Chapter 384: Absolute Source
After lunch, Xiang Yu sat in quiet meditation back at his home, positioned next to the spirit spring.
Within his spiritual sea, he stood on one of the stars and gazed upward.
The darkness surrounding his spiritual sea struck him as truly strange. Usually, a spiritual sea was supposed to be all there was – it didn’t have something else that it expanded into. Even after consulting the empress, she couldn’t understand how such a phenomenon could happen either.
He looked up at the dark energy stretching several thousand miles above the planet he stood on. The sight reminded him of something. “Outer space?” he thought, his expression brightening. That’s right – he should create outer space.
Normally, people’s spiritual seas reflected their mind level and soul level, only growing as these two parameters increased. But his situation was different. Since his soul had somewhere to grow into, he didn’t need to create space through upgrades. In fact, it was the opposite – he could expand the space and receive the upgrades that way.
His smile widened. His current size matched that of a level ten mind.
If he expanded beyond what a level ten mind could handle, would he level up to immortal-level mind? “Well, only one way to find out,” he thought as he flew up from the star, floating just a few feet before the darkness covering his spiritual sea.
He raised his hand toward the darkness. The moment it made contact, extreme pain shot through him, as if he was being torn apart from the inside out. “I really can’t get used to this,” he thought. Drawing upon his void flame, he managed to lessen the pain slightly, though it still hurt like hell.
Making space on top of this thing would be quite difficult since it would take a long time – time he didn’t want to spend in agony. Instead, he decided to create void first. This was easier since his understanding of void energy was much higher.
He clutched his head, struggling to push against the dark energy and establish void just a few inches in size. After about an hour filled with agonizing pain, he managed to create two inches of void. He backed away and relaxed, trying to heal his soul.
This was really hard. Luckily, his stellar constitution was still smashing things inside the cores of the planets, causing them to produce lots of true qi and soul energy, healing him quickly. In just a few minutes, he was completely healed and ready to continue.
He looked at the encroaching darkness, and this time, he dove right into it with an evil smile.
He had realized something – how could he have forgotten? When his body was hurt and healed, it leveled up. Wasn’t it the same for his soul? With his quick recovery and this darkness here, he would stimulate his soul growth while expanding his spiritual sea, killing two birds with one stone.
When he was completely submerged in the dark miasma, Xiang Yu felt his soul being torn apart all over. But he endured it and continued expanding the void. This time, in just thirty minutes, he had managed to expand a whole meter. He left the miasma and started healing his soul.
This was really something. Although having his soul endlessly torn apart hurt like hell, he couldn’t resist the benefits. Pain equals experience, experience equals good, therefore pain equals good.
“It turns out I was this sort of person after all,” he thought, his face flushing as he jumped back into the darkness.
…
“Ah, so good. So much pain. So much power. I want to stay like this forever…” Xiang Yu spoke as he floated inside the dark miasma.
Suddenly, he jolted up as he heard a voice. [Are you okay?] the voice asked.
“The empress?” he wondered as he slowly opened his eyes. He looked around and didn’t see anything. Oh, it was through his other partition inside Li Yao. “Yes, did something happen?” he asked.
[No, you just randomly started acting strange,] she responded.
“Acting strange?” Xiang Yu’s main soul inside his spiritual sea wondered. It was then that he realized what was happening. That’s right, he was still inside the dark miasma. When he remembered this, the sharp pain of his soul being continuously torn apart returned.
He looked around. What was happening? He noticed the stars from afar. Since when had he fallen so deeply? He felt the dark miasma wrapping around him. Oh no, he was being corrupted. He needed to leave quickly.
He employed all his strength, and in a single outburst, the miasma was blown away, creating a void. He noticed that the void was being rapidly consumed by the miasma. He gathered even more energy, establishing space in the void and cutting through it, disappearing into it right before the void was completely consumed.
Xiang Yu appeared on one of the planets. He breathed and absorbed soul energy to calm himself. After a few minutes, he was finally able to completely recover and think rationally.
“That was dangerous,” he thought. He had almost been consumed by the darkness. How could he have been so naive to believe in such a thing that looked so evil?
He floated to the edge of the dark miasma. Even so, it wasn’t so bad. When he was being consumed by the dark miasma, he had realized something. He looked at the miasma and then at the edges where he had already created the void. Unlike deep inside where created void was instantly consumed, here at the edges, it stayed.
He waved his hand and established space on top of the created void. Xiang Yu thought to himself that he finally understood the concept behind the dark miasma. It seemed to be something related to the void.
Usually, in the chaos, people said that it was mostly made up of space. But in reality, it was actually made up of void, then space layered on top of the void, and time and the rest came after. This was why you could cut through space – because there was something else beneath.
This dark thing was actually a level below void. Before the void was put in place, this was the original existence – something that represented the absolute nothingness from which anything could emerge.
He smiled. He would call this the Absolute End.
He thought to himself about whether he could try to reverse engineer this Absolute End concept and see if he could reach an extreme opposite that represented all that exists instead of nothingness.
“Something like the Absolute Source,” he murmured.
He suddenly paused and touched his lips. “Where have I heard that before?” He shook his head. He needed to work on this immediately. He could finally see the path ahead. By merging these two together, he would pave his own path – the path of the absolute.
Daily (2/2)