Black Onyx - Phoenix Resurrection

After waking up I found myself being examined by two beauties. I lifted an eyebrow at them as they just mysteriously smiled. They weren’t touching anything as far as I could tell, but their gazes sure were full of curiosity.

The road back to the camp was uneventful if you ignored the two weirdos who refused to leave my side and stuck to my hands like ticks. I considered asking them what was going on, but then I remembered that I didn’t actually care. I had enough to think about, I didn’t need more distractions on my plate.

After deciding what I was going to do with the Cultivation and Martial Arts manuals, I examined the changes my body and Soul went through after reaching the Spirit Realm.

As I feared, the need for energy skyrocketed again. Just to cross the next Minor Realm, I needed more than an order of magnitude more energy than what I required to reach the Spirit Realm in the first place.

Very soon I would have to devour thousands of Spirit Realm Souls just to progress a little bit. That was going to become a problem sooner or later. If the world’s strongest were at the peak of Sky Realm, what chances did I have to become a god? I was beginning to realize that the entire energy of the world might not be enough. Not if I wanted to make full use of my talent.

There was also another thing. My body. My biological cells were at their limit. There was an upper ceiling for cell density and size and I had evidently reached it unknowingly. I had already compressed them so much that I could not shrink down any further. If I continued to get stronger, soon I would become a giant even in my most compressed form. Not that I wasn’t large already, but for the moment, it was still manageable.

Luckily at least that problem had a solution. Energy could be compressed way more than matter. After reaching the Spirit Realm, a Cultivator could change their body. Not many did it because it was time-consuming and didn’t bring any significant benefits, but as a guy who consumed a mountain of Essence, my body was already pushing it.

What I’m trying to say, is that I had to abandon my mortal body and build one of pure energy. Instead of my cells being coated by Essence, they had to be made from it. Not instantly, of course, but gradually, over time.

Some people I killed knew the technique and some even already tried it, so I knew that it was possible, but basically, I had to change every cell in my body with a perfect copy made out of Qi. Yep. Every single one of the 35 trillion cells had to be replaced, one at a time. Well, that’s how many cells a Mortal male had. I probably had a few billion times that.

So yeah… There was a solution, a simple one too. It’s just that it was a bit time-consuming. Notice the sarcasm in my words? Yeah, it was that bad.

Oh, sure, give me a few billion years and I would be able to do it, no problem. It’s just that... I didn’t have that kind of time! The techniques I knew of all converted at most a few thousand cells per second. Even if I pushed it by stretching my perception, it would still take me a hundred thousand years. But, then again, maybe I didn’t need to convert all of it. It certainly wasn’t required to reach the Sky Realm, so maybe…?

I decided I would have to ask around, maybe one of the Clans would know more about it. They had to have someone who knew about it more than I did. In the worst case, I would exchange my wealth to trade for the information. That was bound to bear some fruit.

Either way, I had to focus on my Soul Cultivation first. In the Spirit Realm, the Soul underwent a change that made it much stronger and able to influence the world around it even more. That’s how I became able to use my Avatar to fight in my stead.

Actually, that was the thing, a person wasn’t exactly a singular being. There were in fact, three. Body, Soul, and Ego. During the time spent in the Spirit Realm, a Cultivator had to nurture the Seed, which resided in the core of the body, as well as the Soul Consciousness. It was both material and ethereal at the same time.

Its job was to bind the two worlds together, creating a unity of one from the trinity. The Body, the Soul, and the Self. When those three become one… Well, I guessed that was when one reached the Sky Realm. I wasn’t sure yet. Maybe there was something else, an extra step at the end.

For now, the Seed had to grow. Soul Essence would be its food and water, and as long as I took care of it, it would germinate, become a seedling, then a sapling, and lastly mature into a mighty tree, its roots and branches binding the trinity together into a single being.

I still had a long way ahead of me.

After returning to camp, we were swarmed by the rest of the mercenaries there. The thing was that they also felt the tremors I and the Queen produced, as well as the wild clashes of energy that occurred. Combine that with the state of my team, which looked worse for wear despite not directly participating in battle, people had way too many questions.

I let them sort it out, they were more familiar with each other anyway, and went to find a quiet place where I sat down and began forming cells out of Qi. It was a special kind of conjuration technique, one that would bind the creation directly to the Soul, and so for as long as the person was alive, the new cells would not disappear.

