Supreme Emperor of Swords

Chapter 738 Greatly Enhanced Strength

“In this Holy Battlefield, winning a battle is hard, and even life-threatening sometimes, but the reward is really generous,” Ding Hao frowned and thought. “However, do the others also get the Jade in Stone as their reward after winning a battle? Do different people get different rewards?”

He should have asked Liao Juzhan and Arnold about this. They should have won one or two battles and received the rewards from that man with a mysterious, cold, and noble voice.

Unfortunately, Ding Hao did not realize this problem at that time.

In the following battles fought in the Holy Battlefield, Ding Hao killed several superiors of the Demon Clan. However, when he searched for the trophies, he did not find any Jade in Stone on them. Maybe the latter guess was closer to the truth.

After thinking for a while, Ding Hao sat cross-legged on the spot and began to regulate his breath.

The integration of Jade in Stone was a process that consumed a lot of energy. Despite Ding Hao’s strong Divine Senses, he still felt exhausted after he went through the process twice. He had to regulate his breathing and adjust his spirit, Qi, and vigor to the best state before he could continue to integrate the next piece of Jade in Stone. After all, this process was extremely dangerous. If he was not in a good physical and mental state, it was highly likely that he would be counterattacked by the Jade in Stone and suffer extremely severe internal injuries, and a precious treasure of heaven and earth would be wasted.

After two hours, Ding Hao stopped regulating his breathing and picked the third piece of Jade in Stone.

The “Mysterious Diamond Jade in Stone”.

“Is this the hardest type of jade among the seventeen types of Jade in Stone?”

Ding Hao observed it carefully. The jade in his hand was slightly larger than the previous piece, shining with silvery light. It was extremely charming with a fascinating hue. Under the sunlight, it was shining with refracted seven-color rays, which looked like the colors in illusions and dreams.

The “Mysterious Diamond Jade in Stone” was known as one of the hardest things in the world.

According to the Sword Master’s advice, this piece of Jade in Stone should be integrated into the bones at the joints of his body.

Other than the spine which was like a long dragon, the bearing capacity of various large joints of the body was also one of the most important factors for the release of strength from the body. In fact, the joints were the weakest parts of the body, but they served as the hubs for the transfer and release of strength. Therefore, for both the Human Clan and the Demon Clan, the strength and bearing capacity of the joints were important conditions restricting their practice and cultivation.

Integrating the hardest thing in the world into the joints could transform the weakest parts into the strongest ones.

That was what the Sword Master meant.

Ding Hao decided to accept the advice.

He took a deep breath, raised his head, and put the “Mysterious Diamond Jade in Stone” into his mouth.

Then he frowned instantly. Cold sweat kept coming out of the hair pores of his body with traces of dark red blood. Although he tried its best to control his body, he was still trembling slightly because of the sharp pain from the bone marrow.

The better the appearance of the Jade in Stone was, the more painful the integration process would be.

Although the “Mysterious Diamond Jade in Stone” was not among the seven extraordinary treasures, it could definitely rank eighth. Ding Hao was now experiencing an extreme pain that was much greater than the pain he felt during the integration of the previous two pieces of Jade in Stone.

A silvery flame flickered in Ding Hao’s body, and then it was divided into dozens of flames. The silvery flames moved at an extremely low speed toward the joints of his wrists, elbows, knees, and ankles and then gradually stabilized in these parts.

This process was extremely slow.

It took him four hours to drive the silvery flames to move from his chest to the joints.

This also meant that in the past four hours, Ding Hao had been suffering unimaginable pain every minute and second. The acute pain drowned him out like a tide. He bit his lips so hard that dark red blood flowed out of the corners of his mouth and dripped onto the black gown over his chest. It was really a shocking scene.

Ding Hao’s face had long turned as white as snow.

The only thing he could do was to concentrate and hold his spirit and Qi together. He tried his best to activate the secret Divine Senses method of the Mind Essential. He used all of his strength to isolate himself from the acute pain while activating the Hell Ice Qi in the lower Dantian of his abdomen to refine and integrate the energy contained in the “Mysterious Diamond Jade in Stone”.

The major joints were far apart from each other, so he needed to be more careful. He split the energy of the “Mysterious Diamond Jade in Stone” into 20 parts and drove them into the bones of twenty most important joints of his body.

In the end, Ding Hao’s black gown was drenched in sweat, and there were circles of water stains around him.

The black puppy anxiously circled around him, barking in a worried and concerned manner. It even tried to lick the sweat on his body with its little purple tongue.

He had no idea how much time had passed.

“Meow, don’t worry. This harm doer will not die.” The Demon King—Evil Moon snored leisurely as he tried to comfort the black puppy.

Just then—

“You ungrateful damn fat cat!” Ding Hao finally opened his eyes and cursed feebly.

