In the servant quarters of the Green Cloud Sect, a youth no older than eighteen years was in great pain.
He was experiencing cultivation deviation after a failed attempt at breaking through the second level of qi gathering.
Suffice to say that his talent was among the mediocre ones and he was even proven to never be able to achieve Foundation establishment in his entire life.
This case of cultivation deviation was severe and resulted in his...death.
As David Warlock died another soul immediately inhabited his body...and what was peculiar was that the new soul also shared the same name.
“What is this? I was just going to sleep after finally finishing that round of pill refinement.”
“Wait! What are these new memories?”
New memories belonging to the previously departed soul assaulted him.
“An orphan...servant disciple of the Green cloud sect. The first level of qi gathering...died during qi deviation...”
“Oh well...it’s hard to believe but I've transmigrated. This could be another Universe entirely. Their power system is different from mine...they call it cultivation...well in a way it is the same...the magicians in my home world strengthen their souls and bodies through mana and here they have another energy they call Qi to strengthen themselves...but I’ve never heard of something like Qi Deviation when you can’t advance in power because of an inner demon. In my home world, if you couldn’t advance anymore, you were stuck at that level for the rest of your life until you found the correct elixir to breakthrough or reach the end of your lifespan.”
“Every mage in my home world was gifted a Soul grimoire by the world spirit at their birth and from the memories of this man I share the same name with, there’s no such thing in this new world.”
“Does this mean that I’ll have to cultivate immortal techniques just like them? With my Grimoire, I could attempt to cultivate aura and magic at the same time with this so-called Qi instead of mana. I think it should be doable...an energy is still an energy after all.”
David Warlock then opened his eyes in his new body and then ignored his surroundings and then concentrated to see if he could feel his soul grimoire inside of him to see if it had followed him in the new world.
Inside his sea of consciousness which he remarked was still the same, he found not only one grimoire but two of them.
His own grimoire had an entirely green hard cover and had green pages. It released a gentle green light.
The other foreign grimoire was entirely black and released black smoke. Its pages were entirely black as well.
“What’s this? How come there’s two of them? Where did this black one come from?”
He ignored the green grimoire he was familiar with and then went to the black one.
He touched it.
The first contact with a grimoire always gave you an idea of its characteristics and abilities.
After digesting the information, he couldn’t believe what he uncovered.
“I was born with two Grimoires...that’s just crazy. It had never happened before in the Tower’s history.”
The Tower was the organization that oversaw everything related to magic in his previous world.
His first grimoire was the Grimoire of Life that came with a plethora of Healing spells and also gave him a deep understanding of the human body and plants. It made him a better Alchemist than the mages who had Wood Grimoires...and his Life Grimoire was the only one in existence.
As for the new grimoire...it was called the Undeath Grimoire.
The prerequisite to unlock it was experiencing death.
“This means that I died after spending three days and three nights refining those pills and it coincided with the death of the David Warlock on this side.”
He thought, dejected.
The fact was that he was basically immortal if he had the time to cast a healing spell in time.
Dying in his sleep when he could’ve changed his fate, left him with a belly full of anger.
“I was too careless when I went to sleep this time. I could’ve at least cast a Reinvigoration spell before I closed my eyes.”
“Well, if I didn’t die, I wouldn’t have discovered the Undeath Grimoire. Now I have real offensive spells. ”
It’s not like he had a family to go back to.
Oddly enough, he was also an orphan raised in an orphanage until he could fend for himself in the world. He had it easy compared to his predecessor. He had the Life Grimoire that taught him everything he needed to know about plants and their effects should they be refined in a certain way. He made a huge fortune in his last life and it would be the same now in this new life.
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“With the Undeath Grimoire, I now have the means to be independent and have my own sphere of influence in this new world and not be exploited by the strongest.”
Without offensive spells he would just end up being a slave of the powerful and abide by their every whims like in his past life.
Repeating the same story with his new means seemed impossible this time ‘round.
The undeath Grimoire came with three spells : Undeath Creation, Undeath Summoning and Undeath Manipulation.
He could Create undead creatures like Vampires, Liches, Zombies, and Ghouls if he used corpses or living beings as ingredients.
He could also summon undead straight from the Undead Plane contained in the Grimoire. The strengths of the summons depended on his own Soul power.
As for the spell Undeath Manipulation, it was just a seal that prevented any of his summons from betraying him even if they became stronger than him over time.
The reason he was so confident in being able to remain independent in the cultivation world was that he crossed over with the same soul power of a Rank 9 mage just a hair away from the Archmage level.
It was a strength acquired through the ingestion of pills and while it was not genuine, it was still a Rank 9 mage’s strength nonetheless.
If he converted his soul’s strength with the cultivation world’s cultivation levels, it was a level slightly above the Nascent soul level or even a bit higher than that.
He knew that because he had just scanned his surroundings and found the strongest person around, which he guessed was the patriarch of the Green Cloud sect, Davis Alban. He even read a bit of his memories without the Patriarch knowing, showing just how much his soul was stronger.
As he was about to decide on his next course of action, he felt a bit weird.
His body was falling apart...and rapidly at that.
{Lesser Heal.}
A spell fell on his body and repaired it.
He knew what was happening. His current weak body couldn’t contain a soul that strong.
In his previous world, most mages trained in Body Strengthening by igniting their Aura through their bodies' absorption of mana to acquire bodies strong enough for their powerful souls.
He immediately knew what to do.
“I should cultivate my body by activating my aura. It’s the fastest way to remedy this situation. A Rank 5 Body should suffice.”
He thought.
“Fortunately, I have a powerful soul fueled by the full mana pool that transmigrated with me so I can attract this ‘Qi’ easily into my body.”
The process to activate aura was easy.
It was to store energy into every cell of one’s body and once every cell had been imbued with energy or ‘Mana’ or ‘Qi’ there would be a chain reaction igniting every cell and the spark of energy released by the cell would be considered the aura emerging.
As David Warlock was directing the ‘Qi’ in every cell of his body, he found it so easy that he couldn’t understand it.
“Why is this ‘QI’ easier to use than mana? It is at least a hundred times easier to attract.”
As every cell was absorbing the qi, parts of his body started exploding.
{Lesser Heal}
Immediately , he was healed.
“I understand now. No wonder my predecessor died. The process being easy is a trap in itself. It is more like I am going against some rule of some kind. This Qi is incompatible with the human body to begin with.”
Everytime a part of his body exploded, he would tap into his abundant mana pool and heal it until healing was the one thing he did all the time in addition to imbuing every cell with Qi.
While he was concentrating on the entire process, he forgot another important organ inside his body that was showing progress as well.
The Energy Core.
The equivalent of a mana pool in the cultivation world.
It had already reached the fourth level of QI gathering and was steadily enlarging and its level climbing higher as the body was imbued with Qi.
Finally, his Energy Core reached Foundation Establishment which was at the same time the Red aura of the Rank 1 of body strengthening was ignited as well.
From the memories of the patriarch, he knew that the compulsory cultivation technique, Green Cloud Cultivation Technique, given to every servant disciple was only easy to cultivate until the Dao Foundation also known as Foundation Establishment. Once one has reached the Foundation Establishment, a new, better technique would be given in the outer court of the sect.
While the Green Cloud Cultivation Technique could in fact be used to cultivate until Nascent soul, the road was mountainous and bumpier as compared to the smooth road one would be on while cultivating another technique.
David Warlock was debating whether he should steal a technique from the patriarch’s memories instead of the one his predecessor had.
As he went through every technique the patriarch had ever laid eyes on, he stopped on a peculiar technique, [Emerald Lightning technique].
Like most of the techniques the Green Cloud sect had, the Emerald Lightning Technique could only be cultivated until Nascent Soul where one would have a Emerald Lightning Nascent Soul and would acquire the devastating power of green lightning.
Right now, David Warlock needed firepower to be able to protect himself more effectively.
It went without saying that he chose the Emerald Lightning Technique.
With the new technique, he built nine foundation pillars in his Energy Core and reached the Great circle of Foundation Establishment.
At the same time the Orange aura signaling the Rank Two Body was seen.
He needed a Rank 5 body which could even house the soul of an Archmage. He wanted that for his future advancement.
Archmages had already fused their mana pool and soul to form one entity. Making their souls one with mana…the mana pool would then gain the immortal quality of the soul or rather the unlimited value of the power of the soul.
Unlimited mana…
For now, he felt it too sensitive to attempt a fusion of Qi and soul. His body was barely able to accept the fusion, he couldn’t dare to imagine the impact on his soul. He was better off following the ways of this new world, but nothing stopped him to make his road less bumpy and slippery.
For now, he would keep using the remaining mana in his mana pool until the very last drop as he urged his soul to sense and call on spirit Qi.
He decided to wait until he had reached the Nascent soul realm.
With the added lifespan from his Rank 9 Mage Soul, his Nascent Soul cultivation and his Aura cultivation, he could live long enough to experiment and find a way to become even stronger in the future.
It was now time to condense an Emerald lightning Core.
Every Foundation Pillar started melting and the green liquid converged in the middle of the Energy Core where it condensed on itself from a big ball that became smaller and smaller.
The more the green ball of energy condensed the more green lightning started appearing in the Energy Core.
Right now, as the green core condensed, he was going from early Core Condensation to late Core Condensation…and then Peak Core Condensation.
At the same time the body was absorbing all the qi on the mountain where the sect was standing and many cultivators came out of their caves to complain because their cultivation sessions had been interrupted.
Before the emerald core was completed a yellow aura then appeared on his body signaling the Rank 3 body.
Davis Alban’s POV
“What’s this? The qi on the sect grounds had been sucked dry...this can only mean one thing...someone is attempting a breakthrough to the Nascent Soul and they lack Spirit Stones to do it, that’s why they are relying on their soul strength to suck all the qi in the surroundings to break through.”
“But I know for a fact that there’s no one in my sect on the verge of reaching Nascent Soul as I am the only one who reached that realm in the entire sect. Even the most powerful Elder Ignace is only a late stage Golden Core. He’s getting old and has barely any chance to reach the Nascent soul in this life. So...who could it be? A rogue cultivator that wants to use my sect’s abundant qi to break through?”
As he was doubtful about the origins of this person and intrigued to meet a fellow Nascent soul, he followed the commotion and reached the servant quarters.
His was a medium sized sect where one Nascent soul was needed at the helm to be considered like so.
It was also medium and large sized sects who needed servants the most. They were used to make the lives of the formal disciples easier as they only had to concentrate on cultivation rather than doing chores around the sect.
“A servant disciple? How Come?”
The patriarch was standing in the air above David Warlock’s accommodation. He could see QI coming from beyond the mountain entering the youth’s body.
“What is that Yellow energy around his body? Wait, It’s turning Green...”
David Warlock’s body reached the fourth rank and right after that his Emerald Core, amid green lightning cracked like an egg and a little being came out.
The cracked pieces of the emerald core were absorbed by the little being which grew a little.
“If I am not wrong, that’s the Emerald Lightning cultivation technique that I acquired when I killed the Emerald Emperor, there’s no doubt about it...Is this one of his descendants?”
“Has he come for revenge?...but no one alive except me knows my involvement in the Emerald emperor’s death.”
From the way he saw things, this breakthrough was abnormal,...it wasn't ending at the Early Stage Nascent Soul.
"It's like he has no bottlenecks at all. His power level doesn't seem to be stopping and keeps rising. How is he doing this?"
It was then that he realized a suffocating presence. Now that he was close he could feel it clearly.
"His soul…"
"No wonder he has no need for spirit stones. His soul is as strong as a Soul Sublimation powerhouse. He can just order the spirit qi in the surroundings to come to him…but the scale at which he is doing it is unprecedented."
If he waited any longer, David Warlock would become stronger than him who was merely an Early Stage Nascent Soul himself.
"I don't know his intentions. This is my only chance...Should… I... kill him now?"