The Undying Live Forever Technique had three stages, and Bai Xiaochun was now, against all probability, advancing to the second.

Iron Skin was the first stage — hardening the body to resist physical harm. The second stage was called Silver Skin, and it did more than resist. It absorbed. Spiritual energy, physical impacts, even elemental damage — all of it could be drawn into the cultivator's body and converted into fuel for further cultivation. In theory, a Silver Skin cultivator could survive almost anything and become stronger from the experience.

In theory.

In practice, the breakthrough to Silver Skin required the cultivator to endure something that would kill a normal Iron Skin cultivator, absorb it, and survive the conversion process. The technique manual listed several suggested catalysts, including dragon fire, celestial lightning, and — Bai Xiaochun's personal least favorite — 'the concentrated hatred of an entire sect.'

'I could just not break through,' Bai Xiaochun told the manual. 'I could just stay at Iron Skin and be fine.'

The manual did not respond, being paper.

But cultivation, Bai Xiaochun was learning, didn't work that way. Once you opened a path, you had to walk it. Staying in place was not an option — the spiritual pressure of your own advancement would eventually force you forward or crush you. The choice was breakthrough or breakdown.

He decided to try the breakthrough with a catalyst he could control: the concentrated flame energy of the Spirit Stream Sect's Volcano Formation, a natural spiritual furnace that disciples used for fire-attributed cultivation. It wasn't dragon fire, but it was hot enough to melt rock.

Bai Xiaochun stepped into the Volcano Formation and immediately regretted every decision that had brought him to this moment.

The heat hit his Iron Skin like a physical blow, penetrating past the hardened outer layer and sinking into his meridians. His body screamed. His cultivation base flared. And somewhere in the agony, something began to change — his skin taking on a faint silver sheen, his meridians absorbing the fire instead of burning.