247 Blessing
A/N: Gn~
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A few seconds after the golden blade disappeared, small, innumerable golden particles evaporated at a pace visible to the naked eye and collected above the Sky Piercing Mountain once again. The space was still locked yet the mountain was almost destroyed with large chunks already torn from its peak and the terrain of the land shifted with barely any vegetation left around. Of everyone conscious and unconscious, Petals became the spectator of what came afterward.
A Tribulation like no other was survived with the virtue of countering the attack using the causal nature of the Invincible Counter spirit skill. No, to be exact, the Tribulation was divided into three unequal portions. The greatest brunt was held by Ah Yin and Petals who displayed the strength well above a Titled Douluo using the True Spirit Avatar but at the cost of injury to Ah Yin's spirit core. The lower two halves were dealt by the Discharge Eagle and the ink-like dragon imprint hidden within the now almost destroyed Thunder Hell Prison Vine.
Discharge Eagle ended up losing its life and Ah Yin would have suffered the same fate if not for the golden flames in the shape of a beautiful sword that continued to protectively hover around Ah Yin. Its previous intense flames were now gentle and soothing. The golden sword moved suddenly as the golden particles continued to form an immortal golden cloud. Meanwhile, Petals found that the sword stabbed into a particular location as if solid and pulled out with a small storage ring coiled with thin golden flames that revealed enough control to not burn the artifact itself.
Ah Yin's storage ring. Just before Petals felt the need to interject, the sword dropped the ring on Ah Yin and then continued to hover around once again.
*Drip*
*Drip*
*Drip*
Within a few seconds, Petals observed beautiful golden raindrops drizzling gently.
The Boon after the Tribulation.
Heaven is fair, well, relatively. The Tribulation caused by the Discharge Eagle was somehow used to attack Ja Sun slumbering underground yet it couldn't break the rules of Tribulation itself. For that, the attack had to branch out and strike the other parties nearby, too. In fact, of all the parties involved, Ah Yin was the only one not on the list. She is a spirit beast turned human. To the spirit beasts and the heaven, she became human by choice and is no longer needed to be targeted by a tribulation yet she was the one who tackled the strike.
As if sentient, the golden raindrops seemed to avoid everything but the broken Thunder Hell Prison Vine and Ah Yin's unconscious body. The raindrops evaded everything including the flaming sword.
With every drop of rain, Ah Yin's body recovered. Petals made observed things in detail. She was too close to death but she also knew that Ah Yin would want to understand the changes to her body after accepting the rewards gained by successfully passing a portion of a mighty Tribulation worse than the usual Tribulations.
The most primal benefit fell on her physique. Ah Yin already had a physical core and now, Petals observed that every inch of Ah Yin's body be it her tendons or organs, or even her blood filled with unusual vitality of a Blue Silver Goddess had a golden sheen as the tempering of the golden rain soon completed, indicating the lack of growth as Ah Yin's body was fully refined into that of a peak physique held by a mortal. In quality, her body and Ja Sun's body were no different and now the only difference lay in their techniques and their output of strength.
However, the rain continued. Unusually stronger than normal tribulations, the benefits would be unusually great, too. And with the death of the Discharge Eagle, the benefits largely fell to Ah Yin who withstood the greater burden by surpassing a Titled Douluo in pure strength temporarily.
Still, the benefits cannot break the rule of this world. Since Ah Yin was at her bottleneck, instead of pushing her rank higher, the majority of spirit energy was used to repair her spirit core. Petals scoffed internally.
'First, you force us to injure the core and now you heal it! Heavens! You're redundant!' However, the 'daring' spirit soul wouldn't dare openly challenge heaven.
With her body and spirit core taking a meager portion of the benefits, the most major blessing fell on the area that Ah Yin lacked the most.
Her sea of consciousness and her mental energy.
With excitement clear in her large, pupilless eyes, Petals saw Ah Yin's sea of consciousness nourish under the nourishment of the golden rain. Unlike Ja Sun's mental world made from two seas of consciousness derived from a chunk of life gold, Ah Yin's sea of consciousness was similar to others but simply vast in quantity due to her already remarkable growth as a spirit beast. But it was too spread out. Every drop absorbed by her body sent pure, untarnished divine intent to her sea of consciousness and it collected in the center of Ah Yin's mind. This focused energy attracted the loose mental energy moving around as mist.
With every drop, this concentration of energy grew more intense and it absorbed more and more of the unrefined, mist-like mental energy.
