The sky regained its color.
Only one sun hanging quietly above, and a little girl stood silently beneath the firmament.
At this moment, her small body seemed more like the sole ruler of heaven and earth. Her every movement carried a terrifying power that would make the world tremble.
The High Priest was still laughing arrogantly in the wind. “Master, my Master, awaken.”
He knelt on the ground.
His staff was slammed into the earth.
Crimson blood flowed across the surface, streams of blood gathering into rivers and pouring into the Heavenly Abyss from all directions…
Countless flowers withered, rotting away completely within the river of blood.
The river of blood was incredibly thick; it looked more like a black filth.
Finally, the countless rivers merged into a sea, slowly reaching the top of the Heavenly Abyss and turning into a spectacular, pitch-black waterfall.
“Aren’t we going to stop it?” I looked at the girl in front of me.
“No need,” Xi Zhiruo said in a heavy voice. “Let her wake up. Only then can everything truly come to an end.”
Just now, more images had surfaced in her memories.
After the first evil cultivator took her back to the cave, she had been locked inside a small, pitch-black bottle. The cave was at the very bottom of the Heavenly Abyss, where the sun never shone. It was the place with the densest Yin energy in the world.
Yin energy could continuously nourish ghost energy; it was a further extension of Yin energy’s attributes. When Yin energy was bolstered by malice, it would transform into ghost energy—the most powerful tool of a wraith. It was pervasive and nearly impossible for normal people to defend against.
“The modification project officially begins,” the black-clad girl muttered to herself, her eyes cold as she looked at the container nearby. “I’ll name you Subject One.”
“To be able to contribute to my transcendence plan, you can consider your death well-spent. As a reward, I will grant you unparalleled combat power. Wraiths are born without physical bodies. Even if they have long lifespans and superior cultivation speeds, they can’t change their inherent flaws. They are destined to have lower combat power than normal cultivators of the same rank. This is exactly what I need to research.”
“As long as a physical body can be made compatible with ghost energy, one can obtain nearly infinite longevity. Even further transcendence would not be impossible.”
Her eyes were somewhat frenzied. “You are a perfect vessel, and a nearly perfect experimental subject. In my hands, you will become a war god, invincible among those of the same rank. Ever since I obtained you, I have seen the hope for complete transcendence. Come, baby, let’s begin the experiment.”
She never worried that Subject One would escape her control or turn against her. As her experimental subject, she had already estimated the upper limit of a ghost cultivator. At most, it would be the Benwo Realm.
An experimental subject was, after all, just a subject. No matter what, it could not possess a physical body. It was merely a tool for her to seek the possibility of merging flesh and ghost energy.
And as for her?
She was already a 7-Source powerhouse, the number one supreme expert among all the great worlds. She could easily destroy a continent with a single punch and was considered the ancestor of all evil cultivators. She was unprecedented, and there would certainly be no one like her in the future.
The experiment proceeded steadily.
The first step was to nourish this soul with Yin energy, letting it gradually grow stronger.
The second step required constant torture. Having a strong soul alone was useless; it needed a corresponding, terrifying malice. Both were indispensable to give birth to a wraith invincible among those of the same rank.
Days passed. Just as she was once again torturing the soul until it was unrecognizable, the tiny soul suddenly roared toward the sky. The entire world was shrouded in her boundless ghost energy, and the terrifying sound made everyone tremble.
“Hahaha!” the girl laughed toward the sky. “This is exactly the effect I wanted to achieve. Only a soul like this can be bestowed with the title of Ghost King.”
In truth, this soul was already capable of birthing sentience. However, the evil cultivator had been suppressing it. She needed an experimental subject that was easy to control, not a ghost cultivator with its own sentience.
After proving that a ghost cultivator could be artificially created, she suddenly hit the brakes on this path. This soul was too special—so special that she couldn’t bear to waste it.
Then she would find another subject. She would train Subject Two to be a ghost cultivator. Having already gained experience once, she should be even more proficient.
Next, she found another relatively special soul and named it Subject Two. Subject Two was easily trained into a ghost cultivator by her.
“From today on, you will serve me personally.”
“As you command, my Master.”
A bloodthirsty killing intent flickered in the girl’s eyes. She took out the Human Sovereign Flag, which was billowing with black energy. “Take this and harvest every soul in this world. Our grand ambition has begun.”
“As you command.”
One soul after another was harvested, and the girl’s army grew larger and larger.
The next stage of the experiment officially began.
She pinched the struggling, tiny soul. “Does it hurt? Don’t be afraid. There are even more painful things to come.”
The girl forcefully pressed down on the soul’s head, actually trying to force it into the body of a rat.
Aaaah —
The soul’s pained screams echoed continuously through the heavens and earth. She was in pain, struggling. Countless tears of blood flowed from her lifeless eyes.
The next second, the rat’s body exploded. A small ball of soul curled up on the ground, already weakened countless times over.
“Is it weak already? I’ll just have to strengthen it again.” The girl sneered repeatedly. “I told you, I will train you to be invincible among those of the same rank.”
The so-called strengthening was the repeated application of intense pain. This would stimulate her to produce more powerful malice, thereby making the soul’s origin even stronger.
Another experiment began.
Ignoring the soul’s struggles, she pressed the soul into the body of a beast once more amidst its heart-wrenching resistance. Unsurprisingly, it exploded again.
Although this soul did not have a specific consciousness, she could already vaguely sense the difference between good and evil. Instinct made her want to leave this place. She stared at the girl with hazy, hateful eyes.
“Go ahead and hate me.” The girl laughed wildly, not caring at all. “No matter how much you hate me, what can you do? You can only have your head held down as I conduct one experiment after another. This is your fate. Weakness is the ultimate sin. As long as I live, you will never escape my grasp. The Source-level mountain that traps countless people for their entire lives is a threshold you will never be able to cross.”
The experiments continued.
Through failure after failure, weakness after weakness, and then painful strengthening after painful strengthening, this soul had become unimaginably resilient through the repeated tempering. By now, she was incredibly powerful. Facing an enemy of the same rank, she could easily win with just a single punch.
This strength made the girl lick her lips. “Truly perfect. Is this really my handiwork? What a perfect masterpiece. I really want to turn you into a specimen and admire you for a lifetime.”
The tiny soul was being crushed under her foot, struggling.
“This is only the beginning. I still have 500 years of life left. The experiments must continue. Come, my baby. Let me see today if you can merge with this insect egg.”
The girl repeatedly made notes in a small notebook filled with countless data. All of this would be the accumulation she needed to complete the final sublimation of the essence of life. She was destined to succeed and go down in history.
***
In reality, Xi Zhiruo had already shed two silent lines of bloody tears. The memories of the countless painful past events were almost exploding in her mind.
Closer to the Heavenly Abyss, the tragic experiences that occurred when her sentience was hazy all those years ago were finally recalled clearly. it felt as if her heart was being subjected to the death by a thousand cuts. The pain, convulsing from her physical body to her soul, made her small body tremble, and she nearly fell from the sky.
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