Chapter 344 – Lives 84 & 85

Following the pattern that I had become accustomed to, I paid for a teleport to the town west of the Wastes and spent two years experimenting with body cultivation. Shortly before this time was up, I made a few purchases to help with my upcoming life:

Enhanced comprehension of beast taming: 15 trillion credits.

Enhanced comprehension of body cultivation: 14.9 trillion credits.

A permanent mid three-star water affinity: 35.16 trillion credits.

A locked-in improvement to JiaQi’s beast taming comprehension: 10 trillion credits.

Low Five-star affinity for karmic energy for this generation’s Sutong: 116 billion credits.

Cost 75.2 trillion credits.

Then, I swallowed a poison pill to return to the start.

You have died. Calculating…

You died as a Martial Disciple 1 – 10 credits awarded.

You died at Level 6 of Rank 2 in Body Cultivation – 6,000 credits awarded.

Total Credits: 83,837,592,825,458

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If I was going to help raise a Sovereign of Beasts, I needed to learn at least the basics of beast taming. So, after releasing the Su Clan and sending them off to conquer the world, I entered seclusion to cultivate a water qi technique. Then, upon ascending to Sovereign and taking over the Nine Rivers Sect, I took both LuLu and JiaQi to the far eastern side of the continent and released LuLu’s entire ‘clan’ in the territory of the Red Forest Sect.

One of the best tonics to help a demon beast grow strong and healthy was the flesh of cultivators. While I generally didn’t like the idea of feeding people to demon beasts, the Red Forest Sect was a bit of an exception. After what I had learned when I came here to retrieve the wood essence cultivation technique, I didn’t have any sympathy for members of this Sect. So, LuLu and her family were free to indulge.

Of course, this sect only had a limited number of people in it, so it couldn’t sustain LuLu’s clan indefinitely. They would eventually need to look for sustenance elsewhere. Still, there were plenty of other ‘suitable meals’ on this continent, and having LuLu take care of them just meant one less job for my clan’s law enforcers.

After sending the deer on their way, I made my way back to the Nine Rivers Sect to devote myself to the study of beast taming. Sadly, I ran into complications almost immediately.

The problem was that no one was willing to train me.

They weren’t rude, and they didn’t look down their noses at me–they were scared. How was a Grandmaster, or even a Lord, supposed to tell a Sovereign what to do? When a misplaced word could result in the execution of one’s entire clan, who would dare speak? Even if my lessons went poorly, I would never even consider this kind of response, but that didn’t matter. These were all people who were born and raised on this continent, so they were well aware of how capricious those in power could be.

Considering that I had sentenced an entire sect to annihilation only a few days earlier, I couldn’t exactly blame them for this mindset, but it was still annoying.

In the end, the Master of the Water Peak stepped forward and offered to teach me personally. Even though I knew that he was only doing this to secure unspecified benefits, I was still grateful for his help.

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While I was interested in learning more about beast taming, I had no desire to form a bond like the one between JiaQi and LuLu. While I could see how having a powerful beast companion at my side might be beneficial, I didn’t have the emotional bandwidth that was needed to support such a relationship.

Instead, I was more interested in learning to use the skills of a beast tamer to set up a farm–a… ranch?

My studies into beast alchemy had stalled out at the Peak of Rank 3 due to a shortage of suitable materials. While various farms would sell the odd Rank 4 beast every now and then, what I needed was a source of consistent, high-quality, high-Rank demon beast carcasses, and no one on the continent could provide them. So, I might as well do it myself.

At the moment, three of my world’s planes were occupied, and four of them stood empty.

The Plane of Fire was like a furnace filled with raging flames in a kaleidoscope of colors. There was no real ‘land’ on this plane—only the world’s spatial boundary—but it wasn’t needed. Everything just floated through the air until it hit one of a dozen different fire seeds. While I was interested in finding inhabitants for the place, the only beings I had ever seen that might be able to call such a place ‘home’ were the creatures from the Tribulation of Fire.

This left the Planes of Earth, Earthfire, and Woodfire.

Woodfire wasn’t too different from the Plane of Fire. Wood-based seeds would force the growth of trees, and only a short time later, fires would arrive and burn them to ash. However, unlike Fire, Woodfire’s ground was covered in a dense bed of fire-resistant foliage, providing a place for herbs and wildlife to flourish.

Earthfire, in contrast, was a world of blasted landscapes and constant volcanic eruptions. This presented more of a challenge, but growing gardens of fire- and earth-based plants and herbs within its sturdy basalt caverns wasn’t out of the question. To the right type of beasts, the place might even be downright cozy.

As for the Plane of Earth, it was the simplest of the three. This plane was filled with barren mountains and endless rockslides, but by liberally seeding the place with earth-based plants, I could easily transform it into a breeding ground for earth-based demon beasts.

After learning a bit about Rank 1 beast taming, I went ahead and seeded each of these planes with a variety of different beasts. Woodfire received a collection of badgers, foxes, squirrels, and birds. Earthfire got a variety of salamanders, snakes, ants, and boars. And Earth was given groups of bears, oxen, moles, and rodents.

