Chapter 182 - Heart Fire Elixir

Defeating the Rising Sun Tribe was not difficult, but assimilating them into a vassal force under the Bloody Totem Tribe was a heavy undertaking. The Aztecs were obstinate and arrogant by both their nature and their raising, they would not submit easily, many would rather die.

And so, many died.

Those who refused to fall into line were beaten down, threatened, and beaten down again, until they finally submitted. If they still refused to give in after enduring this punishment, they were simply more hassle than they were worth, and thus, they were killed.

Yaan did not interfere in this procedure, since the Bloody Totem Tribe elders seemed to be quite capable on their own. This sort of wide scale brutality was quite heavy even for Yaan, but he had been through too much to shy away from the truth of the world at this point.

On the Blood Plane, the strong ruled supreme, the weak could either fall into line, or they could die pitifully. This was a natural law known to all people in these tribes, so nobody thought it was unusual that countless thousands of people were being killed every single day, even after the war had ended.

The losers in war always had pitiful endings. This was why everyone in the War Flower Empire strived so crazily to become strong.

In the end, the strife died down as those rebellious few were removed, leaving only the more obedient tribesmen in the new Rising Sun Vassal Tribe.

Aztec culture promoted bravery and honour, as did most tribes in the War Flower Empire, but how many people could maintain this bravery in the face of death? Some were able to do so, but those few were killed off before the horrified gazes of all the others.

Despite their battle-focussed culture, not every Aztec was truly a warrior, most of these tribesmen had never even left their tribe. They may be ‘cultivators’, aspiring to one day become warriors, but in any society, the majority of the people were weak, spending their lives working for the sake of those above them. Such people could not possibly develop the commendable bravery shown by those stronger Aztecs.

After scouring the tribe for a couple of days and confirming that there were no hidden Aztec powerhouses remaining, Yaan returned to the Bloody Totem Tribe, leaving the organisation of all post-war matters to the tribe leader.

Yaan was not taking complete control over the Bloody Totem Tribe. He had no desire to become the tribe leader, this position would force him to waste his time dealing with many tiresome affairs.

Basically, he wanted all of the benefits and none of the responsibilities, and since he possessed enough power to completely suppress every other elder in the Bloody Totem Tribe, it was not an issue for him to get exactly what he wanted.

The tribe leader was also happy to see this. She was able to maintain her position as the tribe leader, continuing to manage the tribe under her own leadership style.

In a way, she was using Yaan as a tool of war, but likewise, Yaan wanted to use this entire tribe as a tool to further his cultivation. Because their objectives aligned and their individual goals did not interfere with one another, both Yaan and the tribe leader felt satisfied with this arrangement.

Back in the Bloody Totem Tribe, Yaan held a single elixir in has hand.

He was able to cultivate by devouring slaughter aura, but Yaan was no longer a pure fiend, cultivating solely in this way would not be optimal now. His body tempering cultivation and his Qi refining cultivation had fused into one, he needed to cultivate this new path properly, or else his foundation would suffer.

After considering his future cultivation plans for some time, Yaan felt that the best way forwards was to devour slaughter aura and to consume elixirs. Only by combining these two methods together would he be able to progress rapidly and without encountering any bottlenecks.

There were two elixirs ready for harvest back in the Rising Sun Tribe, but Yaan only took the most valuable one for himself. Elixirs would begin to lose their power shortly after they were picked, so generally speaking, cultivators would not harvest an elixir until they intended to use it.

Besides, Yaan didn’t plan to take every single elixir for himself whilst leaving nothing for the tribesmen below him. If he did this, not only would it cause discontent to arise within his force over time, but the tribesmen would not be able to grow stronger, their cultivations would stagnate and they would eventually lose their usefulness.

Anyway, Yaan needed to consider the usage of his time carefully. All elixirs were useful to him, but if he had a surplus of elixirs, why would he waste his time by using any of the weaker ones?

Generally speaking, only one elixir was used at a time, they were not often combined together, because the results could be unpredictable. Since elixirs also tended to have an extremely long duration of effect, Yaan needed to choose only those which were of optimal use to him.

Sitting down in the tribe leader’s tribal mansion training room, he held the heart shaped fruit in one hand.

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The elixirs he had seen in the past resembled fruit in some way, but this fruit really just looked like a human heart. In fact, it even had a pulse! This pulse had started to slow down ever since he plucked the fruit a few hours earlier.

After plundering the spatial rings of the various Aztec Elders, Yaan had learned the exact use of this fruit.

The Rising Sun Tribe, like many tribes in this region, nurtured their elixirs using human sacrifices. The vitality of the sacrifices was absorbed by the sacrificial alters and transferred into the elixir trees directly. Naturally, any elixirs which could be nourished by such a method would possess the qualities of human vitality…

This made them extremely effective as body tempering resources.

This human heart shaped elixir was called the heart fire elixir. The fruit looked like a human heart, and it even had a pulse, circulating a flaming hot vitality throughout its blood vessels.

The heart fire elixir was many times stronger compared to the other elixirs grown by the Rising Sun Tribe, but it was accompanied by a side effect which made many people unwilling to consume it.

The vitality within this fruit contained the lingering emotions and wills of the victims used to nourish its growth.

Each individual will contained within the elixir was minuscule, so insignificant that a single will would be impossible to notice. However, this elixir was grown through the sacrifices of millions of victims over a period of many decades, the amount of emotion and will accumulated within stacked up slowly, until it reached a truly terrifying level!

