For an entire day and night, Clear Cloud Peak was on absolute lockdown.

A few eager Outer and Inner disciples had climbed the stone steps. They were hoping for another profound lecture on the Dao from their Senior Brother. Instead, they were met with an invisible wall of energy.

Their access tokens glowed red.

Access Denied.

Su Bai had used his Peak Master token to seal the mountain.

Inside his wooden hut, the "senior brother" was currently rolled onto his side, sweating profusely and groaning.

He couldn’t possibly let anyone see him. His abdomen was still bulging like a glowing blue boulder. He looked absolutely, undeniably pregnant with a demonic food baby.

To distract himself from the extreme discomfort, Su Bai closed his eyes and meditated. He turned his spiritual senses inward.

Deep inside his body, it was absolute chaos.

The Heavenly Demon Blood-Burning Pills had fully dissolved in his stomach, flooding his digestive system with a terrifying ocean of raw, chaotic Qi.

It wasn’t burning him, but it was completely overwhelming his system.

’A massive bottleneck,’ Su Bai groaned mentally as he realized the irony. He was suffering from the exact same supply-chain problem he had just lectured Chen Yu about yesterday.

His ’Dead Wood’ spirit root was acting like a processor. It was desperately trying to siphon the raw Qi out of his stomach, refine it, and safely deposit it into his Dantian. But there was a critical flaw in his setup.

He didn’t have a cultivation manual.

Because his body violently rejected the orthodox Radiant Sky Manual, Su Bai had no active "software" to manually guide the energy. He couldn’t circulate the Qi to speed up the process. His spirit root was forced to blindly and passively siphon the ocean of raw energy on default settings.

Because the digestion was so incredibly slow, the raw, chaotic gaseous Qi was pooling and expanding directly inside his stomach.

This was the source of his agony. When his cultivation had fallen years ago, his flesh, muscles, and bones had been starved of Qi and withered back down to the fragile state of a Body Forging mortal.

While his internal spiritual pathways (his meridians and Dantian) remained wide and durable from his past Foundation Establishment days, his physical, mortal stomach was currently being stretched to its absolute limits by the trapped, expanding gas.

’My body is a high-end server processing a massive data dump, but I don’t have the right software drivers installed,’ Su Bai thought miserably. ’The hardware is handling the load, but the physical casing is about to burst. I need to vent this raw exhaust.’

He gritted his teeth and tried to force his heavy body to stand.

He managed to get his feet under him, wobbling like a newborn fawn.

"Okay, just one step—"

His foot caught the edge of his blanket.

Su Bai fell forward like a felled tree. He couldn’t even brace himself. Gravity took over, and he plummeted straight down, landing stomach-first onto the hard wooden floor.

BAM!

The physical impact was brutal. Su Bai’s mortal ribs screamed, and his chest spasmed uncontrollably. His eyes bugged out of his head as the massive, over-inflated balloon of raw Qi trapped in his stomach was violently compressed.

Hic.

A tiny, concentrated ring of black frost shot out of his mouth.

Panic flared in Su Bai’s eyes. He slapped both hands over his mouth, realizing a massive pressure wave of highly compressed gas was rushing up his esophagus like a runaway freight train.

He tried to hold it in. He really did. But the sheer pressure of the energy violently ripped his hands away from his face.

Su Bai threw his head back and... burped.

It did not sound like a normal human burp. It didn’t even sound like an animal. It sounded like the howling, mournful gale of a legendary winter beast echoing out of a deep, empty cavern.

"RROOOOOOAAARRR-URP!"

A violent shockwave of unrefined, freezing black mist exploded from his mouth in a wide cone, blasting straight through the open door of his hut.

The temperature in the courtyard instantly plummeted below freezing. The stone pillars of his porch were immediately caked in thick, jagged black frost. A nearby puddle of rainwater froze solid so fast it made a loud CRACK.

As the black mist cleared, Su Bai collapsed onto his back, panting heavily.

Pain flared in his throat. His lips were cracked and tinged a painful shade of blue.

But as he looked down, his glowing, swollen belly had noticeably deflated. The physical pressure on his stomach was significantly reduced.

