The light that was shining started getting brighter and brighter now. “Oh **! What do I do now?” he thought.

He quickly ran to the center of the formation and sat down. “What happens now?” he wondered.

Soon he was starting to feel the heat coming off of the yang jades. “Is this it?” he wondered. The heat wasn’t strong at all.

“No way this is it,” he thought. That small of heat would do nothing for him. Just then, he felt the intensity of the heat grow a little bit.

“Oh, it’s going up,” he thought and waited. A few moments later, it got even higher. The heat was so high that it was starting to get a little uncomfortable now.

A few moments later, Alex couldn’t stand staying in the center of the formation anymore. It was way too hot.

“No, I must persevere,” he thought. He took off his upper robe and threw it towards a corner. He also threw away his storage bags and his ring and sat there with his well-built body.

Beads of sweat formed all over his body as the heat got higher and higher. The uncomfortableness soon disappeared, and all that was remaining was pain.

Alex felt like he was being cooked from all around him. The heat was just way too high.

“Oh no. I got way too hasty,” he thought. Just eating a single yang jade would give him quite a pain while it was being digested.

And right now, he was suffering the direct influence of nearly 300 yang jades. He hadn’t thought of the consequences when he started this.

“Dammit! Because Song Zun did it, I thought I would have an easy time. That bastard must’ve used not many yang jades then,” Alex thought.

It was either that, or he was very bad at making formations and thus couldn’t bring out the same intensity as Alex did. If not, there was no way someone with a mortal body could have survived such a harsh formation.

The pain just kept ramping up as the heat around him got hotter and hotter. Alex tried his best to hang on, but the pain was way too intense.

“Aargh!” he started grunting. He was in more pain than he had been during his cultivation with Pearl in a long while. The only other times he had likely felt more pain was during the first times when his body cultivated.

And yet, the heat was still increasing. The pain was reaching a point where all Alex could do was struggle to keep his wits about everything.

“No! I won’t give up. I will survive through it all,” he cried out and stayed in there.

The heat he was suffering wasn’t normal heat. It was the heat of Yang itself. Even though his body and spiritual roots had yang affinity to it, somehow this Yang was far more potent than either could handle.

So, the pain was all Alex could feel.

Alex’s body convulsed as his skin started getting red from the heat. The pain reached a staggeringly high level as splits started appearing on his skin as well.

The hot skin was starting to dry to the point that it was stretching on itself to tear at places. Marks of burnt skin could also be seen all over his body.

Fortunately, that was the extent of the damage. The heat was for some reason not entering his body and he felt nothing on his muscles and organs. It was just the skin that was hurting.

Alex wasn’t conscious enough to know that at the moment, however. All of his senses were being fully focused to stop himself from going mad over the pain he was feeling.

The event went on forever, or just an instant. Maybe it was an hour or 10 hours. Was Alex even feeling anything? Why was he feeling so much pain?

Did it stop? Why would it not stop?

Alex couldn’t keep his thoughts straight and his mind wandered everywhere. He had lost track of everything and at some point, he even lost track of the pain.

Even then, somehow, he didn’t log out. He never lost consciousness during the whole event, so he never logged out.

After some unknown time, Alex could feel the pain once more. His wits were returning to him as he could gather his thoughts to himself to realize what was happening.

He tried his best to ignore the pain and soon the pain itself started growing dull. No, it wasn’t growing dull. Rather, the heat was lowering.

Alex had his eyes shut, so he couldn’t see anything that was happening outside. He tried to open them, but they wouldn’t follow his orders.

He released his spiritual sense to see that all of his body was in ruin. His crusted skin was starting to flake away as new skin was showing up underneath many of them.

Even his eyelids had crusted away and refused to open up. He then looked outside of himself and saw that the lights coming out of the formation were already very low.

The yellow yang jades were looking very pale, and almost white as well.

He struggled for a few more moments and soon it was over. He stood up from the place and felt his entire body make a crackling sound as flakes of dead skin fell onto the floor.

“Ouch!” he said as the pain still existed somewhat. He still couldn’t open his eyes, so spiritual sense was all he could use to navigate the room for now.

He took one of the lightless yang jades and saw that it had turned to just jade.

“So, I was successful, right?” he thought. He wanted to test it out, but his skin was hurting way too much to try right now.

“Later,” he thought and got his clothes. He cleaned up everything and went back to his room.

“Meow!” Pearl cried out. He wanted to know Alex had been all these hours and why he left him all alone once again.

“Eh? How long was I out?” Alex asked and looked out of the corner of his eyes. “Holy! 2 AM? I was out for over 12 hours?”

He didn’t know that such a lot of time had passed while he was in pain. “No wonder I look so bad right now. A night of cultivation should… uh, maybe I shouldn’t get pearl to cultivate. It might aggravate my wounds more,” he thought.

“Pearl, can you not cultivate today? I’m in pain and I don’t want to be in pain anymore,” he said.

“Meow!” Pearl said that he wanted to get stronger.

“Just for today. For me. Please?” he asked.

“Meeow~” Pearl accepted his request.

“Thank you,” Alex said and got on the bed.

“Meow?” Pearl asked why his eyes were closed.

“Yeah, I’m hurt. So I can’t open my eyes. After I cultivate overnight, I will eat a pill tomorrow morning and see how much it helps,” he said.

“Meow!” Pearl said.

“Thanks. I hope I get well soon too,” Alex said. He picked up Pearl and caught him in his lap. Then, he slowly started breathing in and out, and waited for himself to soon fall asleep.