Chapter 21: Black Magical Alphabet
This strange hole was extremely deep; Merlin had to encounter the darkness while falling down. And he could not move his body as if there was a force locking it up.
Merlin kept falling down that pit for almost half an hour as if there was nothing else in this place but emptiness.
And suddenly, the moment he had been waiting for arrived.
He finally reached the floor.
THUD!
Before touching the floor, Merlin forced out Xian vital essence to cover up his body. So, it helped his arrival on the floor safely.
Merlin stood up, looking around to explore the place.
It was an arid land, full of cracked soil and rocks. The big sky was composed of constellations and the moon.
There were tons of beasts’ bones and remains around him. This place had no living beings. It could be said that he was the only human here.
This place seemed like another dimension, as though the pit had brought him to another realm.
But he was still lucky, for the beasts had left something very useful for him, something people always dreamed of.
And lying in those remains, were “the cryptic souls.”
“It seems like Heaven still has mercy on me.”
Merlin was very happy finding lots of cryptic souls here. He leaped around to observe the area.
Merlin used Moon Spring to jump up swiftly.
Almost half a day later, he figured that from the center to the border, this place was ten kilometers wide.
There were rocks and the remains of level two or three beasts everywhere.
They were weak considering the way they died. They all died of food scarcity.
There were no trees, plants, or any drinkable resources in this place.
Finding parts of the beasts, Merlin imagined that they probably ate their own fellows.
He had read from a book in Waldecian Academy’s library that there were beasts that had a habit of eating their species. They could evolve their bodies and obtain higher levels.
These remains showed that most of the level three beasts had evolved from eating one another.
However, this place had limited space as well as the monsters that ate all their friends up shortly. They eventually died no matter how strong they were.
Merlin closed his eyes to analyze the situation.
“This place probably came into existence because a powerful individual had sliced it out. His magical power had to be very robust for he could cut and put land in this dimension.”
Even though this place was harmless, the dangerous thing was that it had no water resources.
If Merlin had not gotten into the seventh zone of Qi accumulation that enabled him to survive without having to consume anything, he might have had the same fate as these dead monsters.
As long as he still had Xian vital essence, he could survive without food. This place had tons of cryptic souls that could be distilled into Xian vital essence. So, his resource was fruitful.
One interesting thing was that at the edge of this land, there was a powerful, indomitable barrier.
Merlin analyzed it with his Lemegeton Eye and what he found shocked him.
The barrier was built from the black magical alphabet.
Heaven! Aside from the blue and green-alphabet users, there was still a higher-level set of the alphabet!
Merlin concentrated and used his Lemegeton Eye to check again.
The encyclopedia was opened. The knowledge about the magical alphabet floated into his brain.
Merlin learned that the magical alphabet was divided into five levels.
Level one: Blue
Level two: Green
Level three: Violet
Level four: Indigo
Level five: Black
As of his knowledge, the strongest alphabet users in the realm were at the green level.
And barely with the green level’s power, they were almost the strongest and greatest individuals.
It could be said that the existence of these people was even higher than that of a king.
Merlin never expected that there were still higher levels.
And this place was built from the black-level magical alphabet, the highest. With his hundred years of experience, he could sense that this place was keeping some kind of secret.
“But most importantly, how will I get out of here?” Merlin took a deep breath and sighed.
He tried to fly himself up to the sky with Moon Spring. With level seven of Qi accumulation, he could take fifty steps in the air using Moon Spring.
Reaching the rim, he was bounced off very far by that forceful barrier; he could not pass through this wall.
Three days had passed. Although Merlin had tried everything he could think of, he could not find a way out of this place.
There was no formation, not even a mechanism. Other than the remains of the beasts and the barrier, this place was just an empty space.
Although Merlin was also an alphabet user, a blue-alphabet user like himself could not fight against the black alphabet, which seemed to be the highest level of this science.
The gap between the powers of the blue and black alphabet was massive like that of heaven and hell.
There existed only one possibility now: Merlin had to achieve the black level of the magical alphabet and destroy this place. Which was almost impossible.
Barely the next level: green, was already beyond his capability to penetrate through. Because the science was too complicated and he did not know the way.
Merlin could live without food or drinks; nevertheless, every practitioner had a life expectancy. That being said, he would probably die here reaching his life expectancy.
Merlin was desperate and helpless.
……………….
One month later
After he could not find any alternatives other than becoming a black-alphabet user, he gave up.
Each day Merlin would collect the cryptic souls from the beasts’ remains scattering here and there.
He used those cryptic souls as the resources of his practice.
Despite being desperate, Merlin still wanted to live; there was still a chance he would find a way out if he was still alive.
For a practitioner, level-drilling was the way to extend one’s life expectancy and maintain youth in the body.
Accumulating Qi essence, a practitioner would live a hundred and fifty years longer than ordinary humans. And if he could achieve the stem-building stage, his life expectancy would be three hundred years which was twice the Qi accumulation level.
At the present, Merlin was at the seventh level of Qi accumulation, only a few steps away and he would be able to drill his way to the stem-building stage.
These many cryptic souls would surely be able to get him to the next stage.
Not knowing how long it had been, Merlin had stayed in that place for so long that he forgot to count days or nights because there was only night here. And there were only stars and the moon up there in the sky.
This place had no sun rays washing down; that was another bizarre thing.
