The amount of energy provided by the divine ice was immense, but Noah's body was a bottomless pit. He had to devour a third of his stash to feel completely stuffed.
The drowsiness reached its peak when Noah felt that his tissues couldn't contain any more energy. The Demonic Sword, Night, and Snore came out in the open to guard his stash while lying on the ground to face the breakthrough.
The Pain Tribulation would typically arrive during the breakthrough to the seventh rank, but Noah didn't feel anything out of the ordinary when he closed his eyes and lost himself in the process.
The only difference was that his consciousness didn't go dark when the evolution started. Noah remained completely aware of his surroundings even if he couldn't move his body.
Noah didn't know if his mind had caused that change in his breakthrough. Still, that alone didn't explain the lack of the Tribulation. His best guess was that his body was too outside of Heaven and Earth's system to trigger a reaction in the world.
Drops of sweat came out of his skin and evaporated to create a greyish chrysalis. Noah remained stuck in that crystal-like environment and could only inspect the changes of his body to kill time.
His black hole took charge of the transformation. The energy accumulated in the past years had gone through the purification of his fourth center of power. That organ knew exactly how to improve his body.
The changes were slow. It would take months to transform a patch of Noah's skin. His insides required even more time, so he eventually moved his attention elsewhere.
His mental waves could reach every corner of the surface. Noah could see how the world's fauna and flora evolved while he remained stuck inside the chrysalis.
Timid cultivators from the Elbas family came out of their separate dimension from time to time. Their journeys in the outside world consisted of hunts and quick inspections of the surface.
It was clear that they wanted to occupy the outside world again, but they were too scared to make an official return. Noah could guess that they often stared at the sky, hoping to see the signs of his ascension.
The years spent stuck inside the chrysalis gave Noah the time to study his new power more thoroughly. His rank 7 mind made him constantly aware of the laws in the environment, but there was far more to it.
Noah could sense that his thoughts had become far heavier. They didn't weigh on his mental sphere, but they affected the world whenever they came out of his mind.
The structure of his mental waves had also become denser. Noah could now use them to perform complicated actions. They had become a proper extension of his body that resembled the innate ability of the Kesier Apes.
Noah performed some tests while his body continued to evolve. He tried to release thoughts that carried faint intentions in the environment to study how they affected the world.
The meanings were simple. They carried raw sensations like warmth and cold, but Noah felt amazed when he saw that they replicated them in the outside world.
Noah thought about warmth, and the mental energy that carried that sensation generated a wave of heat where it dispersed. The same went for his other tests. His ideas now had the power to alter the correct functioning of the world.
He had become a true god. The world could only bend to his will and adapt to his influence. Those feats would cause uproars among heroic cultivators, but Noah felt that those effects were only a natural consequence of his level.
His mindset had adapted quickly to his new status. The lower plane had become a playground that he could modify at will, and Noah soon lost interest in that.
The years spent in that condition were tragic for a workaholic like Noah. He could sense how much time he had wasted inside the chrysalis. That was pure torture for him, but he could only endure the process and wait for it to end.
Noah made a list of the things that he had to complete before ascending. He had to thoroughly review his assets, create a storage device capable of holding divine materials, and invent new techniques if possible.
He also had to decide how to settle certain matters. Second Prince was still inside Snore, and he had to determine whether he would create his inheritance.
Noah wouldn't normally bother to build an inheritance, but most of the items inside his space-rings would become useless in the Immortal Lands. All his scrolls and techniques in the lower ranks did nothing but filling his valuable storage items.
Throwing them away was a waste, and he couldn't give them to the Hive since the dimensional portal didn't work. The best solution was to create an inheritance ground and stuff it with the resources he didn't need anymore.
'Divine Demon created it,' Noah thought when he saw that the chrysalis was finally about to fade. 'It won't even take me much time once I become a god. I guess the descendants of the Elbas family will have a chance to seize it.'
Cultivators mostly created inheritances to pass down certain studies and hope that the heirs would surpass their previous level. Others hated some enemies so much that they would force their successors to take care of their grudges.
Noah didn't have any specific reason, but he knew that a few experts would have been happy to see that he had left something behind.
Ivor would curse him if he didn't teach the Elemental Forging method to anyone else. His inheritance could even help human cultivators in his same situation at some point. It could give them the power needed to escape their fate.
That was what Eccentric Thunder's inheritance had done for him, so he didn't mind doing the same for the new generations. His expertise also was quite valuable. The theory behind the higher energy alone was enough to make any trial worthy of the effort.
As the chrysalis dispersed, Noah could see that the aspect of his body didn't change much. No strange features had appeared, but he could feel that his tissues had reached the next realm.
A wave of power filled every inch of his body, and faint black lines covered his skin. They were barely visible, but Noah remained speechless when he understood their function.
Those lines were similar to blood vessels, but his body used them to carry his dark matter. Those conduits converged toward his black hole so that it could provide them with higher energy depending on his needs.
His lungs had the highest number of lines, but they were everywhere in his insides anyway. It seemed that Noah's body had fused part of its functions with the black hole. The dark matter had become a core part of its strength, and something told him that he had gained a new innate ability.
Noah straightened himself after the chrysalis dispersed. His hand went to grab a piece of divine ice before he squeezed it in his grasp to check his power.
The shard crumbled under his physical strength. Noah confirmed that his body had reached the seventh rank, and his attention moved to the lava lake at that point. He could finally seize the skull at its bottom.