My Journey to Godhood as a Caterpillar

Yun Jhin watched as the man flailed before he fell outside of the arena, the impact from the air to the ground wasn't that hard but he still vomited a mouthful of blood and became unconscious.

Most of the people that viewed the fight had a keen eye so they recognized the fact that Yun Jhin injected some wind energy into him that cut his insides after it pushed him off the arena, most of them thought that he was a vicious individual for what he had done and they didn't want to meet him during the tournament.

Yun Jhin watched from above as someone else jumped on the arena to replace the sickly man, things went on the same, Yun Jhin's cultivation base put him ahead of any King Realm cultivator, and no matter what they did they wouldn't be able to shake his position or even make him move half a step behind.

The King Realm tournament ended up with Yun Jhin winning it and he naturally took the second prize getting 2 slots for the upcoming expedition in the imperial tombs. The 3rd, 4th, and 5th places were won by the Sikong, Shen, and Shin families.

Yun Jhin left the arena and looked towards the Emperor Realm fighters, in the end, it was still the fight between Sikong Cui and Zhu Cheng, even though the other two fought valiantly against each other, Sikong Cui and Zhu Cheng only needed to slap them to take them out of the competition, so instead of making a joke out of themselves after they had to fight the duo of 2nd stage Emperor realm they forfeited.

It was now the main fight that everyone looked out for, the fight between two young prodigies at the 2nd stage of the Emperor Realm.

Zhu Cheng smiled lightly at Sikong Cui, but while his face was kind his whole body was exhausting fighting energy, his veins were visible as they quickly pumped blood through his body, his teeth were gritting against each other as he watched Sikong Cui, he hated people like her, people that were born into good families if he wasn't lucky enough for the head of the Zhu Family to take him in he might have just died in the pit fights below the city, a street rat that no one would have cared bout.

Even though he hated Yun Jhin for disobeying him he also understood him somewhat, even though he thought he was a pawn planted by the Sumo Empire for something, in the end, he was a country bumpkin compared to him and he didn't find him threatening.

Sikong Cui was a different story, ever since he entered the Zhu Family he tried to pursue her a few times, but all his attempts ended up with her laughing in his face, after a while he got over his crush on her and he started to hate her because he looked down on him because of his birth, he trained hard to overtake her cultivation base and succeeded!

Only for her uncle to luckily find a herb that helped her breakthrough to the same realm as him!

She was supposed to be at the 1st stage, not the second stage like him!

Sikong Cui knew about Zhu Cheng's hatred for her, he was quite unstable emotionally and her looking down upon him in the past didn't help his self-esteem. She felt bad about what happened back then, but only because Zhu Cheng grew into such a strong man.

The fight began soundlessly as Zhu Cheng released his imperial aura all over the arena, his breathing evened out as his hot breath went out of his mouth looking like mist descended on the arena.

Sikong Cui eyes widened, such a hot breath meant his blood was boiling, how angry was he?

Zhu Cheng smile turned strange as he looked at her, his teeth turned sharp as he disappeared from where he stood, when he appeared he was in front of Sikong Cui and had a longsword made of ki in his hand, the longsword color was a deep crimson and it was stabbing directly to her stomach trying to sever her ki pathways!

Sikong Cui dodged hastily by jumping backward but Zhu Cheng put his leg behind hers and tripped her making her fall on her butt.

Sikong Cui rolled as she narrowly dodged the sword that was ready to now impale her stomach, Zhu Cheng was aiming to cripple her but no one was saying anything about it!

The Emperor looked down at the fights from his throne in the palace, he was observing from his throne room and didn't say anything as he just looked on, sometimes his eyes would close as he would contemplate something, from time to time his eyes would wander towards Yun Jhin's figure who was also observing the fight between Zhu Cheng and Sikong Cui, his eyes would glow every time he would look at him.

Sikong Cui gritted her teeth as she finally went on the offensive, she created a purple scythe out of her ki and used it to slash diagonally trying to slash Zhu Cheng into two!

Zhu Cheng easily parried with his longsword almost making her scythe break, Sikong Cui wasn't proficient in close range combat but the arena was restricting her movements, if she was thrown out it would also be considered a loss!

