Chapter 229: Aperture Contention

Stinging pain... boundless stinging pain...

At one moment, a sudden, intense pain jolted Xu Chen into complete wakefulness.

Suddenly, he felt his own body, but after he fully released his Divine Sense and saw his situation clearly, he was completely stunned.

He was currently imprisoned within muscles as hard as steel and iron, with countless meridian-like things growing over every aperture of his body, connecting him entirely to the muscles of the clam shell.

A massive amount of golden lightning flowed like blood through these meridians, entering and exiting his body in an extremely terrifying manner, causing him to feel pain like that of a purgatory.

The pain was still bearable, but his body was completely unable to move.

He was certain that he had just fallen into the memories accumulated by the clam shell over countless years.

Those ancient, flowing light images he had seen were, in fact, the past experiences of the clam shell.

If he had not been awakened by Feng Feiyi, his consciousness would have been completely obliterated by these memories, and then his body would have been fused by the clam shell, eventually becoming a part of it.

He was familiar with this process; it was the same process of soul beasts fusing with the flesh and blood of humans and beasts that he had seen on the way to Yuqing Hall.

It was just that the clam shell devouring him was even more powerful; even with the Blue Light Treasure Bottle present, it could not resist the erosion and fusion of this aura of time, and he had almost completely had his soul scattered, eventually disappearing into this cold and pitch-black Minghuang.

Almost in an instant, Xu Chen figured out the crisis he was in, so he did not dare to delay at all, fully operating the Demon Refining Art, and under the guidance of his Divine Sense, the white light began to surge like a tide to strike the meridians connected to all the apertures of his body.

He was now certain that the clam shell attempting to devour him was the giant clam he had encountered in the Underworld River, and the giant clam's will was preserved within that huge pearl he had refined into a False Golden Core.

Right now, this pearl had occupied his dantian aperture and was simultaneously releasing purple liquid with a terrifying life force.

The giant clam must be trying to use its powerful life force to be reborn with the help of the Heavenly Tribulation.

The white light, mixed within the golden lightning plasma, desperately bombarded the apertures all over his body; soon, some small meridians shattered under the powerful strengthening force of the white light.

And taking advantage of the moment when the clam shell's meridians shattered and regenerated, clusters of Blue Starlight reappeared at the aperture locations; Xu Chen's Divine Sense surged into these starlight vortices, fully communicating with this starlight to seal the apertures.

As one tiny aperture after another was closed, having lost the channel connections, the lightning surging in the meridians was instantly cut off and had to begin gathering toward those main meridian channels.

Xu Chen's counterattack seemed to alarm the clam shell; waves of even more powerful force squeezed in from all directions, and the muscles, hard as steel, began to squirm violently, like a giant millstone, intending to grind his body and Divine Sense to pieces.

Xu Chen felt his tendons, bones, flesh, and blood beginning to be crushed; the golden plasma flowing within his body permeated his flesh and blood, and even seeped into his meridians and Sea of Consciousness; dense lightning, like a thunderstorm, submerged the Blue Light Treasure Bottle and began to crazily impact the Blue Light Treasure Bottle like a tide.

The Blue Light Treasure Bottle vibrated and shook violently, releasing brilliant starlight to resist this unprecedented impact.

Xu Chen felt his Divine Sense collapsing rapidly, and his Soul was also unable to stabilize, being shaken in this sea of lightning; the connection he had just regained with his body began to disappear again, and even the Demon Refining Art began to be strongly interfered with, several times nearly being interrupted by the impact.

Xu Chen finally understood that this giant black clam, which seemed unremarkable, was not simply a Fourth-Rank Nether Beast; judging by the current situation, even if it was not as good as the Nether Demon Flower from back then, it was not far off.

However, he firmly believed that the Blue Light Treasure Bottle could completely resist the pressure of the clam shell.

After all, no matter how powerful this clam shell was, it was far inferior to that Ancient Fierce Beast that had suppressed the Netherworld Passage back then.

The reason he could not resist now was that his body had already been fused and taken over by the clam shell; as long as he could continuously destroy the meridian channels connected to his body's apertures and continue to cut off the Tribulation Lightning power being transported by the clam shell, he would be able to gradually regain control of his body.

Not to mention all of them, he only needed to seal most of the apertures; once he reached a state of parity, he was confident that he could eventually escape alive.

Therefore, Xu Chen simply gathered his Divine Sense, fully stabilized the operation of the Demon Refining Art, and left only one strand of Divine Sense to fully guide the white light to strike other apertures, breaking them one by one.

Sure enough, this strategy was the most correct method.

Although the clam shell erupted with unparalleled ferocity under the stimulation of Xu Chen's awakening, attempting to use its powerful physical body and the power of the Tribulation Lightning to completely grind him to the point of soul destruction.

