Fang Yuan's soul flew away from the Pure Dream Truth-Seeking Body and plunged resolutely into the mysterious Ninth Transformation Immortal Gu before him.
The instant he made contact, Fang Yuan felt an incomparably powerful suction force.
This Immortal Gu, named the Supreme Immortal Fetus by Demon Venerable Spectre, had long been yearning for a soul.
As Fang Yuan's soul entered it, it was like being caught in the dark whirlpool at the bottom of the Falling Heaven River.
In an instant, his soul was firmly gripped by the Immortal Gu and, at an inconceivable speed, began to melt away rapidly!
Fang Yuan couldn't think. He only felt himself sinking into an unfathomable darkness.
But this darkness was not cold. Instead, it carried a gentle warmth.
It was like an infant returning to the time it had spent in the mother's womb, drifting peacefully in the amniotic fluid.
Meanwhile, outside.
After Fang Yuan's soul entered the Ninth Transformation Immortal Gu, a muffled peal of thunder erupted from the sky, as though it were furious yet utterly helpless.
The Supreme Immortal Fetus Gu began to radiate brilliance.
First came white light, shifting from a faint translucent white to pure white, then to a rich milky hue.
Next, a touch of red bled through the white. The red spread rapidly, tinting the glow first a pale blush, then pink, and finally a deep crimson, blazing like fire.
After the red came orange. The orange then transformed into a golden yellow…
The colors cycled and shifted in a dizzying cascade until finally settling on black.
Within the black radiance, the Supreme Immortal Fetus Gu tumbled and shifted. What had been the size of a fingertip now expanded to the proportions of a washbasin.
Inside this sphere, black as ink, a placentawreathed in resplendent, dazzling light flickered in and out of view.
A surge of vitality was brewing within, growing ever stronger, rising higher and higher.
White mist silently enveloped it.
The surrounding temperature plummeted. The mist crystallized into pristine frost, coating the surface of the sphere.
Then lightning crackled to life, coiling around the sphere and weaving into a web of electricity.
The bolts collided, throwing off sparks. The sparks fell onto the white frost, and instead of extinguishing, they set the frost ablaze.
The frost dissolved into wisps of vapor that clung tightly around the sphere.
Green patterns gradually emerged on the sphere's surface. In no time, the phantom lines solidified, sprouting into countless branches, vines, and leaves.
The branches withered to a yellow-brown, while the leaves glowed with a lush, dewy green.
Before long, at a speed visible to the naked eye, flowers bloomed and fruit ripened among the vines.
These purple fruits gave off a wonderfully fragrant aroma, yet their surfaces were hideously ugly—pitted and bumpy, as though they had been rotting for ages.
The myriad transformations were beyond belief. At first glance they appeared chaotic and random, but upon closer contemplation, they seemed to embody some profound truth of heaven and earth.
As the changes continued in the outside world, the placenta inside the sphere grew ever larger.
Finally, after passing through eighty-one transformations, the sphere turned to earth. The primordial fetus within had expanded to its absolute limit and coalesced into an infant, who flung his four little limbs wide!
In that instant, the sphere enveloping him shattered completely, and the infant was born into the world!
It was a boy. His head was full and rounded, his eyes shone brilliant as stars, his skin was fair and tender, his arms and legs plump as lotus-root segments. A rosy blush graced each cheek, making him look adorable and suffused with an ethereal aura.
An invisible force sheathed his entire body, rendering him impervious to harm, safe and unscathed.
The boy descended slowly toward the ground.
During this process, he grew rapidly.
From the moment of birth to the age of two or three, it took only a single breath.
Four or five years old, six or seven, eleven or twelve… By the time his feet touched the ground, he had become a sixteen-year-old youth!
His skin was still fair, but not the pallid white of frailty nor the delicate pink of softness—it was a clean, unadorned white.
His long hair, glossy and black, hung all the way to his waist.
His frame was somewhat slender, with not an ounce of excess flesh.
His nose bridge stood straight and high. Most captivating of all were his eyes. The starlike brilliance had fully retracted inward, transforming into a pair of deep, jade-green pools.
His lips were somewhat full, tinged with a healthy rosy hue. They were pressed tightly together now, revealing a will of iron and unyielding resolve.
This youth was, of course, Fang Yuan.
At this moment, he blinked, surveying his adolescent body, and thought with a jolt of shock: "A completely new… body?"
Forged through the painstaking efforts of Demon Venerable Spectre and the entirety of the Shadow Sect—tens of thousands of years of accumulated knowledge and toil—this body was naturally far more than what it appeared on the surface.
Its hidden depths still awaited Fang Yuan's further exploration.
For the moment, his first impression was that this body resonated with his soul to an unparalleled degree.
To draw an analogy: his previous Immortal Zombie body had been like a garment stitched from withered, brittle leaves, whereas this body was like soft, form-fitting silk.
Everything felt different.
Fang Yuan felt as though he had stepped out of a dark, narrow alley into brilliant blue skies and white clouds, his chest expanding with an exhilarating sense of openness.
"So this is what Demon Venerable Spectre painstakingly crafted—the Supreme Immortal Fetus Gu in action. Rebirth! And the moment I'm reborn, I already possess a Sixth Transformation cultivation base."
The aura of an Immortal Gu Master radiated from him, unmistakably genuine.
He had bet correctly!
Though he still didn't fully understand how this Immortal Gu was meant to be used, having witnessed Demon Venerable Spectre drifting toward it, Fang Yuan had simply followed suit.
As his thoughts raced, Fang Yuan turned his gaze back toward midair.
There, Demon Venerable Spectre still remained trapped in the dream. This was well within Fang Yuan's expectations—the Spectre's condition had been dire to begin with.