Sikong Cui closed her eyes and then opened them revealing that their color changed to a deep purple, her scythe was removed in favor of a bow, she started to masterfully dodge his anger-filled attacks and nocked an arrow on her ki bow.

Yun Jhin narrowed his eyes seeing that arrow and watched on to see what Zhu Cheng would do to dodge it.,

Zhu Cheng's fighting instincts told him that this arrow would be able to injure him quite heavily so he intended to dodge it at all costs!

Zhu Cheng tried to attack her before she could let go of the arrow but the moment he tried to move he felt that her deep purple eyes locked on his head and her fingers were a few centimeters away from the string of the bow!

Zhu Cheng frowned as he dissipated the longsword and created a tower shield to protect himself from the deadly arrow, however, he miscalculated as a small smile appeared on Sikong Cui's face.

Her lips curved upwards as she opened her mouth and whispered:

"It's my win..."

She let go of the string of the bow and the arrow flew so fast that no one below the Emperor Realm could even see where it went, even Yun Jhin had to strain his eyes to see it's trajectory.

The arrow directly went through Zhu Cheng's tower shield and hit his forehead!

The tower shield disappeared as Zhu Cheng appeared with an arrow in his forehead, his head was hung down as blood dripped down on the arena, the referee walked slowly towards Zhu Cheng and tried to see if he was still alive.

Zhu Cheng's aura was fluctuating wildly and his lifeforce did the same, suddenly the arrow lodged in his forehead transformed into dust as it was forcefully destroyed by Zhu Cheng's inner ki.

His eyes turned a deeper crimson than before as they turned into slits and his pupils reappeared in his eyes, he regained some of his wits after he was hit in the head with the arrow, even though his soul was injured in the process it made him sober up.

He breathed out again but his blood wasn't boiling as before, it started to turn a little colder than usual, Zhu Cheng form started to morph as he transformed into a 5 meters long dragon!

There was a dot scar on his forehead from the arrow but it was slowly closing, Sikong Cui's eyes widened as he saw him using his true form and she hastily tried to transform into hers as well, she started growing in size to prepare herself for her transformation.

Unfortunately for her, Zhu Cheng didn't let her, he flew towards her at unimaginable speeds as not even after images were left behind, she looked down at her chest and saw Zhu Cheng's claw inside of it, his claw turned to the left as he grasped her innards and wanted to rip them out, but the referee quickly appeared between them, this was a fatal injury and if he didn't stop it he would be held responsible by the Sikong family.

The referee tried to make Zhu Cheng let go of her innards but Zhu Cheng just smiled at him, the referee thought that he understood what he meant but underneath that smile was a ghastly visage that he kept hidden.

Zhu Cheng did let go of her innards, only after he jumped backward and out of the arena.

Sikong Cui innards were rolling all around the arena as she coughed multiple mouthfuls of blood, she wasn't crippled, she was dying!

The Emperor didn't say anything about killing, so technically it was allowed, but it was also an unspoken rule that killing was banned, officially you could kill but only if you were ready to accept what came after.

Zhu Cheng transformed into his human form as he looked at Sikong Cui's dying frame with cold eyes, his crimson eyes turned back into a blue crystalline color as his aura turned peaceful, as Sikong Cui was dying Zhu Cheng's cultivation base was stabilizing and growing, it seemed Sikong Cui was Zhu Cheng's heart devil that stopped him from improving his cultivation base.

Yun Jhin clicked his tongue as he saw Zhu Cheng's cultivation increase and thought:

"This brat would have made a good young master in the Blood Throne sect, fortunately, it was destroyed, if they knew of me reincarnating I don't think they would have let me go before they dissected my soul and took all of my memories."

Yun Jhin was the former leader of the Blood Throne sect but considering what kind of people he recruited into the sect it was a certain thing that if they found him while he was weak they would try to take all of his memories from him along with whatever treasures he had on him.

Yun Jhin watched as Zhu Cheng approached him and gave him a genuine smile, it seemed some of his anger was burned away along with the death of Sikong Cui, Yun Jhin could see from the corner of the eye an elder from the Sikong family coming and taking the corpse away with a hardened face, he glared at the patriarch of the Zhu family and made a motion with his thumb over his neck, the patriarch just gave out a small smile in response and waved his hand.

