It was night-time. Jun Xiaomo lay on the bed, holding onto the jade bottle given by He Zhang. She smirked to herself, yet her eyes gave off a sense of coldness to them.

She opened the bottle cap, and a waft of medicinal scent diffused into the surrounding air. Jun Xiaomo tipped out one medicinal pill, and promptly replaced the bottle cap. The medicinal pill had a jet-black sheen to it. She toyed with the medicinal pill between her finger, examining it.

“Refining a variant Marrow-Cleansing Bone-Refining Pill using Spirit-Erosion Grass. It truly is remarkable.” Jun Xiaomo sneered, her cold voice echoing throughout the otherwise pin-drop silent room.

“It seems that martial uncle really pulled out all the stops here.” Jun Xiaomo snorted. Without any hesitation, she tossed the pill directly into her mouth, swallowed it, and braced herself in anticipation for the accompanying pain that came in tandem with the marrow-cleansing and bone-refining effects of the pill. 

After receiving punishment from the Sect Elders in her previous life, she had remained comatose for a much longer time and nearly even succumbed to her injuries then. It was only after He Zhang gave Liu Qingmei a similar type of medication to be fed to Jun Xiaomo that she began to recover.

Presently, even though Jun Xiaomo had at her fingertips many more ways of spurring her recovery process in a gentler and more stable manner, she nevertheless decided to consume the “Sagely Recovery Pill” given by He Zhang.

Even though the recovery process would be much more painful, the upside was that it vastly shortened the recovery time.

More importantly, the pill would also completely transform her body from the present half-human and half-demonic state to a full-fledged demonic body, maximizing her compatibility with demonic cultivation arts.

How ironic. In her past life, even though she devoted much of her entire life searching far and wide for the root cause of her body’s transformation to a demonic body, she never came close to solving this mystery. Yet in her present life, she had solved this unanswered mystery in just a few moments.

Perhaps He Zhang was somehow involved in instigating her to enter the Sect’s forbidden grounds. Otherwise, how would one explain the mysterious origins of the demonic energy in her body?

Jun Xiaomo chuckled coldly, mentally adding another entry against He Zhang in her ledger of charges against her enemies.

If Jun Xiaomo did not have the fortune of retaining the memories of her past life, she would definitely have fallen prey to He Zhang’s schemes again – from the involuntarily eruption of demonic energy from within her body, to the ensuing persecution. But now…things are going to be so different from what that hypocrite expects.

Within moments, a marrow-piercing pain swept across Jun Xiaomo’s entire body. That feeling of having her bones shattered all at once caused her to involuntarily collapse on the bed, sweating profusely. Jun Xiaomo tightly gnashed her teeth yet made not one single peep of sound.

Half an incense…one incense…after three full incense of time later, the excruciating pain finally subsided. Looking with disgust at the filth now covering her body, Jun Xiaomo quickly soaked herself into her bath filled with water.

After washing herself, Jun Xiaomo clambered back onto her bed and began meditating again.

He Zhang had not been lying when he had said that this jet-black pill was a “Sagely Recovery Pill”. At the very least, its effects were apparent. If one were to say that half of Jun Xiaomo’s meridians had been blocked because of her injuries before this, then right now the number of blockages had effectively halved. At the same time, the demonic energy within her body had consolidated and thickened by a few times. Yet even then, it gently fused with her spiritual energy and was barely discernable.

After thoroughly absorbing the medicinal effects, Jun Xiaomo slowly released her meditative state and opened her eyes. She clenched her fist. Yes, the frailty that she had experienced with her body during the day had completely vanished. Even though she was still experiencing some lingering pains, this was still well within Jun Xiaomo’s pain-tolerance levels.

Jun Xiaomo picked up the jade bottle, tossed it in the air and firmly caught it with her hand.

He Zhang had mentioned that she was to take one pill a day, and she would have fully recovered within a month. That is to say, the jade bottle must contain enough medicine for at least one month.

Based on the effects of the medicine earlier, her meridians and Dantian would be completely transformed within one month. Her body constitution would then become fully compatible with demonic cultivation, and completely incompatible with spiritual cultivation.

In her previous life, even after her body was artificially transformed into a demonic body, she ignorantly continued to practice spiritual cultivation. Naturally, her cultivation progress came to a complete halt because her meridians were no longer suitable for the flow of spiritual energy. But now… Jun Xiaomo’s lips curled up with a wry smile, and her eyes gleamed coldly.

