Chapter 48: Watch me.

"When I said that only those who are firm in their pursuit of power, it was a nudge in the wrong direction. The Phoenix's inheritance is a gift to this continent, but she wasn't willing to pass on her power to the evil and heartless. The Phoenix's split soul said, taking a pause after.

"The illusions you experienced were created from your memories and were indistinguishable from reality. Even if you have a strong desire for power, love remains the most important thing for the soul. Therefore, if you were to harm the person you love the most, you cannot inherit the power of the Phoenix." This is what the construct explained.

Oh yeah, the Phoenix was probably a good person, as good as a god could be, anyway.

"Among the hundreds of people who passed the second trial, you're the eighth person to pass the third trial, and among those eight, you're the first person to accept to be stabbed by their loved one, showing absolute trust for your partner, giving you a perfect pass for the trial." The phoenix concluded.

"Hundreds of people attacked the person they love the most?" I asked back, unable to conceive such a thing.

The gigantic pupil in the phoenix's eyes constricted a little after hearing my words, as if surprised, "Indeed, your world might be different, far kinder, but here people would stab their parents, their spouses, their children, everyone they ever loved just for more power, you must accept it, the feelings in your heart are far rarer than you understand." 

If those statistics were indicative of the cultivator population of this world at large, then this world was far darker and more awful than I had ever imagined. Perhaps they had their reasons. Maybe they rationalized that it had been an illusion, but I'd rather not trust someone capable of hurting the person they loved the most.

As the Phoenix had said, the illusion was not distinguishable from reality. Just the very tiny details felt weird. I doubted that an illusion could create an entire film from scratch, and it also might have been influenced by the fact that it was a completely foreign concept to this world.

"As your first reward, I'll bestow upon you the Phoenix's Veins." 

The world burned golden for a second before I felt a hot sensation between my eyebrows I inspected my body with all of my available means, but all I could sense was that my veins were slightly different; I needed my equipment to see how different.

"Your second reward will be three drops of the Phoenix's Divine Blood; a normal cultivator can barely handle one, but with the Evil God's Divine Seed and Veins, you can handle them without a problem." 

Three drops of golden liquid appeared before me, a different person's blood inside my body, just like that time, not to talk about a bird god's blood. Had I not already experienced absorbing a drop of millennia-old god blood, I would have asked her what her blood type was.

Not that I had any idea if this world's people even had different blood types.

But she was a bird; there's no way normal bird blood would be compatible. This profound energy thing had some incredibly wacky effects.

I looked at them, unsure of what I was supposed to do with them, but it seemed that I didn't have to worry about that as soon enough they were all forced into my veins.

I observed the way they flowed through my body, feeling the slightest bit of foreign energy in my body, fighting for control against the ocean that was my energy when comparing the volumes.

And yet, the golden blood stood strong, incredibly so, as if it were a mountain that could only get slowly eroded, but not destroyed.

If I let the process go on automatically it would take a fair bit of time, probably around five minutes from the speed they were currently being degraded, becoming part of my power base.

But I wasn't satisfied, if I left it alone I wouldn't learn anything from the process, and there was no way that I wouldn't at least try to take the reins of whatever was happening inside of my body.

So I started creating runes upon runes, all around the three drops of golden blood, not to attack them, but with a single intent, which was to force the blood to fuse with my energy without conflict.

It took a few tens of runes, but the blood finally stopped resisting the assimilation and dissipated, fundamentally changing both the walls of my Energy Veins and my energy itself, and I observed every single second of the process, giving me a chance of in the future taking advantage of this for whatever purpose I may find.

"Wow," I said briefly, knowing how much higher density energy interacted with a lower density one was an experience that I didn't know I would ever need, but it might be useful in unexpected ways.

Mainly how to fuse the two peacefully.

"You took less time than I anticipated, from fifteen minutes to barely a few seconds; it seems you hold some secrets that even I cannot see through. That technique you used isn't one I'm familiar with." I heard the Godly Bird remark with curiosity.

"Well, I just made it, so it's not weird that you've never seen it before," I replied, knowing from Jasmine that nobody else could make my runes; I wasn't that surprised that a long-dead god wouldn't know them either.

Creating new stuff was the specialty of the people of Earth, after all.

"It seemed to hold a small trace of a concept, not something someone at your cultivation level should have access to." She continued, her voice growing even more curious, or maybe I was reading too much into her inflections. I couldn't exactly understand a bird's accent.

I just shrugged in answer. I had no idea what she was talking about; my intent could be seen as concepts, but wasn't everything abstract a concept anyway? 

The will to freeze something was based on how I understood what it meant to freeze a liquid at the molecular level, for example, and that was the same for every single rune. I told the world how to change and used the necessary profound energy. Then, the world did the rest.

Seeing that she couldn't get an answer out of me, since I had none, she just moved on and two things appeared before me: a white bottle and a white stone.

