ALL NOVEL Chapter 41: The Shura Race
Laozi turned towards Tongtian, a hint of emotions crossing his indifferent face. He waved his hand, freezing the fire burning under the Eight Trigrams Cauldron. Even the medicinal fragrance faded.
"It's nothing much," Laozi said. "You might have guessed it already, but even if I gave the Grandmist Violet Qi to my Corpse, it cannot become consecrated."
Tongtian's smile disappeared, and her expression became serious. "Is it because the foundation is too lacking?"
"Perhaps," Laozi said. "Corpses are ultimately incomplete beings, even if merged. Unless we can find a way to make up for their deficiencies, a Corpse cannot become a saint."
"Do we really have to shackle ourselves to the Way of Heaven?" Tongtian frowned. "How about asking Nuwa if she has a method?"
Laozi deliberated for a moment before shaking his head. "Even if she did, she would likely be unwilling to see us become Saint of Heaven with our Corpses and achieve the Primordial Origin Realm with our bodies."
She sighed. It was not like she didn't understand why Nuwa would refuse to tell them. The Three Purities were already one of the strongest groups in the Great Desolation. If all three became Saints and had two more at the same level, wouldn’t heaven and earth become theirs in all but name?
Nuwa didn't know that the Three Purities would split because of conflicting views, at least according to the original myths.
"How is your progress?" Laozi asked.
"So far, so good," Tongtian said. "I found a way to merge them, but I plan on waiting for all three to reach the Peak Quasi-Saint Realm before beginning."
"Take these," Laozi said as he waved his hand, and a jade bottle flew in front of Tongtian. Tongtian inspected the jade bottle to discover it was filled with pills. "These are my recent creations, Nine Yang Arcane Pills. Ingesting one will allow a later heaven lifeform to become a Golden Immortal of the Great Firmament."
"I can't take this," Tongtian said as she pushed the bottle back. "The preciousness of these pills is worth too much. Rather than wasting these, I just need some more time."
"Take it, Third Sister. I concocted them to repay you. I still owe you for the white and red lotuses." Seeing Tongtian hesitate, Laozi said. "If you don't take it, I will feel a debt to you, obstructing my way."
Tongtian sighed. "Alright then, I'll accept."
She excused herself to Supreme Purity Hall. Yuanshi had locked himself in Jade Purity Hall because he had reached a critical juncture during the fusion of his three Corpses with himself.
Inside the hall, Tongtian checked the amount of Nine Yang Arcane Pills and discovered thirty-three pills inside. In addition, there were over a hundred Six Yang Arcane Pills and three hundred Three Yang Arcane Pills. If she gave a hundred to humanity, they would instantly become an undeniable force in the Great Desolation.
Tongtian had her Good Corpse, Shangxin, swallow a Three Yang Arcane Pill. His qi increased to a point where it would have taken her a hundred years to accumulate. Although a hundred years sounded short, considering that it took other beings tens of thousands or maybe a million years to reach the Golden Immortal Realm. And, Shangxin already had the cultivation base of a Quasi-Saint, so this was absolutely an enormous amount of time saved.
While Tongtian raised the cultivation of her three Corpses, the Great Desolation underwent numerous changes. Chief among them was the expansion of the human population.
Despite their weak individual strength, one quality that outstripped other races was their reproduction speed. The million large population expanded into a hundred million, and they began to spread everywhere in the East.
They would even encroach into the South as time passed. The West had enough land but was too barren for the growing population of humanity. Although hot, the South had plenty of plants and animals for them to gather and hunt, but they suffered high casualties due to the number of dangerous beasts and other natural disasters. The North was just too cold for the humans to survive since little plant life and animals lived there, and they hadn't learned how to fish.
Humanity’s overall strength increased, but their concentrated power decreased since they could not contact each other over long distances. Each separate settlement lived the best they could, struggling to survive with no real improvement to their way of life.
