Chapter 119 - Disciples Should Relieve their Masters’ Burdens

Detached from his neck, the First Landgrave's head tumbled down. His death marked the end of the Berserk Colossi and the collapse of the Rust Storm Formation. The rusty sand tempest scattered till nothing remained, with the thousands of armored giants making it up, dropping like fleas. Devoid of anything but battlel.u.s.t, they still maintained their steely, demolition-craving gazes on Harun. Ignoring them, he landed next to the First Landgrave's head, glancing at his now empty eye sockets with a contemplating look. 

Just like the armored giants, the Landgraves were merely puppets—the most sophisticated puppets Harun had ever seen, but puppets all the same. Each of the Colossi had an energy core embedded in his neck. The core controlled the various aspects of their half human, half mechanic bodies and—through a randomized sequence of energy patterns—created their various "berserk" personalities. 

Harun didn't know that refiners didn't need a soul to progress, giving puppets or undead the right to follow that path. What he did know, however, was that unlike plants and trees, puppets had no souls. Yet, at the moment that he lost his life, the First Landgrave's body bred one. This change had nothing to do with personality or mindset and was utterly incomprehensible. Wondering if this had something to do with the Landgraves' constitution, Harun swept the eight other corpses, but found nothing similar. Confronted with a mystery of life, death and souls, Harun realized how far he still was from mastering those esoteric principles. 

"Weaponizing a man's emotions to crush his life, performing Spiritual Alchemy on your soul, destroying the Stele of Tyranny, you really at stop at no evil, don't you? Sure you don't wanna join the Myriad Devil Palace? I got connections, but I'm sure they'd just take you anyway," the System chortled at Harun's deeds. Ignoring the ins.e.n.s.i.t.i.v.e prick, Harun summoned his Scorching Soul Tree, making it absorb the First Landgrave's Soul to transform it into a flaming skull. 

With his Scorching Soul Tree, Harun could now devour and turn his victims' souls into energy bombs. And each of those Flaming Skulls could trigger a blast carrying 100 times the deceased expert's peak strength. At his best, the First Landgrave could match a third-level Ascending God. The energy bomb condensed from his soul could therefore send a fourth-level Ascending God packing. Better, Harun could make the Flaming Skulls overlap to magnify their destructive power. So while each energy bomb could only be used once, the Scorching Soul Tree could potentially turn Harun's foes into a limitless source of country-destroying projectiles. 

*Thump* *Thump* *Thump*

The clatter of the Armored Giants' footsteps snatched Harun's attention. Facing the legions of armored giants closing on him, Harun joined his hands in a prayer sign. His Inner Flame gushed out, becoming mammoth-sized flame serpents that burned their way through the armored giants' ranks—razing them to the ground. Sensing the quasi-endless heat and corrosion powers in those multicolor flames, Jiyan squinted her eyes at the burning cavern walls. "Enough corrosion forces to make Withering Essence seem nature-friendly. More heat than the sun's surface. This is what I call a breakthrough," she appraised. Before they stepped into the mine, the difference between Harun and Jiyan's battle power wasn't significant. Experience and adaptability made the gap. But now, even if she received maximum blessings, Jiyan wasn't sure that she could trade blows with him. Not wanting to become the type that just relied on their partner's skills and shelter, Jiyan resolved to breakthrough as soon as possible.

As their name implied, unless suppressed by a superior power, Harun's ever-burning flames would never stop and keep spreading till the world was reduced to ashes and dust. Thankfully, he could recall that fire plague whenever he wished to. Stretching out his hands, Harun siphoned the flames back into his heart—which had now turned into a kaleidoscopic fire ball. 

Turning heels, Harun was about to return to Jiyan's side when a familiar spiritual resonance captured his attention. 130 souls materialized, shaped like translucent versions of the armored giants and floating where some of the puppets previously stood.

"Wait, wait. Is this…my fault?" Harun speculated. Of the original 18,600 Armored Giants, Jiyan had killed over 3,000 while Harun erased the rest. If this phenomenon was linked to him, there was a 0.87% chance that puppets and undead destroyed by Harun would leave a soul behind—an incomprehensible consequence that, if true, meant that Harun's moves now messed up the samsara. 

"Wow, that was close. Imagine that the souls appeared three seconds before their deaths. So many Scourge Points…perhaps even your current body couldn't take the result," the System said in a serious tone. 

