transformation within.
In the courtyard, he swung the long-handled black-steel hamr again and again, exhausting himself until his hair was soaked and sweat poured from him.
Only then did he return indoors.
He sat quietly, feeling the changes within.
Then he wondered, would his body grow again after this second rebirth?
According to Old Liu, the specific ditation or Qi cultivation technique used could cause vastly different changes.
Now he would find out what kind of transformation his own “wild thods” would bring.
Qin Ming had always been a head taller than most.
After his first rebirth, he’d grown nearly two inches more.
One night, chatting about his rebirth with Old Liu and Xu Yueping, they noted his height hadn’t changed much while others grew much more dramatically.
Old Liu, seasoned and well-connected in his youth with many old patroln, had heard all kinds of stories about rebirths.
“So Qi cultivation arts make the body swell like a bubble after each rebirth, making them grow taller and taller.
But only part of that becos solid golden flesh.
The rest is just hollow expansion.
That’s why many arts later require you to suppress further growth,” Old Liu explained.
He also ntioned that so secret techniques were incredibly rare.
Practicing them could cause bizarre transformations, like growing a third eye.
Certain divine myths likely ca from such phenona.
Those secret manuals were so rare that even the major clans couldn’t get their hands on them.
As he drank, Old Liu reminisced about all the strange stories passed down to him, detailing different rebirth thods and the unusual changes and effects that ca with them.
Finally, he added that one thod required maintaining a perfect golden height ratio from the beginning, which couldn’t allow reckless physical growth.
Old Liu, tipsy and gazing at Qin Ming, said, “I think your height hasn’t changed all that much.”
Qin Ming took it in stride.
In two days, he’d know for sure what path his rebirth would take.
For the first ti, he felt how truly isolated he was here.
He imagined the youths of Chixia City probably knew all this well, whereas he had only gathered bits and pieces.
So people didn’t even rely on rebirth to advance; they had other paths entirely, which felt too distant for him to grasp.
After sitting for a long while, Qin Ming began to feel hungry again.
The effects of the second rebirth were unmistakable.
He returned to the stew to replenish his body with the spiritually rich food.
Afterward, he washed himself with cold water, and in the deep silence of the night, he fell into a dream-filled sleep.
Just before sleep fully took him, he saw his body again glowed with the “golden threaded jade garnt”, silver light covering him, golden threads weaving across his skin.
It was a mysterious, divine sight.
Qin Ming drifted from light to deep sleep, then into a half-dream, half-wake state.
He felt himself sinking into a restful slumber.
His body and mind relaxed completely, recovering well, but a part of his consciousness remained alert.
In this trance-like state, he seed to see a dust-covered black cloth hanging over his subconscious, blocking his vision of what lay beyond.
But as his second rebirth progressed, the dust gradually swept away.
A corner of that black cloth lifted, and he saw a glimpse of his childhood self in confusion.
Though still drifting in and out of sleep, Qin Ming realized sothing: the second rebirth was not only enhancing his body, it was also strengthening his mind.
Even the mories that had blurred in childhood were beginning to resurface.
In a haze, it felt like soone whispered beside his ear, “This path… Though extraordinary, it can no longer be cultivated.”
Then, through the corner of that lifted black cloth, he saw a rough hand holding a thin ancient book opened to the first page in front of his younger self…
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