Chapter 144: Breakthrough! Advanced Martial Master!

An ordinary person's body temperature rising by just three to five degrees would suffer from headaches, nausea, dehydration, and other symptoms. If the temperature were to rise by six degrees, it would be classified as a severe high fever, easily life-threatening! Yet, Catherine's body temperature at this moment was nearly twenty degrees higher, and she was still able to maintain vigorous physical strength to fight, a testament to the extraordinarily powerful tolerance of martial arts.

However, this tolerance had its limits after all. Rising body temperature brought not just the issue of heat, but more importantly, the disruption of the body's internal homeostasis. Internal organs—especially the heart, lungs, and liver—must operate within a relatively suitable homeostatic environment to function properly. Catherine could already feel her heartbeat beginning to become erratic, and her lips and fingertips starting to swell and turn purple. Watching documentaries about magical beasts in the past, she used to think creatures like the cheetah-like swift leopards were foolish; although they could reach speeds of three hundred and seventy kilometers per hour, if they ran a bit too long, they would literally bake themselves to death. And now, she had fallen into the exact same predicament! If she could not find a solution within a minute, she would surely die!

With no time for hesitation, Catherine had to resort to the most feasible method she could think of at the moment: gathering all the Flame of Anton in her body into her fists, and releasing it outward with a punching motion, executing the most fundamental fire-style technique given to her by Ling Mo:

One Hundred and Fourteenth Style: Serpent Wave!

A massive, brilliant burst of flame suddenly flashed forth with unstoppable momentum, engulfing everything within a two-meter radius in front of Catherine! The aged ape that had been locked in close-quarters combat with her had no time to dodge and was directly enveloped by the flames. Without even a chance to emit a miserable scream, it burned like a dazzling torch!

Unlike other flames, which burned with black smoke and crackled with popping sounds, the Flame of Anton burned extraordinarily quietly on its target. First the fur, then the skin, muscles, internal organs, and bones—the flesh and blood of the aged ape wrapped within the flames, its very existence, was burned to completion in a mere five seconds, turning into a pile of white ash that vanished without a trace at the first gust of wind.

Huh? It seemed it wasn't completely burned away after all?

With sharp eyes, Catherine reached out and scooped her hand through the white ash, pulling out a crystal-clear "stone." The stone was hexagonal in shape, pale black, warm to the touch, and strongly resembled the magic cores of certain magical beasts. But the one in her hand likely wasn't one, as Catherine could not sense any magic fluctuations emanating from it.

After unleashing this "Serpent Wave" technique, the temperature inside Catherine's body plummeted abruptly. The accumulated heat with nowhere to go seemed to have found an outlet, surging out all at once and bringing her an incomparable sense of comfort and refreshing relief. Yet, amidst that relief, wave after wave of blackness clouded Catherine's vision, as if something that should not have been released had also erupted outward along with the Flame of Anton, leaving her feeling utterly weak!

At that moment, a vague understanding dawned within her heart as to what Ling Mo meant by "controlling the organs within your body"!

When a living organism's body dissipates heat normally, it always expels certain substances outward to carry away the excess heat from within—sweat being the most common example. However, in the process of expelling sweat, essential bodily substances are inevitably excreted along with it, such as various trace elements. When one's constitution is that of an ordinary person, this naturally poses no major harm; after all, how much heat can an ordinary person store internally? How much sweat can they expel at one time? How many trace elements could possibly be carried away?

However, being a martial artist was different. The amount of heat that needed to be expelled in a single instance was too great. Even if all the water in Catherine's body were converted into sweat and expelled outward, it probably wouldn't be enough to completely drain the accumulated heat. Coupled with the excessively severe loss of trace elements, it was simply not a feasible solution. Therefore, was there any way to allow the body to purely vent heat outward without any loss of "matter"?

Growing up in a magical society, Catherine thought of the answer immediately: only magic could perform such pure energy manipulation! Yes, once spiritual power guided and summoned magic elements, the combination and reaction of those magic elements in the air was precisely the pure energy operation she needed!

Having reached this realization, Catherine's understanding of martial arts deepened significantly. She now fully grasped the essence of what her master called "martial arts"—it was actually moving those violent magical reactions from the exterior of the body to the interior! Exactly opposite to the application of magic, where external reactions occur after summoning magic elements, martial arts first absorbs magic elements to store them within the body, and then uses these already-tamed magical powers to react internally before surging fiercely outward!

No wonder that starting from the Senior Martial Master stage, one's spiritual power and soul had to begin deep integration with the body until they became indistinguishable. Didn't manipulating the internal magical power require the guidance of spiritual power? No wonder this manipulation had to be practiced step by step from the outside in, from the skin to the internal organs, slowly controlling the organs within the body. If she had started experimenting on her heart first, she might have accidentally conjured a "Flame Bomb" right inside her chest and blown herself apart from the inside out!

Although in the process, the various organs in her body would continuously improve their constitution due to the influx of magical power, becoming incomparably resilient, compared to magic, this method of cultivation remained extreme, dangerous, and even completely incomprehensible! What was wrong with placing violent elemental reactions outside the body? Even if it went out of control and exploded, there was still room for remedy. Inside one's own body, not only was the total amount of manageable magical power much smaller, but it was also terribly easy to kill oneself. Aside from being slightly faster to deploy than magic, what advantages did this method actually have?

She simply couldn't figure out this question. However, Catherine knew that she had already boarded a pirate ship and there was zero possibility of changing professions. To say nothing of the distant future, the two young apes right before her had already recovered from the shock of seeing the old female ape burned to cinder. Spotting the undeniable fact that Catherine was extremely weak, and despite the tragic and terrifying scene they had just witnessed, they still showed not a shred of fear, manipulating their respective dark energy spheres and lunging forward once more!

There was nothing else for it.

Deliberately waiting for about a second and finding that Ling Mo had no intention of rescuing her whatsoever, Catherine sighed inwardly. She sank her consciousness deep into her body, manipulated her meager spiritual power to flow through her entire body, and forcibly fused it with the raging Flame of Anton surging within her!

BOOM!!

A thunderbolt from a clear sky wouldn't even begin to describe the magnitude of that instantaneous roar, as if some peerless fierce beast had awakened within Catherine's body, emitting a roar that shook the highest heavens! Centered around Catherine, a massive magical vortex formed, and an almost countless amount of magic elements converged toward this spot, being sucked into her body like a giant whale drinking the sea!

A hazy cloud of energy completely enveloped her. Vain, in a blur, rubbed her eyes and discovered that this airheaded senior sister's physical form seemed to have grown much larger?