A night's rest.

The next day, at four in the morning, before the sky had even lightened, Shen Cong was jolted awake by a tingling itch all through his body.

"What's going on — I'm itching all over, and not on the skin, but inside… cough, cough, in my organs, cough, cough, my throat's itchy too." Shen Cong fought down the urge to dig into his own body and scratch, though he couldn't quite suppress the coughing.

Luckily the itch in his throat eased off after a few coughs.

He began carefully sensing where the tingling was coming from.

A tingling itch in his stomach and intestines. A tingling itch in his bronchi. A tingling itch at the roots of his scalp. A tingling itch at the root of every hair follicle. A tingling itch around his bladder. A tingling itch around his eye sockets… even the place he urinated from had a bit of a tingling itch to it.

"This is…"

Sensing the itch through his body, Shen Cong's eyes gradually lit up, and he came fully, completely awake. "…Smooth-gold?"

The fourth stage of the Lv1 — Pure Gold Era. Smooth-gold: the metallic gradation of smooth muscle.

Smooth muscle, also called visceral muscle, was distributed broadly through blood-vessel walls and the internal organs — every organ apart from the heart was made of smooth muscle. The bronchi, the area around the pupils, the roots of hair follicles — these too contained smooth muscle. Most sphincters were smooth muscle as well. Smooth muscle was muscle not under conscious control.

"Which means my proper connective tissue has completed its metallic gradation process, become fully connective-gold. And now, I've begun the metallic gradation of my smooth muscle — entering the smooth-gold stage."

"January 23rd, I completed the flesh-gold stage of my skeletal muscle. Now I've completed the connective-gold stage of my proper connective tissue. Today is February 25th. Thirty-two days total."

The tingling wasn't especially intense; Shen Cong could bear it.

Smooth muscle beginning its metallic gradation would, without question, greatly raise the load-bearing capacity of his organs and blood vessels —…