Chương 40: Chapter 39: Desolate-Ranked Beast Soul

[POV Sylvia] It hadn't been long since she had been thrown into this new life of sect etiquette, cultivation and meditation. Her days used to be just waking up, fetching water, lighting fire for cooking, and then, after feeding and sending her sisters off to study at their village elder's house, going over to the farm to help her dad tend to the fields.

And now instead she wakes up, takes a shower, and gets straight to doing two hours of meditation specifically to extend and develop her spirituality through cultivating, then cultivating her newly formed copper core which had just freshly entered the Peak Stage of the realm. And once she was done with that, she'd go ahead and practice the five varieties of Cypher Arts her master had specifically chosen for her.

They mainly specialized in offense, defense, healing, investigation and movement—covering most of the fundamental aspects necessary to not require another's aid in battle. It was odd, because to her knowledge, in a war one needed another's help to survive and make it out alive. But according to her Master Asura, that wasn't the case for cultivators of her station.

"Look, child. You're a direct disciple in training—imagine yourself as an already-selected vice village chieftain. Except that in our world, in your father's former world, the ones at the top do not rely on those below them. Those at the top of the cultivation world must be pillars of strength unto themselves, devoid of need from anyone lesser. You alone must be the heaven they can hide behind and feel safe under. You must be the source of strength, unreliant on any other secondary sources."

"But Master, how can a human be self-sufficient and devoid of need?" Her master had laughed, a booming, almost frightening sound that reminded her of her father, who too used to laugh in this manner.

"Because cultivators are not humans. Humanity is the race we cultivators sprung from. It's our beginning—a cultivator pursues the path of immortality, the path of infinity. While humanity pursues the path of limited mortal idealism and pleasure. How can the two be of the same race? Humanity is satisfied with small-scale wars, families, and simple freedom and control over their own little environmental bubbles. While cultivators seek to acquire all pleasure, all freedom, and to keep it for all of eternity.

They seek to conquer the very heavens that birthed them. To be a cultivator is to be a relentless force that would stop at nothing to become eternally self-sufficient, eternally invincible. That is the path we walk, that is our end goal, to reach eternity!" Sylvia had remained quiet after that speech of her master's. She had to admit, half of it had gone straight over her head. Eternity?

A little over a week ago she'd been fighting with her friend over some particularly handsome adventurer who had dropped by her village while passing north. A month ago she'd been worried the lessening yield from their fields might not last an entire month. Her siblings were growing bigger; they needed more food and nutrition, not less. Nowhere in between all that had she ever desired eternity.

Well, maybe that little urge to devour a whole boatload of chocolate at once could technically count as desiring something truly huge and selfish. Now that she thought about it, basing the whole thing off chocolate—wouldn't it be nice if she and her family had access to an endless amount of it? As well as an endless stretch of land that could produce an endless amount of grain?

"That way, we'd never have to worry about food!" She let the thought sit a while longer.

"Father, too, would've been able to stay with us forever and tell us all his stories about his adventures, instead of having to work the fields and manage the village every day." Wanting everything was selfish—that was what the elders back in the village used to tell her, and she agreed. But that was only true when you were taking things from others. In this case, she'd only be cultivating and improving herself.

That was cultivation of the self, and the sect already had legitimate paths to gathering resources, resources they'd gladly provide her as long as she produced real results! You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

"Okay, enough slacking—back to cultivation!" She slapped her own cheeks to pump up her spirits. Crossing to the drawer of her desk, she retrieved two spirit stones from the several scattered inside. With the stones in hand, she settled back into the lotus position and resumed her cultivation. After several hours, she finally felt a crack spread along the walls of her copper-membraned beast core as a flood of white Qi poured into it.

After a full minute of the energy gushing in and nurturing the broken membrane, the wall healed and transformed into one that shone with a silvery hue! And the copper-colored energy within her beast core, too, was replaced with one of pure silver! She felt strength seeping and coursing through each of her meridians at rapid speed. She immediately stood up and went to practice the Cypher Art her master had given her: the Tyrannic Trident. She picked up the wooden one from beside her bed and began practicing the art.

It was similar to a dance, so she tended to hum internally while doing it—the rhythm helped keep her form balanced and sharp. After an hour of practicing, she finally felt the heat emanating from her navel area begin to subside, and she sat back into the lotus position, setting the wooden weapon aside. Peering inward, she watched as the outer walls of her Silver Beast Core shone far more brightly, with a healthier vigor than before.

"Phew, finally done!" It had been hard. She'd been handed roughly two hundred spirit stones, and her whole room reeked of incense. Her task was to reach the Realm of the Silver Core before departing on the expedition. While her life before had been relatively peaceful, the past seven days had been particularly brutal—she'd remained under the effect of this overdrive drug the whole time, and the stress of it had almost driven her mad!

"Just a day remains before I'm sent to the frontlines, huh." Her heart beat with anxiety at the thought, but that wasn't the only emotion residing there. She also wanted to deal with the very thing that had supposedly spawned the creatures which destroyed her village and killed her father. A knock on the door pulled her out of her sinking thoughts. She only sighed to herself before going over. Opening the door, she found a red-haired girl of striking charm standing on the other side.

Xiao, the former disciple of her master.

"Good morning, Senior Sister," she said, bowing. Sylvia nodded and got straight to the point.

"Need something?" The girl only smiled, her crimson pupils nearly gleaming.

"Nope, but Master sent this for you." She extended her fair hand, holding a small box—one that could nearly fit inside a fist. Sylvia took it, flipping it over. She found a small pentagram etched beneath it.

"What's this?" she asked, her voice not carrying even an ounce of the warmth she usually showed the other inner disciples. Xiao didn't seem to mind, though—like she ever would. A vampire who partook in another's lifeblood without consent hardly held any delicate qualities of a human.

"It's a Beast Soul, one Master sent over specifically for you." Her hand shot out like a snake and grabbed hold of Sylvia's own. Sylvia didn't resist.

"Just put a drop of your own blood on it, and it should automatically transfer to your personal system interface. Bye~" She let go of Sylvia's hand before wandering off to who-knows-where, a bounce in her step suggesting she'd already found something interesting to play with. Sylvia could only sigh and close the door. As instructed, she pulled a small knife from her desk and got to making an incision.

"Mmmm." She kept trying to make the cut, only to pull the sharp edge away at the last second.

"Why does it always have to be blood? Do these damn cultivators have any other identification method besides constant self-harm?!" It was the third time she'd been told to puncture her own flesh and pour blood over something just to unseal it! Seriously—of all the absurd spellwork she'd seen, spellwork that let someone hold entire mountain ranges inside a small ball, was it really so hard to design a halfway decent, less painful identification formula?

Also—yes, believe it or not—she was currently inside a cave, inside a mountain range, which was itself placed inside a mystical ball within the ancestral hall of the sect branch! After much hesitation, she finally gathered the nerve to make the incision. The blood dripped onto the red pentagram atop the small cube as a flash of light overtook her. When the blinding light faded, a new system panel opened up. [Congratulations, You've acquired a Desolate-Ranked Beast Soul: {Arch Demon}]