Chapter 96: Nine Sea Gods Trial 4

Chapter 96: Nine Sea Gods Trial 4

Word count = 1591 on 10/14/2023

With the third trial officially over, Xue Tie plucks the fruit, which can now be officially named the death gods fruit after all the changes he had made on it.

He finds that it isn't actually useful for him since the fruit has his essence mixed into it. This means he can't increase his affinity with death through the fruit since it would either be artificial or temporary.

With the idea that this can only be given to others, he gets a special idea. As such, he stores it away for now as it's useless for him until the trial ends. As for the sea gods' essence from the 2nd trial, he had already devoured it. It made his body more flexible due to the water like natural; his mind was also refreshed. His spirit power did rise to 10 at least 50 times as he kept feeding the lower level spirit energy to the death mark on his head. That is how he is still level 1.

Bo saixi simply looks at the fruit that was just stored away before shaking her head of the admiration that has sprouted in her heart due to the perseverance that Xue Tie has shown her.

"Here is your next trial." she takes out a small rube with various symbols on it. If not for the dark sea-stone material, Xue Tie would have thought it was a rubix cube. He takes the cube, and the high priestess continues her speech.

"You must use that sea god stone, which our people use to get the best spirit rings for ourselves. Your goal is to have that stone reach 1 million years and absorb the ring successfully. Oh, by the way. That specific stone has a limit of ten thousand years. There is no time limit for this test as it should only take a bit of your time. A day at most, I would assume, " she explains, not hiding the challenge offered to Xue Tie this time around.

"Too slow, 1 hour at most. " Xue Tie retorts as he sits down cross-legged.

"Disable the limitation of users' energy flow so that it takes in ambient energy. Disable the growth limit. Create an energy shell for the storage so it doesn't explode from the abundance of energy. While I'd love to see how I fare against a nuke, it doesn't mean I'd enjoy it." He lists out his actions as the black flames manifest and seep into the cube.

After each step of what he says, changes occur in the cube, as well as the surroundings. Everyone can feel a tidal wave of energy flowing into the cube as it brightens up greatly. The glow on the cube is first white, then yellow, purple, a few minutes later Black, and then 2 hours later does it gain a hint of red that rapidly changes the cubes color in real-time-speed as if blood is covering the cube.

In truth, Xue Tie has set down the cube in the sand, and every one of its changes in color has blasted the surrounding sand away. The sand that landed on him was burned away so that not even glass could be made.

Soon enough the cube has become fully red. Xue Tie has a mischievous idea and looks at Tang Chen.

"You think I have enough time to take a nap before this thing explodes with god king level force?"

All the viewers just shake their head that something which could be a struggle for anyone else is reduced to the desire to have a nap for someone else as they are bored from waiting after doing the utmost minimal effort.

Regardless of their opinions, Xue Tie takes a nap, though he at least puts the cube in his lap before he does so.

6 hours later Xue Tie is still napping but the cube starts to gain a golden hue. As the golden hue fully covers the cube, the sea stone seems to have reached it's limit as it explodes. Xue Tie is still none the wiser with the exception of finding himself back in his mind palace where he had met Mohg a few times.

Xue Tie is sitting with a fishing rod in hand, yet strangely the line leads into an ocean of black flames. His reason for doing this is because during his meditative sleep, he found that there are different types of death within his flames. These death types take on various forms and scales.

There is low level death which is typically applied to all living beings such as humans, plants, and whatever other lifeforms there is. This type of death comes in various forms of illness, age, trauma (physical or mental), or relative (cause and effect type of death. This type of death can be linked to the other types).

The scale above low level death is mid level death which refers to something more vast: be it an earthquake, plague, or whatever other types of natural disasters that have the potential to kill thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of living beings.

The final stage is quite a conundrum as its scale is quite large. This is related to planetary extinction level events such as a world simply breaking apart and thus killing all life on it. Other examples would be stars reaching the end of their life and possibly ending the life in its periphery.

Xue Tie had to acknowledge all these types of deaths which is why he is now stuck fishing as he is gathering the wisps of certain soft deaths as he wishes to create a sort of divine relic that would allow others to communicate with him once he ascends as he can truly feel the more he understands death through the trials, the closer he gets to such an event.

As for what a soft death is, it refers to those where a living being dies quickly or at least their last moments are painless. By gathering such specific death types, he ensures that anyone who interacts with it won't immediately die, nor will it have far reaching effects if left alone. It's essentially a curse to whoever is near it but if left alone then there are no harmful effects.

The strange thing is that whilst fishing, he drags out the soul of a dragon from his death flames. He can naturally see the properties of this beast as being the ring backlash from the beasts above 10k years of age. Xue Tie quickly comes to the conclusion that the sea god stone had broken from reaching its limits but due to his mental defenses, the dragon could not sweep his mind away for the illusionary battle they would have.

"Damned human, death is the only outcome for someone like you who wishes to tame someone like me." The dragon roars at him.

"Funny you should say that. Have you looked up at all?" Xue Tie says bemused by the words and situation. The dragon does and immediately sees the giant death core that makes up Xue Tie's power. The dragon shivers from the feeling it receives when it's spiritual sense investigates the core.

"Human, what is this?"

"It's death, or rather the death-core I have created. You see, I don't need spirit rings. So your choice right now is either to willingly submit and become one with that core to boost my divine power, or you can simply be erased. The choice is yours. Im busy fishing you see"

The dragon is stumped by Xue Tie's words that its 'brain' outright stopped working. It only fixed itself after seeing two strange pearls just floating in space. The dragon foolishly rushes at these 2 pearls, consuming them both which causes its body to still mutate. It's body casually floats towards the death core afterwards but it seems to have tried to resist. Unlike what it imagined, it didn't actually get destroyed or merged into the death-core. Instead it had become the new core of the Death Soul core. It had mutated from a simple darkness dragon into a proper Death Dragon, as well as Xue Tie's new martial spirit.

To the outside audience, they only saw the cube glow fully gold before a shadowy figure rose up and roared into the sky before a fishing hook made of black flames pierce into the flesh of the shadowy figure which then pulled it back into Xue Tie's embrace. Just moments later a shadowy dragon figure with scales that have the pattern of black flames emerges around Xue Tie's body. He awakens and stretches as he gets used to the newly personified aspect of death serves as the medium for his death energy.

The dragon has glowing purple eyes, opening its mouth releases a purple smog that is reminiscent of Xue Ties old spirit skill of the Turbulent air Trident skill. The smog does not move very far before dissipating but it still gives a very creepy look. That combined with the aforementioned pitch black body that is further imprinted with the pattern of black flames.

(here, it's not exact since most dragon images arent super specific on the patterns of every scale on it's body but this one is cool enough)

Xue Tie brings back his new spirit and looks at the peanut gallery as the sea gods rune once more shows up to signify the end of the 4th trial.