Bab 38: Chapter 38: Link Start
"The spirit ascension platform is the fruit of a millennium years of our Spirit Pagoda's efforts and knowledge. We had invested an enormous amount of resources and used our spatial technology to create a different world, therefore, the first thing you need to note is that the spirit ascension platform is a virtual world. To be precise, it is half virtual and half real. This is because a lot of the virtual data relies on your input. However, it can be considered purely virtual within the elementary spirit ascension platform, so there is no need to fear for your life."
"You can do anything you want in the spirit ascension platform, but your main objective will be to survive. Do your best to survive as long as you can. The longer you survive, the greater the benefits you will reap."
"Secondly, don't believe that it is completely safe in there. Although your life will not be in danger as only your brain waves are active in there, in some extreme circumstances, there is a possibility that your brain waves will be damaged and cause danger to your corporeal body. As such, the moment you face danger beyond your power to deal with, press the emergency exit button; and you will immediately exit the spirit ascension platform. Understood?"
"Understood." Xiu Ye responded quickly.
The staff member nodded. "As for the rest, you will learn them after experiencing it inside. Today is the first time you will be inside, so you probably won't survive too long, but it should leave a deep impression on you. Prepare yourselves mentally and remember this: don't panic if you run into a dangerous situation. Soul beasts aren't that scary if you know how to react properly."
Xiu Ye's lips in a small fraction of a second, twitched. Compared to Soul Beasts, a sadistic old man is much more dangerous.
A familiar voice resounded in his ears. 'I'm not sadistic...'
Xiu Ye inwardly rolled his eyes. 'Yes, yes you are.'
'Bah! Whiny baby.'
Nonetheless, this was the first time Xiu Ye's going to enter the spirit ascension platform. He was filled with excitement and anticipation. It's not every day that he can enter a virtual reality, no matter what the staff guy said about it being half real.
With a press of a button, a single metal box came out of the wall. The box was laid horizontally, it was a person sized-hollow within it, which made it slightly resemble a coffin.
"Lay down inside."
Xiu Ye followed the staff member's instructions and laid down in the metal box. The box was so cold that it snapped his minds into focus.
The interior was lined with electrodes, which quickly began to stick to his body snuggly.
"We're going to start now. Prepare yourselves. Relax your body and wait for the scan to begin. You may feel some discomfort during the scan, but just bear with it for a moment."
That was the last piece of instruction Xiu Ye received from the staff member before the metal box had slowly slid back into the wall.
'Link start!'
He was enveloped in darkness.
A sudden numbness encompassed Xiu Ye's body and agitated his excited soul power and blood; it was as if something was tunneling through his body. His body became paralyzed as the numbness grew stronger.
This sort of pain was nothing to Xiu Ye compared to the pain of being killed numerous times; in fact, this feeling made him drowsy.
He frowned however, feeling a slight tingling feeling in the deeps of his body. Was something wrong with his soul or spiritual power? No, the feeling came in his soul.
'My inner world? What's going on?!' Xiu Ye momentarily panicked, thinking that something had gone wrong in his inner world.
Closer inspection however, he was surprised to see that, except for a brief earthquake, there wasn't much change done in his world.
'What the hell...?' This throughly confused Xiu Ye. He didn't notice anything.
A while later, his body suddenly started trembling, rousing him from his drowsiness. To his surprise, he now stood in a brightly lit place.
The numbness had disappeared along with the metal box, replaced by a metal device that had a big red button. It was attached to the back of his hand.
'Is this the emergency exit button?' Xiu Ye squinted his eyes for a moment before turning around to inspect his surroundings.
He was surrounded by gigantic trees and large thickets of shrubbery. There wasn't a single path in sight. It felt like he had entered an ancient forest.
Currently, there was no any visual beings in his surroundings. But Xiu Ye didn't lower his guards, his memories of Genryūsai Yamamoto taught him to be prepared and guarded in any unknown environment he finds himself in.
'It truly feels like it's real.' Xiu Ye thought to himself, taking in a breath of fresh life. Only this could be considered an authentic ancient forest! Where could one even find such a forest in the modern day federation? The majority of ancient forests had already been cut down by humanity. In fact, it was said that the continent's greatest forest, Great Star Dou Forest, was only a husk of its former self, left with a meagre one percent of its original area.
