Chapter 95: Nine Sea Gods Trial 3

Chapter 95: Nine Sea Gods Trial 3

Word count = 1176 on 10/12/2023

context : Xue Tie and gang return to the island where he is informed that he must grow a special fruit named the Sea Star Fruit. A short history lesson is given that this fruit was personally created by Poseidon during his mortal days to strengthen his water affinity. As Xue Tie has discarded his martial spirits and broken down his own bloodline nature, he is not against attempting to get water affinity since he feels he could convert it into a blood affinity through his original bloodline essence.

"Well, we're here," Xue Tie says to the swimmers. While saying so, he realizes that he is still wearing his robes. Since his robes had been separated from his soul just like his trident, he has to manually take off like a hefty sweater. While he is doing that, the swimmers exit onto the beach itself and observe how he is utilizing his martial spirit as if a regular piece of clothing as they only knew that the trident was disconnected from him and not the robes too. He takes it off and stores it in his storage bracelet.

The Sea Gods trial rune appears once more to signify the completion of the 2nd trial. As such, all 10 people (7 pillars, high priestess, tang chen, Xue Tie) begin to make their way back to Sea Gods island. The trip is much faster as they all choose to fly this time around.

Once they return to the island, Bo Saixi says,

"We will have to go to a specific location for your next trial."

"Are you able to tell me what I'm doing ahead of time?"

"Your goal is to grow to maturity the sea gods seed. For your information, the sea gods seed was personally made by our lord Poseidon to assist in raising his own water affinity to the god officer level which served as their foundations to ascend to their current status as a high level god."

"Also you must complete this task within 2 weeks"

"Hoh, interesting. This will definitely be fun." Xue Tie says in response to the information he was given. In the meantime they have arrived at a special part of the beach that takes on the shape of a crescent moon. There is only a single palm tree at this location with Wisteria, Hydrangeas and Camellias neatly arranged into the kanji word for "SEA" (the word umi)

"We have arrived. Here is your seed. You may then get to work on your third trial" Bo Saixi takes out a strange pearl from her kimono sleeve. The pearl itself is a mixture of aquamarine, and blue with spots of brown. This is the indication of the sky, sea and earth. The pearl is given to Xue Tie who looks at it baffled for a moment before his death mark glows and he inspects it's life aspects before he understands what are it's requirements for growth.

With the necessary information, Xue Tie approaches the shoreline and moves some sand aside to place the pearl in the center of the hole. This way, the beach's waves would constantly wash over the pearl seed. The result is pretty immediate as a sprout is spawned. Afterwards the next few waves arrive but the sprout does not increase in size like before as it is gradually absorbing sea water through its roots. But its speed is abysmal for absorption.

The 'root' cause of this small speed is the fact that it is a true god level plant made from the essence of the sea god. Xue Tie doesnt believe in the story that the high priestess just told him but it could be that she also didn't know the true story. But it's obvious that the trail is rigged to be undoable as it requires divine essence for its completion. This means that no mortal, even a gifted person like Tang San could ever complete such a task.

In addition to the typically impossible task of divine essence, the herb itself would take a month to grow even though he only has 2 weeks to complete the task.

Luckily Xue Tie is no normal person. The Sea God even got a bit of his death energy but he still gave him such a task. Is this supposed to be some sort of favor from the sea god in hopes of helping him advance further. Or is this some sort of malicious plan? He truly can't tell as he has no interacted with the sea god enough.

Xue Tie raises his hand with black flames sprouting around it. He touches the flower sprout. Afterwards, the sprout begins to grow quite quickly with each wave. As for how he did it. He 'killed' the natural limits of the herb's growth which includes factors such as daily root growth, consumption rate, growth rate, growth limits and power limits. All these benefits while killing the concept of overfeeding. Essentially turning it into a gluttonous divine pearl.

In addition to overcoming its natural growth limits, he had also killed the liquid essence of the sea god which functioned as the water affinity boosting effect. He replaced it with his own bloodline and death energy. This way the pearl would actually be beneficial to him as due to his affinities, his death abilities take the form of flame, as such the original bleed effect of his bloodline was fully negated as his death energy is the basis for all his future spirit skills. So he needs no water affinity or any variant of it that could be made from it into blood.

After 3 hours, the herb has grown into a small bush 10ft wide and 5 ft tall. At the top of this flowery bush that sprouted unidentified flowers has a single budding fruit hidden behind a petal-like coating.

It is only a few minutes later when Xue Tie dropped a few drops of his blood that the budding fruit gains a red hue before sprouting a blue-black fruit that gives off a rainbow like glow.

To alert his testers that the trial is done, he swings his hand to release a black blade technique into the sky. 9 people come flying by and Tang Chen for one starts laughing maniacally like Inosuke from Demon Slayer over the absurdity of the situation.

Shortly after they separated from Xue Tie so he could focus, it was told to him that Bo Saixi had lied about the fruits history as she didn't want to demoralize Xue Tie with an impossible challenge. She herself was confused over why this was chosen as the trail. Especially since she was told to withhold the divine water from Xue Tie for an unknown reason.

Yet she now sees the full grown fruit, though it looks far different than what she was told. With her own sight as key, the sea god trails rune appears once more.

Designating that the third trail is now complete