This made the elder extremely uncomfortable as he hastily left with his young mistress body to be buried.

The Emperor came out of the palace to give out congratulations along with announcing the quotas and which family had them, The Zhu family had the most standing at 5 slots, that meant 10 people from the Zhu Family would enter the imperial tomb.

Most of the other families started to butter them up, after all, who knew if the items from the tomb would make them soar like a carp over the dragon gate?

The Emperor smiled cryptically and then disappeared after he announced everything, very few understood the Emperor's smile and one of them was the patriarch of the Zhu Family, he had a grave expression on his face as he returned with all of the disciples back to the family and created an emergency meeting.

Yun Jhin and Zhu Cheng were invited to the meeting along with the sage realm elders of the family.

The Zhu patriarch took a deep breath as he said:

"I'm not sure if we should enter the tomb this time."

Most of the elders were puzzled along with Zhu Cheng, Yun Jhin wasn't sure what the Emperor's smile meant but he caught a glimpse of it and his instincts told him it wasn't anything nice.

The Zhu patriarch told them about a legend of the tomb:

"There's a random occurring in the tomb when the souls of the former Emperor's come back as wraiths, up till now 4 of the former 20 Emperor soul wraiths were captured, however, it took the death of other 2 Emperor's along with the extermination of their souls to capture those 4!"

Everyone's eyes widened as they heard this, did the Emperor's smile meant that they had to deal with soul wraiths again?

The patriarch continued to explain:

"His smile could mean many things but every Emperor smiled this way when the Soul wraiths appeared, and it isn't voluntary, some of the Emperors who died explained before their souls scattered that their mouths moved on their own as if they were possessed, the imperial family might be cursed I'm not sure about the specifics and I don't dare to investigate either."

This could be quite the unfortunate thing as the Zhu Family finally got so many slots after hundreds of years of only getting one or failing.

The patriarch instated this meeting because he wanted to know the opinion of others, would they want to enter or not, after all, as the patriarch who needed to protect the house while others were away he wouldn't be able to enter and he didn't want to force anyone if he did he would lose their loyalty and the house would be in peril from external forces.

Yun Jhin knew about such occurring, they weren't random, they were man-made, the first emperor must have created the soul murking formation when he created the tomb and hid it from his descendants, this was quite the devilish Azure dragon.

The soul murking formation was meant to use the souls of God Realm experts to mend and restore the destroyed soul of a dead God Realm expert. This was a way for those dead God Realm experts whose souls were destroyed to reincarnate, there was never a true death in a sense, but losing your physical body and being forced to recultivate was extremely annoying and time consuming that was why Yun Jhin was searching for true eternal life, among with other reasons that became muddled during his countless reincarnations.

Yun Jhin knew that he had to get inside the tomb, he knew the outline of the soul murking formation and if he was lucky he would be able to find the main node of the formation, there he could insert his soul in the formation and refine the souls of the other God Realm experts to restore his soul capabilities to at least 50% or more! It all depended on how many soul remains were murked from the remaining 16.

Yun Jhin watched as the elders voted and most of them decided that they wanted to go inside the tomb, the treasures were just too alluring.

The patriarch didn't look very happy at what was happening but he respected their decision as he said:

"Zhu Cheng will have to select two other of the younger generation and Yun Jhin one, after that Yun Jhin Zhu Cheng and the other three people will select an elder each and they will go to the tomb's entrance on the day of its opening which is around 5 days from now, make the good choices, I will have to go now."

A lot of elders started to swarm Yun Jhin and Zhu Cheng as they tried to impress them with their cultivation bases so they could be chosen to accompany them in the tomb.

Yun Jhin scanned each elder with his soul willpower and they didn't complain, he wasn't that interested in most of them but a certain peculiar elder that blocked his soul willpower took his attention.

His eyes glowed as he looked at the man, his actions piqued his interest along with his looks and the aura he exuded, he knew that the elder must have done it on purpose but he did have the power that Yun Jhin needed.

Yun Jhin neared the elder and asked him:

"Elder, might you be able to tell me your esteemed name?"

The elder gave a burst of hearty laughter as he looked at Yun Jhin, his plan worked!

The elder opened his mouth to give out his name...