Not only that, but Xiu Ye could feel the circulation of his soul power was faster and the fire element of Ryūjin Jakka inside him being slightly stronger.
"No wonder it's considered half virtual and half real... It truly feels like I'm in an ancient forest, before human civilization conquered most of the planet." Xiu Ye mumbled as he held his storage ring with his right hand. He still had the Eastsea City Academy's uniform on.
Silently, he let out a long two meter tall sheathed sword from his storage ring and hung it by his left side.
It was a nodachi, it sported a red and black handguard and having the traditional yellow and red hilt-wrapping flanked by golden-colored plates on the hilt, which ends in a very ornate, carved pommel. The lacquered sheath is red and has several small bells tied to the scabbard by the blade's hilt.
The Crimson Yang Sword, a sword Xiu Ye forged a year ago out of a first grade thousand refined Crimson Iron that had undergone Blood Sacrifice to act as a sub for Ryūjin Jakka. He wanted to use the latter as a trump card or when he deals with worthy opponents.
After all, when Ryūjin Jakka is unsheathed, all will be turned to ashes.
The long blade of the sword looked mostly normal except for its red crimson edge. The blade could release an intense heat that can easily melt iron when turned with a mental control from its user, which the sheath of the blade could handle as it's highly resistant to fire as it's made out of Crimson Iron as well. Not only that but when the blade is provided with soul power, flames would start to spew out and cover it with the user having control over it.
Basically an inferior of Ryūjin Jakka.
Xiu Ye decided, at the moment, that he was going to hide his projection ability. He was in Spirit Pagoda after all, he didn't want them to discover who he is by being a high value possible recruit. He has to stay low for now.
The Crimson Yang Sword was the perfect cover for being his martial soul, as for not having a soul ring out? He'll just tell them the truth. He could control his soul rings to appear or not along with his spirit soul, but it would always certainly appear when he uses Ryūjin Jakka.
Nodding to himself, satisfied, Xiu Ye moved in a straight direction towards the shrubbery and large tall trees. He used his spiritual power to scanned his surroundings. His spiritual scan had a range of 35 meters of diameters, making him see the plants and animals around him that was normally unseen through human eyes.
Through his scan, there were some weak looking animal type soul beasts hiding behind some bushes nearby, watching him warily in silence.
Thanks to the books stored in his storage ring, Xiu Ye was able to discern that those soul beasts hiding were at the ten year old level. They were just more powerful versions of normal animals, normally they would attack humans on sight as it was in their data instinct to attack humans for nutrients.
It was also because of their instincts that they wouldn't normally attack the human walking through their territory.
They felt a sense of danger radiating from the human. Their instincts screamed at them to not attack.
So they just observed the human, waiting to see if their instincts were wrong or not.
'Looks like they won't attack. Well, they're just ten year old soul beasts, not really worth my time.' Xiu Ye let out a sigh of disappointment. He wanted to hunt hundred year old soul beasts so he could quickly upgrade his spirit soul.
In the spirit ascension platform, for every soul beast you kill in the spirit ascension platform, you obtain one-tenth of its cultivation energy. That energy, in turn, will be spread evenly among the soul master's soul rings. In other words, if you kill a ten year soul beast, your spirit soul will gain one year's worth of cultivation energy. If your spirit soul has 110 years of energy, then it will become 111 years of energy. When it accumulates till it reaches 1000, then it will evolve.
For Xiu Ye, who only has one hundred year old soul ring, could evolve it by killing nine or ten thousand year old soul beasts in the second most quickest way possible. The first one is killing a ten thousand year old soul beast but he wasn't that confident in killing one unless he uses his projection to conjure a rank C or B Anti-Monster Noble Phantasm or use one of Ryūjin Jakka's techniques. Though this was only a rough estimation of the firepower he'll need to use to deal with a ten thousand year old soul beast.
Until now, he never knew at what stage his spiritual power has reached but Xiu Ye is confident that he should have at least reached the Spirit Connection Realm, capable of supporting a thousand year old spirit soul.
