Chapter 93: All is One, DeathCore, Nine Heavens Staircase completed

Chapter 93: All is One, DeathCore, Nine Heavens Staircase completed

Word count = 1956 on 10/8/2023

"Come on kid, you can do it" Tang Chen says aloud as he watches Xue Tie stop on the 995th step. Ever so close to the end and so far as he too is smart enough to make an assumption on what the last layer is like even though he only reached the beginning of the 8th layer. One would think watching a person climb stairs be boring but they are Titled Douluos with little responsibility except protecting their clans or in the case of Bo Saixi and the 7 pillars, protecting Sea Gods Island.

As such, they have plenty of free time to do simple things like this, especially with none other reaching such a magnificent height on the pyramid. To add to this point, they are baffled by what Xue Tie is doing. They watch him sit down and take out his martial spirit trident and point it at himself while activating his first ring.

His whole body is rapidly covered in black-red veins, this includes his rings as well. Skin, bones, muscles, nerves, spirit rings. All factors of his body are covered in veins which gives him quite the gory appearance since it's like the scorpions from the original mummy movies digging under the skin when they appear but once his whole body is covered. The veins seem to stop moving except to occasionally hum in energy as they refine EVERYTHING.

Xue Tie is pushed under another type of pressure as he even refines his spirit bones and thus has no protection from the mental torment. In fact, he is doing this all while his body, mind and soul are being pushed down by the divine sight of the last few floors from the Training grounds (pyramid).

The first to show signs of change are the 6 black and red rings from the robes' martial spirit. Even though they are in an inactive state right now due to the trident martial spirit rings being active. The 6 rings flash from time to time as the red on them slowly spreads like a virus inside a body. Soon they become fully red with a pulse of energy being released back into Xue Tie's body.

As for Xue Tie himself, due to the overload of information and dreams from all his bones and rings, he was outcast into his own mind space, forced to watch all of them at the same time. Within this mind space, there are 3 proto suns floating high in the mental sky. Above these transparent suns is the remnant golden glow which is stronger than last time. The suns are the 3 soul cores within Xue Tie's body, their avatars are stationed within his mind while the real ones are spread out throughout his body. Mind, Heart, Dantian. These three locations are where the cores are truly located and formed at.

Xue Tie appears to be meditating in his own mind space before he suddenly opens his eyes. He has a dumbfounded look on his face with a tic on his chin.

"Haaaa, i'm so fucking stupid. The beasts have been showing me this from the very beginning. They never cared about these soul cores, spirit rings were the culmination of their hard work which was stolen by humans. We don't need rings either, it's simply a template of what they had but our methods are wrong and we have only been taking less than one percent of that hard work." he ruminates to himself for his own idiocy since he even has had multiple outside perspectives.

He raises his right hand towards the top most sun of the 3.

"Break"

The Soul cores, all three, begin to crack and shatter. In the outside world, Xue Tie coughs up blood as his spirit power decreases from 99 to 94. It would have dropped lower if not for all the foundational work he has done by strengthening his body. Due to this, his body is covered in even more cracks as his body is put under the full pressure of his weakened spirit power that cant handle the leftover energy from the original strength.

Xue Tie inside the mind space frowns, he looks around a bit before setting his gaze on a random spot on the floor.

"Did I do it right? It hurts quite a bit hehe" He laughs a bit to himself as he even talks to himself.

Or is he?

From that random spot rises a black flame that takes the shape of the first beast he killed. A blood eagle that was raised by his family in the desolate Mohgwyn ruins.

Whistle

The eagle makes a sound as it nods, approving of his actions. The eagle gathers energy around itself as it flies up into the sky. All the leftover energy from the soul cores follows the eagle. Orbiting around it as if one of the soul cores was not broken. The eagle's body begins to break apart as the black flames which make up it's body are absorbed into the vortex of energy. The energy itself begins to take a lightly dark hue.

It is at this moment that 8 other creatures rise up: A blood fox (2nd ring-was never shown before), A blood turtle (3rd ring, never shown), A blood hawk (4th ring, never shown), the Evanescent Gale Drake (5th ring), an Evanescent Phoenix (6th ring), Evanescent bull (7th ring), and the last two are a Storm Eagle and then is the 9 headed Bat King. They are all formed out of black flames and fly up into the energy orb. Completely corrupting it to become black.

