Bai Yunfei slowly exhaled, drawing the breath out from his body to calm down. In an introspective state of meditation, Bai Yunfei began to use his soulsense to scan his own body.

Second by second, time went by with Bai Yunfei sitting there in silence. The only change that took place on a noticeable level was the fact his eyebrows grew more and more furrowed…

If he had to describe the state his physical body was with the physical wounds, Bai Yunfei had only a few words to say: everything"s an appalling mess.

His body could be compared to a strip of land on earth. In the vein of that comparison, Bai Yunfei"s body was as if a drought and natural disaster had struck it. It was dry and cracked. Miserable and left unchecked, the place reeked with the scent of death.

His muscles used to bulge outwards with power, but now it was a withered mess of weak flesh. His previously steel-like bones were now decadent almost, and his veins and arteries were no longer flush with vitality, they were dry and constrained together.

Dread ran through Bai Yunfei"s mind at the sight. Opening his eyes to stare at his right fist, he tried to clench his hand. But then that action only resulted in him unable to even crack his knuckles…

It was as if he had lost all sense of power in his muscles. His body was virtually powerless. All it took was a slight movement for the rest of his body to feel the pain and weakness.

"How did this happen…"

Bai Yunfei despaired. Trying again to clench his fist, Bai Yunfei tried his best to summon whatever last traces of his strength existed, but he failed.

"If my body"s this weak, what am I going to do…"

The soul was the main aspect a soul cultivator trained, but before they could start on that, soul cultivators needed to hone the body. Mastery of control over the body was essential, and so soul cultivators worked their bodies as hard as they could to make it grow stronger. Even Soul Exalts had bodies that were essentially at the limits of what could be reached. They could tear apart leopards with their arms and crack steel or cliffs with a punch in ease. Even their muscle tolerance and regeneration was extremely high. What would normally be a fatal wound on a commoner would be nothing more but just a flesh wound. Even if their arms or legs were broken, they could fix those types of injuries relatively quick. The only way to hamper their regenerative ability was to have the soulforce of another be transmitted into their bodies and deliberately hamper it. But in general, it was safe to say that the physical wounds of a Soul Exalt could be easily healed.

Bai Yunfei"s current situation was a little special. His wounds had been extremely severe prior to his healing with his muscles and bones being broken in more places than they hadn"t been. Even his internal organs had been injured. While his body used to have cracks and such all over it, they were healed by now.

So…where did this feeling of powerlessness come from?

There were no physical "wounds" on his body to be seen, but it felt like every cell in his body had been injured. He could circulate his soulforce and elemental fire through his body, but…it wasn"t doing a thing to his body?!

Bai Yunfei had never had such a situation like this before. If he excluded his soulforce, Bai Yunfei"s body was like that of a commoner, and barely even that.

This feeling of powerlessness, Bai Yunfei remembered, had been experienced once before when he was extremely young. It had been when he first started working at the rice shop and moved a dozen of rice bags that he felt like his muscles were on fire.

"How did it get like this...what should I even do?"

He panicked a bit in his mind. Fear gripped at his mind and lingered in his heart as he tried to slap his head to wake himself up. Diving again with his soulsense, Bai Yunfei tried to send his soulforce through his body again.

Bai Yunfei opened his eyes again after a very long time in relief. Exhaling a drawn out breath, he sighed, "I can still heal, that"s good…"

In that second observational round, Bai Yunfei had his soulforce scrub at his body. It had worked, much to his relief, the feeling of weakness in his body dissipating by a small margin.

It was only a margin just like how a drop of water in a bucket would only be a drop. Seemingly insignificant on the quant.i.tative level, this still meant that his body could still receive soulforce to heal it, meaning he wasn"t crippled.

"As long as I can heal, everything"s fine…" Bai Yunfei consoled himself. A feeling of worry still lingered on his mind though—while he could heal, the scan of his body and the efficacy of his healing would still require a huge amount of time. He couldn"t even estimate just how many days it"d take!

    ……

Bai Yunfei shook his head. He couldn"t worry about that now. He had other matters to take care of.

The other thing he noticed when he was circulating his soulforce had been large enough to surprise him.

It was his essence fireseed!

He was still in Berserk Mode when he was knocked out, so it was canceled out during a time he wasn"t even in control of his thoughts, let alone his mind. This meant that he was unable to control his essence fireseed, and that the "coil" form was canceled out as well. While he was in danger of dying, the Dual Flame Arts was somehow still running in his body so that both fireseeds continued to co-exist without a problem!

For five whole days!

When Bai Yunfei was knocked out by the Soul Refining Palm, he had been knocked out for two whole days with the fireseeds managing to co-exist. It had been unbelievable at the time that happened, but now the fireseeds managed to more than double the previous length!

And the more important thing was the fact that both fireseeds hadn"t yet split apart from one another in his origin acupoint!

Not only did they not split, they were "fused" together!

Both fireseeds were connected with one another by more than half their size!

This was clearly the result of the "Berserk Mode" (The Berserk Mode is essentially the "Fusion" Form), but right now, his fireseeds were stuck together as if it was "regular"!

In its present state, the two fireseeds were not in a "coil" form, or in a "fusion" form. It was in the state of "cultivation" as denoted by the earlier part of the Dual Flame Art manual.

When Bai Yunfei tried to split the two fireseeds apart, he realized that he couldn"t!

The two fireseeds were stuck together and unable to split apart!

It was an immensely strange situation. The two fireseeds would always try to devour one another whenever they made contact with one another. It was only when Bai Yunfei activated the Dual Flame Arts that the two fireseeds would calm down and co-exist with one another to either increase his strength in either the "coil" form or the "fusion" form. Either way, Bai Yunfei relied on the Dual Flame Arts for an "explosive" increase in strength for a good period of time, though the fireseeds would have to be split apart at the end in order to avoid a fight between the two.

But right now, the two fireseeds looked as though they had "shook hands" to agree not to fight and "fuse" together!

Neither of the two were trying to eat the other. Bai Yunfei could tell that both the fireseeds were still distributing different waves of elemental fire, but the halves where they connected with one another were distributing separate waves of elemental fire that were slowly synchronizing in waveform the closer they got to one another!

As such, the two fireseeds were in a state of being fused and not fused.

As such, Bai Yunfei was then also able to discover that aside from his body, Bai Yunfei"s soulforce was at the level of a…