Since there would be no problem with his spiritual power, now came about how his body could handle the pressure of having a thousand year old spirit soul.
He had asked Ryūjin Jakka how much of his spirit soul cultivation could his body handle, as he's the most knowledgeable about his body, and said he could handle about four thousand years of age.
This was mainly due to the Soul God Cultivation Method slowly strengthening his body, his forging work as well, and reinforcing his base body to be more powerful than it should, making his body more tolerable than average.
Xiu Ye stopped in his tracks, his eyes squinted, he could sense a fast presence heading towards his direction. It was coming from north-east, just 25 meters now incoming. He focused some of his spiritual power to have a visual on the presence heading towards him.
It was an entirely black figure, with four strong limbs and yellow ferocious eyes of a predator. The most intriguing part of this creature was its metallic like stinger attached to the end of its one meter long tail.
It was fast, silent and nimble as it navigated itself around the forest while keeping its incredible speed steady and not making a single sound as it jump from tree to tree.
'That's, if I recall correctly, is a Devil Panther. Judging from its body size and its tail, it is about two or three hundred years old. Known for its aggressive nature and predatory skills to quickly track and kill its prey under the veil of darkness, and kill its preys with its deadly stinger. Which could easily penetrate the defense of a defense type system soul master...'
.....
"This is bad! A two hundred and fifty year old Devil Panther is heading towards the boy's position!" One of the staff member that was monitoring the region where Xiu Ye was, cried out in alarm.
Shu Lengwei, the escort of Xiu Ye, widened her eyes in shock. "What?! Even a team of three soul grandmasters would have a hard time dealing with that soul beast, much less an inexperienced nine year old soul master. Quickly, prepare the medics to treat the child when he comes out!"
"Roger!" All the other staff members quickly replied, one of the staff member even stormed off to get a healing type soul master if the situation was severe.
No matter if one had a special background or not, when one life's in stake others would try their best to help the one who's in danger. Especially since the one being in danger was a nine year old child.
'Don't be foolish little brother, hit the emergency exit button than trying to fight that thing.' Shu Lengwei hoped that Xiu Ye would be alright and that he would get a quick and painless death to minimize the side effects he'd get when he exits the spirit ascension platform.
What they don't know however, was that the situation that would happened next would be the complete opposite of what they had expected.
.....
'It's strong, but not strong enough. It might not be the level of soul beast that I wanted, but I guess I wanted a warm up at least.' Xiu Ye grabbed the handle of his sword with his right hand.
20 meters... 15 meters... 10 meters... 5 meters...
Like a black flash of lightning, the Devil Panther jumped out of the bushes, its pair of yellow eyes was smug and excited. Its black long tail rose up and bent like a snake readying to strike, showing its infamous stinger positioned to strike between the brows of its prey for instant death. Its pair of claws, four inches long and sharp, were up forward to shred its prey's carcass after it killed, to eat it.
1 meter...
Xiu Ye grinned, he unsheathed his sword and, in one precise vertical slash upwards, followed by a red line, he sheathed his sword once more.
The Devil Panther was just a few inches away from Xiu Ye before a straight red vertical line appeared between its eyes, and it continued to stretched up and down, then the soul beast's body split into two, revealing its bones and internal organs.
The split body of the Devil Panther passes through Xiu Ye in between soundlessly and hitting the ground with a thud, steam started to rise from it as blood dripped down in the ground, staining the emerald grass with a crimson color.
A white ball of light appeared from the carcass of the Devil Panther and it entered the body of Xiu Ye, who remained clean from the entire exchange.
"Oh, so this is spirit energy?"
He could feel an unknown energy flowing through his body and into his soul, specifically his Thunder Hammer. Although the improvement was marginally small, but he could feel that it was stronger than before.
Spark of lightning momentarily cackled between his fingers, telling Xiu Ye that the Thunder Hammer was happy from the spirit energy it had been provided.
Xiu Ye smirked, also feeling happy that a part of himself was getting stronger. "I like it as well."
He then continued walking forward, ignoring the now dead body of the Devil Panther.
.....
"...." The staff members and Shu Lengwei all watched with dumbfounded expressions and jaws hung down.
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