This process repeated with his trident martial spirit rings: The scorpion from the Nevermore forest (1st ring, refinement), Evanescent toad and tiger from Mt. QiXiao, Earth Dragon (5th ring). These 5 beast (A/N: I don't remember what I used for his 2nd trident ring) all fly up into the black core as well.

The next ones are the spirit bones, All but the pterodactyl harpy have gone ahead, so it's the only one that forms and heads up into the black core.

The speed at which the energy flows around the orb is surpassing light speed in Xue Tie's mind. After all, he cant actually see it spin anymore, it's the illusion of it being standstill or slow when it's actually extremely fast. It doesnt help that it's all just black now, clouding his vision and sending the whole mind space into darkness. The computer-like flatscreens which had been showing Xue Tie the beast memories break down and disappear.

Even though Xue Tie is left in darkness, he recognizes that he is left untouched or that the process which his body is undergoing is still progressing. Extending his senses outward, he visually sees the changes. Starting from his robes newest 9th ring, all the way to the 1st, they begin to shatter and disappear.

"Ring detonation? No, this is different" Tang Chen states as he watches what looks like the ancient Clear Sky Clan Technique. The difference being that a mellow afterimage of the original rings remain as the detonation effect is temporary damage. Not like this, which is temporary. One by one, the rings and their energy flow into Xue Tie. As it flows into the orb, it brings more black flames with it. Expanding its size to twice, three times, four times the original size of soul cores. It finally settles when it reaches 6 times the original size.

The reason it got this big is due to the Trident martial spirit rings detonating one by one as well except for the first ring.

The colossal core has split into multiple branches of revolving speed, reminiscent of the earth's body: the inner core is the fastest and appears almost liquid flame swirls, the outer core is partially liquid too but it notably still revolves quickly. The inner mantle is the transition point between liquid and gaseous energy swirling around, the outer mantle is much slower the further out it goes until it reaches the crust or outermost layer and it appears to simply be a wall of wind, some sort of layer that contains all other rapidly spinning energy.

Once the energy settles, the final and first ring from the trident is shattered, the veins on Xue Tie's body disappear and even more so a few black flames sprout from his hand. A moment later, Xue Tie releases the trident while holding a red orb in his hand. The trident on the other hand, falls over with a CLANG. As if it was a rusty metal pipe falling on the floor.

Once again, the observers chirp in. "What is going on?", one of the 7 pillars asks out loud in confusion. Bo Saixi chips in with a seemingly enlightened look. "Is this the ascension process? The final self tribulation to convert a mortal into a god. Converting rings to gold and condensing a new power. Though this looks different, instead of turning his rings to gold, he absorbed their energy into himself?" She states with a fair bit of confusion herself.

While they are having their discussion, Xue Tie absorbs the red orb back into his body, which allows it to merge back with his soul, making it whole again.

Within the mind space, Xue Tie ruminates, "Martial Spirits are the manifestations of the soul, combined with one's bloodline. Yet these manifestations are made externally, This is another deficit as they absorb most of the spirit ring energy during the ring assimilation process. This is due to the unstable nature of such techniques. One's body itself is supposed to be the catalyst for spirit power, which is why Beast martial spirit users were always so much stronger than tool types. But even they are flawed as the strength is external rather than internal."

"I had always praised the authors original idea of going against the traditional cultivation methods of other chinese novels but I have realized the flaw in my mentality, by undergoing soul ring absorption, we do not truly harmonize with the world through our own efforts which is why godhood is foreign to so many people even ones like Tang Chen, Bo Saixi and Qian Daoliu. It enforces the idea that unless a beast sacrifices, A human would never become a god without the support of other gods or something like Tang San who is a world's chosen champion."

Xue Tie stops speaking to himself as all his spirit power is drained from his body: level 90, 80, 70, 60, 50, 40, 30, 20, 10, 1. It stops there as the energy has been reduced to it's minimum but not the absence of it which is why it never drops to proper talentless zero.

Yet even with the absence of all this energy, his body is not crushed by the divine sight pressure which has instead become fuel for his body to remold itself.

The final crystallization of this transformation is a black trident mark on his forehead. Similar to the Sea God mark but fully black to the point that the area around him dims upon it's appearance. Xue Tie gets up from his meditation, picking up the dropped trident and storing it away in his storage bracelet. He climbs the final 4 steps as if there is no pressure on him at all.

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I honestly almost forgot to create this chapter for today as I was too busy catching up on Demon Slayer. I've been away from all anime for roughly 1 and a half years. I am shaming my status as a Weaboo.