Chapter 799: Depths of Death
Unsurprisingly, most of the 50 cultivators who were called first were high-grade attendants, with the majority sporting insignias wrought from white jade. Jade was the stage between Gold and Emerald, with bronze being the lowest tier.
Except for citizens such as himself, of course.
Zac knew that most of these cultivators were Monarchs, and he imprinted every single face to memory, making sure he wouldn’t accidentally annoy one of these people in the future. However, as he memorized their appearances, he noticed something surprising.
“Why are there no Emerald badges here? There should be some in the area, right?” Zac asked a neighboring cultivator. “I figure those people would be the most motivated to find some items.”
“Emerald Badges can teleport to a private town with the help of their tokens,” the man sitting next to Zac explained with a face full of envy. “They don’t need to make the trek to the cities. Besides, I hear the best items don’t leave Liberty Point, making it pointless to head over here.”
“Oh,” Zac nodded understanding.
It looked like Murbot wasn’t kidding around when talking about the benefits of becoming attendants. The best items weren’t even released to the public cities. That wasn’t the only benefit Emerald Badges had from what he’d learned over the past days. Emerald Badges could actually avoid up to five relegations.
It was a small concession by the Orom in hopes that they’d manage to break that final threshold and provide a huge burst of insights. Conversely, Jade Attendants got one freebie, while Gold Attendants and lower had to live in constant fear of relegation just like everyone else.
Thankfully, Zac’s Luck pulled through, and he didn’t have to wait more than a few hours before his talisman lit up. He immediately entered the Contribution Center and sunk his attention into the stock after nodding at the clerk.
Staggering volumes.
There was simply a shocking number of items added to the contribution store. The number of unique treasures had multiplied over one hundred times over, and the stock of base cultivation resources had skyrocketed by at least five hundred times. Some materials, like basic Cosmic Crystals, had their supply increased thousands of times over.
Zac couldn’t even begin to estimate the value of all these items, and this was only what was available to common citizens such as himself. It was a testament to just how many resources the Orom World went through over 500 years. Even more shocking was the fact that over 95% of the resources the Orom snatched didn’t even enter the Contribution Store.
Anything of middling or low quality was somehow ground down and distilled into the pure energies that went into running the Orom World and feeding the Orom and its handful of descendants.
It was also obvious that a frantic shopping spree was already taking place, seeing as the listed stock was continuously dwindling on all kinds of items. The scene filled Zac with some anxiety, and he quickly started scouring the list for anything that could either help with escaping or his cultivation.
Thankfully, the clerks hadn’t been idle over the past two months, and every single item had been analyzed and categorized, making it easy to find useful items. Zac didn’t find any items that would prove useful in a prison break, but he did spend a good chunk of his remaining Purchase Points on three sets of items.
The first purchase was two bottles of Pseudo D-grade Node-Breaking Pills that seemed to even exceed the [Aethergate Pills] he had bought in the Twilight Harbor. They were called [Stellar Enkindling Pills], and there were altogether ten pills inside each bottle. As long as his pill immunity didn’t reduce their effect too much, these pills would be able to help him push through most of the High E-grade.
Since the pills were made for E-grade cultivators, the two sets of peak-quality pills only cost 80 Purchase Points, which was nothing compared to the items meant for Hegemons or Monarchs. They were also made for the living rather than Undead cultivators, which decreased the likelihood Zac would already have built up a natural immunity to the materials that went into the pills.
Secondly, Zac purchased a chunk of an interesting material he had never heard of before. It was called [Spiritual Ice], but it wasn’t meant for his Soul Cultivation. Its only apparent use was to temporarily freeze and harden one’s spiritual body. At the surface, it didn’t seem very useful, especially since it apparently turned your mind extremely turbid. But it did have one interesting ability.
As it froze you, it also made your body and mind more durable, allowing you to lessen the impact of Node Bursting. Seeing as it didn’t seem to clash with his other preparations, he figured that he might as well get it as he would soon start going for the nodes in his head. The more protections he could layer for that step of the way, the better.
Even back in the Twilight Chasm, his soul had reached the level of strength needed to empower six revolutions with his Daos without harming himself. Back then, he would have managed to empower the seventh cycle too if he really pushed himself, yet he found himself struggling at this same level almost a year later.
On the surface, it looked like he had barely improved, but Zac knew that the situation wasn’t as simple as that. Since finishing his eight-month cultivation session in the Twilight Chasm, his two soul oceans had undergone a drastic change. First, they were transformed and empowered in the valley when he was steeped in life and death. The concepts stored within the oceans had more than doubled, which also meant the storms they kicked up during cultivation had doubled in ferocity.