On Buzhou Mountain, more and more demons had appeared. They weren't the Demon Clan of Thirty-Three Heavens, the Heavenly Demon Clan, but the new generation of ones born on the land, the Earthly Demon Clan. Their numbers soared, and so did their overall strength. The four ancestors of humanity and the three animals could fend them off, but each clash resulted in too many deaths.
As a result, the four ancestors of humanity, Suiren, Zhengyi, Youchao, and Wutian, moved the core from Buzhou Mountain to near the East Sea. Some of the humans stayed and took refuge in the Titan Tribe, specifically the Houtu Tribe.
The intermingling of giants and humans eventually led to the birth of half-giants. Although they were born weaker than giants, they grew stronger by cultivating the Strength Path. Additionally, they had spirits, which allowed access to the use of spiritual artifacts.
The twelve titans silently acquiesced to this trend. They had tried to discover what was so special about the humans since Nuwa created them, but after discovering nothing special, they lost interest. They had previously considered destroying humanity, but after discovering how weak they were, they didn't want to give Nuwa an excuse to take action against them for something that could not threaten them.
On the other hand, humanity's actions displeased Heavenly Court. They thought that since Nuwa created humanity, they should be the Demon Clan's ally, yet they actually turned traitor and joined the Titan Tribe.
Heavenly Court didn't take any action since the Dao Ancestor had already said they should rule the skies and not tread on land for ten eons, at least overtly. Secretly, several demons descended and gathered the demons native to the land to target the humans closest to the Titan Tribe.
Not only did this cull the number of humans, but it also cemented humanity's current reliance on the Titan Tribe. The human populations near Buzhou Mountain shortened the distance between themselves and the Titan Tribes. They didn't just merge with the Houtu Tribe but the other branch tribes as well, but most preferred the Houtu Tribe since the others treated them like servants in all but name.
While the newest race of the Great Desolation drew everyone's eyes, a new race was about to be born in the Blood Sea.
An island floated in the core of the Blood Sea. Unlike the miasma-filled air of most of the Blood Sea, the core exuded a gentle red light filled with vitality. Anyone who cultivated the Strength Path here would receive twice the gains with half the effort.
At the center of the island was a palace made of scarlet stone, like dried blood, Crimsonsap Palace. Inside Crimsonsap Palace's main hall sat Minghe on his Twelfth-Ranked Red Lotus of Karma. In front of him floated two figures, one wearing white and untainted by the bloody aura, and the other wearing red, seemingly formed out of the bloody aura.
There was a third object floating in front of him, a golden lotus. It was the Ninth-Ranked Golden Lotus of Merit that he had traded from Zhunti at a high price. Raising it didn't take much from Minghe since the Ninth-Ranked Golden Lotus of Merit primarily fed on merit.
The Blood Sea gathered all the blood in the Great Desolation, and along with them, the broken souls suffering grievances. It was why the miasma was so strong. The Blood Sea continuously received merit from the Way of Heaven for being the garbage dump of the Great Desolation and preventing the baleful air from contaminating the rest of the Great Desolation.
Still, the harvest was not enough for Minghe to use. He had entered a bottleneck for his third Corpse, so he wanted to gather a massive amount of merit to sever his Obsession Corpse.
Since he witnessed Nuwa becoming a Saint of Heaven by creating a new race, he wanted to replicate her feat. Minghe stored his two Corpses and flew out of the palace, carrying the Ninth-Ranked Golden Lotus of Merit in his hands.
Minghe exited the gates of Crimsonsap Palace, which was shaped like the mouth of a furious fiend. Outside, floating in front of the island, were over a hundred thousand copies of Minghe.
The four in front exuded the aura of Golden Immortals of the Great Firmament; four hundred exuded the aura of Golden Immortals of the Great Unity; four thousand exuded the aura of Golden Immortals; while the rest ranged from Profound Immortals to Earth Immortals.
These copies were all Minghe's incarnations, his bloodgod incarnation. As the master of the Blood Sea, he could use the sea as he liked, including forming thousands of incarnations of himself. As long as the Blood Sea persisted, he would forever be eternal. He doubted even a Saint of Heaven like Nuwa could accomplish this feat.
However, he wasn't so brash as to test this theory out.
Minghe raised his hand into the sky. A pillar of broken souls pierced the clouds, catching the attention of numerous major powers. The broken souls screamed in rage, agony, and torment, but Minghe ignored their pitiful cries and merged them into his bloodgods.
He stuffed several, sometimes even hundreds, into a single one, significantly altering their forms. Every one of them grew two to three pairs of arms and two to three heads, each displaying a different expression. Half of them changed into females with alluring features, while the males had wrathful and fierce appearances.
Each showed a belligerent expression as if they couldn't wait to pounce on each other and rip them to shreds, but they all obediently kneeled to Minghe. "We greet the Ancestor!"
Minghe nodded. "From now on, you shall be known as the Shura Race!"
As soon as Minghe said those words, clouds of merits descended from the skies. Eighty percent of the merit was absorbed by Minghe, and the newly created shura race absorbed the rest.
"Sever!"
Using the merits, Minghe successfully formed his Obsession Corpse, but he wasn't happy. Compared to when Nuwa created humanity, the merits for creating the shura were less than a tenth of hers.
"I created more shura than she did humans, and all of them are stronger than any current human, even the four most powerful ones combined," Minghe muttered. "So why did I get so little merit? Is it because Nuwa is destined to become a Saint, so that's why the Way of Heaven was so generous?"
Minghe glared at the skies. After a while, he snorted and glanced at the four shuras with the cultivation base at the Great Firmament Realm. "Your names shall be Bali, Kharakantha, Vemincitrin, and Sakra. You four shall be the Shura Kings who rule over the shura in my stead."
The four Shura Kings obeyed and accepted their positions. Unknown to Minghe, when he named the fourth Shura King, Sakra's eyes flashed with a mysterious light that quickly disappeared.
"To help you rule over them and defend my Blood Sea, I will bestow this high-grade innate spiritual artifact," Minghe said as a war drum floated between the four of them. He waved his sleeve and turned around, entering Crimsonsap Palace once more.
The four Shura Kings glanced at each other and immediately began to fight for the spiritual artifact. While Bali, Kharakantha, and Vemincitrin were busy fighting one another, Sakra retreated a fair distance away.
Sakra gathered lightning in his hand and shot them at his fellow Shura Kings. They screamed in pain, but it wasn't enough to defeat them once and for all. All three glared at Sakra and ganged up on him without any semblance of teamwork. When the chance presented itself, they would turn on each other without a second thought.
Sakra's eyes weren't shrouded in bloodlust. With cold logic in his heart, he incapacitated his fellow Shura Kings one by one. He became the winner and accepted the war drum as his prize. "You shall be called Alambara."
On Kunlun Mountain, Tongtian glanced in the Blood Sea's directions. "Shuras? One of the six races dominating the Six Paths of Reincarnation?"
In Buddhism, all life can be born into six kinds of creatures depending on the karma they accumulated while they lived: the Heaven Realm, Human Realm, Shura Realm, Animal Realm, Hungry Ghost Realm, and Hell Realm.
She recalled that Buddhism especially loved converting evil creatures like shuras into enlightened beings. If she created an avatar and sent it into reincarnation to be reborn as a shura, wouldn't she have a way to sneak into Buddhism?
Tongtian laughed. Reincarnation hadn't been created yet. The dead souls still lingered in the Great Desolation or gravitated to the Blood Sea. Not to mention Buddhism hadn't been created yet, but that didn't mean she couldn't prepare ahead of time.
While Tongtian was plotting, she felt a powerful coercion emanate from Kunlun Mountain.
"Second Brother has achieved Sainthood?"