Chương 382: Destruction is the Nexus of rebirth

"Half a thousand low grade essence stones." Long Feng slowly uttered, causing Ren Ji's face to turn terrifyingly dark.

"Bastard! When did I…" he instantly moved, barely dodging a fist that smashed into where he was standing. Staring at the towering frame of Xiao Hu, Ren Ji forcefully swallowed his words and fished out five hundred low grade essence stones. Even for him, he felt a slight pain as he gave them out for nothing. Long Feng received the essence stones and couldn't suppress the grin on his face. Immediately he stored them away, he glanced up and spoke again, ignoring the growing killing intent around Ren Ji.

"There's also my lifesaving bronzeflame talisman… it was granted to me by my father before I left…" He was simply spouting nonsense. He didn't even know what the item was, but since it was apparently lifesaving, then he wanted it. Ren Ji choked on his breath as he glared at Long Feng. Could anyone be more shameless than this? He didn't even have the time to speak before Xiao Hu glared at him.

Gritting his teeth, Ren Ji took out a paper talisman that was inscribed with several profound runes and threw it at Long Feng.

"Know your limit, brat! Do not go too far!" He threatened openly, unable to stop his heart from bleeding. He only had three of these talisman, and he was preserving them for when he found himself in a life threatening situation. He wouldn't even have given Long Feng one as he promised earlier. He was merely trying to get the Dao heart without any effort. Who knew that he would actually have to give it out? The pain in his heart felt like someone was repeatedly stabbing needles into it.

Long Feng directly ignored Ren Ji's threat. A huge grudge was already formed between them, and Ren Ji certainly wouldn't let it rest. In that case, why stop here when he could gain a few new treasures from him? That way, he wouldn't be bothered even if Ren Ji returned the very next day.

"Oh, there's also my extremely precious deity resurgence pill… I can't remember the grade exactly, but it seemed to be a mid grade pill…"

"Motherf*cker!" Ren Ji nearly spat out blood on the spot as his face turned slightly pale while his eyes blazed with virtually endless killing intent. A mid deity resurgence pill… he only possessed one of those. He had gotten it after countless struggles, and he was storing it for when he would undergo his second refinement. He was already a mere half a step away from the late stage deity realm, when he would refine his cultivation down again.

The deity resurgence pills were the pills used to refine the cultivation, and the higher the pill's grade, the much greater the effects. Of course, taking a mid grade pill meant withstanding nearly ten times the pressure compared to a low grade pill. Nine out of ten cultivators would shatter their core. Those who succeeded though would be even stronger with a much more stable core.

Ren Ji had used a low grade deity resurgence pill for his first refinement, and sensed that he could undergo another refinement and even try using the mid grade pill. He calculated that his chances of succeeding was sixty percent, which was high. If he gave it to Long Feng, he wouldn't be able to get another one in a short time, which could delay his second refinement unless he used the low grade one. The low grade pill alone could cost hundreds of low grade essence stones. The mid grade pill cost thousands.

A high grade pill would require hundreds of mid grade essence stones to purchase. Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation. As for the higher grade pills like the peak and supreme grades, they were extremely rare in and of themselves. Purchasing a peak grade would require thousands, even tens of thousands of mid grade essence stones! The supreme grade pill wouldn't even be sold due to how special it was.

Apparently, a supreme grade pill was beyond perfection, allowing a person to undergo four refinements while granting and unparalleled foundation. Of course, fewer than ten supreme grade pills have ever appeared within thousands of years, and currently, no alchemist had the ability to refine a supreme grade deity resurgence pill.

"Impossible!" Ren Ji snapped. Xiao Hu instantly attacked, beating the former to a haggard state, yet he refused to change his mind. This directly involved his cultivation… it would be weird if he agreed easily. Seeing that Ren Ji was determined not to change his mind, Long Feng decided to take a step down.

"Um, I remember now. It was a low grade deity resurgence pill!" He shouted. Ren Ji instantly threw out a porcelain pill bottle containing a single pill without hesitation and rushed away without a word, nor a glance at Long Feng's direction. Long Feng grabbed the pill bottle and shook it with a smile before storing it into his void ring.

"Not a bad harvest… I'll need to figure out what the bronzeflame talisman and the deity resurgence pill are later on though." He decided. Xiao Hu quickly returned and grinned at him proudly.

"See that? Your elder brother is really strong! I smashed Ren Ji and forced him to flee!" Long Feng nodded.

