Tribulation of Myriad Races

Su Yu had gained numerous new comprehensions from his recent cultivation. He no longer utilized the blood essence of others for his book. Rather, he was starting to use his own blood essence for the projections formed by his book.

Even a single drop of blood essence would drain quite a lot from him. And losing too much blood essence would even damage one’s foundation. Of course, one could always recover as long as one stayed alive. Back then, Hong Tan had been selling the blood essence of the beasts for decades, and those beasts had survived just fine.

As Su Yu worked, the dark page shone brighter and brighter. More and more golden stripes appeared on it. From the early heaven grade, it advanced into the middle heaven grade. As for the projection, it grew from the peak Sunmoon Realm, slowly reaching the level of an Invincible.

Su Yu had yet to reach the level where he could create an Invincible with a single drop of blood essence.

“Absorb!”

Finally, Su Yu tossed the page out, allowing it to devour the incoming death qi. Slowly, the weak, miniature dao on the page grew.

Looking at the page he had tossed away, Su Yu chuckled. In the future, someone might stumble upon this page and use it as he used the Book of Time. By dripping a drop of death spirit blood essence on it, one would be able to comprehend the cultivation method of the death spirits and even borrow the power of the death spirit dao. Of course, Su Yu’s death spirit dao was still illusory in nature. It wasn’t real and powerful enough.

After all, it was something Su Yu had formed through the absorption of some death qi and death spirit blood essence. It was far weaker than the pages of the Book of Time. Then again, Su Yu’s Mark of Civilization probably had a higher potential than the Book of Time.

Done with that, Su Yu felt a lot more relaxed as he no longer felt like he was on the verge of being fully converted into a death spirit. He started walking forward, braving the violent waves of the river.

Su Yu proceeded to shut his Heaven Gate and comprehend the dao in silence while walking upstream. Slowly, some new comprehensions dawned on him. He looked down at the river and muttered, “I see.”

He opened his Heaven Gate again. Immediately, the river beneath him changed in appearance.

The water under him had transformed into the figures of countless people. He muttered, “So the cultivation of the death spirit dao does not involve opening new tributaries. Rather, it involves one’s fusion with the main branch itself. With this, the river will continue to grow and the death spirits will not have the chance to pioneer a new dao.”

Su Yu shook his head. He couldn’t say if this was a bad or a good thing. It was unknown if the creator of this dao had done something wrong during the creation, or perhaps this was deliberate. Due to this design, the Death Realm would not be able to produce a true Master of Law. One could only focus on fusing with as much of the dao as possible.

“Is this a way to strengthen itself?”

This design would benefit the creator of the river as the creator would have full control over the river.

“Am I supposed to fuse with this dao as well?”

Su Yu considered it and shook his head. If he were to begin, it would be too difficult for him to free himself from the death spirit dao in the future.

Abandoning a dao was not an easy task, especially for a dao as powerful as the death spirit dao. Culture King was strong enough to separate himself from the pen dao, but he might not be able to achieve the same with the death spirit dao.

“Resurrection probably requires the separation of a death spirit from this dao. In that case, can I find Xing Yue’s dao amid the river?”

Every drop of water in this river represented a dao. One could even say that each drop represented a death spirit. This was quite a terrifying thought. Could he find Xing Yue’s dao?

If he could, he could probably try studying it to find a way to separate her from the death spirit dao. Su Yu might have grasped only one of the four daos left behind by Culture King, but he could always substitute the missing daos with something else.

For example, the physical body dao of the heavenly desolate beast was essentially meant to produce the resurrection target with life force. The life dao would probably work better for this.

The paper dao was probably meant to hide the resurrection target from the attention of the heavens. A similar dao could also play the same role. The ink dao was likely meant to suppress the death spirit dao temporarily to allow the separation to happen.

Su Yu was in no rush to look for Xing Yue’s dao. With a roar, a thick burst of death qi eruped from his palm. Then, he reached out to the river beneath him and grabbed a drop of water. The droplet struggled intensely.

It started corroding Su Yu’s palm. Su Yu’s palm was extremely powerful and tough, yet it started cracking from the corrosion.

Ignoring the corrosion, Su Yu invaded the droplet with his willpower and studied it. After a short moment, he groaned as he started bleeding from all seven orifices. However, his eyes were flickering pensively. This was the dao of a death sovereign.

The death sovereign was still around. But this wasn’t a death sovereign he knew. The death sovereigns under him resembled each other in appearance, but he could still recognize them individually.

“Not one of mine…”

Then, Su Yu released his life character, invading the droplet with a large amount of life force.

“Ahhhhhhh!”

A miserable wail rang out somewhere in the Death Realm. Su Yu could hear the faint voice. He also saw the droplet unleashing a burst of death qi to clash against the life force. Instead of fusing, the two powers were counteracting each other.

As of that moment, the entire death spirit dao seemed to have awakened. The entire river rejected him as massive waves started crashing into him.

Boom!

Su Yu was pushed back repeatedly as blood dripped down his body, drop after drop. And finally, the drop of river water in his hand exploded.

All the death qi and life force in that droplet had fully exhausted each other. The result was the destruction of this dao.

