Chapter status: Unedited
“Most important of all——I am still alive!
“I am still alive!!”
The happiness of surviving made Zhen Jin repeat himself.
For a time, Zhen Jin thought he was finished!
Ever since Zhen Jin had regained consciousness, he had gone through several life and death experiences and had always been touched by joy every time he survived.
Hu, hu……
Zhen Jin gasped as he gradually calmed down.
His shoulder blade was in constant pain.
His joy and happiness faded as the youth clenched his teeth, tore a strip of his clothing off, and dressed his wound.
The cloth acted as a bandage and immediately turned red when it covered the wound.
Zhen Jin wrapped the cloth around his armpit, bit one end with his teeth, and then tied it tightly using his hands.
A burst of pain made his eyes darken.
The youngster sucked in a breath of cold air and after enduring for several seconds, the pain weakened somewhat .
He wiped the cold sweat from his forehead while constantly gasping for breath.
After a long time, his eyes refocused.
The erect tail in front of him attracted his gaze.
The scorpion tail seemed to glitter like gold.
Zhen Jin had suffered much from scorpion tails. But now he actually had one.
It was a fantastic feeling.
With a thought, Zhen Jin made the tail stay perfectly straight and motionless, as if it were a bamboo pole.
With another thought, Zhen Jin made the scorpion tail bend and undulate like a wave.
It was just like moving an arm or a finger!
“Although it is a long tail, it still feels as if it were a part of my original body.”
Zhen Jin again touched the scorpion tail with his hand.
The ice-cold and hard feeling subsequently passed on into his heart.
“But the scorpion tail does not have a sense of touch.”
Zhen Jin lowered his head and looked towards his chest.
His stomach had a carapace that seemed to be a natural layer of armor that tightly fit to his body.
Zhen Jin felt the carapace on his stomach and sensed that it was the exact same as touching the scorpion tail.
“It's the same, the carapace also did not feel as if it was touched.”
“But previously when the carapace protected me from the scorpion tails, I clearly felt the impact of the attack. In other words, a sense of touch isn’t missing. I merely cannot sense the light force of my touch.
Humans had many senses.
The main ones were sight, hearing, taste, and touch.
Most beasts had carapaces, fur, or feathers. Compared to them, humans had sparse hair and tender skin, thus the defensive abilities of humans were low.
But at the same time, human skin and their minute hairs gave men a relatively keen sense of touch. Sometimes humans can quickly sense when a mosquito lands on them.
A scorpion’s carapace’s sense of touch is inferior to a human’s. However the defensive strength of a scorpion carapace dwarfed the human body.
“This scorpion carapace saved my life!”
Without the carapace, he would have been penetrated by the scorpion tails.
Zhen Jin tried again to look inside himself.
It went without a hitch!
Without any hindrance, he looked at the magic crystal in his heart once again.
The magic crystal constantly flickered with blood light as it was constantly being consumed to silently support Zhen Jin’s present transformations.
Zhen Jin’s eyes flashed as he tried to stop the magic crystal’s current consumption.
In a moment, the magic crystal’s radiance quickly weakened and completely ceased in less than a breath.
Without the mysterious crystal core’s support, Zhen Jin’s carapace and scorpion tail rapidly turned black and then carbonized. In the blink of an eye, the transformed tissue fell to the floor as ash.
Shortly after, a sense of weakness gushed from the bottom of Zhen Jin’s heart.
Regarding this sensation, Zhen Jin was already very familiar with it.
He had felt it after his hands transformed, when his arms transformed, and also when he took the emetic potion.
Zhen Jin lowered his head and looked at his chest.
The scorpion armor had already dissipated without a trace and revealed that his toned pectoral muscles were uninjured..
Of course, the pectoral muscles were not massive.
“I am only sixteen years old; I am still growing.”
Zhen Jin inspected his chest and did not detect any abnormal changes left behind.
After that, he stretched out a hand and touched his buttocks.
His trousers had a hole torn into it.
It was where the scorpion tail had sprouted from.
Zhen Jin touched his tailbone.
It was completely normal.
Zhen Jin quietly relaxed.
He once again attentively focused on the magic core in his heart.
He discovered that the more he focused on the mysterious and fantastic magic core, the more clearly he felt its state.
After reaching a certain level of clarity, Zhen Jin was able to sense the magic core’s remaining power.
“If the degree and duration of transformation was the same……I would roughly be able to transform two more times.” Zhen Jin naturally concluded. Furthermore, his intuition told him this calculation was correct.
“I will be very powerful after transforming.”
“But the number of times I can transform is limited. It cannot allow me to transform infinitely.
“The inherent cause of this is the magic core’s finite power.”
Zhen Jin’s eyes twinkled with light as he pondered.
“I am not only restricted in this aspect.”
“There is still another restriction——I can only transform a scorpion carapace and tail.
He could not transform the large scorpion pincers.
“Wait a minute! This is?” Zhen Jin's perception deepened; he found another new discovery.
The youngster's face flashed with a cheerful look.