"Yes, elder brother Xiao is extremely powerful! Ren Ji was no match for you at all!" Xiao Hu nodded with pride, then suddenly scratched his head.

"Eeeeh… I forgot. As your elder brother, I need to give you a meeting gift… but what should I give you? Eeeh?" He began to panic as he desperately thought of something to give. Long Feng speechlessly watched from the side without doing anything. This Xiao Hu was too simple minded… Long Feng even felt slightly guilty for manipulating him as he did, but he couldn't help it. Ren Ji wouldn't have been chased off otherwise.

"Um… little fellow, you look so skinny and weak. I think I know what to get you. Just wait, I'll go bring your meeting gift!" Xiao Hu measured Long Feng with his gaze before hurtling away, causing the earth to vibrate with each step he took. Long Feng watched blankly as he vanished before rushing into his cave, unwilling to wait for more trouble to find him. He sprawled upon the bed once he reactivated the formations around the cave before sighing.

"The Dao heart is beginning to be a headache…" he personally knew how precious it was, and it needn't be mentioned that any deity would be interested in having it.

"How many people are aware of it…? If it's only Ren Ji, then it isn't as bad as it can get. But if more deities like him know of it…" he couldn't imagine what would happen if several deities as powerful as Ren Ji approached him. His only option would be to lock himself up within his cave, not daring to step out. As for Xiao Hu, Long Feng had already forgotten about the so called elder brother matter.

After pondering over it, he still couldn't think of anything to do without actually confirming the situation, so he dropped the thought. A worn out jade appeared in his grasp, looking like time had taken its piece out of it. Long Feng examined the jade thoroughly but couldn't find anything special or out of the ordinary about it, other than the fact that it was extremely tough. This was the jade containing the Rune Archon Nexus technique, which apparently couldn't be cultivated.

Long Feng wasn't planning to cultivate it. His goal was simply to see if he could comprehend anything from it, perhaps find out about it's actual use. He slowly sent a strand of his soul power into the jade, ready to decisively cut it off the moment anything strange happened. That strand seemed to have been teleported through time into a distant era as a heavily ancient aura drowned it. His mind became sluggish in the darkness that engulfed him, blurring his sense of time and self.

A second passed in reality, but a decade seemed to have elapsed within the darkness in the jade. All of a sudden, sparkling runes appeared out of nowhere, flowing like a river and illuminating the dark space. The runes flowed beautifully, moving in a unique pattern. The longer Long Feng looked, the more he realized that the runes were actually forming a text! A moment later, the runes froze, revealing the exact sentence that was floating in the darkness.

Long Feng stared at the sentence and read it out slowly in a dreamy voice, "Destruction is the nexus of Rebirth…" The moment he read it out, it seemed to be imprinted upon his very soul, never to fade away again. The feeling was extremely strange, and Long Feng couldn't describe it with words. But that same reason made him alarmed. He wasn't even aware that he had read the sentence aloud, and the unsettling part was that it happened while he was fully conscious!

He had never seen a technique transmitted in such a way. What exactly was this secret technique? The darkness around him suddenly began to crumble visibly, like pieces of glass. An immense destructive force erupted from the collapse of the darkness, sweeping through the space like a tide. The force was attuned to a single word; Destruction. Pure and unbridled destruction tearing the very fabric of this space apart. Long Feng Feng infinitely tiny before this tide, like a boat in the midst of a raging storm.

The feeling of death was so pure and real that he expected his strand of soul power to be erased from existence if the tide arrived. The tide washed over him and the soul strand was blasted out of the jade, forced back into Long Feng's body. Long Feng's eyes opened violently as he dropped the jade with sweat dripping down his forehead. He didn't dare to pick it up immediately again as he stared at it with utmost caution. What just happened was extremely strange and unexplainable.

A frown forced it's way to his face as he sensed something different. There were two things he immediately noticed. One was the sentence that was etched on his soul… it subtle echoed through his mind, as though someone was reciting it continuously in a dreamy tone. Long Feng was helpless to stop the voice, and he could only ignore it. Nothing he did otherwise was effective. The second thing was the huge bunch of information that had suddenly flowed into his mind through that strand of soul power.

It was composed of strange runic symbols, in a language that Long Feng didn't recognize, yet he could instinctively understand the words in his mind.

"This…" he blinked repeatedly.

"This is the first stage of the Rune Archon Nexus?"