Fast!
Wei Wuyin's body kicked off explosively, his legs pumped, his heart throbbed, and his arms swung as he ran violently across the surface of the Agonized Road. Each stride propelled him hundreds of steps, and a torrential outpour of hellfire followed after. The raging storms of flames were mercilessly swift, and despite Wei Wuyin's greatest efforts, they continuously devoured him after each of his steps.
WHOOSH!
He blitzed out of each storm a literal skeleton with only a few meaty bits that were extra resilient! Then, almost instantly, Wei Wuyin's blood, muscles, skin, and hair regrew to a complete recovery. The surface of which had a silvery glow that lingered.
Almost immediately after, those fleshy parts of him melted down by a ravenous tempest of hellfire, seeping into his jet-black bones with a reddish-golden molten glow.
HUMMM!
The hums of a blade were incessant! Wei Wuyin's brain was spurting out blade light that could cut souls apart, yet it refused to allow the blade lodged into it to escape! It healed, was destroyed, and healed again!
Wei Wuyin's thoughts were blank; he moved solely on instinct as his ability to properly convey a meaningful thought was continuously eviscerated by the blade light. In fact, Wei Wuyin wasn't moving his body at all.
The four Astral Souls tethered to his soul were acting!
"Move the left leg! Left leg! Now, swing the right arm! Right leg next! REMEMBER NOT TO BREATHE!" Eden led the three other Astral Souls to orchestrate Wei Wuyin's sprint.
"Oops!" Ori exclaimed as she regulated Wei Wuyin's bodily balance to sustain his condition, such as moisture, heat, and bio-electrical impulses through lightning. Unfortunately, she caused Wei Wuyin to instinctively breathe in as he shuttled through a storm of hellfire around the 200,000th step. The hellfire rushed into his lungs to burn them to a crisp, influencing his heart which remained one of the few constants of his endlessly healing body.
"King!" Eden shouted urgently.
King's Omega Saber Soul Light flared out as it rushed into the heart, causing the grayish heart to violently throb as it entered. Using the annihilative properties of Omega Saber Soul Light, King handled the excess hellfire to prevent it from overwhelming Wei Wuyin and unintentionally killing Kratos.
"Sorry!" Ori said earnestly. Unfortunately, the hellfire was becoming increasingly pervasive and kept infiltrating Wei Wuyin's lungs. While these lungs were burnt, they hadn't been incinerated into nothingness but melted away instead. Then, the Mark of Eden would revitalize these melted organs while under Ori's Wood Origin Growth properties and Eden's ability of transformation and fusion would reshape it. As such, every burnt lung was always his original lung.
This was an incredibly complex process that Wei Wuyin, no, a peak Mystic Ascendant Realm cultivator, wouldn't be able to perform with their limited conscious thought. The entire process required the Spirits of Cultivation's near-instantaneous ability to react and manipulate their powers without obstructions while being able to perform their jobs independently.
Eden led the three others, managed the Mark of Eden, and assisted the regrowth process.
Ori was tasked with stabilizing Wei Wuyin's physical condition and handling the regrowth process.
King eradicated any excess hellfire and blade light that invaded vital areas that could affect the brain, heart, genitalia, or Outer Shell of the Soul.
Kratos controlled the body's movements! Without its incredible effort, Wei Wuyin would be standing still, unable to think with a blade embedded into his brain! He might as well be dead!
Wei Wuyin had complete trust in his four Astral Souls!
Long ago, Wei Wuyin had learned a little about the Calamities of Hell, obtaining slight clues from that Heavenly Seer that followed Long Chen—Ming Shufeng. Since then, he's been plotting this exact strategy with continuous practice!
Furthermore, Wen Mingna had allowed him to make it less of a race to the finish line with unknown variables to a race with all variables known and able to devise appropriate strategies. It was her amazing gift of knowledge that allowed Wei Wuyin to have 100% confidence in overcoming this Calamity of Hell! Moreover, he was striving to conquer it!
400,000 Steps!
The heat at the moment was at such a level that Wei Wuyin's bones were melted liquid after exiting the various storms. If it wasn't for him tethering the blade to his brain, it would've returned to its home and, after a certain number of steps, would have grown stronger and cut with an even greater ferocity! If it did, just once, Wei Wuyin wouldn't be able to stop it from ending his life!
Unlike normal Sinner Souls experiencing the cleansing of Hell, Wei Wuyin was here via the Bloodline of Sin's profound powers, and Hell would eradicate him if he failed!