KRRRRR!
A strange sound came out of Merlin’s body. Now the boy’s build seemed to have grown.
This place was sunless and windless; that was why his skin had turned pale. However, it still looked firm and healthy because of the practice.
It was unquestionable that this boy here was no ordinary person; he was someone who had achieved the stem-building stage.
Exactly! Stem-building stage!
His flesh, blood, and all the organs inside had been refined. And now they surpassed human’s limits.
Stem building was the true first step towards the path of Xian.
Merlin’s body flew up into the air. The strange sound was still coming out of his body.
It was the sound of the nine Qi pillars inside of him.
Inside Merlin’s body now were the nine pillars of Qi. And on their tops, there lay a shiny golden seat.
The sound continued loudly.
It was the sound of those pillars.
They were moving; those movements were a part of Xian vital essence’s foundation-settling.
The golden seat lying on the pillars was the symbol that he had now gotten into the stem-building stage.
Merlin’s body was now arranging the stem-building courses.
Then, Merlin opened his eyes.
BANG!
A strong energy wave spread out like an ocean wave. It moved like a water surface expanding among the ocean.
After the boy opened his eyes, they showed that he was resolute and absent.
He started to move again; his feet stepped on the air as if that was the ground.
That was right! Merlin was now able to float in the air freely; he no longer needed his levitation art.
Merlin became a thick crowd of fog; mysterious energy spread out of his body. He was graceful. Stepping into the air, he looked as majestic as a celestial god.
These were the abilities obtained from reaching the stem-building stage. Merlin’s body fused with Xian essence in the air.
Normally, being in the Qi accumulation stage, one needed an occult instrument to fly.
Occult tools were the items connecting Xian vital essence in the body with that in the air.
But after one had achieved the stem-building stage, flying no longer required those tools. Except for the high-level occult instruments that could increase the flying speed.
Merlin’s body was floating in the air; he relaxed his arms down. Suddenly, there appeared a great energy wave.
HONG!
That wave resonated loudly like a huge gong.
After Merlin moved the tips of his fingers, tons of remaining cryptic souls came out of his magical ring.
Being controlled, they were flying around him.
Merlin flicked his left hand and those cryptic souls crazily let out the magical power. They became a shifting energy flow.
Merlin inhaled the whole magical power spreading gleamingly into his body.
Having achieved the stem-building stage, Merlin had also achieved his previous goal.
Taoist foundation was fulfilled; the heavenly foundation was built firmly inside his body. So, he was now able to practice another science without any problems.
Everything that was worrying him had been completely ripped out. He did not need to worry anymore that his Taoist pillars would be foul.
All the magical power from the cryptic souls was inhaled into his body and induced into his heart, making an immense universe.
Hearts were the place where the wizards kept their magical powers. Now, the power was no longer turned into Xian essence and moved into dantian spot.
It was running like a river; after a while, the magical power in his heart had finally reached its limit.
If a person wanted to become a wizard, he or she had to, firstly, be able to sense the magical power. Then there came magical-power accumulation in the heart.
Wizards had many levels. The first step was to become a novice practitioner.
After that novice practitioner had gathered enough power, reaching the limit, he or she would have to drill to the next level: magic practitioner.
There was one condition to drilling the magic practitioner’s zone: after accumulating the power to the limit, one needed to consolidate it.
BAMN!
The magical wave exploded inside Merlin’s body. It went out just a short length, around one meter.
Indeed, Merlin had now achieved the magical-practitioner level. If anyone in the realm knew about this situation, they would be really shocked. A finished drilling the magical-practitioner level in a short period of time. There was nobody in history that could do something like this.
It was unbelievable that a boy could understand the path of magic so quickly.
In fact, there were probably people from noble families who could find quality resources for their heirs’ cultivation. But the difficult part was to understand the level-drilling.
Each level of the magical power was split into five sections of power. It was already a hard thing cultivating to reach the fifth section, but drilling the borders between levels was even harder.
But for Merlin, these things did not bother him because of the Lemegeton Eye’s skill that allowed him to understand the magical power together with his Xian-practice experience. They were useful for him trying to understand the magical-power cultivation.
“Huhh.”
Merlin sighed. Even though he had achieved the stem-building stage of Xian-essence cultivation or had become a magic practitioner these successes were useless.
Because no matter how high of a level he achieved, it would not be enough to get him out of here.
Being here, aside from the cultivation, Merlin had also spent his time seeking the secrets of this place.
Time had passed; even though Merlin’s body did not need sleep, with the discouragement in his mind trying to get out of this place, he had to rest on the ground.
Merlin’s problem was unsolvable; he saw no way out. The only thing he could do was look at the sky; his brain tried to find the solution. Unaware of how much time had passed, he kept staring at the sky.
Suddenly a thought appeared in his head.
Looking at the moon up there, Merlin found that something was wrong.
The moon had not moved an inch since the first day he arrived. It was still at the same spot unlike the other stars moving around it, the center.
The moon was strange; there had to be something about this place.
Reminiscing about the time before he got here, he remembered that those incidents, whether the secret door or the strange hole appearing out of nowhere, had something to do with him.
After thinking thoroughly, he knew that these things had something to do with the pain in his right eye.
This Lemegeton Eye had to be connected to these incidents, and possibly, to that moon.
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone