3 Heaven Core

Some time after being pierced by the unknown black sword, the young girl woke up, and quickly checked her body for any wounds, particularly the large hole she presumed to have existed from being struck by a blade flying at high speed. Upon finding none, she sighed in relief, then froze with confusion, where did the sword go?

The black sword was nowhere to be found, and when scanning across the surroundings, the golden veins on the ceiling had become a bit dimmer, as if their power source had been crippled. Though the light in the residence became a little dimmer, the girl realized that her senses had somehow increased, for she could easily see a further distance than before; she could see the first set of doors on the wall from her current position, a feat impossible for her just a few moments ago.

Angling her head towards the walls once more, she attempted to look for the sword again, only to stiffen in surprise when she came to the wall where the sword once hung.

Devouring Heaven. The characters and symbols on the wall which she had no comprehension of, the girl could decipher the intention of the message, though not the full content. What had changed? Why are the symbols understandable?

The girl traced the symbols from left to right once more, and this time obtained further information she quickly deemed unusable. Luminous Seraph, Heaven Core. Shaking her head, she decisively tore her gaze off of the wall, and back towards the corridor, for she had better priorities at the moment, which was to find food for her starving stomach.

The divine fountain water's effects had begun to wear off, and she was a mere mortal very recently, and her body was hungry!

Jogging to the first set of doors, the girl stopped just short of approaching a door and throwing it open recklessly. She sighed, and wished she had a map, so she could at least know where her basic needs could be maintained!

As each door remained identical except for the inscriptions above, of which she couldn't get any comprehensive information out of, she merely picked the door in front of her, and slowly pushed it open. Immediately after, her expression blackened at the spectacle before her.

Opening this door, led to another similar corridor, with doors on each side similar to the main hallway she had just attempted to leave. A main difference here was this time, the doors were merely three meters tall and each door was placed five meters apart compared to the previous ten meters tall and ten meters of spacing.

Another lucky difference, the girl rejoiced, was that this time she could barely understand the meanings of the inscriptions above the doors, which gave her some insight to its contents within, yet her hopes were dashed; while there were many doors, too many to count, she couldn't find a single one related to food, or eating. Sighing, she begrudgingly walked back towards the main hallway, to try her luck with another door.

This time selecting an adjacent door to the one she just emerged from, the young girl was slightly luckier as the corridor only held four doors within, and the last one was titled "Ration Storage". Upon reaching the door, the girl jumped with excitement, and quickly shoved her way in, to be greeted by racks containing rows of a white square-shaped object, all consisting of an equal size. Grabbing one with her small hand, she quickly bit into it, and almost spat it back out.

Tasteless! Absolutely tasteless! The girl was shedding tears at this rate, but still wolfed down the white squares, constantly grumbling about the poor taste, or lack of, before searching for a water source after obtaining her fill. To her surprise and delight, there were several bags lying to the right of the door, and as she opened one, she was greeted by small jars, of which she confirmed was the divine fountain water similar to the one in the entrance hallway.

Discovering that the bag wasn't heavy at all even with several jars full of water, the girl carefully packed in as many of the white squares as she could. Tasteless it may be, but the squares performed its job very well-keeping her fed.

With the goal of exploring the residence a bit further, and possibly obtaining a map, the girl ventured out once more into the entrance hallway, of which she began to explore some of the nearby doors.

The corridors within contained a myriad of categories of items, from a collection of mortal items, a divine weaponry storage, and even a large, detailed painting of the residence's exterior-of which she found absolutely no use for, the girl eventually discovered that the distance she had covered until now from the moment she stepped into the residence, was far greater than what the exterior presented.

Furrowing her brows, she realized that some spatial magic was at work, and a faint desire of manipulating that power herself also came into fruition, although realizing that dream would have to wait for quite a long while. One room she particularly liked, was one that contained a massive bed at its center; being thirty meters wide and forty meters long, the bed appeared as a massive ocean of fabric at first glance, and the blankets were of the highest quality of silk the girl had ever seen in her life.

Making a mental note to sleep here later, the girl carefully memorized to route to this room, before returning to the main foyer hall, with the intention of finding a map. Since she knew the general direction of where she could obtain food, water, and a source of good rest, she had no intention of stopping until she found a map of some kind.

As there was no method of counting time in this residence, the girl spent a period of what seemed like several days to explore most of the residence, until she reached the last set of doors, the set of doors first visible when entering the residence from the courtyard.

Slowing pushing the left-side door open, the girl was greeted by a massive library, overfilling with books. With four floors, the girl estimated about twenty bookshelves for each floor, and in the middle stood a pedestal, and with further scrutiny, displayed a general catalogue for the books and their system of organization. Though she didn't manage to find a map, the girl settled for the next best thing, which was to obtain more knowledge on her circumstances.

Coming to the third bookshelf on the first floor of which the pedestal labeled "History", the girl simply drew out the closest book, titled "A Discussion of Mortal and Immortal". With her impressively slow deciphering abilities due to only being able to obtain a limited amount of information from the book, the girl could only conclude that this book contained the differences between mortal and immortal beings, primarily centered around the ability to reincarnate, or as described by the author, "the intrinsic function of a hard reset of the soul".

Mortals and immortals essentially have the same origin when considering their most basic characteristics. As both types of entity share a common appearance, immortals living in a mortal domain could completely blend in without any chance of detection, given they maintained a low-profile identity.

The point of divergence, of which the girl found supported with the neighboring books "Mortal Soul" and "Treatise of Mortals", was that the soul of mortals would undergo a complete reset, or reincarnation, once a certain threshold was reached, be it due to age, death, or other combinations of factors. Oppositely, immortals do not undergo this reset, as they merely fall into a slumber lasting for a period of time proportional to received injuries.

Starting from this point of divergence, the disparity between the two increases, for mortals are restricted purely to worldly qi, the "waste" of divine essence, but can exhibit a wider range and extreme of emotions, compared to the immortals' strength and general lack of a variance of emotions.

Reading on to the end of "Mortal Soul" gave the girl a shock; immortals usually only visited mortal worlds for leisure or for experimentation with a construct, never for any serious purpose. Not only that, they would create a pseudo-Mortal soul, one that would relay information back to the original after expiring.

The difference between a naturally formed Mortal soul and an artificially created one was almost negligible, for a duplicate could be easily created by investing a tiny bit more divine essence, which would allow the pseudo-Mortal soul to attain certain abilities, including the ability to reincarnate.

Many immortals on the Divine Realm utilized this method, for not only was it convenient as the pseudo-soul could simply reincarnate when accidentally killed, the reincarnation factor allowed for experimentation with mortal cultivation techniques with absolutely zero risk, of which the Divine Realm utilized the obtained results to influence the mortal domains.

Thinking that she could return to the mortal world she resided in previously, her spirits rose, then lowered as thoughts about her family and brother rose to mind. Since it was the world that they resided in, she decided not to bother about it, as they had no relations anymore. Shaking her head, she initiated the process of reading the books once more, this time searching for a book on the history of the Divine Realm.

Unfortunately, she didn't manage to find such a book that detailed the events of the Divine Realm, she did obtain a clue of why such information was not recorded in the books, and also why she was unable to comprehend much more than the outermost layer of information.

The key factor, was the authorization each divine entity held upon their creation. As authorization tiers differed, the entity could comprehend and utilize the Divine Script to the extent regulated by the tier, with the lowest of immortals being unable to visualize the inscriptions as anything more than mere "hieroglyphs".

Where she got confused, was how she could comprehend the script when she was originally unable. Was it due to the incident with the sword? This sparked a desire within her, to find the secret behind the black blade she saw hanging in the main foyer. Unfortunately, after roaming through all four floors of the library and skimming over the titles of the book, she was forced to conclude that there was no recorded information about the blade; like the circumstance of the information regarding the history of the Divine Realm, the information about the black sword must be at a higher tier of authorization for it to be able to be portrayed in a book.

A small windfall she gained from this furious scanning of book titles, was a curious find, titled "Treatise of Heaven's Core", which instantly sparked memories of the words she found at the inscriptions she touched after waking up. From what she could gather, those that could form a Heaven Core within their body would be able to access the main qi vein that circulated in the entire Divine Realm, allowing them to wield essentially unlimited qi from any location, as anything killed by the power generated by the Heaven Core was converted into rudimentary divine essence that was then fed into the spiritual vein.

Shaped as a small spherical object, the Heaven Core relied on rotation speed that determined the amount of divine essence obtained from the spiritual vein. The qi generated by the core was applicable to all uses, and could be operated indefinitely, though the performance would differ by the number of ridges in the sphere; the number of ridges increased the quality of qi generated by the core, determined by the varying levels of connection to the vein.

As even mortal souls could be converted, the girl felt chills as she thought of a horrifying cause of an immortal causing a 'reset' in a mortal domain. As described by the gold-inlayed book, activating the Heaven Core was very simple; reciting the unique initiator sequence, be it verbal or retained in the mind, was enough to activate the system.

The initiator sequence was described as an integral factor behind her immortality, one of the driving reasons that froze her soul, preventing the process of dissipation prior to the reincarnation experienced by mortals. But what was unique to her leading to her immortality?

Other than her pitiful mortal life of living as an ordinary mortal except for being ostracized and bullied by everyone else in society, or the betrayal of her older brother; there wasn't much that she could relate to her immortality, other than the fact that the World Tree forced it upon her in exchange of letting her brother escape. Perhaps it is something related to my nature?

The girl placed the book down, sat on the floor, and attempted to enter a meditative mood, a state of thoughtless tranquility, one stated to be pursued by all mortal cultivators-the most excellent source of enlightenment.

Clearing her thoughts in this manner proved to be impossible. Her mind remained cluttered by a myriad of emotions and memories, as well as worries about the future, especially about the punishment the World Tree promised to dish out on her, one said to be five million years' worth of judgement.

She hated pain, and hoped her punishment wouldn't be too painful, otherwise she thought that she might cry in a corner when judgement finally descended. Wait, hate? Thinking back to the differences between mortals and immortals, especially the range of emotions portrayed by each, she thought once more about the initiating sequence for the Heaven Core.

Perhaps the unique initiator could be found by isolating emotions into separate categories? She attempted to categorize her memories based on the emotions she felt. Anger towards the society and family when she was a mortal, hatred towards those who bullied and harmed her, and helplessness when she was before the World Tree, as well as even more hatred when she saw her brother not even replying with a 'thank you' when she took the blame for his transgression, almost as if treating her as a disposable unit.

As hatred seemed more prominent than the other emotions, she focused intensely on that emotion, and suddenly her eyes opened, and her left iris took on a golden sheen as she shouted:

"Offer thy soul, offer thy world, offer thy heart! Condemn life, condemn death, condemn the origin! I, Li Xiang, shall burn the heavens with my wrath, and slay God!"

At that moment, the ethereal sphere that replaced her heart suddenly shook, and became tangible. Deep ridges with crisscrossing golden and scarlet patterns engraved themselves into the core, and the entire sphere trembled before beginning to rotate horizontally, then vertically, finally falling into a chaotic rotation.

With each successful rotation, the girl experienced an intense pulse throughout her entire body; she realized this to be copious amounts of divine essence, confirming the book's statements regarding the main spiritual vein and the Heaven Core. Once the sphere's rotation speed seemed to reach a peak, it trembled violently once more, and began to rotate even faster than before.

On the sphere, a ridge was glowing with divine light, and Li Xiang suddenly shook as tremendous information rushed into her mind, and inscriptions began to rend themselves into existence.

"Unaffiliated Divine, World Tree Chaotic Butterfly, Li Xiang"