The gorilla roared in anger. As it stomped its feet, the ground instantly cracked open.
Leveraging on the rebound force, the gorilla leaped into the air, swinging an iron fist larger than a bus at Ling Jiu.
The force of this punch could break up a mountain. But Ling Jiu performed a horse stance and met the incoming punch with a fist.
“I am not afraid of you when it comes to physical strength!”
The fists collided, as if Mars had crashed into Earth. The impact was accompanied by a thunderous explosion and a violent shock wave spread in all directions.
Where the shock wave hit, shrubs, weeds, and giant trees turned into dust.
Both Ling Jiu and the gorilla were flying out backward at the same time, with Ling Jiu retreating 20 meters, and the gorilla seven or eight meters.
Which was stronger? Who was superior to the other?
Ling Jiu was elated instead of angry. He had found a decent punching bag.
“Come on!”
Ling Jiu looked up at the sky and guffawed before lunging out again.
The gorilla beat its chest with its fists and then charged at him.
A violent clash unfolded. The surrounding forest became the victim. Where Ling Jiu and the gorilla were, they crushed or pulverized everything—shrubs, weeds, and towering trees—in their paths.
Wherever they went, it was a mess.
Bai Ya flew out of the airship and saw the scene. She quickly tucked away the airship and chased them down.
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
Roar!
The gorilla roared, raising its fist and hitting Ling Jiu multiple times. It had got an upper hand.
But what puzzled it was, Ling Jiu took its punches, unharmed. Instead, he was getting tougher.
Unlike other direbeasts in the forest, this angered the gorilla even more and caused its attack more brutal.
“Come on!”
Ling Jiu looked excited and lunged forward to meet the gorilla head-on. He was exhausting his physical strength with each round of fighting.
But he could clearly feel that his body cells were absorbing the massive vitality stored in his body.
Absorb, exhaust, reabsorb, and re-exhaust.
His physique improved rapidly during the entire process.
The battle was worth it with this alone.
“Come again!”
“Haha!”
“Come again!”
Ling Jiu attacked without feeling tired, as if he was a humanoid machine.
He was not afraid of exhaustion, injury, or death. Even if the gorilla hit him and sent him flying out many times, even if he had brushed with death many times, it did not deter him.
The situation on the battlefield was undergoing a subtle change without them knowing.
At first, the person getting the beating gradually got evenly matched with the opponent. And when the battle went on for another half an hour, that person had got the upper hand.
The difference was, it was not the gorilla but Ling Jiu who had the upper hand this time.
Bang!
Another brutal blow sent the gorilla flying back 20 or 30 meters away. This angered and made the gorilla even more.
It grabbed a gigantic tree in front of it and stroked it with its hand to strip off the branches and leaves on the trunk.
The next second, the gorilla was holding the huge tree trunk, swinging it as if the Monkey King wielding its golden-banded staff to attack Ling Jiu.
“Do all monkeys like to play sticks?”
Ling Jiu sneered, taking out the Emissian war blade with the flip of his hand, and the war blade expanded to 50-meter long in the blink of an eye.
With the sharp war blade in hand, Ling Jiu lunged up and swung, cutting the tree trunk in half in an instant.
The gorilla was taken aback for a moment, looking at the stick in its hand, and then at the blade in Ling Jiu’s, as if it did not expect the sword to be so sharp.
“Come again!”
There was no need to play nice. Ling Jiu swung the war blade in his hand and slashed the tree trunk in the gorilla’s hand into stumps.
He then tucked away the war blade and lunged forward with his fist.
He just wanted to fight barehanded this time.
The battle went on.
A few hours had passed, and the white hole in the sky was still glowing with no sight of darkness coming.
The gorilla was exhausted, with a begging look in its eyes after a high-intensity battle.
“I will spare your life today for being my sparring partner this entire time.”
Ling Jiu wiped the sweat from his head and stopped attacking. He waved his hand to signal to the gorilla to leave.
The gorilla felt a ton of relief and fled, as if its tail was on fire. It was exhausted.
“Are you alright, Honey?” Bai Ya hurriedly came up to him.
“I couldn’t feel better than this!”
Ling Jiu stretched his arms. “I feel so good right now, as if I have just come out from a sauna.”
“That’s good then.” Bai Ya breathed a sigh of relief. “Where have you been just now? I didn’t see you when I woke up.”
“I went out to replicate some arcanas. I am sorry.” Ling Jiu said in embarrassment. “Seven days passed and I could replicate again.”
“OK.” Bai Ya nodded in acknowledgement.
“I am starving, Honey.” Ling Jiu stroked his stomach.
“Me, too.”
The two returned to the airship and then ordered the smart robot to cook. Food was on the table after a while.
