Chapter Forty-One: Recycling?

At the same moment, many others who, like Li Tong, were weighed down by regret had already set out. Their destination was all the same: Scarborough Market. After all, the dangers lurking in the magical beast rainforest were too numerous and unknown; to rush in unprepared was nothing short of courting death. Even if one survived by luck, the odds of finding Ling Mo and his companion within were infinitesimal. It made far more sense to wait in this small town.

Catherine, who had followed Ling Mo for a while, had finally sobered from the joy of regaining what she’d lost. Suddenly, she slapped her forehead and exclaimed, “Oh no! I forgot to pick up the corpse of that male Butcher Bird! It’s a level-four magical beast—we could’ve eaten well for days!”

She turned to go back, but Ling Mo said, “Don’t bother. The male Butcher Bird’s body isn’t much use as food. Because of its unique physiology, once you remove the heart, the remaining carcass only has the energy content of a level-two magical beast.”

Catherine’s face fell. She rubbed her stomach and complained, “Master, you were too ruthless! You pulverized that female Butcher Bird. That was supposed to be my dinner! I’m starving now, my combat power is way down—you owe me a meal!”

“If I hadn’t turned that thing to dust, eating it wouldn’t have done you much good anyway,” Ling Mo replied without looking back.

“What do you mean? Isn’t a level-four magical beast enough to replenish my energy?”

“You… do you really not know what’s going on? Haven’t you noticed anything odd about your body?”

“No?” Catherine bounced on her feet, inspecting herself, and found nothing amiss.

“Did you turn off the comment feed in your streaming room?”

“Yeah, I turned it off early on so I wouldn’t get distracted.”

“No wonder you didn’t see all the people trying to warn you. Got a mirror in your bag? Take a look.”

Following his suggestion, Catherine fished a mirror out of her spatial pouch and raised it to her face. She froze, stunned for a long moment before stammering, “This… is this me?”

The face reflected in the glass was covered in wrinkles, shriveled like a dried orange peel. Her hair was brittle and yellow, a tangled mess of straw. Her eye sockets were sunken, cheeks hollowed in completely. Looking further down, the veins and windpipe in her neck protruded sharply, with only a thin, sagging layer of skin stretched over them—a truly ghastly sight!

“Streamer! Hey, streamer! Look at yourself, quick!”

“Streamer, you look so scary now!”

“How did you suddenly end up like this?”

“You look like a dried corpse!”

“Yeah! A dried corpse! Looks like you’ve been baked under the desert sun for days and all your moisture’s been steamed away!”

“Bet you won’t dare to claim you’re the world’s cutest Catherine anymore, huh?”

“Seeing the streamer like this reminds me of my eighty-five-year-old grandma!”

“They do look a bit alike, don’t they?”

Catherine’s hands trembled as she gently touched her face—the sensation was rough beyond belief, like the bark of an ancient withered tree. She raised her arm and saw it had changed just the same. Grabbing Ling Mo’s arm, she blurted out, “Master, what’s happening? Isn’t martial cultivation supposed to beautify you? Why do I look like a ghost now?”

Ling Mo pinched the leathery skin on Catherine’s arm and explained, “This is perfectly normal. You just finished regenerating your left hand, didn’t you? This is the price.”

“The price?!”

“Of course. Practicing martial arts doesn’t make you divine. At the end of the day, your body is still human, just with a more active metabolism. When the body runs out of energy, it first breaks down sugars, then fats, and if those run out, it starts digesting proteins. The Butcher Bird’s heart acted as a trigger, a catalyst, but growing back a whole hand still consumed your own energy reserves.”

“So, my sugars and fats were completely burned up during regeneration, and now my body’s breaking down its own proteins? But… I didn’t feel anything! Even now, looking like this, I still feel energetic, not the least bit exhausted.”

“Of course. Your body decided that the missing limb had to be regrown, so it mobilized all available energy stores. At the same time, it knew that depleted energy would need to be replenished, so it left you just enough quickly accessible energy to maintain your combat power. In my experience, at the intermediate martial artist level, your body will only leave you enough energy to survive for about two hours. If you don’t get a major energy replenishment in that window, you’ll lose all combat ability!”

