Qi Cultivation Starting from the Repair Panel

This time, the Great Realm where Chu Zheng's avatar was undergoing tribulation was somewhat special, with very peculiar Heaven and Earth Laws, thus nurturing some very strange living creatures.

The battle armor absorbed the essence of flesh and blood, and such acts of spirit communication and demon transformation were very rare in the Great Universe.

Most weapon armors of high quality possessed self-awareness. These Spiritual Treasures could absorb the essence of flesh and blood to nourish themselves, but Chu Zheng's current avatar situation was entirely different.

When Chu Zheng first inherited the Taixuan Divine Fire Scripture, he used the power of the Tongxuan Spiritual Treasure to assist him in crossing his first great tribulation.

But even if weapons possessed spiritual awareness, they remained weapons. Even with immense power, upon reaching the Eighth Order, they would be shackled, unable to exhibit their full power without a living being to control them.

This was because in the Great Universe, no weapon could actively occupy a share of Heavenly Fate. Without anyone paving the way, upon reaching the Eighth Order, they would naturally revert to their original state, losing the ability to move freely.

However, Chu Zheng's current situation was entirely different. Under the peculiar Heaven and Earth Laws, his armor fused with the flesh and blood of a living creature, making him a new kind of living being.

From an inanimate object to a living creature, it was a fundamental transformation.

Originally, Chu Zheng had not thought about becoming an Armor Demon, but the environment of this place provided him with such a possibility.

Initially, he only wanted to experiment, never expecting that he would truly turn a set of battle armor into an avatar.

At this moment, his state was very mystical. Relying on the tendrils extending from the gaps in the armor, he continuously communicated with Heaven and Earth, absorbing the Heaven and Earth Primordial Qi.

The Heaven and Earth Primordial Qi seemed very compatible with him, with no barriers to refining, but the absorption efficiency was extremely low, vastly different from the Qi-refining Technique in terms of cultivation.

Even with the intent to actively control and absorb spiritual energy, it would take at least a thousand years to form enough combat power to transcend the tribulation, which translates to about ten years in the Great Universe.

Chu Zheng found this growth rate somewhat unacceptable.

In another three or four years, he would have to enter the Boundary Battlefield, and this speed was something he couldn't afford to wait for.

At most, three to four hundred years, he must push the combat power of this avatar to the Eighth Order.

Chu Zheng wasted no time and began to deduce a suitable method for operation.

However, this time the difficulty was a hundred times greater than when he had the Spirit Tree Avatar.

The Spirit Tree had the Spirit Vortex as its foundation, but this Armor Demon, a bizarre entity, had no concept of spiritual power flow, and even its form was unstable.

Although it appeared as battle armor now, in fact, the interior of the armor had long decayed, essentially just a mass of writhing flesh.

Despite this, Chu Zheng gritted his teeth and started to delve deeply into research.

In the blink of an eye, more than twenty years had passed.

Chu Zheng gained nothing and had no choice but to give up. He stopped pursuing this dead-end and left the battlefield, beginning to seek a new direction.

There was no need to waste time in this place.

In this Great Realm, the Hundred Countries were in a state of fragmentation and frequent warfare, city massacres and village annihilations were common sights, and scenes of corpse mountains and seas of blood were everywhere.

Major countries, hidden behind the scenes, manipulated the small countries to fight each other, thereby plundering resources and population on a large scale to continuously grow stronger.

Armor Demons like Chu Zheng could also be frequently seen.

Broken battle armors enveloping mutilated corpses roamed the battlefields, acting on instinct, attacking the living out of a thirst for fresh blood, and seeking new bodies to continue wandering.

In general, Armor Demons used corpses as their vessels, surviving and growing through a form of parasitism.

As time passed, the bodies that Armor Demons inhabited would become ever stronger, and their combat power would naturally increase accordingly.

This realization gave Chu Zheng some inspiration. He could look for a suitable body to try opening the meridians and operating the Qi-refining Technique.

Given the Armor Demon's affinity for the spiritual energy of this Great Realm, as long as he could operate the Qi-refining Technique, he was confident he could grow rapidly in a short time.

Chu Zheng spent several years crossing vast battlefields, attempting to parasitize corpses, but the results were ultimately unsatisfactory.

The corpses' Primordial Spirits had perished, and their Yang Qi was lost. Even with forced control, he could only absorb Yin Qi, which was different from the path of the zombie he had walked previously. Chu Zheng was now an Armor Demon, a living creature, not in a divine soul state.

The environment and Heaven and Earth Laws of this realm were also inappropriate for the growth of the zombie lineage.

Thus, he could only look for a living host. However, the parasitic method of an Armor Demon was very different from possession; it was a symbiotic relationship with the corpse.

Corpses did not speak or resist, but the living would.

Faced with this dilemma, Chu Zheng quickly made a decision. After one last attempt, if it truly failed, he would abandon the Armor Demon body and find a new path.

Months later, Chu Zheng stopped in a mountain forest, following the scent of blood to a mass burial mound.

Two soldiers in armor were each holding a leg, dragging a young man whose blood had turned the dirt to mud.

The young man was not yet utterly dead, gasping hoarsely with a sword wound through his heart and lungs, his body pierced by more than a dozen feathered arrows.

Chu Zheng's eyes flickered, finding a suitable candidate.

People willing to share their bodies with an alien species were not easy to find, except for those on the brink of death, hovering at the edge of the Yellow Springs.

Chu Zheng waited for a moment, and as soon as the two soldiers left, he transformed into a wisp of black light, gradually enveloping the young man's body, completely consuming him.

The young man struggled to open his eyes, staring at the dim sky, his pupils unfocused. Amidst the blur, a voice echoed from the depths of his heart:

"I can save your life, but you'll have to give me half of your body. Do you agree?"

The young man widened his eyes, pupils contracting, and summoned his last breath, his voice barely audible:

"I agree..."

As long as he could live, any price was worth it.

As the words fell, the black light emerged from the young man's body, forcibly lifting him. The sword wound through his heart and lungs healed in an instant, and the arrows embedded in him were consumed by the black light.

Before the young man could regain his senses, the voice from before sounded again:

"From today onwards, you are called Chu Zheng. I will give you strength and help you do anything you want, in exchange, your life belongs to me. How long you live depends on your fate."

In the next moment, the young man's face twisted in intense pain, his chest as if something was prying it open. The pitch-black breastplate grew like a second layer of ribs, pushing aside the flesh and emerging.

This sensation was extremely bizarre. He could seemingly feel every piece of armor growing.

His shoulders connected to his collarbones gradually swelled, pushing out dragon head carvings, while the scales that appeared between his ribs overlapped like dragon scales.

A layer of black light extended from his spine, with three-inch iron spikes popping out from each vertebra. When the final neck armor completely locked in place, the chilling metal pressed against his Adam's apple, and a strong scent of blood filled his nostrils.

This scent of blood did not disgust him; instead, it was refreshing, like drinking nectar and divine dew.

The pitch-black tendrils had already silently invaded every part of the young man's body, converting his meridians completely into part of Chu Zheng.

With this, Chu Zheng finally sensed the path for operating the Qi-refining Technique, and he had an even greater gain.

Now, he and the host were one. If the avatar's tribulation was effective, even if the host died during the ordeal, he would still have enough room for maneuver, and could even seek a new host again.

If everything went well this time, his gains might be far greater than they were in the Spirit Moon Great Realm.