The tunnel around Yao Jun wasn't entirely smooth, the walls dotted with ridges that suggested that the creation of this tunnel was done in steps rather than in one single burst. It was quite similar to the other holes that dotted the mountain so there was a chance that an insect-type beast had long ago managed to dig its way into the centre of the mountain. And if that really was the case, and the dense bloody energy they sensed from this island was only the remnant of whatever was left, then Yao Jun really didn't want to guess at what the source once was.
As was to be expected, this tunnel dug in much deeper than the other holes that dotted the mountain. They stopped at only a handful of metres, but Yao Jun quickly crossed the one-hundred-metre mark as he followed this tunnel. The air only grew heavier as they went deeper into the mountain, a certain staleness lingering in the taste of the air, as if time itself had stopped interfering with this area.
But it was just a sensation, an illusion brought about by the sheer length of time it had been since someone else last entered the mountain. And no sensation was enough to halt Yao Jun's footsteps as he marched onward, eventually reaching the end of the tunnel.
The tunnel opened up into a cavern that was much smaller than Yao Jun would have initially expected, it barely reached 100 metres in diameter. The ceiling and walls were rough and ragged, to the point where it looked like an explosion had occurred here and that had been what carved out the cavern. The earth was completely barren, so cracked and dry that it was on the verge of becoming a desert.
"Seems like you didn't manage to reach your goal huh, fell just barely short."
Yao Jun's gaze drifted towards the centre of the cavern as he muttered, a pool of blood that was close to three metres in width quietly resting there. And lying only a single metre away from the pool of blood was another exoskeleton. But this one was in a far better condition than the rest, it still carried a black sheen and didn't have a single wrinkle, it even still had all seven ant-like limbs and its goat-like head. But even with all seven limbs stretched out, the beast failed to reach its target and ended up wasting away.
The area around the bloody pool carried traces of what appeared to once be an array, but even that had withered away with the passage of time, only a few half-faded lines remained to speak of its existence. Yao Jun's gaze raised slightly after lingering on the exoskeleton for a second, landing on the centre of the pool. The reason was simple, there was a single mound of crystalline bones gathered at the centre of the pool, a sign that looked to be made from wood rising up from amidst the mound.
'These will be the final words of myself, Huang Tao Di, Second general of the 34th Celestial Realm. I have brought down the Fiend Gorge Commander, but he has cast his final lingering curse on both me and this land, our end is already in sight. I have decided to gather the entirety of the curse onto myself, as I am already dying, I might as well spare this land the same fate. I will seal myself, his corpse, and the curse here, let the passage of time turn it all to nothing more than whispers on the wind. On the day my sealing array breaks, I pray that the ones who find my final resting ground gather up what little remains of me and my energy and return it to the 34th Celestial Realm, let at least my remains be of use to my future allies.'
The strokes grew fainter and more disorderly the closer they got to the end, the final word was barely legible so it was probably written mere moments before Huang Tao Di met his end. And comparing the bones in the mound to a human's anatomy, Yao Jun guessed that he had actually gone as far as to stab the sign into his own shoulder to ensure that it remained upright as he sat down to meet his end. His final words were his final blessing on the land, as well as his final desire, but it was a shame that destiny did not favour him.
"I can try to bring your bones back to their home, but I'm sorry, I'll be taking all that energy."
Yes, Huang Tao Di's final wish was simply to be returned home so that he could be useful to the future generations. But sadly, the one who found him, in the end, was Yao Jun, and his heart currently did not have the space to contain the deceased's final wish. He stepped forward, his hand sliding along the sleek exoskeleton, the other being that failed to fulfil its final wish.
"It might be useful to Du Xiao, should probably take it."
The corpse didn't even resemble a spider, but it still looked to be an insect-type Demonic beast so it might give Du Xiao a little boost at least. Of course, he couldn't currently contact Du Xiao since she was stuck in one of the dead fragments of his God Gate, but preparing for the future was always a good choice. The exoskeleton vanished into his interspatial ring and Yao Jun reached the edge of the pool, the dense and bloody energy wafting over him like waves, battering his skin and flesh.
He didn't know what sort of realm one needed to reach to wear the title of the second general of a Celestial realm, he didn't even quite know what a celestial realm was. But what he did know was that just this remnant energy, worn away by the passage of time, was still strong enough to equal a late-stage Earthly Deity, or possibly an early-stage Heavenly Deity. Yao Jun didn't immediately hop into the blood, quietly observing it from the edge of the pool, his eyes sweeping over it as if he was trying to measure how much energy it contained.
"Are you thinking about whether or not it would be possible to use the energy in the pool to fill up the small fragment?"
Little Gray and the others stood behind and beside Yao Jun so they had a full view of his examining expression, which made it quite easy for them to form a guess as to what he was thinking. Filling up that small fragment of his shattered God Gate was definitely one of Yao Jun's main goals right now, it would let him see what would happen and if he could possibly do the same with the other fragments to interact with them in the future. But while that was one of his main goals, it was not what Yao Jun was currently thinking about.
"No, I'm thinking about whether or not I can use this energy to facilitate my soul cultivation. The weakened state of my soul can't be allowed to continue for too long, otherwise, it will become a problem when I try to utilize my energy."
