A few hours prior to Lao Jianghu's appearance in the round table conference in the warehouse, Cheng Hao had his hands in the pockets of his robes as he threaded on forward while humming a happy tune. He had been walking in the direction of hut #5742 for a while now. Suddenly, the golden snake shot out from the bushes on the side of the road and landed on his shoulder.
He looked incredibly excited. "Cheng Hao, you MUST become a Twin Star disciple! This castle isn't as easy as it seems, it might even contain otherworldly treasures! If I get to eat them, my strength will skyrocket!"
Cheng Hao rolled his eyes.
I don't need no snake to tell me that! Furthermore…
"Do I need to remind you of those absurd conditions? It does not depend on me, but on whether I can find another eight-year-old child in this god-forsaken land that can somewhat hold a candle to me." The child with golden eyes clicked his tongue and pursued his lips. "I have no intentions of doing that. Unless he somehow shows himself in front of me, I won't bother searching. I am weak, I need to grow stronger, I can't just rely on a drop of blood to protect myself forever!"
Goldy fell silent, as if he wanted to retort, but ultimately decided not to. A few minutes later, the small dragon yawned and then comfortably scratched its belly as it asked, "Cheng Hao, what do you think about that elder?"
With a slight frown, Cheng Hao shrugged his shoulders, a motion that sent the golden snake flying. "He can be used. That guy's cultivation is incredibly high, probably one of the highest in the whole Sect. He should at the very least be a Sect Protector, and a high ranked one at that, top five at least. Seeing how I made quite the lasting impression on him, he should already have eyed me as a potential disciple..."
"Pff, what did you just say? That old fart has a high cultivation? He's still a being in the Mortal Realm! How could you say that?" The snake climbed back on Cheng Hao and rested atop his head. With a knowing smile, Goldy shook his head. "You and I have both seen the might of those who truly had power! That ten-million-year-old beast, the Blood Soaked Flood Dragon, was a being at the Pseudo-Immortal stage! Despite initially being only a lowly Spirit Beast, it has achieved a staggering cultivation! Let alone this Sect, it would probably be able to erase this continent with literally nothing more than a thought if it truly wished to! And remember: a Primordial Beast like me, at its peak, would have little to no problem erasing this whole plane of existence, once it also reached the Pseudo-Immortal stage!"
"This plane of existence you say..." Cheng Hao pondered aloud. The Golden Snake nodded, and seeing that, Cheng Hao asked, "What about other ones? I've never seen you at your peak. Even the history books told of your might, but I've never actually had the chance to witness it... You kinda slept the whole time."
"Indeed: had it been the Blindlight you knew of then, a lot more effort would have been required… However!" Goldy beamed at the unexpected chance and immediately revealed his skills at self-flattery, "However, during the Endless Slaughter, the greatest battle to have ever taken place, the slaughter that lasted for millions of years and took place an untold amount of years ago, my power had also bordered the peak of the Divine Stage. Then, it had been just one little step away from the Immortal stage and through it I completely erased a plane of existence hundreds, THOUSANDS of times bigger and of higher spatial quality than this! Although I did have to sleep for ten thousand years after that to recover the energy spent though… Eheheh!" The snake smirked as he remembered the glory of his youth, when he had been just a few million-year-old youth in his early years, slaughtering his way through the never-ending conflict that had been the Endless Slaughter, the war between Primordial Beasts!
"So, I have never asked you this... But in your eyes what would have my strength have been before I died? At least, compared to the powerhouses you had the chance to fight during the Slaughter..." Cheng Hao was suddenly interested, "I mean, I DID slay thousands, millions of heavenly guards and generals, and even though I didn't beat him in the end, I was able to battle with Lord Tian, who inherited the power and cultivation base of the Jade Emperor, Hundredth Xu himself! That should make me quite strong, even when put amongst Primordial Beast, right?"
The dragon frowned and began pondering. He looked back in his past and saw flashes of his memories of Cheng Hao's battling figure... back then, the golden eyes had been a mesmerizing blue, and his looks that of a man in his early twenties, despite his true age easily surpassing the hundred years.
In his right hand had been a swirling black flame, so hot even a thousand-year-old glacier would be turned into vapour within the fraction of a breath. In his left hand had burned a white flame so cold it would turn everything it touched into white ashes. Taking the form of two flaming dragons, the twin flames wrecked havoc amongst the armies of the Heavenly Realm, devouring all those who were unlucky enough to be caught by the flaming fauces...
Then, deep in the blue-eyed man's left pupil, the illusion of a battlefield suddenly appeared; an ancient battlefield where corpses piled up in mountains and blood formed oceans. A golden sun eerily shone down on the dead bodies and the crimson sea that expanded beyond the horizon. The young man waved his sleeve, and a gigantic wheel, the true form of the mighty golden sun, appeared behind Cheng Hao's figure! The wheel began turning and an incoming thousand of black dragons hundreds of meters long couldn't resist at all as they faded from existence, their essence absorbed by the metallic rays on the golden wheel's surface!
The youth kept fighting like that until, for some reason, his usual calm look turned into rage and his eyes blazed with fury! His right eye turned from blue to black as if it had somehow been corrupted... within the darkened orb, a mouth with no body kept biting the space surrounding it, screaming and yelling to the human to let it free to slaughter!!! Although the yells were silent, the blue-eyed warrior seemed to have heard them as he smiled fiercely and mouthed a horrifying: go ahead! With a slap of his palm, the air trembled, and an excited black mouth appeared in the battlefield!