Seeing this, the black puppy barked happily, wagging its tail like a windmill.

The Demon King—Evil Moon secretly breathed a sigh of relief, and with a look of righteous indignation on his face, he slowly said, “Meow, it’s okay for you to call me a fat cat, and I can endure that. But you actually added the word ‘damn’ in front of ‘fat cat’. Hey, human pet, you’ve gone too far!”

Ding Hao affectionately rubbed the black puppy’s mane and ignored the fat cat.

He gasped for air, and his pale face looked scary.

The process of integrating this piece of Jade in Stone was too laborious. For Ding Hao, every second felt like an era. Thinking about it now, he still had lingering fears. He even began to admire himself for being able to hold on for 16 hours.

During the process, there were several times when he even had an impulse to give up, because the pain was too unbearable. However, the moment that he was about to give up, he managed to hold on, gritting his teeth.

Ding Hao had no time to feel the strong power of the “Mysterious Diamond Jade in Stone”. He took out a foundation-strengthening elixir from the storage space, popped it into his mouth, and began to recover his physical strength.

Only then did the pain slowly fade in his body like a reluctant ebbing tide.

In the next four hours, he swallowed 13 elixirs in a row and recovered some of his vitality.

Integrating the Jade in Stone was far more difficult than he had expected.

He had integrated only three pieces of Jade in Stone, but he began to have the tendency of being unable to hold on. The pain not only worked on his physical body, but also tortured his spiritual and divine senses, making him feel exhausted. He just wanted to lie on the ground and sleep for ten days and nights.

He knew that his attempt to integrate the Jade in Stone should end at this point.

For a martial artist, such extreme tiredness was never a good thing. If he pushed himself too hard, it was very likely that he would get half the result with twice the effort, and he might even be possessed by the devil. If that happened, he would end up wasting all the power he’d gained through practice and suffering a fate worse than death. That would be an extremely miserable ending.

Since he had integrated three pieces of Jade in Stone in a row, the consumption of Qi in his body had reached the upper limit.

Therefore, Ding Hao had been warming up his divine senses and recovering his Qi throughout the next day.

He had many precious medicines he got from the Divine Herb Garden in the Sage Battlefield. He took these medicines like a cow chewing on a peony and directly absorbed them. His energy was replenished. In his spare time, he would also take time to rest and relax.

He was adjusting his physical and mental state on purpose.

He wanted to achieve a balance between labor and leisure.

He would be sent to the so-called final divine temple very soon. At the very least, he knew that those who could reach that point were all peerless talents and rare geniuses. Once there was a conflict, he had to go all out in order to stand there till the end. For this reason, Ding Hao must make himself full of energy and adjust himself to the best state.

Boom!

The destruction shadow raised his hand, and a black light column shot out.

Facing this attack, the “Starry River Boundary” in front of him was as fragile as a mirror and was broken into pieces instantly. The debris of that dark, deep, and lonely space darted forth and then disappeared like thin ice under the scorching sun, revealing the spiral staircases made of ancient red wood.

The “Starry River Boundary” was directly smashed in the most violent way.

The power of the black light column exceeded the ultimate bearing capacity of the “Starry River Boundary”.

The destruction shadow gently waved his hand.

Countless green ancient spirits of the dead around him poured out like a flood.

The space was filled with the ear-piercing, crazy roars and howls of the wronged souls.

The green flood flowed over the spiral staircases and madly rushed toward the 101th floor of the divine tower. The pressure in the “Towering Buddha Pagoda” did not affect these things. They were moving as fast as lightning like a group of crazy, bloodthirsty evil ghosts.

“Haha, it seems that your “Starry River Boundary” has not reached the perfect conditions yet. If you want to stop me relying on this, I’m afraid you will be disappointed!”

The destruction shadow looked into the distance. His dark eyes, which were like black holes, had no focal point, and black flames flowed out of his eyes like liquid. He seemed to have thought of something.

Although countless spirits of the dead surrounded him and the ancient corpses for the revival of spirits clustered around him like the most loyal guards, he seemed to be extremely lonely. He let out a deep sigh, causing the surrounding atmosphere to become much colder.

Suddenly, he seemed to have sensed something. His looked up with his eyes giving off black light.

The black light from his eyes directly passed through the barriers of space and time and the “Towering Buddha Pagoda” and came into the surveillance of some kind of existence in the dark.

“Humph, two little minions. How dare you peep at me?” The destruction shadow snorted, sending out sound waves, and something was shattered.

“I didn’t expect that this demon had reached such a level.”

In that mysterious space filled with hazy white flames, two figures stood in front of the giant illusion mirror, which consisted of countless small illusion mirrors pieced together and looked like a compound eye. They burst into an exclamation when they saw in one of the illusion mirrors that the ancient souls of the dead poured like a flood into the Second Celestial Level of the “Towering Buddha Pagoda”.