Eight skulls engraved with symbols of different schools of magic floated in the air, revolving around Chen Yu as he hastened the chant of his spells, signaling the second stage of the ceremony had begun.
The first stage gathered negative energy to initiate the ceremony, the second stage offered sacrifices, and the third stage was about transcending life levels to complete the Promotion Ceremony. These were the three stages of the ritual recorded in the "Multiverse Universal Necromancy Spell Compendium." With the variation of Chen Yu's spells, the second phase of the ritual commenced.
The frantic chants were like an invisible whip lashing onto the magic array inscribed on the ground, making the array, merely etched into the soil, emit green light. Even the five skulls that were initially still on the Sacrificial Magic Array began to float. The eight skulls that hovered beside Chen Yu spun around him, with the fire from the Ritual candles stretching into trails as they burned, leaving behind streaks in the air, but Chen Yu completely ignored this, focusing solely on reciting his spells.
As the chanting continued, the Ritual candles atop the five skulls on the Sacrificial Magic Array, which had been burning naturally, suddenly flared violently. Like fireworks, the flames rapidly engulfed the entirety of the Ritual candles and then wrapped around the skulls, cloaking the floating bones in a layer of green firelight.
Wrapped in the firelight, the skulls seemed to come to life, their intact mandibles opening and closing with a "clack, clack" sound. They whirred around the two goats offered as sacrifices, like five Evil Ghosts considering where to bite first.
This terrifying spectacle, sufficient to scare ordinary people out of their wits, was unseen by Chen Yu; he knew it was merely part of the ritual.
Before the ceremony had started, Chen Yu had already learned from the Black Leather Tome what would happen during the ritual. The prepared sacrifices were inevitably to be consumed by the five ignited skulls. The agonizing pain of a living being being torn apart and devoured, even to the point of having its soul shredded, would generate an extremely intense negative emotion.
This process wasn't merely to torment the sacrifices, but rather to procure enough negative emotion, which then acted as the key to harness negative energy and open a path to the Nether Plane, obtaining the essential Necromantic Power for the entirety of the ritual.
Necromantic Power is the sublimation of negative energy, as well as the force employed by Certified Necromancers. Unlike Mage Apprentices, Certified Necromancers obtain Necromantic Power by connecting to the Nether Plane, transforming the negative energy they've gathered into Necromantic Power. Only with this can a Necromancer truly master the power of death and propel the genuine necromancy.
A Mage Apprentice's efforts driven by negative energy could only be considered the superficial aspects of necromancy—strictly speaking, it was more akin to Dark Magic rather than true necromancy. This is because real necromancy spells contain the power of death and must be fueled by Necromantic Power.
Of course, a Necromancer only needs to connect to the Nether Plane once during the Promotion Ceremony. After obtaining Necromantic Power, one only needs to continuously transform the negative energy into Necromantic Power and does not have to open a Nether portal each time.
As Chen Yu reminisced about the explanation of the Promotion Ceremony from the Black Leather Tome, the five burning skulls had completely consumed the two goats offered as sacrifices. The green flames enveloping the skulls seemed to be nourished after devouring the sacrifices, growing a ring larger so that the flames obscured the skulls within, even the color of the flames began to pale.
However, this pale color was not entirely pure; it seemed to be mixed with a bit of gray-black. Under the influence of the accumulating gray-black negative energy, this slight imperfection was nearly imperceptible.
This was actually because the sacrifices Chen Yu prepared were goats, not sentient beings, so the negative emotions produced when the sacrifices were devoured were not intense enough, resulting in impure negative energy. Of course, with the huge amount of negative energy accumulated over nearly a century at Kawakami Cemetery, which Chen Yu was invoking, this minor flaw was negligible.
With the sacrifices offered and the negative energy gathered, the second phase of the ceremony was smoothly completed. Chen Yu's chanting entered the final stage, the third phase.
The content of the spell had transformed into a different tone, like a hymn praising death, eliciting a resonance from the Nether Plane. When the resonance peaked, the massive negative energy could open the passage, connecting to the Nether Plane.
Before the ceremony began, Chen Yu had been concerned whether he could resonate with the Nether Plane at all, since Earth felt like a world of low or, one could say, non-existent magic to him. Whether he could connect to the Nether Plane was completely unknown.
But as the spell entered the final stage and Chen Yu successfully resonated with the Nether Plane, that little bit of worry was set aside.
With the resonance of the last stage of the spell complete, the five burning skulls fell back onto the five apexes of the Pentagram within the Sacrificial Magic Array, and the burning flames then set the Pentagram and the Sacrificial Magic Array alight.
Within the rising flames, a speck of emerald fire suddenly appeared from nowhere, flickering for a moment before transforming into a ring-shaped portal.
The passage to the Netherworld had opened.
Although the passage was open, Chen Yu knew he couldn't let his guard down yet because the most important stage of the ritual had just begun.
Following the instructions from the Black Leather Tome, he mobilized his magic power to send the eight skulls surrounding him flying towards the Netherworld portal, pausing as if embedded on the periphery of the passage, beginning to attract the Necromantic Power of the Nether Plane through these eight skulls.
The pure Necromantic Power of the Nether Plane was by no means harmless, and direct contact would cause serious injury even to a Necromancer, for after all, Necromancers are still living beings, unlike Liches or Corpse Witches who are already undead creatures. This pure death essence was like a deadly poison to any living life.
In fact, in the short period since the opening of the Netherworld passage, just the aura emitted from the passage had already caused the surrounding plants to wither.
But Necromancers could manipulate this power.
As recorded in the Black Leather Tome, Chen Yu tried to gather the flames from the Sacrificial Magic Array, controlling them like a fire dragon, lighting up the eight skulls one by one that were embedded around the Netherworld portal. As the eight skulls were ignited, the flames within the Sacrificial Magic Array gradually died out, and the five skulls seemed to have completely melted away, disappearing from view.
"I thought I could save a few Ritual Candles for next time; now they're all going to burn up," Chen Yu muttered to himself. Although he was a tad distressed about his Ritual Candles, he continued to mobilize his magic power as required by the ritual, extending the flames into the Netherworld portal.
As Chen Yu acted, the ghastly white flame that extended into the Netherworld portal gradually took on a pale purple hue, a sign of contamination by Necromantic Power. At the same time, the magic power Chen Yu used to control the flame was naturally imbued with the Necromantic Power, tainted with its essence.
This was the method of obtaining Necromantic Power recorded in the "Multiverse Universal Necromancy Spell Compendium." The sacrificial flames acted as a buffer since they were generated by sacrifice and also represented death, thus they could filter out the damage that the Necromantic Power brought.
Seeing that the color of the eight skulls around the Netherworld portal had all turned pale purple, Chen Yu slowly retracted the flame stretching into the passage, then manipulated the eight skulls to detach from the portal and circle around him once more.
As the eight skulls detached, the Netherworld passage also gradually began to close and eventually shut completely.
Seeing the Netherworld portal securely closed, Chen Yu then focused his attention on the eight skulls in front of him. The next was the third stage of the ritual, and the most substantial part, using the Necromantic Power to forge his own body, achieving a sublimation of his life level.