"This is my fault?"

"Yep."

"Why?"

"When you destroyed the stele, you robbed the Right of Tyranny, which is a force no one under the Samsara Grasping Tyrant Realm can skillfully control. Thankfully, the stele recognized you as its lord. Otherwise, you'd have just blown yourself up. Why did you even do that?" The System inquired. Drawn by the Stele of Tyranny, Harun's soul ascended to that ancient world. But as others before him, he just had to engrave his name on it to receive a Right of Contest. Only when his cultivation reached the Samsara Grasping Tyrant Realm could he actually compete for the Right of Tyranny. Even that level was far from enough to challenge the wrathful monk. But by destroying the stele, Harun outright robbed the Right, something even the wrathful monk dared not do.

"Mhm. To be honest, at first I just felt an impulse to write my name on that whatever stele. But when I saw that guy's face…I couldn't restrain myself. Dude was so ugly that I punched the stele in indignation." Harun crossed his arms below his c.h.e.s.t and seriously replied. 

For the first time in several months, the System was speechless. "You're joking…right?" It probed, wondering if Harun was making fun of its intellect. For a moment, the Plague Overlord pursed his lips, and with a deep frown, mulled the question over. "Nah, he was just that ugly." 

That said, Harun absorbed and turned the 130 souls into flaming skull bombs, and strutted back to Jiyan. Following the Eye of Luminous Treasures, the two left for wealthier areas. Obsidian Soul Stones were not only remarkable soul boosters, they ranked among the most precious treasure refining materials on the globe. Depending on the stone's rank, artifacts had a high or low chance to breed a spirit—tremendously increasing their destructive powers. 

…

Meanwhile, the Soul Refining Hall experienced extreme casualties. But using the Mysteries of Soul and Sacrifice, Weeping Soul absorbed every single one of his fallen disciples, adding them to his Weeping Soul Tree. By now, half the disciples, over 500 loyal experts, had perished already. Each death stabbed the Reverend's heart.

At the 8th layer of the Weeping Soul Mantra, the cultivator would start feeling the grief and pain of all he directly or indirectly fed to his tree. Past, present and future victims united to punish the destroyer, betrayer and despoiler that refused to let them live or die in peace.

By experiencing 100,000 grieving souls of exquisite quality and reaching Profound Enlightenment in the Mysteries of Soul, Grief and Sacrifice, a Dream Seer could break through to the 9th layer, not only making his cultivation base explode, but producing en Embryonic Seed of Life and Death. The higher the soul count and quality, the greater Weeping Soul's boons would be. And what better resource than a fallen Empress' succulent soul? For that soul, Weeping Soul had researched and prepared himself for centuries. 

With masterful ease, the Reverend crushed the skulls of hordes of porcelain dolls that hunted the Soul Refining Hall's expert on Landgrave orders. The elders formed a battle array around him, enabling their leader to fight and grieve at the same time. 

Weeping Soul knew of all the dangers in the Obsidian Soul Stone mine, the 27 Landgraves and the Mother they obeyed. So if he dared rush into this infernal den, he naturally had a plan. But as he raced across the hallways, the Reverend's eyes blurred, the anguish the past and new souls bred increased to nightmarish levels and, breaking into cold sweat, Weeping Soul collapsed on the ground. 

Alarmed, the hall elders stopped and rushed toward their master. But before they could reach him, they too experienced an internal attack from all the souls they ruined across thousands of years. Raw anguish tore them from the inside out, and like epileptic youths, they convulsed on the ground. 

At the Dream Seers' back, a 1.85 meters tall teenager appeared with a monstrous bull by his side. His three, striking eyes locked on the Dream Seers, and as his hands formed mudras, he cast an apologetic gaze at the Reverend. 

"Reverend, my sincere apologies. But I've just learned from reliable sources that disciples should never greet their masters without abundant gifts or tuition money. I have neither," Birandar started, and Mukri shook his rump as if to tell the world that all those ideas came from him. "Moreover, master's name is destined to spread across the omniverse. Every single one of his disciples should be the titan of an era, with countless legends following their names.

So, on behalf of my master, I must use you to accomplish my first legendary feat," Birandar said, and raised his palms in an open-handed fighting stance. "The non-cultivator…crushing the God."