Su Bai let out a long, raspy sigh of relief.

’Wait a minute. If an accidental physical impact vented the gas pressure from my stomach... then manual force should work as a manual exhaust valve.’

Su Bai’s eyes gleamed with determination. He dragged his aching body off the floor, stumbled out the door of his hut, and marched over to his favorite flat meditation stone.

He sat down in a lotus position, took a deep breath, and slammed his own fist directly into his stomach.

His knuckles throbbed instantly, and his abdominal muscles screamed in protest at the blunt-force trauma, but the physical impact did its job.

"RROOOAAR-URP!"

Another howling blast of raw black mist shot into the sky. His throat burned with the cold, but his body sang with relief.

"Oh, that feels amazing," Su Bai muttered through chattering, blue lips. He punched himself again.

"RRROOOOOOARR!"

Punch. Burp. Freeze. Punch. Burp. Freeze.

***

Meanwhile, at the neighboring Verdant Peak.

Dozens of Inner Sect disciples had stopped their morning sword practice. Their faces paled as they looked toward the sky.

A horrifying roar was reverberating across the mountains. It sounded like an ancient, demonic beast of ice and shadows was tearing something to shreds.

"Heavens..." a disciple whispered, trembling. "What is that terrifying sound?"

"It’s coming from Clear Cloud Peak!" another shouted. "That’s Senior Brother Su’s mountain!"

Standing near the edge of the training grounds, Liu Meng dropped her training sword. Her face completely drained of color as the roaring grew louder.

’Senior Brother Su!’ she gasped internally. ’He had locked the peak down today. Was it because a demonic beast had invaded? Was he fighting for his life to protect the sect from an invisible threat?!’

Without hesitating, Liu Meng spun around and bolted toward the main pavilion. She threw herself to her knees in front of an austere, gray-haired man holding a teacup.

"Master!" Liu Meng cried. "Please! You must go to Clear Cloud Peak! A terrifying demonic beast has invaded, and Senior Brother Su is trapped inside with it! He might die!"

Elder Qin of Verdant Peak frowned, placing his teacup down. He felt the chilling Yin energy radiating through the air from miles away.

"Such dense Demonic Yin Qi," Elder Qin muttered. His expression turned grave. "To bypass the grand arrays... this beast must be at the peak of Foundation Establishment, perhaps even Golden Core! Stay here, Meng’er. I will go assist Martial Nephew Su!"

Elder Qin summoned his flying sword and shot into the sky like a bolt of green lightning. His spiritual aura erupted in full force as he prepared for a deadly battle.

***

Back at Clear Cloud Peak, Su Bai let out one final, thoroughly satisfying sigh.

He patted his stomach, wincing slightly at the fresh bruises forming there. It was completely flat. The bottleneck was cleared. His spirit root had finally finished refining the remaining energy and deposited it safely into his Dantian.

He checked his internal cultivation.

5th Stage of Qi Refining.

He had jumped almost an entire major realm in a single day. He hadn’t reached Foundation Establishment because he had quite literally burped out half the pill’s raw energy, but the 5th Stage was incredible! He finally had enough refined Qi to properly use low-level spells and activate array formations.

Su Bai smiled and opened his eyes.

His smile immediately vanished.

The front half of his courtyard looked like a frozen apocalypse. The grass was shattered black glass. His favorite flat stone was encased in two feet of jagged ice. The trees were frozen solid.

"Ah," Su Bai’s voice was hoarse from the frost. "I might have overdone the exhaust."

Just then, his Peak Master token vibrated wildly in his robes.

Su Bai grabbed it, sending a tiny thread of his newly restored Qi into the jade. A projection of the mountain’s array appeared in his mind.

Someone was rapidly ascending the mountain. Not a disciple, but an Elder. A furious, fully armed Elder radiating killing intent.

It was Elder Qin from Verdant Peak.

Su Bai looked at the terrifying winter wonderland he had just created by burping. He then looked down at his own body and pristine white robes.

"Well," Su Bai muttered, rubbing his temples. "How exactly am I going to explain this to HR?"