Under Petals' expected gaze, the entirety of Ah Yin's mental energy began to compress into one point. Usually, a core needs a source of great energy to form, or else the formation might be unsuccessful. However, the only exception to this case happened to be Oscar whose spirit core seemed to be able to grow at its own pace. It wasn't even completed but gave him no trouble. This was directly related to his sheer talent in spirit cultivation and the immortal herb he absorbed. Even Ja Sun and Ah Yin didn't have such a leeway.
For Ah Yin, her spirit came from utilizing the pool of energy that was Yin-Yang Petals before and her physical core came from the residual Blue Silver Emperor's Core and her own vitality and bloodline. Now, the reward of tribulation by itself formed her mental core.
The milky white mental energy within Ah Yin's sea of consciousness continued to converge and compress into a single point. It felt as if there was simply no end to the refinement while her body kept on absorbing the golden rain.
*Vum*
A soft, humming noise finally echoed in the dark sea of consciousness that had all its energy sucked into a single point. Petals waited with bated breath. With every echo of the soft hum, the milky white layer of mental energy would fall off as if a layer of useless substance. The moment the portion of the layer was separated from the still convulsing core, it began to wither as if having lost all its essence.
Once.
Twice.
Thrice.
This continued for too long in Petals' eyes as she was too excited yet not even a minute had passed in the real world.
The final layer gave way to a golden brilliance filled with a vibrant sheen of ocean blue as the glow covered the entirety of Ah Yin's recently emptied sea of consciousness as if a vast ocean!
*Crackle*
A bolt of thick golden lightning followed by the thundering clap instantly struck Ah Yin's body but instead of harming her, the lightning tempered Ah Yin's entire being. From her physique, to her spirit energy and mental energy, everything was harmonized at once!
Although Ah Yin's mental energy didn't reach the level of a divine intent, it wasn't far off anymore as a brilliant golden core with resplendent ocean blue carving on its surface continued to absorb energy from its surroundings and began to refine it into mental energy to fill Ah Yin's sea of consciousness.
The Golden Cloud dissipated after the bolt of lightning as if it didn't exist.
The surrounding shackle of space was lifted and Petals instantly felt many forms of energy sweep over them yet it was at this instant that the silent Golden Flame Sword hovering at the sidelines grew humongous in size and caused a small perimeter around the mountain to grow in a dome of flames!
Petals' worry for Ah Yin's body that she would need oxygen to breathe was soon lifted. She didn't need it anymore. Ah Yin's body had gotten self-sufficient using internal and spirit energy similar to Ja Sun's body.
If Petals was suspicious of the strange sword's motive then, after this act, she was at ease.
The flames continued to burn slowly as Petals felt the multiple sweeps of malicious intent fade away but some stuck around. As if waiting for one weak spot to finally invade the territory and devour them alongside every benefit they experienced today.
Yet, everything changed once a purple talon suddenly emerged from the ground.
Petals' expression turned pale. For a moment, she felt that she had been teleported to a world of crimson. All she could see was a wide-expanse of a crimson ocean and she strangely stood on the ocean. Looking down, she suddenly shrieked at the sight of countless bones sticking out, forming a platform in various regions!
What terrified her the most was the purple, eldritch monstrosity with a sleek body staring back at her with an empty gaze that seemed to hold her fate in its hand.
"Sorry," the figure whispered and Petals found herself staring at Ja Sun who held a gentle smile. There wasn't anything strange with him. She was surrounded by flames once again at the foot of the almost demolished Sky Piercing Mountain but she didn't feel the other malevolent intents anymore.
"It's not like me to lose control... but the sensation of being shafted is unpleasant. Can't blame Ah Yin and Bibi Dong from now on," Ja Sun added as he turned to look at the golden sword made of flames and bowed deeply.
*Shrkkk*
With a sharp sound, the flames were absorbed by the sword and the sword itself dematerialized at this point.
To Ja Sun, the identity of the maker of the sword was clear and he was deeply grateful at this point.
He was awake this entire time but he couldn't move physically. There are a limited number of things that can stop his demi-divine body and as it turns out, one of them is the absorption of an external spirit bone from a million-year-old spirit beast.
And for the first time, Ja Sun felt how empty his previous words were.
'Laughable... she couldn't leave me to fend off for myself when it really mattered... and I couldn't stop myself from worrying,' Ja Sun's expression turned blank once again.
He wasn't happy that Ah Yin was hurt.
He wasn't thrilled by the idea that she was forced to pick up his shit.
Yet...
He sat beside her and stroked her cheek. He was in awe.
He was speechless.
"You fucking idiot," Ja Sun whispered, "I can't have the woman who reached my heart in our first meeting dying over me, literally. Try it figuratively next time..."