But when the powerful vitality of the white light refined by the Demon Refining Art fully struck a certain point, the clam shell was completely unable to withstand the terrifying destructive power brought by this vitality; a meridian connecting an aperture was instantly shattered by the impact, and as it exploded, a cluster of Blue Starlight appeared, turning into a misty vortex to block the aperture.

Xu Chen still did not know the specific usage of these Blue Starlight clusters to this day, and so far, he had only developed two functions: one was to replicate Divine Pattern Battle Techniques, and the other was to plant a Slave Seal.

But no matter which one it was, Xu Chen could be certain that this Blue Starlight must be related to gods and belonged to something far beyond the Immortal World's cognition.

With each aperture re-sealed, Xu Chen felt his control over his body become one point clearer.

And as the white light exploded one after another on different apertures, the meridian pipes the clam shell had inserted into his body also disconnected one by one.

In this process, the clam shell's reaction became more and more intense, the amplitude of its muscle contraction and squirming became larger and larger, and its power became more and more formidable.

Xu Chen felt that his physical body, which was as hard as a Second-Tier Magic Treasure, also began to collapse continuously under this powerful squeezing; however, the white light was also continuously and rapidly repairing it at the same time. Although the speed of destruction was far greater than the speed of repair, at least in his feeling, his body would not be completely crushed very quickly.

As time passed, Xu Chen felt as if he had undergone Foundation Establishment cultivation once again, breaking through all the apertures of his body one by one, and then closing them all one by one, making his physical body completely separated from the outside world and forming a closed whole.

However, as more and more meridians were disconnected, all that remained were the main meridians connected to the vital apertures of the whole body.

The clam shell had also sensed that the fusion of Xu Chen's body was under great threat, so these main meridians were also constantly strengthening and thickening, and there was even a vast, cold aura continuously and forcibly drilling into his body along these pipes, and with the flow of the plasma, all of it surged toward the dantian position.

Xu Chen could clearly feel that the purple light in his dantian was becoming extremely restless and turbulent, and its aura was becoming stronger and stronger, as if a new universe was expanding, and there were faint roars and angry shouts coming from within.

Perhaps the final battle would be his dantian.

This giant clam would definitely not easily give up on fusing with him, because this might be the beginning of a brand-new life for it.

Whoever finally won control of the dantian might be the one who could ultimately survive.

This was the greatest crisis Xu Chen had faced since obtaining the Blue Jade Bead.

Because this unprecedented battle for control was taking place inside his own body, the Blue Light Treasure Bottle might not be able to sense the life-and-death crisis Xu Chen was facing, and therefore did not help from beginning to end.

Or perhaps, the Blue Light Treasure Bottle felt that the Heavenly Tribulation was also a normal behavior for Xu Chen's advancement, and therefore stood by and watched.

Of course, these were all Xu Chen's own deductions in an instant, and there was no basis for them.

But with the situation deteriorating like this, he was powerless and could only feel a terrifying and vast aura continuously strengthening in his dantian.

However, he was not completely powerless to resist.

At least he had already sealed nearly sixty or seventy percent of the small and medium apertures; as long as he could regain control of all the main apertures before the clam shell's aura became strong enough to completely occupy the dantian, then he could eventually trap the clam shell's will completely within his body and then slowly refine it away completely with the Demon Refining Art.

Therefore, Xu Chen simply stopped thinking about it and ignored the changes in his dantian, instead settling his mind and fully operating the Demon Refining Art, guiding the white energy to continuously strike the one hundred and eight main apertures one by one.

He did not know how much time had passed.

Xu Chen was completely immersed in extreme self-forgetfulness.

Outside, in the crimson Tribulation Cloud in the sky, the Tribulation Lightning had already fallen to the twentieth bolt.

In the pitch-black wilderness centered on him, an area of several miles had completely turned into a lightning lake with flashing and churning electric light, connecting the sky and the earth directly from the thousand-foot-high Tribulation Cloud to the ground, forming a spectacular and terrifying scene.

The entire Minghuang was alarmed by this aura of Heavenly Tribulation.

Within tens of thousands of miles, no matter how strong or weak the Nether Beasts were, they were all frightened by this terrifying power of heaven and earth and fled in all directions; even those Fifth-Rank or even Sixth-Rank Nether Beasts were extremely terrified, burying their heads and hibernating in their nests, gathering their auras and not daring to make any movement.

There had never been a lightning tribulation in Minghuang for millions of years.

But that did not mean that the creatures living in Minghuang did not know the power of lightning tribulation.

This is the power of the laws of heaven and earth, already transcending the Underworld; it is the might of gods, the power of the Dao, and once tainted by this aura, it is highly likely one will perish.

There will be two chapters this morning, and one more chapter this evening.

(End of this chapter)