Inside the lava:
Bao Gang was slowly burning to death, his arms had become charred and unusable, his body comatose. It seemed as if he was only a step away from death, but deep inside his body was a pulsing vitality.
The golden droplet.
The droplet seemed to be pure vitality. It had been condensed from what could be considered Bao Gang’s vitality(the mysterious force which heals him), and had become much more concentrated.
The droplet not only absorbed fire laws, it did so only in the space around Bao Gang, as if sentient, trying to protect Bao Gang’s body.
At this point, Bao Gang was in a vegetative state. He could not harness fire laws to cast magic, and could not use his body to move. All he could do is wait as he sunk deeper and deeper into the lava.
His healing factor had disappeared. The quicker healing stemmed from the mysterious force in his blood, which turned out to be the golden specks, which congregated to form the golden droplet. After the golden droplet had entered his soul sea, the mysterious force was no longer present in his blood.
His blood had already evaporated, so he could not heal normally, and his healing force had disappeared. Looking it at from a realist’s point of view, he has no chance of survival. He would keep sinking and sinking, fire laws would become more and more dense, and eventually, the golden droplet would not be able to absorb all the fire laws around Bao Gang’s body, and he would succumb to the heat.
But Bao Gang didn’t worry about it, because he couldn’t do anything anyway.
As he got deeper into the core of the earth, the droplet of golden blood in his soul sea never stopped absorbing the fire laws around him, and even seemed to grow slightly bigger.
But the density of fire laws increased faster than the absorption from the droplet.
The tips of his toes once again began to burn. Bao Gang could not feel it though, because his nerves had already been destroyed.
His feet began to get uncomfortably warm. Well, he couldn’t feel this either, but if he could, he would describe it as not a temperature he would want to keep his feet at. He was literally bathing in lava after all.
The golden blood responded, sending out a wave of vitality into his body, as if unwilling to watch him slowly burn to death. It soaked into his body, and his body rapidly regenerated, turning from black, charcoal like skin, to the soft silky skin of a newborn.
After barely being able to absorb the fire laws around him, and having sent a wave of vitality into his body, the golden blood could not hold back the fire laws.
Once again, the fire laws were able to touch his body and his lower body began to burn. Not just his feet or his toes, but everything below his waist.
The golden droplet sent down another wave of vitality, healing all his wounds, but the fire laws soon destroyed part of his body again. A cycle of healing and damage occurred endlessly, not just thousands of times, but tens of thousands. Over this time, Bao Gang sunk deeper and deeper into the magma.
After his body had been healed, Bao Gang would once again be able to feel pain, only exaggerating the agony of having his body begin to burn.
After sinking for all this time he reached the core of the planet. Here, the fire law density was so much that the golden droplet could only protect his head. It would also send down waves of vitality, healing his entire body, before it once again burned.
The reason for the blood healing the rest of Bao Gang’s body was to keep it from being completely obliterated by fire laws.
As long as his body did not truly get completely destroyed by the fire laws, it could be healed. However, if Bao Gang’s foot was continuously burnt by the magma, it would be destroyed beyond repair.
While Bao Gang would rather sacrifice his foot than his entire body, he did not have control over the golden droplet.
Although Bao Gang was in the core of the planet, he could not see anything. His eyes could not see through magma, and his spiritual sense could not be extended outward due to the fire laws.
Having no information and no ability to change the situation, he just waited.
Then, he heard a voice in his head,
“Who on this godforsaken planet has the strength to survive down in the core of the earth?”
Bao Gang opened his eyes, only to realize that he still could not see inside the magma.
“Oh, just a boy about to die. WAIT, is that God’s blood? AND DEVIL’S BLOOD TOO? It hasn’t yet been awoken, but it certainly has the potential to.”
The being did not see the cauldron, presumably because the cauldron was too strong. None of the other thousands of beings who flew to Earth were able to sense the cauldron either.
“Thinking in his head Bao Gang weakly asked,
“Who is this?”
“Your lord and savior, Lucifer. Well, actually in this case, you are going to be my lord and savior. How about this boy, you take my place in the infernal prison. It will release me if you take my place. Then I will take your body. When I get stronger, I will come back and save you. Otherwise, we will both just be stuck here forever.”