His thumb traced her supple neck as he added, "And Petals... you share what I said right now to Ah Yin, I will make it my personal goal to replace you with a better spirit beast and feed you to some other divine soul."
The spirit soul was speechless since after experiencing the oddly terrifying yet calm bloodlust, she was sure that Ja Sun might fulfill his threat.
After confirming Ah Yin's condition, Ja Sun took her storage ring and safely put it away before looking towards the peak of the mountain.
Ah Yin should be the one to collect since that was her reward so Ja Sun merely picked Ah Yin up and reached the peak of the mountain before settling down.
'Now... I truly got fucked by Poseidon. I lack too much in terms of knowledge... and application of divine intent...'
As Ja Sun settled, Petals found ocean blue marks suddenly emerge from his forehead all over his tattoo of the emerald third eye.
In fact, Petals was sure that these marks were similar to the base of Ah Yin's mental core but for some reason, the marks on Ja Sun's forehead continued to act as a... beacon.
'Could it be...' Petals had a conjecture that she didn't dare entertain...
It cannot be true, right?
Ja Sun could not have offended a god, right?
How could the poor Spirit soul know that she was correct?
Ja Sun didn't offend 'a' god.
He had two gods on this list and now one of them managed to make the first move.
---
"Ugh..." Qian Daoliu leaned against the nearest tree with cold sweat drenching his entirety.
'What... was that? Killing intent? Slaughter City's Killing intent should be more... open.'
He didn't know how to categorize Ja Sun's killing intent except for the term disgusting. It was disgustingly eerie. It was disgustingly heavy. It was disgustingly frightening!
The intent wasn't aimed at anybody. It simply oozed as Ja Sun seemed to have lost his bearings for the tiniest moment but this only made Qian Daoliu glad in the end. In his early sixties, an individual like this no matter the age meant a threat and he would have definitely done his all to remove such an individual. This is something Qian Xunji tried and failed to accomplish.
However... in his late 'sixties', Qian Daoliu knew better. Ah Yin was a Spirit Beast turned Human with three spirit cores. Ja Sun was a twin martial soul spirit master with three cores, too! Their future was greater than his and now, Qian Daoliu knew for a fact that temporarily, they could raise their strength beyond his achievements, too.
At that moment, nobody could have stopped the blade of Poseidon's trident except for Ah Yin. What Qian Daoliu did was provide the ending straw that broke the camel's back.
'And that... external spirit bone...' Qian Daoliu recalled what he sensed back then. Due to the spatial lock, it was hard to make sense of things but once it crumbled away, Qian Daoliu could feel the malevolent energy creeping up his skin.
Right now, Ja Sun was only a disciple in name with strength that left nothing to refute about. Deep down, Qian Daoliu also had a selfish intent.
The day he took Ah Yin and Ja Sun under his wings, he didn't only want to keep the 'threats' close but also his other motives could be understood from the inquiry he placed then.
What is the difference between a master and a teacher?
The answer was fairly simple.
Teacher teaches all irrespective of innate talents.
But a master pursues talented individuals.
Why?
Not only to leave a legacy behind, but if possible, live long enough for the said talented disciples to grow and assist the master himself.
The concept of master and disciple appeared from the relationship of a parent and its offspring.
At a tender age, a good father teaches and nurtures his child well. It's like taking care of and protecting a small plant.
But in time, this plant would grow into a sturdy tree and provide food, shelter, and shade.
The unsaid essence of a relationship between a disciple and a master lay in this aspect of give and take, too.
With a satisfied smile, Qian Daoliu glanced in the direction of one particular intent that was ready to pounce but couldn't be felt anymore.
'A king, my ass. You and Tang Chen are cut from the same cloth. No... you're actually worse. At least, Tang Chen had the sensibility to disappear. Your time is going to come soon.'
---
"Ugh!" The very same 'King' fell on his knees with cold sweat dripping on his forehead.
This killing intent was too familiar.
It was too terrifying!
'I wanted to reclaim the mutated Thunder Hell Prison Vine and the spirit beast turned into the girl for King, however...'
His eyes twitched.
The silver pole sticking out from the emerald lake finally trembled as the cold voice shook its surroundings.
"Asura..."
Not far from the 'king', a regal-like furry-little creature stuck its head out from the bush. Its three red eyes gazed in the very same direction. Although the beast looked like a wolf, its sturdy body spoke a different tale. Despite the wolf-like muzzle of the golden-furred spirit beast, the short concentration of mane around its head revealed the strange lineage of the beast.
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A/N: It is as stated, Ah Yin and Ja Sun are already god level powerhouses but this only means rank 100 and that, too, the weaker ones. Qian Daoliu, despite his strength and fame is only a peak rank 99.
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