Yes, filling up the fragment was one of his main goals, but he hadn't become so tunnel-visioned that he lost track of everything else. He couldn't forget to focus on himself, he had to improve his own strength so that he didn't remain a sitting duck just waiting for a strong predator to come and pick him off.
"It should be doable as long as I make sure to use my own laws to properly paint over the energy. I'll be going ahead, please protect me."
Yao Jun didn't know it, mainly because he had never given it any thought, but Little Gray and the others were keenly aware of a simple fact related to his statement. This was the first time in all the years he had spent cultivating that Yao Jun had asked someone else to protect him, one of the extremely rare occasions where he entrusted his back to someone else.
And because they knew this, they pushed their senses to even sharper heights as they took in their surroundings, guarding Yao Jun as he set foot in the pool of blood. The pool was only three metres wide, but it seemed to be quite deep, the first step alone made it so that the blood reached all the way up to Yao Jun's hips.
He released a bit of his crimson Monarch Essence, the viscous and heavy energy forming a thin layer between him and the blood so that he didn't sink further. He then walked over to the centre of the pool and sat down, the Monarch Essence forming a small platform beneath him so that the blood didn't go above his navel as he sat there. He then closed his eyes and stretched out his mind, drawing in the energy that the pool radiated.
If he were to follow his body cultivation to absorb this energy then he would have to compress it a few times to form a single drop of blood, a Blood Heart. He would then have to fuse this Blood Heart with his flesh and his skin since his bones and bone marrow were already strengthened in the two earlier stages.
But for now, he allowed the energy to stay in its uncondensed state and guided it into his body. In the past, his soul resided inside his God Gate, something he could really only do since he had managed to connect the two at a very early stage. But with his God Gate shattered, his soul had returned to its rightful place, the soulsea that was located between your head and your heart.
Yao Jun's soulsea was currently just a vast white expanse, an illusory clone of him hovering in the air. In the past, this clone had looked like a life-like copy of him, but all that remained after he lost a good portion of his soul was a flickering and nearly completely transparent image. And Yao Jun surrounded that flickering image with the energy he had guided into his soulsea, and then he smashed the energy into his soul with such force that it cracked and fell apart.
His body twitched violently as his soul cracked and fell apart, a few cracked and fell apart, a few mouthfuls of blood erupting from his mouth. Such a scene wasn't good for the hearts of Sirius and the two others, but they steeled themselves and bore it, they knew that Yao Jun's soul cultivation method was far from kind and easy.
And indeed, this shattering of the soul was one of the two main steps of his soul cultivation method, the more thorough you were the better. But he kept it at a very basic fragmenting for now and moved on to the next step, using your own laws to stitch the soul back together. Yao Jun didn't have any Qi at the moment, but that didn't mean that he had lost all his laws, or rather, he hadn't lost his understanding of the laws.
He brought a bit of his Monarch Essence into his Soulsea, the white expanse quaking slightly due to the unfamiliar weight of the Monarch Essence. But Yao Jun ignored it and mixed the Monarch Essence with the remaining energy that lingered around his soul, using it as a conduit to bring out his laws so that he could fully paint over the energy with his laws. Once this step was complete, he used the energy as both the needle and the thread, stitching his soul back together while ignoring the blood that would occasionally leak from his mouth or ears.
The description of his soul cultivation technique, Monarch's Nine Rebirths, stated that you would reach the Godking realm after stitching your soul back together for the ninth time. But obviously, that required you to break down your soul to a certain degree, and it also had rather stringent requirements to the power behind the laws used to stitch it back together. So while he could be considered to have stitched his soul back together once now, it didn't really count as one when it came to the nine required rebirths, it was just a simple shattering and rebuilding to make it somewhat stronger and stabler.
But just doing it once wasn't enough, Yao Jun wasn't satisfied with the state of his soul after putting it back together. So he broke it down once more and repeated the reparation process, he had energy to spare so he was fine with doing it as many times as it took. Of course, his soul had a limit, it too needed some rest if it was pushed too far, especially when it came to a nearly suicidal cultivation technique like this one.
But if his soul needed to rest then he could just focus on a different part of himself, and his body was certainly more than willing to take some punishment. Whenever his soul needed to rest, he compressed some of the energy into Blood Hearts and merged them with his skin and flesh, a deep crimson hue overtaking his body as a searing sensation assaulted him.
The sensation was only enhanced by the fact that Yao Jun mixed in his own universe's body cultivation method with his body cultivation technique, the Blood Ocean's Hunger. The Blood Hearts were merged with his flesh and skin, and a bit of the other energy was used to force open his acupuncture points, carving new ones in the process as well.
He was in a hurry, but he didn't allow himself to rush things. The last time he got overconfident and rushed things he ended up losing his closest friend, he would not allow that to happen again. He would take it slow and steady, step by step he would march forward, and he would not allow himself to lose a single thing ever again.
