Chapter 41: An Incredible Change

Afterward, the old man personally placed the delivered nutritional supplements and potent medicinal decoctions within Li Qi's line of sight. Throughout the entire process, the old man did not make the slightest sound; he even restrained his life magnetic field to the absolute extreme, fearing he might cause the slightest disturbance.

Yet, Li Qi did not touch the potent medicines at all. While they were indeed fine treasures, they were unsuited for him at present. His current life state had reached a certain threshold, and the medicinal potency was simply too fierce; using them now would cause more harm than good.

Thus, starting from five o'clock in the afternoon, Li Qi remained inside the room, doing nothing but eating and drinking. Eventually, the temperature of the entire room rose by more than a dozen degrees because of him, as if a massive heater had been turned on.

His body grew more robust at a pace almost visible to the naked eye, and even his height began to increase.

This rate of growth was utterly inexplicable by traditional life science.

At its peak, Li Qi's height shot up directly from one meter seventy-two to nearly two meters. The flesh, blood, tendons, and bones across his body expanded until he looked like a giant. As for his weight, it soared from the original one hundred and forty catties to nearly three hundred catties.

Growing to double one's body weight in six hours—if anyone claimed he was not a cyborg now, no one would believe it. Normal human beings simply did not grow like this.

Had Li Qi been conscious at that moment, he might even have begun to doubt whether he was still human.

One must know that even cancer cells, which possess the fastest cell division rate, require twelve hours to divide once. As for growing back to their original size after division, it takes nearly four days.

Yet now, Li Qi had doubled his mass in just six hours, and this was not some disorderly, chaotic growth, but an entirely methodical process.

When the six hours had passed, Li Qi was still eating, and the portion size of the food he consumed continued to increase. At that moment, it seemed as though he intended to make up for all the nutrition he had lacked during his growth over the past sixteen years in one go.

For ordinary people, that prolonged period of growth and development almost never allows anyone to eat fully and sufficiently at every single meal. They either eat too much or too little, worn down by various unhealthy lifestyle habits.

Almost no one can ever grow to their own ideal state.

In fact, under ideal conditions, everyone's height should be able to increase by at least five centimeters, and it would be quite normal for their appearance to improve by one or two stages.

Yet the reason the ideal remains ideal is precisely because it is so difficult to attain.

Only an extremely small minority—those who have enjoyed the care of professional teams since childhood, or those raised from youth by masters who comprehended the essence of life—could possibly achieve such a feat.

Li Qi naturally possessed neither of these advantages.

Yet at this moment, things had changed. Li Qi had suddenly grown to nearly two meters tall, transforming into a robust powerhouse. If his image at this moment were placed in his past life, absolutely no one would think Xiang Yu was mightier than him.

However, as time flowed on, Li Qi's physique began to shrink, growing smaller all over, as if an invisible hammer was constantly pounding his body, tempering it through a thousand refinements!

Meanwhile, Li Qi continued to consume food endlessly.

Under this state, the density of the cells in Li Qi's body, along with the density of every organ and every life system composed of those cells, was increasing.

The changes in the density of his bones and muscles were the most dramatic, while the rest were slightly smaller.

At this stage, this was no longer merely compensating for innate deficiencies; this was evolution!

Under such circumstances, even the adipose structure composed of fat cells inside Li Qi's body underwent certain adjustments. It was no longer a low-density structure suited for rapid combustion and energy release, but rather a high-density, tough, and elastic fascial tissue.

If an ordinary person's fat cells were to transform into this structure, the conversion of fat would become several times more difficult, their body's energy supply would fail to keep up with consumption, and they would ultimately starve to death.

Yet at this moment, Li Qi's entire bodily state was transforming, all his cells following some obscure blueprint of life, evolving toward a superior structure.

It was not until nine o'clock the next morning—a full sixteen hours later—that Li Qi's consciousness finally returned.

At this moment, his height had shrunk to one meter seventy-eight, not even reaching one meter eighty. It was utterly incomparable to the two-meter peak of yesterday, but in this state, he was terrifyingly powerful.

As for his muscle lines, compared to before, the size of every muscle across his body had increased by nearly twofold, yet they did not appear bloated in the slightest. Every single muscle clung tightly to his bones like a suit of armor.

His skin, moreover, was as delicate and smooth as white jade, with pores reduced to the absolute minimum, entirely invisible to the naked eye.

Li Qi was not wearing any clothes at the time; early on, in order to dissipate heat, he had instinctively cast them off.

Yet precisely because of this, he had saved his clothes.

Otherwise, the subsequent expansion of his physique would have utterly destroyed them.

At this moment, Li Qi looked around the room, and it was in complete disarray.

The walls of the entire room were coated with a layer of black substance, resembling a mixture of grease and grime. On the floor, furthermore, lay numerous blackish-grey fragments. The substance on the walls consisted of the waste products generated yesterday when his body underwent intense metabolism—matter left behind after dead cells decomposed and were expelled with sweat, unable to be converted into nutrients. In addition to this, there were residues from all the artificial additives and processed foods consumed over the years that had remained trapped in his body and difficult to metabolize.

The debris on the floor consisted of much the same material. Amidst that drastic remodeling, the cells within his body had rapidly iterated, staging a miracle of life. A portion of useless matter was vaporized away with the sweaty steam, while another portion, too rapid to be vaporized, had seeped directly out through his skin.

As for Li Qi, now fully awake, he felt as though he had split into two yesterday: one self had dreamed a wonderful dream, while the other self had undergone a truly miraculous transformation of life.

Such a transformation simply should not have occurred at his level of cultivation.

A single severing of demonic tribulations naturally brought immense benefits, but it should not have been this wondrous and divine.

True, a sufficiently powerful spirit and mind would alter the physical form, but his own spirit and mind were still far from being powerful enough to reach such a realm.

As Li Qi breathed now, he felt as though the airflow no longer merely reached his lower dantian, but circulated throughout his entire body. It felt as though every single cell was breathing.

At the same time, his physique felt unprecedentedly pure and light, as if no undesirable elements remained within his body whatsoever.

Utterly pure and untainted, he felt like a newborn infant, innocent and pristine.

His entire being felt as if it had just rolled off the assembly line, free of any wear and tear or erosion.

With this thought in mind, Li Qi first looked toward the system log interface, figuring he would find the answers there.