Su Yu didn’t even need to check further to know the result. The corresponding death sovereign must have died as well.

“Well, I guess this is a good method to kill someone. But it’s not too practical.”

As Su Yu said that, he coughed up another mouthful of blood. With his current strength, he could kill a death sovereign without suffering any injury.

But through this method, he had to utilize his life force and melt away the dao of the target. The target was dead, but he was also injured from the backlash of the death spirit dao. And this was only a death sovereign. Attempting this on a marquis could probably kill him.

“It’s not worth it.”

Su Yu shook his head with disappointment. The path of resurrecting someone with brute force alone was not available. Back then, he had thought that his life force only needed to be strong enough to resurrect Xing Yue. But that was clearly impossible. Attempting this on Xing Yue would only kill her.

“Indeed. Culture King would have resurrected her long ago if it were so simple. Death spirit dao…how interesting.”

Su Yu had discovered something new. The droplet that had exploded earlier had released a burst of death qi during its destruction. And that burst of death qi had been instantly absorbed by someone else.

With his brow raised, Su Yu continued moving upstream. At the same time, his death spirit page continued absorbing the death qi from the river. Through the law of the dead, he was further improving his own death spirit page.

***

Outside.

South Heavenly King and the others were staring at the Celestial River of Death. Not long ago, a death sovereign had died out of nowhere.

South Heavenly King looked at the river with a frown. Was that Su Yu? If that was the case, Su Yu must have discovered something. A method to kill someone from afar.

How terrifying.

***

At the same time.

Sealed Region.

Those in the black pillars remained relatively unbothered. They only knew that a death sovereign had died. A death sovereign might be weak, but they wouldn’t mind taking any extra inch they could on the river.

The expert called Dizhiluo laughed and said, “Looks like the humans aren’t done killing. Good. Keep killing. The more they kill, the nearer we will be to our freedom. A day will come when all the power of the dao will be grasped by a single person.”

A different voice spoke up, “Concentration of power? Dizhiluo, are you trying to die? When that happens, all of us will die.”

“So be it. Our deaths will help the Imperator. If the Imperator manages to become the sole master of the dao, not even the ancient Human Emperor can be his match.”

The largest pillar remained silent.

Concentration of power.

That was a possibility they speculated, one that was shared by the ancient humans. That was why the humans had proceeded to seal them away. The ancient humans were worried that excessive killing would produce an expert capable of mastering the entire death spirit dao.

The ancient humans even considered creating their own force of death spirits or creating such a death spirit themselves. Unfortunately, not everyone had the ability to endlessly take in the power of the death spirit dao.

Marquis Lanshan was a good example of this. She was decently strong. After all, she was a marquis. But even after devouring so many death spirits, she was still stuck below the level of a heavenly king.

Ultimately, the ancient humans abandoned the plan and resorted to sealing all these death spirits away.

***

Somewhere in the death spirit dao.

Su Yu continued his advance, stopping occasionally to rest. It was very tiring to move on this river. As he advanced, his understanding of the death spirit dao deepened. At one point, he discovered something major. A fork had appeared ahead of him.

There was a tiny tributary there!

“Ink dao.”

Su Yu was greatly surprised. So the ink dao was here!

It was quite far in the river. He rushed forth and stared at the tributary with his Heaven Gate open. It was a dark tributary, and it did not look like a natural tributary. This was the one and only tributary Su Yu had seen on this river.

At the moment, the tributary was stealthily stealing the power of the river. Su Yu also noticed numerous seals around the tributary. These seals reminded him of Culture King’s other works. After some observation, he noted that these seals were meant to hide the tributary from the detection of the river. At the same time, they were also meant to stabilize the tributary.

The tributary had essentially appeared because someone had forcefully punched a hole through the edge of the river. The opening was constantly trying to close up, but the seals were preventing it from happening.

“Is this Culture King’s work?”

Su Yu inhaled in shock and muttered, “The more I know, the more impressive Culture King seems.”

From this, he could see that Culture King had explored the death spirit dao as well. Ultimately, Culture King had forcefully created a tributary here. Unlike the Celestial River of Death, when a tributary was opened on the River of Time, the river would not attempt to close the tributary.

The Celestial River of Death clearly differed in this aspect. In fact, this ability to self-repair made it almost impossible for one to open a tributary here. And Culture King had achieved the impossible. He had opened a tributary to steal from the main branch.

“So is this the so-called ink dao?”

When Su Yu approached the tributary, he saw the water from the main branch crashing into the seals to destroy them and enable the self-repair process. In short, the ink dao was a parasite on the death spirit dao.

And when Su Yu focused further with his Heaven Gate, he saw something different. A silhouette was imprinted onto the tributary.

“Liu Hong?”

Su Yu’s heart thumped. Next, he chuckled and reached out to grab some water from a stretch that was free from the imprint. With a roar, he released his death qi and formed a sentence with the water.

With another roar, he tossed the sentence back into the tributary. Culture King’s seals rose to stop it, but Su Yu merely released his pen dao to confuse and slow the seals since the seals had been formed through the pen dao as well.

And with that, the sentence was imprinted onto the tributary.