From soul to body, from body to soul, he constantly changed what he was focusing on so that neither of them ended up overworked. And before he knew it, his soul had returned to a realm similar to what it was in the past, the Law-Seeking Soul realm. If he were to compare it to normal cultivation then it would be equal to the Earthly Deity realm, it was quite easy for him to return to this stage since he had after all reached it in the past.
And since he returned to the Law-Seeking Soul realm, he had also regained the Anima Essence he had lost when his God Gate shattered. It was far more ethereal and illusory than the heavy Monarch Essence, so it was much better suited to interacting with other ethereal things compared to the much more physical Monarch Essence.
Yao Jun opened his eyes when things reached this stage, spitting out a heavy breath that came out as a bloody mist. His gaze trailed downwards to inspect his own body, or to be more specific, his emerald green shirt and pants. Sirius had luckily protected him, using a bit of wind to divert the blood he spat out so that it didn't stain the clothes he treasured.
The pool had shrunk considerably after Yao Jun's cultivation, about 80% of it had vanished, converted into energy that was sucked into his body. He had used most of it, but he didn't feel like he had wasted it. His soul had returned to the early stage of the Law-Seeking Soul realm and his body had inched much closer to the middle stage of the Blood Lake realm, the body equivalent of the Earthly Deity realm.
"How long did it take me? And did anything happen while I was out?"
Yao Jun had truly trusted his back to Ba-Shei and the two others while he cultivated, he didn't even keep a sliver of his perception outside to keep an eye on the passage of time. But looking at the fact that there didn't seem to be any signs of combat in the area, he found it unlikely that anyone had tried to intrude. And sure enough, Ba-Shei confirmed that theory while giving a slight bow.
"It has only been a short five or six months, and we've avoided being found so no one's tried to intrude. But there was a commotion from your Bloodwind Code two or three weeks ago, but we decided to not wake you up for it."
One of Yao Jun's eyebrows rose slightly, the Bloodwind Code was quite a big thing so anything related to it was worth paying attention to. But he had a small guess as to why it made a racket, and if his guess was correct then he was only surprised that they waited so long. He raised his hand and brought out the Bloodwind Code, the red bead covered in countless runes floating above his palm. And sure enough, when he sank his mind into it he received the expected message.
"Acknowledgement revoked due to prolonged loss of strength and potential, Multiverse and Universe ranks lowered accordingly. Title of Prince of Demonic Greed has been revoked as a result, position returned to the previous Prince of Star-Swallowing Greed."
Yao Jun had managed to snatch himself a position on the Bloodwind Codes Multiverse List, and a pretty high one too since he got the title of Prince of Gree. But that title and acknowledgement had all been based on his previous strength and the potential his God Gates offered him, without them it was obvious that he wouldn't be allowed to keep the same ranks.
It was the expected result but it still left Yao Jun quite annoyed and exasperated. After all, he had been relying on getting the King rank so that he could ask the Bloodwind Emperor if he could revive Yun Yantian, losing the Prince rank meant that he was that much further away. But he would get that title back in time, and he would definitely get the higher titles as well. After all, his current sight was set for the peak of all existence, for a realm where entire universes would fit in the palm of his hand.
But that was a goal for the future, it wasn't one that he could achieve right now. Right now he had to focus on what he could do and what he could get his hands on, and that included the remaining blood beneath him. He drew in the energy and guided it towards the nine scattered fragments of his God Gate, pushing it towards the smallest fragment.
And just like previously, the small fragment released a strong desire for consumption, sucking up the energy to fill up the empty basin it seemed to contain. Yao Jun had no hopes that this small amount of energy would be enough to fill up even the smallest fragment, and he was right to think so. All the energy vanished, the final drop of blood in the pool disappearing, but the small fragment was as quiet as before.
Yao Jun pulled back the Monarch Essence that kept him in the air and landed at the bottom of the empty pool, in front of the now scattered mound of crystalline bones. He looked them over for a bit before cupping his hands and giving a slight nod of his head, storing both the bones and the sign into his interspatial ring. Once he finished the gesture, he swiped his interspatial ring and brought out a bronze plate, tossing it to Little Gray and the others while speaking.
"I've already got an idea about where we can head next, it's number six on that list. But for it to be on a list like that it's clearly one of the more popular ones, there are definitely going to be a lot of people trying to undertake the tests to conquer the tomb. What are your thoughts?"
The bronze plate he threw out was one of the items he had found in the interspatial rings of the three people they killed just outside the mountain. It contained a very simple list and description of some treasure-filled areas that were scattered throughout the area of this competition. But since even Earthly Deities could get their hands on this list, it was obvious that others could too, and there would definitely be many willing to test their luck there.
Yao Jun would have to rely on Little Gray and the others in there, especially if they had to flee rapidly. As such, he wanted them to give their input, if they felt that it wasn't safe then they would just have to find a different place. That particular tomb was quite enticing due to who it housed, but it wasn't worth risking their lives for it. But Sirius and the others only spent a short minute going over the information before they cupped their hands and bowed reverently, a faint glimmer in their eyes that made Yao Jun's lips curve somewhat bitterly.
"Please, allow us the honour of carving you a path to your weapon!"
"Yeah, I had a feeling you were going to say that. Well, shall we go interact with other people again then?"
Thanks for the chapter!