“Definitely not! What if you never come back?”
“Trust me boy, it’s our only option.”
Then the cauldron spirit, Wei Yun, spoke,
“Do it, take his place in the prison. Just reach out with your soul sea, and once you feel it, it will suck you in.”
Bao Gang did as Wei Yun said. He brought his soul sea out of his body, into the magma. The golden droplet which the being had referred to as God’s blood, as well as the cauldron came with it.
He reached out with his soul and felt a cage. The cage seemed to be fueled by fire laws, and had the golden droplet not been inside his soul sea, it would have been annihilated by the flame laws.
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The cage seemed to be emitting a feeling of despair, likely the feeling Lucifer had been feeling inside the cage. Bao Gang shuddered, wondering how long Lucifer must have stayed there for the nearby fire laws to give off a feeling of despair
When he touched the cage, a strong suction force seemed to suck his soul sea into the cage, unable to escape its pull, he entered the cage between the bars. When he attempted to leave through the bars, the suction force pulled him back. Now he realized why Lucifer could not just leave.
At the same time, Lucifer reached out with his soul, through the bars, trying to get to Bao Gang’s body.
The bars only allowed half of Lucifer’s soul sea to escape, but that half all made it to Bao Gang’s body. This type of soul injury could be considered to be the most serious. Half of his soul sea had been lost! Ordinary, low-realm cultivators losing half their soul sea would be hard pressed to stay alive, let alone that Lucifer had expanded his soul sea through cultivation, meaning that he would have to regrow more soul.
While soul injuries were the most serious type of injury, being hard to heal, and very debilitating, Lucifer did not seem to care jubilantly yelling,
“HAHA I’m finally free! I have a vessel with unawakened devil’s blood, no one in this realm can stop me! I’ll take over the entire realm!”
Then he realized that there was another soul sea in the body.
Bao Gang had created a second soul sea when he first arrived on the planet, and had left it in his body for insurance.
Although he trusted Wei Yun, he was not completely sure that his soul would not get burned, which is why he left the extra soul sea in his body. The “Divide and Conquer” cultivation method would allow him to keep living even if one of his soul seas was destroyed. After all, the soul is the basis of the being, and if he lost one soul sea, he would have another autonomous soul which could be considered as being the same person as him.
Lucifer quickly took over his body, while Bao Gang did nothing, believing Wei Yun to have a plan.
Then, Bao Gang felt his connection to the soul sea in his body vanish. With a sinking feeling, he asked,
“Wei Yun, what is happening, why did you tell me to enter the cage?”
Sighing, Wei Yun said,
“Bao Gang, you are utterly incompetent. How could you possibly fail so hard? That “lizard” I gave you isn’t a lizard. It’s a dragon. If you just brought the dragon with you, nothing on this planet would even stand a chance of hurting you. You even knew how powerful it was and didn’t bring it for protection.”
Every word cut into Bao Gang. Even though he had believed himself to be the most monstrous genius, this was only a result of what he had been given. His ridiculous spiritual energy attunement, his body made perfectly to cultivate, and his godly cultivation methods were all given to him.
“Master does not need someone like you as a successor. You are not just stupid, you are gullible to the point which it shames me. How could you trust someone else to guarantee your own well being, why would you trust me unequivocally when I told you to bring your soul into a cage called, ‘The Infernal Prison’? This brings me to ask how you even managed to enter the volcano, the only place on the planet where you could not escape from. These problems would be minor if you had the attitude of a cultivator. All of the previous things can be fixed. But you don’t cultivate for a purpose, you have no drive. Because you have no drive, you don’t force yourself to get stronger, even at risk of death. A truly strong cultivator must have this mindset, but you don’t!”
Bao Gang felt utterly ashamed. But Wei Yun kept talking,
“I will leave you here to reflect on your mistakes. I will just watch over another successor. After all, you are clearly a lost cause. By that time, Lucifer will have become strong and will be a grinding stone for the next successor. You can keep the God’s blood as it has already imprinted your soul. The only regret that I have is giving you the dragon. Master told me it would become unimaginably strong when it grows up, and now that it has recognized you as master, it won’t do the same for anyone else. Truly a waste.”
It was unknown what waste referred to, wasting the dragon, or Bao Gang
The cauldron of creation and destruction floated out of Bao Gang’s soul sea and passed through the bars of the cage as if they weren’t even there.
Lucifer had already left. With a body, Lucifer now had no problems dealing with the fire laws, and immediately escaped, far away from the cage.
Now Bao Gang was truly alone.
All that was left was half of Lucifer’s soul and the golden droplet, which was inside his soul, moving in a circular orbit.
The loneliness was stifling.
After entering the cage, the golden blood had stopped absorbing flame laws. There were no flame laws in the cage, nor could it pull them into the cage.
He was in no true danger, as flame laws were only powering the cage, but didn’t actually enter. As long as he didn’t touch the bars, he would be fine.
With his genius status revoked, having no body, and stuck inside a powerful soul prison(prison which prevents soul seas from leaving), the future looked bleak.
As fear took over his body, he had hallucinations.
In these scenes, he imagined Lucifer taking 5 years to become an absolute being in the realm, then conquering all, enslaving all. The other strong beings had all died in “The Graveyard, and Lucifer soon became the sole owner of the realm. Soon Lucifer arrived at the “The Graveyard,” and took interest in it, eventually spending 2 years to reach the center, where he found Earth. Expecting a treasure, he was furious that it was just an ordinary planet, killing all beings on the planet.
He also imagined Wei Yun. In his hallucination, she was not the only cauldron of creation and destruction, there was another. Wei Yun looked for the other one for 5 years, and when the two cauldron met, they combined, growing larger and more powerful, now both cauldron spirits were housed in the one cauldron. The other cauldron spirit had been watching over another successor, one born to the same circumstances as Bao Gang. He eventually grew into another strong being and became the inheritor of Wei Yun’s master. During this time, Bao Gang was kept imprisoned.
Lost in his hallucinations, Bao Gang sank into despair and hatred.
He had lost an unimaginable opportunity, he had wasted his entire life of trillions of years.
At first, he was in denial, blaming everything around him. After all, he didn’t leave Xiao Gou Shi in the Immortal Mountain sect, or jump into the volcano willingly!
But then he began to accept it. He didn’t purposefully leave Xiao Gou Shi? Why would he even join a sect. If Wei Yun had wanted him to, she would have brought him to the sect. She had wanted him to become self-sufficient. Although he did not jump into the volcano on purpose, he had taken a completely unnecessary risk by sitting near the lip of the volcano.
Now he wallowed into depravity and self-hatred.
Then he had a moment of inner peace.
His trillion year life had been for nothing. He might as well end it by dashing his soul sea against the bars of the cage.
He readied himself, and accelerated toward the bars. In the pre-death moment, he remembered the lives he had witnessed on Earth. He remembered the ups and downs of the people’s lives. Those that soldiered on, overcame their problems, and those that committed suicide to escape from their emotional problems, gave their problems to others, mainly their family and friends.
“I can’t just die. Without me, the lives of the people of Earth, my family, will be lost.”
He thought back fondly on the happiness which every single human of Earth experienced. And he had an epiphany.
“All lives will have obstacles, but how they overcome these obstacles is what differentiates the successful from the unsuccessful, the happy from the miserable.
Bao Gang stopped himself inches from the bars of the cage.
Cultivation is a struggle against the heavens, and the heavens always leave a way out.
Cultivation is struggling, even when the situation looks untenable.
A line which Wei Yun had told him truly stuck with him,
“Because you have no drive, you don’t force yourself to get stronger, even at risk of death. A truly strong cultivator must have this mindset, but you don’t!”
He thought of an idea. One which could end in his death.
He began to feel reservations again, then resolve. Thinking of the smiling faces of the humans on Earth turning to ash under the onslaught of Lucifer, thinking of Wei Yun’s contemptuous smile, thinking of her master who gave her the power to play with his life, creating it and ending it on a whim, he promised that he would get stronger till he ruled over the heavens, stopping only when no one had power over himself. He would not just rule over the heavens, he would force them to bow to him.
“God, if you are out there…”
He dashed his soul into the cage, making sure that the golden droplet landed on the cage.
“...maybe I will be seeing you soon.”