Black Onyx - Phoenix Resurrection

I watched silently as the duo left. The old man thought he realized what I had done, but he was not entirely correct. The Soul Stone and the Cultivation technique I gifted them would be enough for little Felix to grow and become a powerful Cultivator, but that was not all.

I also manually uplifted his Soul, purifying it to perfection while feeding it Soul Essence. In a sense, his Soul’s quality was just like mine. Perfect. He would have no bottlenecks, no difficulty advancing Realms, all he had to do was work hard and stick to the technique I gifted him.

He didn’t have the abilities of a Soul Eater so his growth was going to be much slower, but he would get there, eventually.

I just gave him the opportunity to grow as a man should, without limits, eternally. Well, I also gave him a little boost, skipping the first step of Cultivation, and directly started him at the Spirit Accumulation Realm just like I had.

It was just a year of work saved, nothing more.

I turned back to the Dreadstone mine and saw Thalza giving me a conflicted look. I frowned slightly and approached.

[That was not a nice thing you did, saying those things to the kid.]

“I…” She looked at me and I could see confusion in her eyes. Then she lowered her head. “I have seen similar cases before. He was useless. Crippled.”

[Yeah? So what? That’s not a reason to be rude. Just the opposite, in fact.]

“But... You healed him!” She said, her tone somewhat accusatory.

[He was not sick, he was simply... broken. I just repaired his Soul.]

“Just repaired his Soul…” Thalza repeated my words quietly and then began to chuckle.

[What’s so funny?]

“Just repaired his soul, he said.” She looked at me with fire in her eyes. “Do you not realize what you just said?! Not only did you do the impossible, fixing the damage that should by all rights kill him in a few years, but you even purified his Soul, achieving something countless others have spent thousands of years trying to accomplish and failing, yet did it in just a few minutes! You basically unlocked his limitless Talent!”

[Potential.] I corrected her. [I unlocked his potential. And to be fair, everyone should have the same limitless potential. I wonder how far can he go. A limitless potential has to count for something, right? I don’t understand why everyone has to suffer with the impurities in their Soul for their entire life when they can so easily be washed away.]

Thalza began to laugh. “Easily?! I don’t know about you, but for us Drow, such a thing is impossible! Did you perhaps miss the part when I said my people were trying to do this for literally thousands of years?!”

[I heard you loud and clear. I just couldn’t believe it.] I replied.

“Then read my mind, you idiot! See for yourself!” She shouted.

I waved my hand in a dismissive manner. [Nah. I spent quite enough time in your head already. There is nothing else I want from you. I just thought you would figure it out on your own after all that I have shown you...]

“Figured out what?”

I pretended not to hear her and began picking at my teeth even though they were perfectly clean.

“Figure out what?!” She repeated more aggressively and got in my face.

[Oh, you know…] I lazily scratched my chin. [The fact that the Demons are perfectly aware of how to purify the Soul. You would think they would share such knowledge with their close allies, but I guess not.]

“You… you are lying.”

[Why would I lie? I have no reason to.] I laughed. [But I can show you the truth. Would you like a peek?]

“No! Stay out of my head!” Thlaza shouted and backed away, holding her head. I got the feeling she was getting a headache. Shortly thereafter, she exploded, blasting energy out of her as she roared.

“Ugh! I hate you! You are so annoying! Stop… messing with me!”

That was her way of releasing all those confusing, pent-up emotions. She was so funny. I didn’t even do anything and she was already driving herself mad, not sure what was real anymore. But the crazy thing was, it was all real. That was the real mind fuck.

[Oh, well…] I clapped my hands together. [Back to work, I guess.]

It took me approximately five days to make a brick. Five long, sleepless days to gather and refine the ore into a usable product. Truthfully, I didn’t actually have an actual clock to measure time with, but my internal clock was good enough as an approximation. Not like it mattered in the Ashen Wastes. Time had little meaning in the Lower Planes.

I took the Dreadstone brick and weighed it in my hand. It was quite dense. If I had to compare it to something, the closest Mortal material would be tungsten or gold, though it was still significantly heavier than that.

