Chapter 552: A Pitiful Fate
[Graceful Starfish Body]
Description(public):
A special physique that is unique to those of Roaring Tide ancestry.
This particular physique has no function in regards to enhancing aether cultivation, nor does it confer its owner any additional resistances or weaknesses beyond what their baseline mortal selves have access to.
However, there is one benefit to this particular physique: Major Regeneration.
It doesn’t matter how badly wounded someone becomes, as long as they have this physique, they’ll be able to heal back to peak condition in a matter of days.
A scrapped knee will take merely seconds.
A cut finger, just as short.
Even if the blessed person would lose their limbs, they would grow back in a matter of days, bones and all.
While there is no way of knowing if this physique is hereditary, it is said that those born with is particular physique would have a birthmark shaped like a star appear on their back.
{Hidden Truth: Known only to few.}
Anyone born with this physique is said to have some tangential relation to the Invulnerable Storm Queen, or to be more specific, is said to be related to one of her famed warriors: The Unbreaking Star Charger.
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Blessed physiques.
A bit of misnomer, but blessed physiques are exactly as the name implies, bodies that might as well have been blessings by heavens since the only way one can get one is by being born with it randomly, unlike the [Inheritance] one can get from being a bloodliner. On top of that, blessed physiques are completely unnoticeable by the naked eye due to it being essentially an “internal” thing.
Scholars have argued that a blessed physique is just an [Inheirtance] from super powerful, ancient Progenitors, but the fact that there have been cases of bloodliners, humans and aetherii with absolutely no relation to one another somehow being born with the exact same physique, kind of nullified that idea.
That being said, some people consider blessed physiques to also be a type of curse, due to the restrictiveness that can be imposed on a person just having been born a particular way, literally.
Aether cultivation for the most part tends to be pretty free form, with the compatibility of formula and soul being the biggest determinant of how far one can progress…unless a blessed physique gets involved.
Depending on what benefits or restrictions a blessed physique gives a warrior, it can render them incapable of being able to cultivate a formula that is compatible with them.
For example, there is a blessed physique known as [Snow-Wind Jade Constitution].
Simply put, the owner of this particular body is able withstand temperatures below freezing and be able to walk through blizzards as if it was a nice sunny day. Unfortunately, as a drawback, the owner of the aforementioned body is more likely to suffer from heatstroke from even the mildest of summer days.
If one were to cultivate a formula with an aether affinity that just so happened to ice or wind related, this particular constitution would be a massive boon to their cultivation.
If they tried to cultivate an Ignati formula, they could very much become someone who passes out every five seconds due to their own aether causing them to heatstroke constantly.
In essence, whether or not a blessed physique is considered a blessing or a curse very much depends on the “who” and the “where”.
After all, one person’s trash is another’s treasure.
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=Well…you already mentioned how its less of a genetics thing and more of a random chance…you should probably include more real world examples of a blessed physique in action. That and how it can actually influence a bloodliner’s [Inheritance].=
=Most likely, after all, it is related to his predecessors.=
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*THWACK!*
This was a common interaction in the life of one Pai Ling, a poor orphan slave girl that had been dealt a bad hand from birth.
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As far as Pai Ling could recall, practically everyone she met would gaze at her with two emotions plain on their faces: contempt and spite.
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‘I’m sorry!’
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‘I can’t help it!’
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‘I’ll clean it up!’
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‘Where are you…’
As far as she could tell, there were precisely two reasons as to why people, and especially her masters, seemed to detest and hit her so often.
First and foremost, she was a slave.
By the laws of the Pearl Scale Empire, a slave had no rights and their owners had no limits in regards on how they treat them.
While some people treated their slaves well, many others would treat them worst than livestock.
It was a bit of an open secret that some “nobles” enjoyed killing their slaves as easy as one might kill a chicken, and some cases…enjoy them like chicken.
Of course, nobody in polite society would know of such things on a firsthand basis…but rumors do spread.