At this stage, I wasn’t yet trying to breed anything. I just wanted to see what animals would be able to thrive in the harsh worlds that they were being sent to.

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A few years later, Emissary Yun arrived for our regular meeting. As I had hoped, the evaluation she gave me this time had returned to ‘exceptional,’ so I didn’t need to worry about interfering in the clan’s politics, at least not at the moment. If things slipped once, then they could slip again, but I wouldn’t worry about that until it happened.

After she left, I returned to my study of beast taming, and a couple of centuries quickly passed me by.

At this point, without a bonded companion, it was hard to call myself a Beast Master, Beast Grandmaster, or Beast Lord. However, with my high level of comprehension, I was able to quickly pick up everything that I needed to know. After a century or two, while I might not have been able to call myself a true Beast Emperor, I had a solid grounding in all the theoretical knowledge that would be expected of one.

During this time, one species proved its dominance on each of the three planes. On Earth, it was the oxen. On Woodfire, it was the hawks. And on Earthfire, it was the boars. This disappointed me. I was hoping to breed powerful lizards since having a plane filled with dragons would have been more fun, but the boars were better able to adapt to the environment of Earthfire.

Several of these beasts had reached Rank 3, none had been able to advance any further. To do so, they either needed to eat cultivators or enhance their bodies with karmic energy, and neither of these options was available to them. So, like the Bao and Ye clans, they had stalled out. For me, though, this wasn’t a problem.

Over the years, a large amount of karmic energy had built up in the formation on the Plane of Woody Earth, and most of it hadn’t come from any members of my core clans. So, one at a time, I pulled the three most powerful beasts from each plane and infused them with a portion of that energy. Then, after giving each of them enough energy to ascend to Peak Lord, I sent them back to where they had come from to see what would happen.

Unfortunately, the three test subjects in each group ended up fighting a bloody civil war until only one was left. I could try again, but as they say, two tigers can’t hide on one mountain. After gaining the sentience that came with the Ruler Tier, None of the Lords were willing to suffer another being of equal power within their domain.

However, I still had hope. If one of the beasts were raised to Emperor, then they should be able to keep a group of Lords and Kings in line.

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The year I turned 344 years old, my soul shuddered in a familiar sensation, and I knew that it was finally time for my world to advance once more.

By this time, I had gathered multiple copies of every fire seed, including the Earth-Rank one from Zhuge YeDu. Because of this, aside from just putting a copy of this seed in my soul, I also placed one on three of the four new dark planes: the Plane of Dark, the Plane of Darkwood, the Plane of Dark Earth, and the Plane of Dark Woody Earth.

While these additional seeds were only powered by spirit stones, they still helped me rapidly absorb the Laws from YeDu’s seed of the True Darkness Fire.

Unexpectedly, even after 20 years of this, I still hadn’t advanced. I could only think that the Laws from a single Earth-Rank fire weren’t enough to trigger the world’s next ascension. It needed more. However, this was good. It gave us a bit more time to prepare.

I sent a message to the clan’s leadership and told them about the upcoming tribulation.

In the past, this had caused a large percentage of the clan’s population to rush into the world to defend it, but this time, the response was rather anemic. Barely a million people showed up. I felt a twinge of regret when I thought about the billions of credits worth of dark essence that we could have received as a reward, but I wouldn’t force anyone to join us if they didn’t want to.

Once everyone was settled in, while continuously feeding spirit stones to the seeds of the True Darkness Fire, I cycled a collection of Yellow-Rank fires through my soul. Then, I slotted a Profound-Rank fire into place. Shortly afterward, my inner world was covered in dark clouds, and I lost my connection to it.

The Tribulation of Dark lasted thirty days. When it was over, there was barely any evidence that it had happened at all.

Each of the inhabited planes had easily taken down any tribulation that had tried to attack them. Additionally, from what I could tell, the dark creatures had never even been able to establish themselves on the Plane of Fire.

Of course, as they had been uninhabited, the four new planes were absolutely swarming with large, inky, snake-like tribulation creatures. But since they were only at the low Grandmaster level, I just opened portals and let my hordes of demon beasts take care of them.

Once this was settled, I slotted the seed of the Expanding Realms Fire back into my soul and set it to begin expanding my 11 existing planes simultaneously.

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After ‘eradicating’ dozens of evil organizations, JiaQi had led LuLu on the path of conquest. If they were going to raise LuLu to Sovereign of Beasts, then her clan needed to control a lot of territory so that they could grow and earn the karmic energy they needed.

This caused several wars to break out, but I exerted my influence to keep them all contained. It was only natural for an empire to defend itself against invaders, but I wouldn’t let the entire human race gang up just to persecute a group of friendly deer.

Finally, shortly after I turned 400 years old, LuLu broke through.

As I watched, a powerful wave of karmic energy washed over her entire body, making her teeth sharper and fur glossier. When it was done, this energy settled into LuLu’s blood, transforming it from a bright red to a brilliant gold.

