Chapter 3898: Shell
Chapter 3898: Shell
Alex turned to leave the Sky God’s palace, but before he could, he had to stop.
"Oh, right. Senior, I hate to ask this of you again, but could you lend me some more cultivation resources?" he asked. "I’m really lacking a lot of them."
"Cultivation resources?" the Sky God asked with a strange look on her face. "Didn’t I give you some a few years ago? That should have lasted you for a few decades at least."
"I cultivate much faster than that, and on top of it, I’m currently cultivating in a time dilation formation to help speed up my cultivation," Alex explained.
"Huh, no wonder your cultivation speed is so much higher than before. I had assumed you ate some pills to break through a few cultivation realms," she explained.
"I could have done that, but I needed to deal with my Origins first, and at that point, cultivating made much more sense," Alex said. "But I’ve run out of resources now, especially when I’m so close to breaking through to the next realm."
"I see," the Sky God said. "Well, I gave you what I had on me. I would have to ask someone to go to the treasury to look for something that can work for an Immortal, but it appears you require quite a lot," the Sky God said with a frown.
"Yes. I’m willing to pay it back, either through pills or some other way," Alex said.
"That’s not really the issue," the Sky God said. "I’ll see what I can do, but why don’t you go and purchase some resources for yourself?"
Alex chuckled slightly. "You made it impossible for me, remember? I can’t leave."
"That was before the Fire God arrived," the Sky God said. "Now that he’s here, you are free to do what you want."
"Anything?" Alex asked. "What if I were to just... leave?"
"You can’t," the Sky God answered as if it were a matter of fact. "The Fire God will already have people watching you. The Storm God has had people watching you from the start. And with me being a neutral party in this duel between you and the Fire God, every single person manning the teleportation formations in the Sky God’s realm is aware enough not to let you leave."
Alex raised an eyebrow. "I do have the ability to travel through the Void."
"Then you would just be delaying the inevitable. Worse, you’d be a fugitive, unable to do much as the manpower of three entire Half Gods, along with several other Gods and Divinities, would be coming after you."
Alex raised an eyebrow. "Three?"
"As the person responsible for keeping you here, I too will be searching for you should you choose to leave," the Sky God said. "As such, I ask that you do not leave. It will reflect badly on me, and at this point in time, I cannot have that happen. The fate of peace in the entire world hinges on that fact."
Alex took a deep breath. "I won’t leave," he said. "I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, senior. I will not cause you any more trouble than I already have."
The Sky God smiled faintly. "Go and do your shopping. Then finish your cultivation session. