It was done.

Lao Huli was dead by my hand. Or teeth, actually. He paid for his sins of trying to make use of me as a sacrifice. I consumed his flesh and bones to replenish my own. Consumed his Soul to fix mine, and discarded the trash he wore. The jewels and various relics I kept though as even in their sorry state, they were worth something.

I stood in the darkness of the cavern, surrounded by piles of corpses, both beast and men, as well as the corpse-eating mushrooms. The fool truly thought he could advance that way. I grinned to myself and picked up one of the mature specimens.

Netherworld Corpse Yin Fungus was a toxic mushroom that grew on old battlefields or places with a lot of rotting corpses. Cultivators were a bit too tough for common microbes and insects to eat, so specialized lifeforms grew to break them down.

The black fist-sized chunk of flesh with white and purple lines running through it was one of those things. I brought it to my face and took a bite.

It was a vile, disgusting thing. But I ate it nonetheless. Why? Because it had been accumulating Essence from corpses for decades. It was chock full of it. The beasts were feeding it, feeding them, under the orders of the Watcher.

I didn’t know much about the weird creature, but what I did know, was that the Spirit Beast was a master of energy manipulation. Souls too, that’s why it could curse us so easily with its attacks.

Mind control was a lesser form of that. If you could scramble someone’s Soul, why not instead implant fake memories and make yourself the boss? Clearly, the Watcher did just that. But I suspected such delicate work required time. In comparison, scrambling someone’s brain, or energy, required much less effort.

I took another piece of mature fungus and ate it. The taste was horrendously bitter and was clearly poisonous, but since when did I care about that?

Lao Huli planned on growing those things for a few more years before turning them into some sort of elixir to help him break through to the Spirit Realm. It was doubtful if he could ever reach anywhere higher than the first level with his limited lifespan and Talent, but every little step mattered.

Well, he bit off more than he could chew that time. Trying to exploit me was a good way to die painfully. He didn’t know that, of course, but that didn’t matter.

I eventually ate all the mature mushrooms and felt my head spin. There had to be a lot of corpse poison in them. My body began burning and soon I was back to my top form. Relatively speaking.

I felt some minor changes taking place inside me from all the Underworld Corpse Yin Fungus I ate, but I really couldn’t be bothered with exploring it. I just wanted the Essence, and there was still a mountain of butchered corpses to eat.

I slowly licked my lips. Drakes and humans. What a feast. I pushed my Qi outward and my body morphed, taking the shape of… Well, I guess I kind of looked like a Kobold? A large, scary-looking Kobold, not a scrawny weakling like in some drawings.

Anyway, I decided to train in maintaining my new shape as I ate. Also by transforming I expanded my body by about 30%, making it easier to absorb more Essence at a time.

Heck, I even began training in the way of the Dragon. I began pushing Essence into my limbs, reinforcing newly formed Dragon Bones, and forming Dragon Marrow. It would begin producing Dragon Blood on its own in time, slowly replacing mine, and eventually create Mithril inside it as well. Hopefully.

It was unfortunate that all those Souls were destroyed. The mountain of corpses would push me higher in terms of Body Cultivation, yet I still remained at the First Layer in terms of Soul Cultivation. I advanced a bit by consuming some of the broken fragments as well as Lao Huli’s Soul, but he was weak, and the former were few and far between. Combined with the parts I had to abandon due to curse damage and the stuff I had to use to repair my Soul, I barely advanced from where I was a few days ago. Still better than nothing though.

I trained in the darkness in silence, slowly growing accustomed to my new form as I built my new body. Only the faint glow of the mushrooms kept the darkness at bay, the eerie silence my one eternal companion.

I don’t know exactly how long it lasted, but the cycles of consumption, silent meditation, and mental training repeated over and over so many times, that I lost count. By the time I ate it all, it must have been dozens, if not a hundred. I did not require sleep, and every time I felt some space free in my stomach, I would eat more. I was constantly full, absorbing the Essence slowly and with great care to not waste any.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Hastily built flesh crumbled just as fast, while bones forged over decades would last centuries. That was the plan at least. I incorporated most of the Essence into my bones. They were the strongest, most durable, and my one way of resurrection in case things went to shit.

I tested things out and realized I didn’t actually need to breathe anymore, yet my mind still went into panic if I didn’t. A weird leftover from ancient history. Apparently, the fear of drowning or suffocating was something all humans shared. I guess I was still somewhat considered human. By the time I stepped into the Spirit Realm, that would begin to change. But that was for later.

Having digested Lao Huli’s memories, I realized I overreacted. The magic he used was one that focused on the Soul, not the body. By draining my flesh of Essence I actually did more harm than good. But at least I found out I could survive even if I was just bones.

