The room grew impossibly hotter, the air heavy with the oppressive weight of accumulating mana. Each breath was a struggle as the fiery energy within him surged dangerously close to breaking point.
If he didn't resolve the crisis now, it wouldn't just tear him apart—it would obliterate everything around him in a violent burst of unrestrained mana.
The thought of dying again, not in combat or vengeance but by exploding like a poorly constructed cauldron, was almost too humiliating for Ashen to bear.
His jaw clenched. He had clawed his way back from death itself. He wouldn't die a second time, not like this.
The core of the problem was glaringly obvious—Eren's meridians. Twisted and gnarled like a centuries-old tree, they refused to channel the mana properly.
It was as though the pathways themselves were sabotaging his every attempt to circulate the power that was pooling dangerously inside him. Ashen's hands pressed harder onto his knees, his nails digging into the flesh as his focus intensified.
In his life as Ashen, the Demon Lord of Murim, he had struggled with opening his dantian points. That had been an arduous, grueling process, each breakthrough achieved through blood, sweat, and sheer determination.
But here, in this frail, broken body, he was faced with the exact opposite problem. Every dantian point was wide open, greedily absorbing mana from the saturated environment, yet he had no way to circulate or control it.
"How ironic," he thought bitterly. "In Murim, I fought tooth and nail to awaken these reservoirs of power, and now, I'm drowning in it because this body's pathways are too damaged to manage the flow."
The twisted meridians acted like bottlenecks, trapping the mana in his core and amplifying the pressure. Every failed attempt to untangle them sent a fresh wave of fiery pain coursing through his body. He felt as if his veins would rupture at any moment, releasing the volatile energy in an uncontrollable eruption.
As Ashen delved deeper into his body's internal landscape, he discovered something peculiar—and troubling. Due to the Heavenly Yang Constitution, all the accumulated energy seemed to converge unnaturally toward one region: his lower abdomen. Specifically, his phallus.
A sharp, incredulous laugh escaped him despite the dire situation. "Of course, this body would make things even more complicated."
With painstaking effort, Ashen guided his consciousness further, inspecting the area where the energy was pooling. What he discovered sent a jolt of shock and fury through him.
Deep within his nether regions, hidden within the very sack of his balls, was a concentrated mass of poison. It was subtle, almost imperceptible, but unmistakable in its malicious intent.
The poison had been carefully crafted to cripple, to ensure that the victim could never harness the full potential of their Yang Constitution. And it had succeeded.
The poison had effectively rendered Eren impotent, not just physically but spiritually, severing any chance of him ever awakening to the power that lay dormant within him.
But now, under the relentless onslaught of mana and heat flooding his body, the poison was being burned away. Slowly but surely, it was evaporating, the concentrated energy within him proving too intense for even the insidious toxin to withstand.
Ashen's thoughts darkened as he pieced together the implications. Someone had gone to extraordinary lengths to plant such a poison in Eren's body—someone who despised him so deeply that they had sabotaged him before he was even capable of understanding what had been done.
"Eren truly is the king of all misfortunes," Ashen mused grimly. "Whoever hated him this much ensured that even his potential for greatness was crushed before it could take root."
The poison must have been planted when Eren was a child, a time when he was defenseless and utterly ignorant of the world's cruelties. It was a calculated act of malice, designed to destroy him before he could even dream of fighting back.
Yet, fate had played its twisted hand. The Great Cataclysm and the mana oversaturation that now plagued the world had inadvertently kept the poison at bay, preventing it from completing its lethal purpose.
Ashen's lips curled into a humorless smile. "Should I be impressed that it didn't kill him? Or pity him for living a life where death might have been a mercy?"
The thought was both sobering and infuriating. Even in death, Eren had not been free from his misfortunes. And now, Ashen, wearing Eren's broken shell, was left to deal with the aftermath.
The heat in Ashen's body intensified as the poison burned away, leaving a faint, acrid taste in his mouth as if the very air around him carried its remnants.
The process was agonizing. His muscles spasmed uncontrollably, and his vision blurred, but he gritted his teeth and endured.
Every passing second brought him closer to freedom from the toxin's shackles, but the cost was steep. The strain on his body was immense, and the mana within him showed no signs of abating.
Still, Ashen couldn't help but marvel at the resilience of Eren's body. Despite its frailty, it had endured years of abuse, the poison's corrosive effects, and now the overwhelming surge of mana.
It was a testament to the Heavenly Yang Constitution—a trait that seemed determined to keep its host alive against all odds.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the last traces of the poison dissipated. The energy pooling in his lower abdomen began to circulate, albeit sluggishly, as if testing the newfound freedom of the pathways it had been trapped in.
Ashen exhaled sharply, his body sagging with exhaustion as the immediate crisis of the poison subsided.
The burning heat in his core had eased, and the sense of impending collapse had momentarily faded. However, the underlying issue remained—a problem far more daunting than the now-evaporated toxin.
The mana around him continued to flood into his body, relentless and unyielding. His constitution acted as an insatiable vessel, pulling in every scrap of energy from the oversaturated environment.
But this body, for all its potential, was still finite. He could feel the limits of the container pressing against the seemingly infinite flow. It was only a matter of time before the balance tipped again, and when it did, the results would be catastrophic.
Ashen's sharp mind raced, sifting through potential solutions even as his focus was pulled to an increasingly troubling symptom. The yang energy, now coursing through him without restraint, had created another urgent problem: his phallus.
The surge of vitality had left it impossibly rigid, standing erect with a strength that even Ashen, in his long years as a Demon Lord, found difficult to comprehend.
His brows furrowed as his consciousness brushed over the region. The sheer size and girth of the organ were enough to give him pause.
"Is this… normal for Eren?"