After the meal, the two went to bed and did some ‘wonderful things,’ then fell asleep before waking up a few hours later.
Ling Jiu was not in a hurry to practice self-cultivation. Instead, he immersed himself in the Inner World.
He found that the whale-like galactic life form he had swallowed earlier had not been digested. Only some skin had been burned, and most of the body was unscathed.
The blazing flame had been burning for so many days. How could it be?
“Galactic life form is galactic life form. Even if it’s just a body, it is not something I can easily digest now.”
Ling Jiu let out a sigh and left the body alone. He then continued to practice self-cultivation.
A steady stream of dark bio-energy came from all directions and poured into his body before entering his elixir field and being swallowed by the spinning nebula.
The Gene Arcana core was still spinning at high speed, continuously devouring the surrounding nebulae and the massive amounts of dark bio-energy
He felt that this was too slow. So he sent a piece of dark bio-energy crystal into the Inner World.
Boom!
The raging fire burned the dark bio-energy crystals, rapidly melting it into pure dark bio-energy.
This dark bio-energy poured into the body again and was swallowed by the Gene Arcana core.
He was absorbing dark bio-energy from the air and the dark bio-energy crystal.
The two-pronged approach boosted Ling Jiu’s self-cultivation speed to an unprecedented level, literally spoon-feeding himself.
Time passed quickly, and it was on the 10th day.
Ling Jiu stopped practicing on this day.
“I have absorbed a dark bio-energy crystal, but there is a long way to go before I can attain Level-Nine. Maybe I should take one more piece.”
Ling Jiu murmured to himself and then got up to do a stretch.
Since Bai Ya was still immersing herself in self-cultivation, he did not want to disturb her. He sensed the dimensional mark that he had left on the Mud Beast earlier and vanished from the airship.
“Replicate Anti-Aging arcana!”
Replication is successful. Install?
“Install!”
“Aah—”
…
Anti-Aging was an amazing ability.
The reason people age is that the telomere length of cell chromosomes is fixed.
Each time a cell divides, the telomere is shortened a bit. As the cell keeps dividing and the telomere keeps shortening, and it will come to the point of death.
Once the telomeres are exhausted, cells will no longer divide, and people will naturally age and die.
The Water of Life on Earth is an efficient nutrient that can replenish the consumed telomeres and increase the number of cell divisions, delaying aging and prolonging lifespan.
Because of this, a dose of Water of Life can extend lifespan by 30 years.
The principle of Anti-Aging arcana is like that of the Water of Life, which is to lengthen the telomeres at the ends of chromosomes.
But unlike the Water of Life, the Anti-Aging arcana is not an efficient nutrient. It gives the chromosomal telomeres a regeneration function.
What does this mean?
It means chromosomal telomeres can be continuously regenerated with the Anti-Aging arcana.
The chromosomal telomeres will continue to regenerate, which extends the number of cell divisions, which delay senescence and prolong life, even if the cells continue to divide.
Simply put, the Water of Life and the Anti-Aging arcana are the difference between medicine and ability, which can be visually understood as the difference between giving a person a fish and teaching a person to fish.
The water of life is like giving you a few more chromosomal telomeres, so you can live a few more years longer.
And the Anti-Aging arcana is like giving you the ability to make chromosomal telomeres, so you can continuously regenerate chromosomal telomeres, and then extend your life.
Which one is better?
Of course, it is the Anti-Aging arcana.
“I wonder how long this ability can extend lifespan.”
Ling Jiu murmured. He returned to the airship, and then woke up Bai Ya. “Honey, do you want to stay young forever?”
“Staying young forever?” Bai Ya was stunned. “What are you talking about, Honey?”
“I ask you—do you want to stay young forever?” Ling Jiu grinned.
Bai Ya was confused. “Of course I do. Who doesn’t want to stay young and beautiful forever as a woman?”
“That’s all you need to have.”
Ling Jiu activated the third natal arcana he recently awakened-the Bestowment Arcana to give Bai Ya the Anti-Aging arcana.
“Ahh—”
Bai Ya screamed softly, her face changing.
“I just gave you a new ability, Honey,” Ling Jiu said. “You will feel pain during the installation process. Just bear with it.”
“Understood.”
She did not know why Ling Jiu gave her this arcana, and she did not care as it was really painful now.
“Aarrr—”
“Hang on there, Honey.”
Ling Jiu clasped her hand and gave her encouragement. As an arcanist with Arcana Replication, he knew too well the pain during an arcana installation.
Fortunately, the pain went away just as quickly as it came. Ten minutes later, she had come out of it with a pale face.
“H—honey, what is going on?”
“Here is the thing…”