Just holding the elixir allowed Yaan to feel the chaotic emotions within. He could sense the erratic mixture of the countless emotions felt by the many sacrifices at the moment of their death…

Sadness, indignation, fear, panic, grief, regret, rage, pride, defiance, hatred, unwillingness…

These emotions were so strong that any cultivator would think twice before daring to consume the heart fire elixir.

Yaan raised the pulsating heart to his mouth, then bit down without hesitation. The heart began palpitating and spurting out burning vital fluid, but Yaan’s mouth covered the fruit quickly, preventing anything from going to waste.

With another few bites, he consumed the elixir entirely.

The moment the heart fire elixir reached his stomach, Yaan felt a powerful burning sensation encompass his abdomen. The flaming sensation was quite pleasant at first, similar to the feeling of drinking wine, but the heat built up further and further, until it was slightly uncomfortable.

By the time the heat reached its peak, the flaming power spread into Yaan’s veins, quickly circulating around his body. The burning vital power entered his vital core, and for a moment, Yaan’s body trembled. The elixir’s burning vitality combined with his own Vital Qi, causing the flow of his Vital Qi to become turbulent for a brief moment.

Yaan expected this. He was not a pure body temperer, he did not possess vital energy, but Vital Qi. Because of this, his energy was not perfectly compatible with the power of elixirs.

The difference fortunately wasn’t too extreme, after a brief period of adjustment, the chaos in his body settled down. Yaan’s Vital Qi adopted the property of extreme heat, though of course, this was only a temporary effect, this would vanish after he fully digested the elixir’s power.

And as for the millions of combined wills and emotions…

Yaan felt the chaotic mixture of emotions shoot through his body and into his mind, but the instant these emotions stormed into his mind, he suppressed them with his psyche power.

Yaan’s psyche cultivation was at Hundred Sage grade, meaning that he could manifest over 100 psyche avatars within his sea of consciousness. In fact, he could now manifest 230 psyche avatars!

This was slightly higher compared to the last time he assessed his psyche cultivation. The improvement in his psyche cultivation could be attributed to the hardships he had been through since then, each of which required the strenuous use of his sea of consciousness.

With psyche cultivation equal to Rank 3, Yaan could easily suppress the emotions and wills contained within this elixir.

The emotions were not too powerful for him to handle, but they almost seemed to be endless. Yaan maintained 100 psyche avatars within his sea of consciousness. Each avatar quickly moved its hands, crushing the continual stream of emotions that stormed through his body and into his mind.

If he ignored these emotions, they would begin to affect his own emotional and mental state. Even if that did happen, the effect would not be too much for Yaan to tolerate, but it would be a hindrance to his cultivation. The heart fire elixir lasted for 100 days, Yaan wanted to make good use of this period of time.

He intended to use of the Bloody Totem Tribe’s formations to train this time.

Body tempering was the main cultivation path on the Blood Plane, so naturally, the people had developed the perfect methods to pursue this path. Their societies which were setup to nurture elixirs reflected this, but elixirs alone were not enough for high level body temperers.

Elixirs were unlike refined body tempering resources, they were usually relatively gentle, whilst the effect lasted for a long, set period of time. In order to reap the benefit of the elixir, this time needed to be spent training arduously, pushing the body to its absolute limit time and time again.

The best way to make use of an elixir was to train the body under tremendous strain. For body temperers, normal physical exercise could never truly exhaust them, they needed to develop other means of training.

The Blood Plane’s environment was excellent for this already; simply flying a few miles into the sky resulted in the build up of spiritual pressure and gravity. However, eventually, you would be pushed down by this pressure as exhaustion accumulated, it was not the best method of training.

Yaan made his way outside, before flying away from the tribal mansion, towards a tower located a few miles from the tribe’s centre. This structure towered far above the other buildings in the tribe, but towers like this could actually be seen in many tribes across the Blood Plane.

This tower was called the Elixir Sky Tower, it was a construct covered in formations which made use of the rising spiritual pressure at greater heights, amplifying this pressure within a single chamber located at the peak of the tower.

This tower was only rarely used in the tribe. Due to the high cost of operation, the tower was only ever used when a tribe elder was cultivating with an elixir.

Like many formations, the tower’s formation was powered by demonic beast cores. Demonic beast cores were a powerful source of energy, they were often used in formations and alchemical recipes.

Yaan examined the formation curiously. Unlike the formations he had seen on the Qi Plane, this formation could also be fuelled by body temperers’ vital cores. Like demonic beast cores, vital cores contained vast quantities of energy.

For now, Yaan did not use vital cores as the formation’s fuel. Vital cores had greater value to body temperers than beast cores. Since Yaan possessed many demonic beast cores, there was no reason to waste the vital cores that he gathered during the battle against the Rising Sun Tribe.

After placing hundreds of Rank 4 demonic beast cores and some Rank 5 beast cores into the formation, Yaan sighed to himself, realising once again that war was truly too profitable.

He had killed tens of 4-Star Aztecs, so naturally, he also gained the entirety of their wealth. He also had access to the entire Rising Sun Tribe’s wealth, but he didn’t want to squander these funds too recklessly.

After activating the formation, attracting a fair bit of attention as the Elixir Sky Tower lit up with bloody red light, Yaan entered the tower and flew up, entering the chamber at the peak.

He set the spiritual pressure and gravity to a level that caused him to struggle to stand.

With this, he began training at once.