Yang Kai had been lying quietly on the ground for over an hour before he finally stood up. The earlier ordeal had drained him of all his strength.
Recalling the events of an hour ago, Yang Kai felt like he was in a dream; he really couldn't believe it was all true.
He secretly pinched himself and felt some pain.
"What exactly happened? What kind of thing is that Black Book?" Yang Kai muttered to himself, unable to sort out his thoughts.
By the time he calmed down, Yang Kai immediately realized that something was different about him. Originally, he barely had enough to eat, and he received a beating every five days, so his body had always been weak. But now Yang Kai clearly sensed that his bones were full of vitality, and a warm energy seeped from the inside out, giving him an indescribable comfort.
When he moved slightly, the bones in his body gave a series of clear, crisp, and pleasant pops, as if playing a perfect tune. And the pain was gone; the places where Zhou Dingjun had injured him today seemed to have healed.
Noticing this, Yang Kai quickly rolled up his sleeves and lifted his clothes to examine himself closely. The bruises all over his body were gone, and even his old injuries showed signs of healing—disappeared without a trace.
But he was still thin as a stick!
He rubbed the areas where the injuries had been, and dead skin fell off in flakes, revealing soft and tender new skin. It wasn't like a newborn's, but it was much healthier than before.
"Hiss—" Yang Kai breathed in sharply. He had never imagined that the Proud Bone Golden Body fused into his body would have such an amazing ability to recover!
Checking his cultivation again, he found that he was still at Body Tempering Stage Three, no different. This discovery made Yang Kai a little disappointed.
Growing up, Yang Kai had heard many stories of martial arts lore and the hidden secrets of predecessors. He knew that many people with deep luck stumbled upon lucky encounters and thereby leaped over the dragon gate to achieve supreme fame.
But those were just stories. How many people in the world could actually change their mediocre lives by gaining a fortuitous encounter? The stronger the predecessors, the less willing they were to let their lifetime of cultivation be buried with them; they always found a successor before they died. So, hoping to run into an opportunity by jumping off a cliff or crawling into a cave was basically impossible.
But now this had actually happened to him. The mysterious Black Book must have a major origin, and the Proud Bone Golden Body was—as the saying goes—"the Earth God's fart: out of the ordinary."
This could be called his lucky encounter, but it was also inevitable.
The last four sentences on the very first page of the Black Book plainly stated: "Proud Bone Golden Body, Dominator's Barrier, Unyielding Soul, only then can it be subdued."
If the Black Book hadn't been picked up by him but by someone else, they would never have glimpsed its secret; they would have only thrown it away as garbage. It was precisely because he found it, used it as a pillow for a year, and it sensed the unyielding perseverance in him, that the Black Book's secret revealed itself today.
In other words, this was indeed his lucky encounter, but it was one he obtained through his own ability. Thinking about this made Yang Kai feel relaxed. As the saying goes, "A fine horse deserves a fine saddle, and a beautiful woman is a gift for a hero..."
"Where's the Black Book?" Yang Kai suddenly remembered the treasure he had slept on for a year and hurriedly searched for it, but he couldn't find it at all.
Just as he was getting anxious, something seemed to stir faintly inside his body. The next moment, the Black Book abruptly appeared in front of Yang Kai and fell to the ground with a clap.
Stunned, Yang Kai picked it up. He frowned and thought for a moment, and with a thought, the Black Book vanished from his hand. With another thought, it reappeared.
This looked like a magic trick, but Yang Kai's face was grave, because he truly felt that the Black Book could be stored inside his body through his will.
"Could the material of this wordless Black Book be... the Soul-Suppressing Stone?" Yang Kai blurted out, almost startling himself.
The Soul-Suppressing Stone! That was a legendary heaven-defying treasure.