Because he found: he could not only transform into a scorpion, he could transform into a monkey bear again!
But like the scorpion, he could only transform the bear’s claws and arms, but not into the rest of the monkey bear.
“Besides the monkey bear, I can also transform into a fire-poison bee?!”
One new discovery after the other.
Following Zhen Jin’s thoughts, the magic core activated quickly.
Zhen Jin understood the scorpion and monkey bear transformations. For the other transformations, he needed to try and experience them for himself.
He could not conserve energy on this.
A fire-poison bee transformation soon appeared!
Zhen Jin looked at his hand.
The back of his hand rapidly turned black and yellow while being covered in a layer of fuzzy hair.
This was the hair of a fire-poison bee and was striped like a zebra, only with yellow and black.
“I can cover all of my skin in this fuzzy hair. But doing that will consume even more energy.”
Zhen Jin immediately deactivated the magic core and a similar scene played out once more.
The fire-poison bee hair quickly withered into ash and fell into a pile.
Zhen Jin’s hand lightly trembled and as the ash fell, it exposed ordinary flesh that was exactly the same as before.
“Scorpion, monkey bear, fire-poison bee……I can even transform into a goat.”
But as for the goat transformation, Zhen Jin could only turn parts of his body into goat meat.
Compared to the other transformations, the value of that one was low.
Zhen Jin still tried a bit more.
“The transformed goat meat does not contain the chaotic magic power from before. That is normal as the goats only had it because they ate that grass.”
Stopping the magic core transformed the goat meat part back into normal human flesh.
“If I changed a part of my body into goat flesh and dug it out with a dagger, could I use it as food?”
“Could I eat myself?”
As Zhen Jin thought again, he shook his head.
Prior practice had already proved: parts that were transformed were supported by the magic core’s power and would quickly wither into ash.
So, eating himself would not work.
Just as Zhen Jin reached the limits of his investigation, he discovered he could transform into two additional things.
One was a type of moss.
The other was the green flesh of a lizard.
“What is this moss? After seeing the back of his hand transform, Zhen Jin immediately felt a familiarity with it.
In the next breath, he immediately recognized it.
“Is this the moss that poisoned me?”
It had been when he and Zi Di were exploring outside the monkey bear cave. During that time, he had gotten poisoned because his skin had rubbed off on the moss.
Zi Di had tried to detoxify him but could only alleviate the pain. They looked for the source of the poison and used the moss as a material to completely eradicate the poison from Zhen Jin.
“It is called the Poisonous Green Spot Moss.”
Zhen Jin remembered that after he had gotten poisoned, small green spots started growing on his face that didn’t make him feel any different.
Finally Zhen Jin also transformed his hand into the green lizard flesh.
It was the same as goat meat and had no practical value.
After feeling it, Zhen Jin’s understanding of the magic core deepened.
“It seems that after the magic core absorbs external life, it is transformed and stored in the magic core, that can be used to transform into any part of that lifeform.”
“But why can I change into these but not into the evil blue wolf, python vine, scaled leopard, or sword spider?”
Reflecting upon this, Zhen Jin came up with an answer.
“The scorpion……is it because I activated my magic core to draw out all of its life?
“The monkey bear……is it because when Zi Di treated me, she imbued me with large quantities of bear blood?”
“I ate some goat meat. Likewise lizard meat. Recently, lizard meat has been my primary food source.”
CHAPTER STATUS: UNEDITED
“However I also ate viper meat, flying squirrel meat, as well as some scorpions and spiders. Maybe I didn’t eat enough of them.”
As for the fire-poison bee?
“I was poisoned. My body once contained a large quantity of fire-poison, even to an extent that I was on the edge of death.”
“Both poison and flesh entered my body. From that point of view, both are indistinguishable.”
“Therefore it seems the magic core has been quietly absorbing everything coming in.
“As for the other magic beasts, although I have encountered them, I did not touch them closely. The evil blue wolf, the gigantic lava turtle, and the python vines are like this.
Thinking of this, Zhen Jin received another valuable conjecture.
“Currently it seems the things the magic core absorbs and transforms into are all living beings.”
“The magic core cannot absorb pure magic power.”
Zhen Jin’s previous “cold-poison” was internal chaotic magic power. But that magic power was not absorbed or changed by the magic core, or else he would not have been poisoned.
“So the function of my heart’s magic core is roughly this: to forcibly absorb and transform living beings into a special and mysterious magic energy. If this magic is activated, it can transform the human body into the forms and tissues of the life forms it has absorbed.”
Notes
If you were wondering what is going on between “magic crystal” and “magic core”, well the character used for “crystal” is “晶” while core is “核”. Towards the middle of the chapter, the author transitions from using 晶 to using 核 by referring to the bloodcore as “the crystal core”. Magic crystals are associated with magic beasts while the core in Zhen Jin is something completely different. There are many translations for “核” actually. Some candidates I thought about include, stone, nucleus, and core. After careful consideration, I felt that “core” suited it the best. That in part, led to the title change that occurred around when chapter 20 something released.