As soon as they recognized the identity of that fanged mouth, the section of the opposing army closest to the blue-eyed youth cried in fear! As they hurried away, not even caring that they were turning their back to a foe, the black and white flame dragons did not hesitate to feast upon their defenseless backs!
However, the horror had yet to end! Because, at that moment, the black mouth opened its jaws as much as it could, until it grew to be 999 feet tall! With another push, it grew to a staggering height of 1000 feet tall! The darkness turned golden, and the mouth into a gigantic golden gate...
The gate opened all at once, holding within millions, billions of screaming monsters chained inside! The screams were horrifying to the extreme and hearing their shouts, a large portion of the entire army of millions of Heavenly Warriors trembled before exploding and turning into one, massive puddle of blood... Mountains of corpses and an ocean of blood formed as more than a hundred thousand opponents were slain just like that! The man's left eye brightened and the image of the battlefield in his left eye overlapped with reality. The corpses and the blood disappeared in the real world to become even more corpses and even more blood in the illusion!
However, the youth had yet to finish: what he had just defeated had been but a small portion of the massive army! It was at that moment, that he pulled all stops! The blue eyes turned golden, as a golden hurricane exploded from his body, engulfing the entirety of the large army! The hurricane spanned countless miles across, and every single Heavenly Soldier had been included inside, more than a million total! At first, no one noticed anything different, but soon, cries of pain sounded out all over! At first it was one, then ten, then a hundred, then a thousand, ten thousands, hundred thousands, until more than a million beasts screamed in agony as their bodies, cultivation bases and even their very souls were absorbed by the golden hurricane!
In the end, only two people remained standing on the battlefield: one was the blue-eyed youth, whose pupils were now glowing golden, and the other was a winged giant as tall as a mountain! The young man raised his right hand, and all the energy he had gathered from the millions of beasts gathered in his palm, where they encased a massive, rectangular greatsword more than twelve feet long in blinding, golden light. In response giant roared loudly and punched out with all his might, when… Swish!
A single, golden arch appeared, appearing as if it were splitting reality itself in half: the golden greatsword had executed a single, beautiful arc in the air.
The winged giant's overbearing attack came to a stop inches away from the youth's face as its face twisted... and its head fell on the ground…
"…you listening?" Cheng Hao interrupted the golden snake's thoughts as he pondered out aloud, "At the peak of my strength, my cultivation had been of the Supreme Stage. However my true fighting potential was way beyond that..."
"That's true." Goldy pondered for a bit but then nodded. " Furthermore, your ability to grow stronger the longer a fight goes on allowed you to slowly power up during a war and easily turn the tide of battles: one moment your opponent would seem undefeatable, the next he would find himself being tossed around like a rug!"
Mortal Realm, the Ageless Realm, and the Immortal Realm. Each of these three Realms is divided into six, five and four stages respectively. Each stage is furthermore divided into a certain number of levels depending on the Realm. In short, these stages are used to distinguish cultivators' power and skill level!"
"With that, your mere Supreme stage cultivation possessed a might capable of skipping whole stages. Of the three great Realms of cultivation, the Mortal Realm, the Ageless Realm, and the Immortal Realm, the higher one reaches, the more the effort required to successfully take the next step! Thanks to your abilities, cunning and methods however, despite the chasms between each stage in the Immortal Realm, Evil Saint Xu Ling could even fight the average Divine Stage beast. Although you ultimately fell at the might of Tian's peak Divine stage, even at the time of the Endless Slaughter, although not a powerhouse, but you would have been able to hold your own against the majority of the middle tier Primordial Beasts."
"As for the Golden Blood Drop in your possession, as you probably have already figured out, it is a drop of a Supreme, or possibly even a Divine Stage being's blood. And it's not just any drop of blood, but rather a drop of Life Blood at that! It's rare for even Primordial Beasts to produce more than a dozen in their whole lifespan, so it's truly a treasure worthy of being described as rarer than phoenix feathers and qilin horns! If only we could somehow find a way to inject it into your own bloodstream… Well, the temporary growth in cultivation base definitely would not be low!"
"Finally, as for that Spark… even I don't really know what it is. From your description, it most likely is the essence of a really powerful being. An existence so powerful that even death could not completely dissipate its soul!" Goldy shook his head. "I honestly have no idea what rank that would require and can only assume that, since no Divine Stage beast could possibly grow so powerful, it's got to be a true Immortal Stage Beast. It's strange, because I have never heard of anyone reaching the Immortal Stage before, but to be able to survive death and force its way out of the circle of reincarnation... I really can't think of a better explanation!"
"Somebody is following us..." Suddenly, Cheng Hao slowed down as he perked up his ears. Then, he muttered in astonishment, "Judging by the pauses between his footsteps he seems to be… a child?"
He turned around and, sure enough, a small figure in the distance could be seen running anxiously, trying to catch up with them, "To be inside the walls of the Mysterious Light-Shadow Sect's fortress he must have passed he exam… But he is so young! How in the world could he possibly…"
"That child…" he gulped, "Could it be that a fellow that, with guidance, could grow to hold a candle to me… Actually appeared?"