"In the Jade Bottle, there is the Divine Phoenix Pill. Its main ability won't be of much use to you since you possess the Divine Flame Seed, but it can still increase your profound strength by at least a single rank. In the Jade, instead, there is inscribed the [World Ode of the Phoenix], one of the Three Great World Scorching Heavenly Books with the power to burn the heavens."

For some reason the way she explained it made it sound far less impressive than it most likely was, but how could I judge the naming sense of a God?

So while I inwardly renamed it the WOOTP, the P being silent for ease of pronunciation, I outwardly just gave her a brief thank you.

"In that jade, there are only the last two stages of the technique." She continued, she did seem a little irritated that I didn't show a bigger reaction to the thing, but it might have been my imagination.

I hoped.

I raised an eyebrow at her and asked, "What do you mean?" 

"Originally, there were two inheritance sites, and one of the two formed the current Divine Phoenix Empire. The Phoenix consciousness in that trial was slowly corrupted: it developed a consciousness, which led it to want the entire continent for itself. It attacked me to destroy me, so we fought, but I was weaker. I feigned to dissipate to escape, but it succeeded in destroying the original Jade. I could only save the last two stages while it managed to get the first four." 

That was interesting. It was a Skynet situation. The artificial intelligence went out of control and wanted to conquer the world, trying to wipe out the competition. 

Nothing unusual, it seemed that I would have to develop a more powerful safety net should I decide to create an AI of my own.

"I see," I replied, my face unimpressed by her tale.

Did the temperature just rise a little? 

Must be my imagination.

"The first four stages of the technique are currently in the hands of the Divine Phoenix Sect, so if you wish to acquire them, that's where you will have to go." She explained briefly.

"And finally, I have a warning for you, do not speak of the trials to anyone, if you go to the Divine Phoenix Empire you need to hide any signs of the Phoenix Veins and mark, at least until you have enough power to ignore the Divine Phoenix Sect." 

"Why?" I asked back immediately, the tone that the Bird God used wasn't one that I liked, it felt… ominous.

"They will not take kindly to an outsider possessing their sacred blood, and will do everything in their power to find out where you got it." She replied.

I felt a chill, her words bringing me visions of every single film scene that I had seen involving the torture of a captive for information.

And in a magical world, I didn't want to even think about what kind of tortures they had come up with, not to talk about all of the stuff regarding souls that on Earth was impossible, just thinking about it made my blood run cold.

"Alright, thank you. I can't take out this jade thing, right?" I asked, but I could already see the resounding rejection that would arrive… and it arrived, "Of course not." 

"I see…" In that case, I couldn't just let this thing go away alone, I gave it a brief look and it was very cool, it contained different ways of controlling profound energies that created some incredibly cool effects.

And just like the golden text from when I learned the Buddha Art, it seemed mostly incomprehensible gibberish, divided into different segments under different names, but the techniques themselves were mostly impossible to understand easily.

Every squiggly line, meaning, and intent in the text indicated different things, different ways to move energy, with different intents and speeds during different movements, it was complicated but doable.

I didn't have any intention to study it right now though, so I had to figure something out.

It seemed that I would have to create those recording runes way before I had programmed.

I took out my notebook and opened an empty page, then my intent flooded the page, ordering it to create a perfect reproduction of the text in the jade.

The page turned to ash.

"Huh." 

"You cannot copy such a powerful technique into mortal materials. The intent of the technique is to turn any lesser material into dust. This jade comes from a higher realm; nothing on this continent is sufficient to hold the [World Ode Of The Phoenix]. I'm afraid that you can only give up on learning it." The Phoenix said, her voice her pity.

"Oh yeah? Watch this." I said, then I started concentrating like I never did before.

Pity, I didn't want any pity, not from an overgrown bird, not from anyone, and most of all not because I couldn't learn a technique that I didn't care for in the first place! 

She said I couldn't take it out of here, then I'll prove her wrong.

I had something from a higher realm right inside of my hand, and it just so happened to stop time for the things inside of it, so I started drawing.

I didn't need to understand how to draw energy lines, nor did I need to understand it to copy and paste the intent from inside the jade to another place. I just had to separate every big and complex intent into small and manageable packages, my runes.

So I started the conversion and storage of this massive thing into a pure runic script inside of my Green Realm.

It wasn't hard, just tedious, breaking apart the intent to "Burn the heavens, smite existence for daring to stand before my flames and not making way." Into small, tiny runes that when executed together recreated the same effect as the original intent.

An hour later, I was too slow, and the children might be starting to worry about where I was, so I created the last rune, completed the entire project, and stood up, cracking my back in the process.

"I'm done, can I go now?" 

I wanted nothing more than to leave this place and take a shower.

Hello~ 

That thing, the power stone, give it to me!

Love you all!