Michael had been training in the Styx Soul Incarnation Scripture for more than 11 years now. He was still in the peak viscous soul realm. But, from the start, the entire process of cultivation had been based on gathering death energy. Death energy was the term coined in the scripture about the energy of dead creatures. Michael had accepted it as fact and never really bothered with experimenting with the energy. But, now when he had the ability to feel life energy, he understood that life energy was the base to start comprehending life laws. Michael wanted to test if it held true for death energy as well as if it was a coincidence.

He started collecting death energy from a beast he had hunted and started condensing it in his arm instead of absorbing it in his soul as he usually did. Then, he filled up a bug with that energy. He then waited to see what would happen.

For some time, nothing happened. Looking at this situation, Michael frowned. He started sending more and more death energy to the bug. Slowly, the bug started growing slower as if turning old. Its movements became sluggish and its soul was weakened. In the end, it died. This had confirmed Michael's hypothesis. The death energy was meant to bring about death as life energy brought about life!

If he just absorbed the death energy without using the procedure of Styx Soul Incarnation Scripture, he would be committing slow suicide. As Michael learned this, he became extremely grim.

This scripture had been obtained from a devil. It was not correct to believe that the scripture had been made by an expert among the devils but it was a possibility! But, looking at the level of the technique, it was much higher than the law inheritance he had received. Had the life law master been so profound, he would also have created a powerful technique that would have made it much easier to feel life energy. For the master who created the Styx Scripture meant that his understanding was much higher than the master who left the inheritance.

This gave him some idea about the power backing the devils. How could he know that he was too ignorant to even try to guess the power of the master of devils?

But the realization caused sweat to start dripping from his whole body. He shivered greatly. He had thought that the life law inheritance would allow him to beat the devils but it did not seem that simple anymore.

After thinking about this completely, he decided to do something extremely daring. He was going to learn the laws of death!

Death laws were part of grand laws. No sane person would try to learn them by themselves knowing that the endeavour would not lead anywhere. But, Michael had the life scripture. He was going to derive the death laws using the guidelines from the life scripture. He would deal with it as it came. Thus, he started trying to generate death energy. It was not too difficult. Any injury that he had would eventually become a source of death energy.

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After finding this, Michael tried to find more methods to generate death energy. Ultimately, it came to the point where he could generate death energy from dead cells in his body.

From his studies in Anatomy, he knew that the body almost always lost its cells as these cells died. Then new cells would be created to replace these. After figuring out the entire process, he found that anything no matter how small that had died was able to call death energy as any living thing could call life energy. Michael's soul could already call both due to practising the Styx scripture. In just a month, he had fully mastered both death and life energy.

He found that he could amplify death energy as well with his persona.

Thus, it was as if he could use endless life and death energy. If any expert were to know of his progress in the laws, they would be left shocked to the point that their jaws would drop to the floor.

Death energy naturally came with its own quirks. Life energy allowed him to have accelerated healing. Though not to the level of instant regeneration, it was still very helpful. Death energy seemed to have no good impact on his own body but was especially useful in draining the opponent. The monsters and vicious beasts had a terrifying amount of endurance and recovery abilities. This was one of their strengths that humans did not have. But with death energy, Michael could drain these beasts with each of his attacks. His opponents would feel weakened after trading every blow. This was the new ability he got after mastering death energy.

While he was only on the first layer of his so-called life and death scripture, he was looking forward to what other abilities he would receive.

After he comprehended a bit of life laws, he would try to reverse the effects to try to derive the death laws. While the process was slow, Michael knew that this would help him later when he fought the devils. If he was to have a weaker level in laws, he would make it up with numbers!

Many years later, Michael would realize how his destiny had changed due to this decision.

After that month, Michael started to cultivate his soul at an extremely fast speed. Now that he could use the laws and his persona to call forth boundless death energy, he could cultivate at full efficiency all the time. In the next two months, his soul energy kept increasing and he ultimately made a breakthrough.

Solid Soul Realm!

Now, Michael could be called a bonafide and respected soul cultivation expert in Aterna. His soul energy was comparable to the late solid soul stage realm among humans. Any cultivator who did not cultivate his/her soul would have to treat him cautiously.

One had to know that as Immortals lived very long, they would practise soul cultivation in most cases. Thus, most immortals had sublime souls. There were only a few in solid soul stage.

The solid soul stage of the Styx Soul Incarnation Scripture only had 3 chapters corresponding to the early, mid and late solid soul stage.

Michael then reinforced his cultivation thoroughly for a few days. Now, around 3 months were left before the final test of the tower. It was time to shake entire Aterna!