Demonic Tribulations - Chapter 28 preview (Patreon)

Chapter 28 - Yin Xue

Yin Xue breathed in, exhaled and ran through the instructions that Bianhua had left him. To resolve the issue between the soul’s dao and his own, he would have to subsume the remnant soul within himself. Doing such a thing was impossible, of course, for something as large as a remnant without utilizing a dark soul art. That Bianhua knew one might have been concerning for Yin Xue, if not for the fact that the creature before him was an Ancient Dragon.

Such a creature was multi-millennia old. The kinds of things it might pick up as a matter of plain existence was near impossible to count, and the storage rings – more armbands wrapped around the creatures lower legs – were massive, able to store more than the usual ones that Yin Xue was used to. These were, after all, immortal items rather than his old cultivation works.

Soul arts in general were frowned up, rarely utilized except by healers. It was not something that could be easily wielded in the middle of a fight. Healers were generally the only ones who learnt such skills, but finding a soul art that could be utilized on another and that was compatible with an individual’s skills was difficult.

Those were considered orthodox arts, or at worse, heretical. The one that he had been trained in was the complete opposite. It was the forced consumption of a soul, the destruction of an individual to empower ones cultivation. Drawing forth an individual’s dao insights forcibly, stealing what was not theirs to create a scaffolding to the heavens.

Or hells.

“You only gave me the last part though,” Yin Xue muttered. “Not that I’m complaining.”

“If you did, I’d eat you now and be done with it,” Bianhua said, laughing. “You have no reason for the first part, the extraction of a soul. Or the second, which stores it before consumption. Only the last – the digestion – is what you require. Now, stop delaying and eat well.”

Yin Xue grunted. He knew that even the act of consumption would mar his soul as far as the orthodox were concerned. However, he had left that particular allegiance a while back. As far as he had trod the demonic path, there was never a way for them to accept him again.

Breathe in, deep and then exhale. Pull energy from his dantian, empower it with immortal and demonic chi, send it through the intricate weave of meridians within his body and through the lower, upper and then middle dantian. One, after the other, weaving the energy over and over in an intricate knot pattern through the meridians in his body that rivalled any cultivation method he had ever seen.

That was just the preparation too, it was not even the process of assimilation. That happened when he eventually broke the seal holding the remnant soul back. It surged forwards, only to be caught in another net, one built of Yin Xue’s will and chi. Weaves of demonic and immortal chi wrapped around the remnant, the thrashing force and shade but a sliver of the man’s initial immortal soul.

Such was the Cai King’s strength, a creature at the half-step Immortal stage that he need only take a single inch forward before he achieved full immortality. He had held back, over and over again, locking away portions of himself when he reached that threshold for he had a plan. To rule all of the Middle Kingdom, to turn it’s people and resources against the very heavens themselves before he stepped forward.

Now, this remnant of a soul that had been growing, feeding on the same energy that Yin Xue had been feasting upon was unleashed. It tore at the bindings, sought out Yin Xue’s own soul, its dao of all consuming greed in full flower.

In turn, Yin Xue had no dao of his own, no shield. He had one, once, but the tattered dao of nobility, his own presumptive belief in his place in the world and that of those around him had torn away and shredded over the course of the years. Now, what little he clung onto were shreds, unable to hold him up or offer support.

He could no longer stand there, rooted in his belief that everyone had a place that they need only struggle forwards to meet. That nobility had obligations and rights, above others; but also prestige and benefits that came with that.

No, his belief system had changed over the years, as his presumptive rise and then fall, his injuries and his struggle upwards, the broken pathway he had forged as an Elder had ended with him at the Core Formation stage.

Accepting, even consuming this dao of greed was not without its benefits then. He could use the soul to rebuild the scaffold of his own immortal soul, reshore the parts that had begun to crumble and deepen the foundations. There were aspects, that he knew, he would need to keep of his original dao, of his own beliefs. That was, after all, the point of what Baihuan desired of him.

Just as importantly, taking on too many aspects of the soul would see him lose himself. There was a reason soul arts and the consumption of souls was so frowned upon. Too many cultivators saw it as an easy form of power, and consumed soul after soul without thought or concern about what it did to them.

Eventually, what they were, were but hodgepodge cultivators, true to none of them. Their minds filled with dozens or hundreds of whispers, remnants of memories that had yet to be consumed, driven by impulses that they could not control or even understand.

Driven irrevocably insane.

Yin Xue had enough pride to want to avoid that. He would consume this remnant all the way through, absorb its memories, dao and strength. Rebuild himself and emerge as a peak Nascent Soul cultivator, or not at all. To do that, though, he would have to take an extra step.

A small twitch of his focus, the crushing of the core within his dantian. He shattered it, and it said something of how weak his cultivation had grown, between the deprivation of immortal chi in the stolen realm, in his body’s ever increasing reliance on demonic chi, of the injuries he had taken battling this remnant’s original body and his own pitiful growth, that shattering his core had taken nothing more than a surge of will.

The Cai king’s soul noticed his distraction, tore its way free. Managed to part a dozen strands holding it still, nearly two thirds of the way through as Yin Xue struggled; forced to capture his own immortal soul in the bindings of the soul art.

It was withering, half-formed, a foetus that had been birthed before its time. It would die, overwhelmed and with it, Yin Xue’s own hope. So, rather than allow that, he took it in the cocoon of power that was the soul art and tore it to shreds himself, beginning the merging process.

Every cultivator – to some extent – did the same during their ascent to Nascent Soul. It was partly why it was so dangerous, as mortal and immortal souls merged and became one. For those that succeeded, the process was painful but survivable, as the soul that emerged was close enough to their origins that the replacement was not too great a shock.

Like swapping spinning gears in a mill.

For him, it was like pouring boiling oil down his veins, setting his mind alight and being struck by lightning all at the same time. He could not spare the attention to safeguard himself against the remnant, could only work the soul art to integrate his own immortal soul as quickly as he could.

High above, he could sense the change in the atmosphere, the way the clouds and winds altered. Such an action always heralded an incoming storm, a testing by the immortal heavens. A timer was set upon his path, but he had neither time nor desire to turn his attention to it.

No, all his focus was on completing the swap and merging, even as the remnant tore itself free of the bindings. It was through the dozen threads of power that held it, and only the final ones – the strongest, the core of the art – held it back. Those twisted and slipped, even as the remnant tried to free itself, but they were straining, coming apart.

A race, between heavenly ire and ghastly specter, to see who would kill Yin Xue first.