Inside the inheritance ground,
Yang Zhai sat, staring at the Torus before him. It was severely injured.
He healed his wounds first before beginning to absorb the Torus's essence.
He refused to take risks during the absorption process, ensuring no one was near him. As such, he was sitting alone. There was no one around him except for the torus.
During this time, a cultivator would be left vulnerable, susceptible even to a mortal's attack.
He drew spiritual energy into his body as a black vortex swirled around his abdomen. With his aperture gone, the vortex manifested there directly, bypassing the need to channel energy through it, much like when he first became a cultivator.
He then collected the Torus's blood, tossing it and a Spirit Stone into the vortex to forge a connection. The stone, soaked in blood, was linked to the beast's spirit unnoticed due to its pain and limited intellect. Using essence water, he channeled the Torus's essence into his vortex, purifying it via the Blue Gem to avoid chaotic impurities.
The blue line in his void absorbed the cleansed essence, glowing with stabilized power.
The blue line was rotating in the void, circling around the black sun. Its speed increased as it absorbed the essence of the Torus.
The Torus withered, silenced by restraints.
After fully absorbing the Torus's essence, he observed its shriveled, lifeless form.
He didn't stop there and continued,
"Let's use the blue gems to advance to the rank five peak stage."
There were two methods to utilize Blue Gems after developing the Black Sun. The first involved dedicating an entire Blue Gem to forge a single star, shaping it solely from purified rays infused with void power. This approach treated the gem as a catalyst, requiring four or five Blue Gems to craft one complete line—or twenty if one wanted to achieve a line of perfection.
The second method forced a line's creation during the star's formation by channeling the Blue Gem's raw energy. This produced a diluted line where natural essence overshadowed the purified rays, as the gem's power compensated for the missing stars. Here, the Blue Gem ceased to be a mere catalyst—it became the foundation, its innate energy substituting for the absent stars.
As such, he started to absorb the rank 5 blue gem. Its essence was entering the void and combining with the purified rays.
At first, these two came together and began to rotate around each other before slowly coming together. Their speed kept increasing before pulling more and more purified rays inside. The temperature kept increasing.
Finally, a huge amount of energy was released into the void. However, the lines managed to hold off the energy inside and didn't let it out. If they had managed to exit, Yang Zhai would have been incinerated.
A star was being created, but Yang Zhai began to forcefully alter the creation of the star, using the blue gem's energy as the main ingredient and dominating the star's creation.
After a whole day, he managed to advance to rank 5 mid-stage. After resting for a while, he continued.
After two more days, he was finally at the rank 5 peak stage.
"Let's see what it has in store for me."
He rose and activated a blue line.
After activating the line, he noticed that his body toughened, including his veins, bones, muscles, and skin. As for his strength, he didn't notice his strength.
"Good, as I thought, my body's defense increased. Now, let's activate four lines slowly."
He then activated two lines together, then three, and finally four. However, he was still fine.
"Good, as I expected. Toughening my body doesn't mean breaking the limit of my body—in fact, it means increasing the limit of my body. This is the reason my body isn't bleeding from anywhere."
After that, he activated the orange lines. However, his strength didn't increase.
So, it's still not night yet. Whatever, let's absorb that bandit's essence now and reach perfection.
He walked up to the bandit leader.
"Congratulations, I am finally about to release you," Yang Zhai said with indifference.
The bandit leader couldn't say anything.
Though Yang Zhai had promised to spare him, he kept the bandit leader in the same condition as before, under the pretense that the bandit leader hadn't yet handed everything over.
In the beginning, he kept lying to the bandit leader about intending to release him, but later resumed his old treatment when the lies no longer worked.
When the bandit leader heard Yang Zhai, he felt a flicker of hope.
However, he couldn't think straight as he was in a half-conscious state. He wasn't even given any chance of being able to regain complete consciousness. If Yang Zhai was not around, he had ordered the rank 5 water hound to keep the bandit leader at bay through his minions.
After saying this, Yang Zhai kicked the man in the face and made him faint completely. He wanted to prepare before starting. As the man was already in a half-conscious state, making him faint wasn't quite difficult.
"Let's begin the procedure of reaching perfection."
As such, the process of achieving the line of perfection began.
After three weeks,
At night, right after the moon was visible.
"It's been almost a week, and we still haven't found any trace of that Tzu Kid! Damn it!"
"How could we get deceived by a mere kid—and that too by one who's just a rank 5 cultivator?!"
"I still can't believe we're unable to locate a mere rank 5 cultivator!"
"Where did he even disappear to? If I find him, I'll torture him to hell!!!"
Two rank 6 cultivators vented their annoyance.
They guarded the place where Yang Zhai had initially vanished. Though uncertain of what had happened, Mu Kang remained cautious, stationing two rank 6 cultivators there as well.
A door silently opened beside them without their notice.
From the door appeared a person. His aura was undetectable; it could even be said his presence had vanished.
Yet because the door was too close, they eventually noticed and slowly turned their heads toward it. But as they turned, two hands shot toward their eyes and seized their heads.
"Uh…"
Before they could react, the hands tightened their grip.
"Ho...w…"
One guard managed to mutter this before their heads were squeezed until they burst.
The brain matter splattered everywhere along with the blood.
Yang Zhai was covered in it. He looks at his hands with indifference that were covered in blood and the brain matter that was slowly squeezing out from between the fingers.
"Good, even I didn't think I was holding so much power inside me all this time. Two rank 6 cultivators couldn't even resist my grip. I am glad I came here, risking my life, so that I could obtain the unique Torus's ability…it paid off."
If it hadn't been for their pride - their arrogant belief that someone like me couldn't possibly threaten powerful cultivators - I never would have succeeded in obtaining the torus.
My arm has fully recovered from the negative effects. The toll exacted by using Damnation Snake has completely healed because of rank 5 over stage. While the technique's backlash was terrifying for the rank 4 perfect stage to recover it, achieving the rank 5 perfect stage made the healing process remarkably effective.
!|!*****!*****!|!