Here, Ling Mo pointed at Catherine with a smile. “As for whether your sugars and fats are completely depleted, just check your own chest. Haven’t they shriveled up?”

At this, Catherine looked down in horror. Sure enough, her once-proud bosom had vanished without a trace! She hadn’t noticed earlier, but now she clearly felt that her chest was like two empty leather pouches, swaying with every movement.

“Be grateful you had a big chest! You only became a martial artist a few days ago—even if your progress is swift, the energy stored in your organs isn’t much. If you hadn’t accumulated all that fat in your chest, your body would have drained you dry during the hand regeneration!”

The comment feed instantly exploded:

“Big boobs save lives!”

“Who knew having a big chest increased your survival chances!”

“See? Big boobs are evolution’s way of choosing who survives!”

“User ‘I Have Big Boobs So I’ll Speak First’ tipped the streamer a Chaos Meteor! Message: Teacher Ling, I think I’m well-suited for martial arts! Please take me as your disciple!”

“Pics or it didn’t happen!”

“Pics don’t prove anything, could be padding!”

User ‘I Have Small Boobs But Still Want To Speak’ tipped a Chaos Meteor as well, leaving the message: “I feel a wave of malice from the universe…”

Catherine, however, had no mind for jokes. She quickly checked her entire body—face, chest, hips, thighs, all the usual fat stores. All of them were shriveled. Her thighs, especially, were nothing but skin and bone. What was terrifying was that she couldn’t feel any of it.

“Master, don’t joke around! Can I still recover from this?”

“Of course… you can. If you were an ordinary person, such severe protein depletion would cause irreversible, permanent damage. But the whole goal of martial cultivation is perfect control of your body—so something like this, of course there’s a way.” Ling Mo paused, rapping her lightly on the head. “That’s why we’re in such a hurry, looking for the best possible energy source for you. And you’re still wasting time.”

“Then let’s go, Master!” Catherine urged anxiously. “How much farther? How long will it take?”

“Not too far. But I just thought of a brilliant idea.” Ling Mo suddenly stopped, a strange expression on his face. “Didn’t you just say you wanted to retrieve the Butcher Bird? That reminded me—while the body’s useless, there’s something else valuable we left behind.”

“Valuable?” Catherine was momentarily confused. Seeing Ling Mo’s expression, she suddenly shuddered, her tone trembling with shock. “Master, you mean… my half… the half…?”

“Exactly, your severed hand!” Ling Mo finished the thought for her. “It’s your own flesh and blood—the physical quality of an intermediate martial artist is even better than some level-four magical beasts, especially those focused on spellcasting. Why not consider recycling it?”

Catherine bit her lip, saying nothing, her face pale as death. Clearly, she was locked in a fierce internal struggle, Ling Mo’s devilish words echoing in her ears:

“Think about it. It’s your own flesh, the same origin, easily absorbed. Eat it and you’ll regain most of your lost energy right away—your body will fill out again. Of course, our plan is to find you some high-energy food, but who can guarantee nothing will go wrong? If you go longer than two hours without, permanent damage might set in. Not even I could help then. You’d be stuck with the face of a woman decades your senior for life.”

Beads of sweat gathered on Catherine’s furrowed brow, streaming down her deeply lined face. Her expression was one of utter torment, torn as to which path to take. Her body shook uncontrollably—the task before her was so far beyond her understanding of the world, she simply couldn’t make up her mind. Seeing this, Ling Mo decided to fan the flames.

“Don’t know the way back? No problem, I’ll take you!” With that, he grabbed her hand, intending to lead her back.

Smack.

Ling Mo’s hand was flung off. Catherine’s face still bore traces of her struggle, but her body no longer trembled. She shut her eyes and said in a faint, exhausted voice, “No… I won’t. Master, I think… some boundaries are best left uncrossed.”