Though Ding Yun worried, her fourth metamorphosis began as soon as the energy was sufficient. Not long after it started, Ding Yun couldn't help but laugh with joy because she felt pain.
She felt a tingling pain all over her body.
In her previous three metamorphoses.
She hadn't felt anything at all.
This undoubtedly meant that this metamorphosis was a qualitative leap, meaning zombies had a high probability of evolving to be similar to ordinary humans in the future.
However, she soon couldn't laugh anymore. As she felt pain, the healing ability crystal core in her mind also kept growing larger and more refined.
The surging healing power within.
Made Ding Yun's heart tremble.
She was afraid the ability would overflow and harm her body.
Then, before Ding Yun could take any preventive measures, the healing ability crystal core in her mind, which was connected to her entire nervous system, began to frantically inject healing energy into the nervous system.
This was followed by extreme pain.
Pain in the entire nervous system.
Ding Yun's mental power could clearly see her body's internal nervous system collapsing rapidly under the effect of the healing ability. Yet, she had no idea how to stop it, as she couldn't just sever the connection between the crystal core and the nervous system.
After all, severing the connection was no different from directly digging out the crystal core.
This was the most crucial core part of a zombie.
It could even be considered the source of power for a zombie itself.
So, Ding Yun could only watch helplessly, enduring the pain of her entire nervous system being destroyed. However, a turning point soon arrived. The moment her entire nervous system was destroyed by the healing ability and she lost control of her body, collapsing to the ground.
Strands of new nervous system began to regenerate under the effect of the milky white healing energy. The most critical part was that the newly formed nervous system already contained a trace of life, showing signs of being alive.
Seeing this, Ding Yun immediately understood that the healing ability might not be entirely detrimental. Perhaps it could be used to reshape the body through continuous destruction and rebirth.
So, she stopped panicking and began to use her mental power to drive the steel, oil, gold, and silver she had collected and stored around her into her mouth, replenishing her energy.
Didn't her golden finger, which allowed her to eat anything, provide energy for her body?
The healing ability crystal core was also part of a zombie's body. Therefore, after the healing energy within was consumed.
It could naturally be replenished by eating these things.
Under Ding Yun's efforts, the healing energy within the healing crystal core in her mind was constantly being consumed but also replenished, so the changes in her internal nervous system naturally did not stop.
Repair, destruction, cycle after cycle.
After repeating this nine times, Ding Yun was astonished to find that her internal nervous system had become energized. Not only had its color become the same milky white as the crystal core, but it was no longer made of flesh and blood but had become a pure energy aggregate. The healing ability could flow and manipulate within it without causing any pain.
By this time, the fourth metamorphosis had long since ended.
Ding Yun was somewhat bewildered by her current changes, unsure if this was the evolutionary path for zombies or if she was an exception due to her special ability.
Most importantly, most of the zombies around her had not yet evolved abilities, so Ding Yun didn't know if her current path was correct.
"What should I do next?
Should I continue eating and undergo the fifth, sixth metamorphoses as planned, or should I use this healing ability to energize other parts of my body? If my entire body becomes energized.
Then would I still be human? Or an elf?"
"No, I'm not human now either."
"The core of a zombie is the crystal core, and becoming an energy body doesn't seem like a bad thing. Forget it, I'll take a gamble and move in the direction of energization.
And try to circulate the ability like internal energy.
Perhaps it can speed up the efficiency or something."
After a period of deliberation, Ding Yun subconsciously felt that the core of a zombie, the crystal core, was more important. Since the energization of the entire nervous system was initiated by the crystal core itself, it was likely beneficial. After all, for any life form, even with lower intelligence, seeking advantages and avoiding harm is instinctual.
Considering that the speed of transformation by pure healing energy accumulation was too slow, Ding Yun decided to use the experience from the cultivation technique that could reach Martial Saint in her previous world.
She forcefully applied it to cultivate the healing ability.
And upon discovering that there were no problems and the effects were quite good, she naturally cultivated more diligently, practicing during the day and collecting various kinds of steel and oil throughout the city at night to consume.
She didn't feel tired even after not resting for a day and a night.
With her diligent efforts in both cultivation and evolution, her body underwent changes every day, such as her bones and internal organs.
Her bones gradually transitioned from a dead gray-white.
Towards a milky white.
Her internal organs were the same.
In short, she was racing towards full body energization. It was even possible that influenced by her subconscious, her subsequent metamorphoses also involved the crystal core growing larger, the energy becoming more abundant and purer, and the energization of her body making leaps and bounds.
A year later, after consuming all the metal, oil, gold, and silver jewelry from an entire city and several nearby small cities, completing her ninth metamorphosis, she finally achieved complete energization.
Full body energization.
Bones, bone marrow, internal organs, blood, muscles, and even skin and hair were completely energized.
Concurrently, Ding Yun's martial arts cultivation reached the pinnacle of the cultivation technique, entering the Martial Golden Core realm.
Then, a miraculous thing happened.
Ding Yun's body, which had completely transformed into healing energy, instantly re-transformed into energy and was absorbed by the crystal core in her mind. This is not entirely accurate; to be precise, Ding Yun's entire body was absorbed by the crystal core, leaving only the rhombic milky white crystal core in its place.
But she did not die.
She was in a very peculiar state of core condensation.
Then, the sky became overcast, and countless bolts of lightning descended, striking the only remaining rhombic milky white crystal core on Ding Yun. The rhombic crystal core, forged by the heavenly lightning and tempered by Ding Yun's own condensation of the Golden Core, rapidly condensed into a perfect sphere.
And after eighty-one bolts of lightning.
It transformed into a platinum-colored Golden Core.
Then, around the Golden Core, flesh and blood began to regenerate and bones grew. Before long, Ding Yun, with normal skin tone, reappeared.
She was neither the zombie she was originally, nor the pure energy form she later became, with a milky white body.
Instead, she appeared in a normal, human form.
She had refined the crystal core into a Martial Golden Core and used the blood-regeneration ability inherent in the Martial Golden Core to reshape a Martial Saint's body for herself. She not only regained a physical body of flesh and blood but also eliminated all zombie viruses.
Most importantly, even the crystal core in her mind.
Had transformed into the Golden Core in her lower dantian.
She was now completely unrelated to zombies, with not a single trace of similarity or connection.
At the same time, her healing ability was retained.
The Golden Core could be used as the healing ability crystal core.