The acquisition of her demonic body was the first step in her journey to become the strongest cultivator.

This time, she would once again stand at the peak of the world with insurmountable strength, and no one would be able to harm her or anyone whom she loved and cared for!

……

A month passed by in the blink of an eye. Within this last month, Jun Xiaomo practically lived in seclusion. Apart from the necessities of eating and sleeping, her life comprised only of taking her medicine and meditation. She even turned down offers to visit her, including offers made by the enemies of her previous life.

Compared with the strength of some of these cultivators, the present Jun Xiaomo was like an ant in front of a towering tree. It would be wishful thinking to even attempt to stir the leaves of the tree. Therefore, Jun Xiaomo decided not to engage in these affairs for now.

With a resolute fixation on recovering and establishing a stable foundation for her cultivation, Jun Xiaomo had closed herself off to all visitors so that no one would be able to disturb her.

After consuming the last medicinal pill in the jade bottle, Jun Xiaomo activated the demonic energy within her body, sending the demonic energy coursing throughout her meridians for an entire day, until the demonic energy finally returned to her Dantian.

Yes, the energy Jun Xiaomo now operated was demonic energy, not spiritual energy. Even though her body still contained both spiritual and demonic energy, her body had already become a fully-fledged demonic body five days ago. Therefore, spiritual energy was no longer useful to her.

Of course, this were only the case until she began to cultivate the refinement technique from her past life, the Nineform Spirituo-Demonic Refinement Technique. With this refinement technique, Jun Xiaomo would be able to freely convert the spiritual energy within her body to demonic energy, and vice versa. Jun Xiaomo had only obtained this refinement technique through a serendipitous encounter in her previous life, where she had almost even lost her life because of it.  

Unfortunately, this refinement technique carried with it too many restrictions and conditions, including a restriction on age. One of the conditions was that the practitioner had to be under eighteen years of age and have an artificially acquired demonic body. Back then, Jun Xiaomo had already exceeded this age restriction by the time she acquired this refinement technique. Therefore, she had no choice but to simply set it aside in her Interspatial Ring.

She might even have been a little dissatisfied and sore about not qualifying to practice that refinement technique back then. This was because despite so, she would nevertheless from time to time retrieve it from her Interspatial Ring and pore through it, until the technique was finally fully etched in her mind. At that time, she never imagined that she would be given a second shot at life and that this technique would in fact come in handy!

This was a completely fortuitous turn of events!

Jun Xiaomo recalled to mind and traversed the detailed particulars of the Nineform Spirituo-Demonic Refinement Technique. However, she did not immediately dive headlong into practicing it. She could not, because this refinement technique was very demanding. One of the other conditions was that she would have to cripple all her present cultivation progress and restart from scratch. 

In other words, Jun Xiaomo had to give up her eighth level of Qi Mastery which she had painstakingly acquired to date!

In this realm of cultivation, achieving the eighth level of Qi Mastery at the tender age of sixteen years was no mean feat. Yet, now that she was faced with the prospects of giving it all up, it seemed to be quite the waste. Furthermore, Jun Xiaomo had never heard anyone in this cultivation world talk about or even mention this Nineform Spirituo-Demonic Refinement Technique, and it was impossible to gauge whether it was a tried and tested technique or otherwise. Unfortunately, apart from Jun Xiaomo herself, there seemed to be no other person qualified to practice such a refinement technique. At least, not after searching through the memories of her past life.

Therefore, she could not ask anyone about this.

It was a gamble. If she succeeds, her path of cultivation would become much smoother. However, if she failed, she might even find herself in a more dangerous predicament than her previous life!

Forget it. High risk begets high rewards. Jun Xiaomo silently considered, before deciding that she had to take the gamble.

Crippling one’s own energy arts is never a simple thing; it carried many dangers. In order to cater for the unexpected, Jun Xiaomo had to prepare some recovery pills and medication for emergency use.

Fortunately, these pills and medications were not hard to obtain, and could be easily purchased at the markets. Jun Xiaomo’s Interspatial Ring also contained numerous spiritual stones given by her parents.

So, after closing herself in as a hermit for over one month, Jun Xiaomo finally stepped out of her room for the first time in a long while.