I consumed the body of the Watcher since the old man gathered it as well. Its Soul was unfortunately destroyed, as were the rest, but the core remained. Spirit Realm Beast Core. That was exactly what I needed for Tiny. I would make sure to upgrade him after returning to the Sect.

I stood up and stretched. Haven’t done that in a while and it felt good to move. I took a step and the cavern shook and the stone cried. Small chunks cracked beneath my feet.

[Ah… Where did I put the ring?]

My body took back the human form and I slipped on the Ring of Weightlessness. I immediately felt lighter and the complaints from the stone stopped as my weight lessened.

I felt light, yet extremely dense. My body was hard like a diamond, stuffed to the brim with Essence. I was about 220 centimeters in height with an athletic build, yet probably weighed more than a house.

I wrapped myself in a bubble of inverted gravity and lifted off the ground. I consumed what there was to consume, and collected what loot there was to collect. Many mushrooms were left behind as I floated through the long corridor back to the outside world, but they were not ready to be harvested. I left them some bones and scraps I didn’t like, returning just as much as I had taken.

There was no reason to destroy the place. It was a secluded little hole and as I came back outside, I was met with a massive, crystal-clear lake. It came as a nice surprise.

I was dirty and my clothes were full of blood, so I took off my robe and jumped in. I just closed my eyes as I sank in and enjoyed the coldness as I relaxed, meditating under the water. My mind began screaming at me to take a breath, yet I stuffed those instincts down to the depths of my Soul and just stayed there, on the bottom.

By the time I came back out, it was already night. The sky was full of stars, and one of the moons was right overhead. I looked, and with the increased abilities that came with Cultivation, I spotted the ruins on its surface. It was difficult to tell what I was looking at, as everything was covered in lunar dust, but the shapes of structures there were clear for all to see.

[One day…] I quietly said, but then a thought hit me. Why not today? What was stopping me from flying to the moon? I had as many Spirit Stones as I needed a hundred times over, and I didn’t need to breathe. My body was immune to flames and ice, and I could go months without eating for a long time after the feast I just had.

What was really stopping me? Fear? Of what? I had no fears. I had just conquered the one of drowning as well.

And so I jumped. And I flew, straight up, breaking the sound barrier in the process. The air screamed as it was shoved out of the way, and soon I was high above the clouds and only going faster as the air got thinner. The chill of the night hit me and ice threatened to consume me, but I just began to slightly glow, and everything was fine.

That’s when I saw the sun. I was already so high, the evening sun turned night to day. Yet then something weird happened. My skin began to itch.

Odd, but nothing unusual. I was nearing the edge of space after all. But then I felt myself slowing down as my magic began to fail. I expended my Qi in ever-increasing quantities, yet the effects of it diminished with each passing second. I even felt my body, and the Essence inside it, starting to fail.

I felt my skin burning without heat as the Essence inside my cells began to decay. It was happening slowly at first, but as I got higher, bathed in the sunlight in the vacuum of space, it began to accelerate. Any barrier I tried to construct with conjuration simply evaporated like fog on a summer morning.

I suddenly stopped ascending and looked at the moon. It was so close, yet so far. I knew that with my speed and acceleration, I would need but a few hours to reach it. Hours I didn’t have.

[Still not strong enough…] I internally sighed and closed my eyes, releasing my grip on gravity. I began to plummet. It took a while but eventually, the itchiness and decay of my body stopped as I fell into the warm embrace of the planet’s atmosphere.

That’s a fancy way to say I began to glow like a damn meteor as I fell from the sky at hypersonic speeds. I crashed into the ground just the same as I didn’t bother slowing down. There was a brilliant explosion as matter was pushed out of the way and a crater formed, with me in the middle. I almost wanted to just stay there and take a nap, but then I pulled myself out of the cracked bedrock and realized, that once more, my clothes were destroyed.

[Never gets old, huh?]

I took another robe and put it on. Just as I did so, I noticed a pair of eyes in the distance, at the edge of the crater, staring right at me. As soon as they noticed my gaze though, they disappeared, and I heard them running away, calling out to someone.

It was definitely a human, I just didn’t understand what they were saying. Not because I didn’t understand the language, but because they were too far away, and the surrounding forest muffled the sounds.

[Wait, forest?] I looked around. No trace of the semi-desert anywhere. I was in the middle of a forest somewhere, god knows where, and once again completely lost. At least before I knew the general direction of my home. But after the last flight…

[Well… fuck. This is definitely not the Ancient Ironbark Timberland.]