Next, the oceans were infused by the remnants. The shard had stayed for months in his soul aperture, but the real transformation of the oceans took place when he formed the glimpse of chaos. Torrential amounts of Oblivion and Creation had been squeezed out of the remnants and dragged through the oceans before they entered the pathways on his shoulders.
The two oceans had even been marked by Chaos when he circulated those two slivers of Chaos through his body. Perhaps, that had been the biggest factor behind the shocking and unpredictable storms that were kicked up now every time he cultivated.
At the same time, his soul had gained a lot of power after the chasm as well. Surviving all kinds of trials and tribulations could strengthen one’s soul just like it led to breakthroughs in one’s Dao. And Zac wasn’t lacking in tribulations, no matter if looking to the mysterious light that infused his soul, the actual Tribulation Lightning, the storm of Oblivion that forcibly empowered his soul, or the benefits of forcibly sealing a Shard of Creation for months.
Along with the marvelous treasures left by Aia Ouro, his mental strength was many times greater compared to when leaving the Twilight Chasm. Without that, he probably wouldn’t even have managed to last five Dao-empowered cycles with how his oceans looked. If anything, seven revolutions right now most likely eclipsed the difficulty of performing nine Dao-empowered revolutions with normal soul seas.
That brought a question of its own. Was he ready to undergo a reincarnation or not? His Soul Core had pretty much reached sublimation for what the method allowed. He could sense that the benefits were minuscule compared to the difficulty of finishing a revolution. But at the same time, he worried that the powerful oceans would increase the difficulty of his breakthrough, which spoke for empowering his soul even further.
These thoughts had plagued Zac over the past month as he slowly digested the two Soul Treasures, but he didn’t want to wait any longer. The faces full of desperation and hope in Samsara’s Edge urged him on, reminding him of what was at stake. This was ultimately a prison, one that he needed to get out of. He couldn’t get complacent and let his momentum stall, or he’d never seize the opportunity to escape this place.
This was the one.
He had a better understanding of the process, and he had a broader knowledge of the soul in general. He had dozens of Spatial rings containing innumerable treasures that he could take out if necessary. He even had Cosmos Crystals attuned to life and death that could unleash an unprecedented storm of energy if need be.
The cost of a single one of those crystals could bankrupt a hundred E-grade elites, yet he had more than a hundred of each kind. He lacked for nothing, and only the fear of crushing his soul once more held him back. But no longer.
Zac forcibly shook his mind awake before it was claimed by the deathly chill. Shortly after, an imposing will pushed down on the deathly ocean as he contained some of the chaos brought from the seventh infusion. The next moment, his Dao Avatar on top of the Soul Core turned into its Draugr form before spewing out a storm of deathly Dao as Zac opened the gates to [Spiritual Void].
The stored-up Dao joined the faltering stream from the hanging coffin before they dragged the already deathly Mental Energy into the Array Disk for an eighth revolution. As he was drained, Zac rapidly lost control over the churning waters in the pitch-black ocean, but he could only grit his teeth and withstand the waves crashing into his Soul Core.
The minutes passed, until finally, a storm of even stronger death poured back from the array, pouring into the ocean. A deep rumble that echoed through his Soul Aperture made Zac’s nose bleed, but he kept going, using the same solution as he had during the first Reincarnation. Two months had passed since getting trapped, which was enough to stockpile quite a bit of Oblivion Energy.
He forcibly squeezed the entrenched energies from his soul, pouring them into the array disk along with the last scraps he could squeeze from the hanging coffin. Zac hurriedly crushed a few Soul Crystals as well, but the energy that entered his mind was like a few drops of rain in a parched desert. With a puff, it was gone, only providing some minimal relief as Zac started the ninth revolution.
Zac didn’t know if a second had passed or a century. Time had no meaning to Death, and his consciousness had come as close as humanly possible without crossing that threshold. He had no wants, no desires. He had melded with the nothingness, a small spot of darkness in the raging sea of the Abyss.
He was Death.
A small ripple suddenly broke the illusion, and Zac found his utterly drained soul flicker awake as the final cycle was completed. His energy came crashing back like an icy river, pushing the deathly darkness of the ocean to perfection. The rumble was even greater this time around, and it almost felt like the Heavens had been summoned to his Soul Aperture as dark clouds formed over the raging sea.
However, these clouds were pitch-black, mirroring the waters below. They were vapors of pure death. And their mere aura caused small cracks to spread across Zac’s Soul Aperture. Zac found himself slipping into that soothing darkness again as the storm in his mind reached cataclysmic proportions, and he hurriedly sent a mental command into his Specialty core.
He had pushed the [Nine Reincarnations Manual] beyond its limits in its descent into Death, and it was time to form the counterpoint to his reincarnation.