The unfortunate thing was that Dreadstone was not a metal. It was, as the name said, a kind of stone. That meant it was really hard to manipulate. It couldn’t be molded into shape since it would crack under stress, and heating it up didn’t really help with that. After melting it the thing would become even more brittle and form all sorts of tiny bubbles inside. In short, it was a real pain in the ass to shape.

I knew it had to be useful somehow since it was the only resource in the Ashen Wastes that was actively being extracted. Even the beasts that sometimes came to check things out were not that important. And they were literally the thing that kept the people there alive.

It had to be some good stuff if so much effort was spent on collecting it, I just needed to figure out how it could be used.

[Might have to visit the Enchanter…] I murmured to myself. The guy had vast amounts of knowledge, and maybe he could come up with an idea of how to use the Dreadstone.

Perhaps an alloy would work.

An idea formed in my mind, how I could perhaps improve the material by combining it with a super Qi conductive metal. Something like the Celestial Metal, which I still had plenty of.

Of course, I knew that the experiments to get a working material would take a lot of time if I really wanted to combine the two, so I decided to outsource the task. The Enchanter would most likely love it if I gave him such an interesting problem to solve.

[I bet he’s going to be thrilled.]

Now, the only problem I found with this plan was the fact that I had to deliver the Dreadstone brick to the guy. Even if I flew at top speed, it would have still taken me hours to get there, and carrying the brick for more than a few minutes at a time got really exhausting. Staying in contact with that thing was like getting the life sucked out of you. And not in a good way.

I had to come up with something to isolate the effects of Dreadstone, not only for my convenience but also for the safety of others. While I could easily resist the pull of Dreadstone, someone like Felix, or heck, even the Chief would probably die in a second if he accidentally touched it or just came too close.

There was a solution to my problem, and that was the storage ring. Since the time inside there didn’t pass, nothing could change, so the brick wouldn’t affect anything in the real world. Crossing that threshold, however, storing the Dreadstone, was a bit of a problem because it warped and distorted the transitory effect itself. The storage ring simply refused to work in the presence of pure Dreadstone.

Luckily, there was another way. Void Stone.

Qi could flow from one side of it to the other through the Void Stone, but not in reverse. And if one constructed a box out of Void Stone such that it was constantly siphoning the Qi from the inside out, whatever was stored inside couldn’t interact with the Qi outside. Simple.

And so, I did just that.

I always knew it was a good idea to collect so many treasures through my travels even though I never needed them. Just filling up the storage rings with everything I found was great, since you never know when an item might come in handy.

I took a few sizable chunks of Void Stone, honestly, I didn’t even remember where I got them from, and began sculpting a stone chest.

The sides were quite thin, only two fingers thick since I didn’t have much material to work with, but the seems were air-tight so nothing could escape it. I reinforced the stone chest with pieces of Spirit Metal and then even covered it in thin sheets of Celestial Metal just in case. I really didn’t want to risk it breaking.

Lastly, after a safety latch was complete, I took the chest and placed the brick inside it. As soon as I closed the lid, the unsettling feeling I was constantly experiencing abruptly vanished. It was like the background hum of a fan suddenly vanished and my mind felt like it was floating.

I didn’t even realize how much it was affecting me before I put it away.

“Ah~! That’s so much better.” I heard Thalza moan quietly not far away where she was Cultivating. For once, I had to agree with her, it did feel nice.

I closed my eyes for a while and just relaxed. Nothing bad would happen if I slowed down a bit and enjoyed life. I had all the time in the world anyway.

I was zooming across the land, probably close to a Mach 10, lifting up dust wherever I went, though it was really hard to judge my exact speed. Everything looked the same. Gray hills, gray sand, gray rocks… But I knew I was going the right way as the beacon I created pulsed at equally spaced intervals, guiding my path.

I didn’t set a return beacon back in the Echoes of the Forgotten Dawn village since I had a trail to follow back there. It was… difficult to miss.

Soon, the little village on the hill appeared on the horizon, and a few seconds later I was already above it. I abruptly stopped, releasing a final sonic boom and announcing my arrival. Not much has changed since last time, with people still busy processing the mountain of corpses from the beast horde.

I noticed a crowd gathering below and waved.

[They couldn’t wait to see me again and came to welcome me. How nice!] I grinned. [Well, let’s not keep them waiting.]