Beast Blood
Zhen moved towards the massive corpse of Bear which was still gushing Blood through its half-severed neck. It was a good thing that hunting with his elder brother had desensitized Zhen to the sight of blood and gore.
He took out a small clay cup covered with arcane runes and filled it with blood from its gushing neck. The runes were not for the Thousand Beast Blood technique and to purify and concentrate the essence in the blood. It was a shame he was not an alchemist yet and had to rely on such crude methods.
Pushing essence Qi into the runes, he watched them light up and blood started to seemingly boil before his eyes. Soon instead of the whole cup, only a few drops of blood were left.
Zhen put the cup on the ground, far from the corpse of the beast, and sat, cross-legged opposite the cup.
"Skyword, please open the Mantra of Ten Thousand Beast's Blood."
The Heavenly book appeared, opening the page Zhen demanded. Zhen looked at it and started chanting the mantra again and again while revolving his Essence Qi in a very specific pattern inside his body.
After few minutes the drop of blood in the cup started to glow in soft golden light and floated towards Zhen. Seeing this, Zhen stopped reining the mantra but continued to move his essence qi.
The blood drop kept floating towards Zhen, and before long, splashed against his forehead. Just then Zhen felt a momentous amount of Demon Qi enter through him through every pore of his skin. The Qi of Gold bear entered his body, pressing against his organ, stabbing into his every muscle.
Sharp pain assaulted Zhen, who kept sitting in a meditative stance, rivulets of sweat flowing down his forehead. He was expecting that but it did not make it easy.
The pain kept assaulting him but Zhen kept rotating his Qi, helping Demonic Qi of Gold bear to forge his body. He kept at it for half an hour before all demonic Qi dissipated.
Zhen breathed a sigh of relief. It was finally done, he had entered the first realm of skin forging.
He got up and flexed his muscles, feeling much more strength in them despite looking as scrawly as before. Despite the first Great realm of Body forging being called the Skin Forging realm, it actually focused on strengthening both skin and muscles.
Just then he noticed the sky was bright and dawn was near.
"Oh no, not much time left.", Zhen was about to jump away just when his gaze landed on corps of Gold bear and he stopped himself.
He almost forgot about it, Gold Bear's corpse should be quite valuable. Its hide was the strongest he could get in Beast at Foundation Establishment and bones so hard that they even broke his Qi blade. It was a treasure trove and did not want to leave it behind for other beasts to eat.
"Maybe I should cut it and take as much as I can carry.", Zhen moved to pick up the thee bear to gauge how much he should take, one to be surprised when he lifted the entire corpse over his head without much effort.
"Whao....what!", Even he was shocked by his own strength. Before he would definitely not have been able to do anything like this.
"I knew I got a portion of Gold Bear's strength but to think it would be this much. And this is only one beast, what would strength of then thousand be like?", Zhen mused, absentmindedly throwing the mini-truck-sized beast in the air and catching it. He was quite pleased with the outcome.
Securely holding the bear's body over his head, he jumped onto the canopy. The moment he landed on the branch, which bent under their collective weight. Zhen immediately jumped away, activating the Shadowless Flight, jumping away before it could snap under their collective weight.
Thus he moved like a phantom through the canopy of the Indigo forest carrying corpse weighing in tonnes while skipping on branches barely thicker than twigs.