The second reason was due to her heritage.
A majority of the Blossoming Scales Kingdom knew of the Royal Bai Family, and the two subordinate clans of Zhen and Zhu. However, if one just so happened to be a member of the Blossoming Scales “elite” class, then they would know that a long time ago, there used to be two other prominent clans known as the Pai Clan and the Gao Clan.
These other two clans were once equals to the Zhen and Zhu, and were just as loyal to the Bai Family.
Which is why, when the Pai and Gao Clans turned traitor, made dirty deals with enemies of the Pearl Scale Empire and dared to try and coup the Bai Family, nobody saw it coming.
The resulting conflict born from this betrayal was brutal to say the least, and when the dust finally settled, both the Pai and Gao Clans were destroyed…mostly.
Whether it was due to mercy or some form of sentimentality, the remnants of both the Pai and Gao clans were spared from dying like their patriarchs and warriors. Instead, they were broken apart and sold into slavery, with their names forever disgraced and rendered into being names only used by commoners.
Pai Ling was the sixth or so generation born into this fate, carrying the sins of a family she never really knew.
All she knew was that she was a slave, one that was bought by one of the subordinates clans to the Zhen Clan, after being bought, beaten and sold multiple times, and that she would be stuck there for as long as she lived…which was a fact that she dreaded.
Because no matter how badly she was beaten, no matter how severe her wounds were, no matter how often she felt her bones get pulverized and how many countless number of times she remembered puking up blood and viscera…she would just get back up a few days later and felt as if nothing was wrong.
For all intents and purposes, Pai Ling was stuck in a cycle, a hellish one based around pain and not much else.
‘Will…will this cycle ever end?.’ Pai Ling had asked herself multiple times before.
‘Will…I finally be able to die? Can the hatred for the Pai Clan finally end with me?’
These kind of thoughts would pop into her head a lot, especially when the young master of the Lei Family would beat her.
Evidently, she was so used to thinking this way, that when a certain fox-faced idiot decided to play hero, she had assumed it was an angel of death coming to finally take her away.
‘Oh…looks I can…finally rest…,’ Pai Ling had thought to herself, moments before fading into unconsciousness.
‘I wonder if…heaven is…soft…’
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“So…can y’all remind me how the hell the giant ass cut y’all made on her stomach somehow managed to heal the moment y’all took down the ice dome?,” Zhen Xing asked as he stared at the unconscious slave girl laying on the counter, who was looking significantly healthier than before.
“I told you, it’s because the girl was born with a special physique. The kind that heals itself stupid fast” Zhen Liu repeated. “Now quit your worrying and come and eat dinner with us.”
“Fine…”
Soon after Zhen Liu and Zhen Hai had finished operating on the girl, Zhen Liu had Frosttusk dismiss the ice dome and removed Razorstella and Archanidame from their respective heads.
Of course, Zhen Liu had to spin a quick yarn about how he had made the “Spider Madam” puppet some weeks ago in secret after getting his hand on a rare high tier spider monster corpse, and how he had the “secret” ability to infuse his aether puppets into other people, on a temporary basis.
This led to a lot of questions and a quick request for him to make special aether puppets for them, but Zhen Liu managed to dodge the question via saying he was hungry.
Thankfully, Gao Ren had prepped a giant pot of stew beforehand so Zhen Liu used that as a means to escape the conversation.
As of this moment, the Zhen Clan scions were enjoying their host’s special homemade stew, whilst keeping an eye on the girl that they had saved from the clutches of their other cousin’s(?) dickhead subordinate.
But now they had to deal with two new issues.
First, they had to make sure this girl was alive.
Second, they had to figure out what to do with her.
“You know…those copper novels about heroes saving princesses never really touch upon the after portion do they?,” Zhen Guo stated.
“So…what the fuck do we do now?”
“I…don’t know,” Zhen Liu answered.
Of course, he did have one idea…