This was all somewhat within my expectations. With qi cultivation, Rank 7 was the first step of the Bloodline Tier, after all. While this name didn’t necessarily translate directly into how one would advance as a body cultivator, the fact that it did wasn’t too surprising. With a certain dark god manipulating things behind the scenes, few things in this world were a matter of luck.

What was strange, though, was that as this enhanced blood flowed through LuLu’s body, a faint energy signature appeared around her heart. While this particular type of energy wasn’t one that I had many interactions with, I had seen it enough in recent years to recognize it instantly: blood essence.

Upon seeing it, my mind flashed to the jade boxes containing all my copies of the Bloodfire. Ning ZeKun had never been able to come right out and tell me what the Bloodfire did, but from his actions, I was confident that I knew the basics. I just didn’t know certain details, and it would have taken a quadrillion credits to buy the ability I needed to learn them.

Still, from what ZeKun had allowed me to see, I knew.

The Bloodfire consumed bodies. Specifically, it consumed the living bodies of Sovereign-level cultivators.

To create blood essence for his clan, ZeKun had taken elderly Peak Emperors from his clan and forcibly raised them to Sovereign. Then, as their minds broke from advancing without the proper karmic energy, he burned them alive with the Bloodfire.

Why couldn’t ZeKun have waited until after they had died? Why did he have to burn them alive? I wasn’t sure, but I had a sneaking suspicion that the Bloodfire wasn’t just burning people’s bodies–it was burning their souls.

While this was horrific, I could understand it. This was a final sacrifice that the elders were making to ensure the prosperity of their clan. Still… that didn’t mean I had to like it. And now, if what I was seeing in LuLu was correct, such a practice might no longer be necessary.

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I spent the rest of my life studying LuLu and watching how karmic energy interacted with her bloodstream. Using my water affinity, I even extracted bits of it and examined how the wu, blood, and karmic energy all weaved together.

Finally, at the ripe old age of 436, I made my move.

Reaching into the Plane of Woody Earth, I used a potted plant to extract a large portion of Sovereign-level karmic energy connected to the blood and soul of the Su Clan. Then, I pulled the plant outside and shifted the energy into my body. Finally, in a space packed to the brim with water wu, I slowly fused wu and karmic energy into my blood in a loose mimicry of what LuLu had done.

I started from one of the arteries in my right wrist that carried blood into my right hand. Instantly, I felt a searing pain as the karma-infused blood spread through my flesh.

Unlike with previous realms, I hadn’t started with an upgrade to my skin–I had started directly with my blood. Now, as this karma-infused blood circulated through my body, it was depositing high-level energy into everything it touched, and that had consequences.

This burning sensation first spread through the muscles of my right hand, then the tendons, and then the skin and bones. It took an hour for this pain to reach its peak. Then, it didn’t abate, it just spread. First, to my lower arm. Then, to my upper arm.

LuLu hadn’t experienced any pain at all, so I must have done something wrong, but I could feel myself growing stronger, so I pushed through. As long as I could advance, this pain would be worth it.

However, in a bid to end this torture as quickly as possible, I started pouring energy into several more points throughout my body: my left wrist, my ankles, my knees, and my elbows. I also wanted to dump energy directly into my chest, but without knowing more about what was happening, I held off.

An unknown number of hours passed, and eventually, the burning sensation reached my heart.

The feeling of burning alive intensified, but as it did, I felt a transformation. As karmic energy passed through my heart, it was being transformed into something new.

I let out a ferocious scream and collapsed, unconscious.

I don’t know how long I was out, but when I woke up, I was greeted with a message from the System.

System Alert: A novel body cultivation technique has been created. Please name your technique.

I could barely think, and I had no idea what this technique did, so I didn’t bother trying to be clever. “Blood Refining.”

Blood Refining. Rating: Low-Yellow Rank 7 Body Cultivation Technique. Would you like to submit this technique to the Dao?

“Yes.”

Submission successful. Contribution confirmed. Calculating… Reward: 50% discount for the next purchase below 1 quadrillion credits.

Note: Yellow Rank 7 body cultivation techniques will no longer qualify you for further discounts.

Just as I was about to slip back into unconsciousness, my mind was struck by an enlightenment, and I understood what I had done wrong.

LuLu was a damn wood-element demon beast. I had cultivated water wu. Of course her energy patterns had been incompatible with my own. It should have been obvious.

With this thought, I passed out.

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While I wanted to earn more credits, I had no wish to put myself through unrelenting torture, so I held off on cultivating my body any further. Instead, I just focused on raising my beasties so that I could advance one of them to Sovereign and get energy patterns for a different element.

To help this along, I also went out and found several new types of demon beasts to fill out my four new ‘dark’ planes.

A year later, at the age of 437, I recalled the clan, lay down, and headed off to my next life.

You have died. Calculating…

You died as a Martial Sovereign Peak – 100 trillion credits awarded.

You died at Level 1 of Rank 7 in Body Cultivation – 10 trillion credits awarded.

Total Credits: 193,837,592,825,458

Rank 4 Small World – 1,060/10,000 km3 (Earth, Wood, Fire, Dark)