True death!
The Calamities of Hell weren't meant to be survived! They were meant to be resisted!
600,000!
Wei Wuyin hadn't even exceeded the 1% mark, but the blazing heat was so unbearably intense that each time Wei Wuyin leaped out of these maelstroms of hellfire, he would be in a semi-melted state. If it weren't for his Astral Souls ensuring his bones didn't drip off him in their liquefied state, he would've long become a puddle! Of course, this was his physical body, and hellfire was meant to target Souls. If not for this characteristic, Wei Wuyin's body wouldn't have the slightest chance of survival.
Mark of Eden!
By the 1,000,000th step, the Mark of Eden was carrying Wei Wuyin's survival by itself! The seemingly endless amounts of lifeforce were poured out at lightspeed, swiftly repairing the damage that was inflicted by the melting storms. One second, Wei Wuyin was a mostly melted skeleton, and the next second, he was completely normal with a three-foot blade embedded into his skull!
Again! Again! Again!
3,000,000 steps!
The Second Mind was no longer howling; it simply twitched erratically as it lay there in his Sea of Consciousness. The Second Mind's manifestation was highly unstable as it shifted from Wei Wuyin's human form to a mass of mental energy as swiftly as a flick of a light. Whenever it returned to its human form, it violently clutched its head as its mouth was wide open, yet no screams could be heard!
However, it held on!
It had to!
Should it fail to feel the pain for Wei Wuyin, then Wei Wuyin's Primary Mind would have to feel the pain, and not just Wei Wuyin would be affected but the four Astral Souls as well. Without the Astral Souls' delicately precise control over the recovery of his body, it would've long since been destroyed and his soul exposed, cleansed out of existence soon afterward.
No more Wei Wuyin.
No more Second Mind.
No more anything.
10,000,000 steps!
30,000,000 steps!
50,000,000 steps!
"AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!" The howl returned! The Second Mind was only a lump of mental energy at this point, teetering at the edge of complete dispersion, yet it howled! This wasn't out of pain, albeit the pain had reached a point where death felt sweet and comfy, but it was a howl of sheer unyielding willpower!
70,000,000 steps!
At this point, Wei Wuyin would become an amalgamation of melted bone, brain, heart, and genitalia! Each time he left a hellfire storm, he was a lump of remnant material that was no more than two feet tall with a blade stabbing through it. If it wasn't for the silvery light that glowed ferociously on the surface of this lump, it would have been impossible to tell it apart from the flames.
Then, his Mark of Eden would roar to life, and his flesh, bone, and blood would return as good as new! With the little time he had, he propelled himself forward before his foot melted entirely.
Wei Wuyin hadn't calculated that each time his body melted and regrew that his body would experience a type of metallic-like tempering that gave exceptional stability of shape and form! In fact, his body was growing resistant to hellfire and its absurdly high temperature! While having a fleshy body had its advantages, he couldn't fly in this strange dimension and felt incomparably heavy. If he was a soul, he would've been a hundred times faster!
100,000,000!!!
If the blade wasn't lodged into him, if it returned to the Agonized Road Dimension and grew stronger, Wei Wuyin's life would've been over in an instant! Even if he wanted to run to escape its edge, he simply wouldn't be fast enough. Only a True Soul of Sin with an Outer Shell of an existence at or beyond the Realm of Sages would have a chance of survival, and that depended on the level of progression their True Soul Refinement had reached!
Wei Wuyin was unaware of just how many Bloodline of Sin Inheritors had fallen to this Calamity of Hell! Those who were stronger than him, those who were more talented than him, and those who had far more Karmic Encounters than him! But they fell!
On this Agonized Road, they fell.
107,999,999!
The last step!
Wei Wuyin landed as the Mark of Eden dimmed considerably.
It didn't dim because of the lack of lifeforce; no, the Mark of Eden's reserves of lifeforce was indescribably vast. Wei Wuyin had to have expended at least tens of millions of years of unrefined lifeforce strands, yet he could feel that the Mark of Eden's reserves were still over half-full! It had dimmed because its job was over!
Wei Wuyin stood at the end of the Agonized Road; the blade embedded into his skull dissipated, the hellfire storms vanished, and the Agonized Road rapidly cooled into an inactive state.
Wei Wuyin stood upright without a scrap of cloth, infected by an unseen aura of pride and accomplishment. He looked back at the Agonized Road. It was extremely quiet.