Also, in very dire circumstances, the Qi cells could be used up to grant the person extra energy. It was, of course, not advisable as you would be simply ruining your body that way. But, the option remained.

I focused completely on the task at hand and followed the instructions to the letter. It was not easy. The things I was creating were microscopic in nature, with hundreds of moving parts and different attributes for each of those. Usually, form follows function, though in my case, function followed form, so I had to be extremely accurate in recreating the cell.

Even with guidance and foreign experience, it took me approximately an hour to form my first cell. It was just a simple skin cell, yet I was exhausted by the end of it.

Luckily just a moment after I stopped concentrating, I was back in my peak form and could go again. The second cell took me just about ten minutes, and the third just over a minute.

By the time I got to making my tenth conjured cell, I could do it in a second. As I gained experience, my expertise went up rapidly. By the time the thousandth was completed, I could almost print them out subconsciously. About ten each second. At such speed, the tip of my pinky would be completed in just a short thousand years.

While the thought was depressing, I knew there had to be a way to speed it up. The technique I was familiar with could do a thousand each second, and even that depended on the strength of the Soul. The guy I got it from was capped at that speed, so I hoped I could go faster.

I just needed to do it long enough so that my subconscious mind would start doing it on its own. Kind of like breathing. However, since I didn’t even need to breathe anymore due to the density of Essence in my body, that part could easily take over another passive job.

After some time I detected a disturbance in the real world and I awoke to see what was going on. I had Astrid on my right side, pushing with all her body weight while trying to stab my hand with a small knife. Beside her was crouching Sunfire, looking intently and encouraging her to push harder. The healer girl was failing miserably.

[What are you doing?]

“Aaaaah!” The girls jumped back in fright as I spoke, quickly hiding the knife.

“Oh, hey, haha… You are awake.” Astrid said nervously. Her heavy armor was gone and she was dressed in a simple tight-fitting leather attire.

“Well… Ah… General Red said to call you. We have to celebrate the job well done, haha.” Sunfire added, pulling her friend back.

[Was trying to stab me the best way you could do that?]

“Whaaaat~? Stab you? I don’t know what you are talking about…” Astrid said, pretending to be innocent.

“He’s onto us! Run!” Sunfire shouted and dragged the other girl after her. They ran away giggling.

I mean, what? I knew what they were doing, and they knew that I knew, yet they still refused to admit it. Someone had a terrible childhood if they were still doing that at their age.

I begrudgingly stood up and went back to the camp. The group of warriors was nowhere to be seen, only the five remained. I was told they went into the cavern where they would establish a new perimeter and clear out any stragglers that might have returned. After that, the miners would arrive and start clearing out the Netherealm Jade, but we didn’t have to worry about that anymore. Our job was done.

To celebrate, General Red pulled out a large ceramic jug with a century-old wine and poured a cup to each of us. It was a celebration of staying alive as much as it was of successfully completing the mission.

Torin, who still appeared dispirited even after some time had passed, finally relaxed after drinking a few cups. He even admitted that he had felt useless and apologized for being unable to defend against the Shadow Queen.

That got him a bunch of laughter from the rest of the team, saying it was him who had defended against her long enough so I could kill it. Even if they helped, just knowing how to make an Eternal Bastion was a praise-worthy accomplishment. It was known that the Eternal Bastion was a defensive Formation used by Sects or powerful Clans against an extinction-level threat.

It was something that required years and countless resources to complete, yet he created a miniature version in just a minute and under extreme pressure as well. The praise really helped lift Torin’s spirits and he became more talkative, joining in the conversation.

After a bit of probing, Astrid and Sunfire admitted to their secrets as well. They wanted to see my regeneration power and fire ability respectively. After acting aloof for a while and having them beg me to show them, I finally relented and promised to make some time for them and teach them my techniques.

They celebrated and we drank for hours thereafter, increasingly having more fun as the special wine did its thing and made us drunk. What kind of alcohol could intoxicate a Spirit Realm Cultivator, I didn’t know, but it was nice to finally feel something, as normal wines didn’t affect me anymore.

Even Red’s magic brew was quickly getting purged from my system, but it was nice while it lasted.

And so, another day ended, joking with a group of friends around the campfire, inside a dark cave full of untapped adventures.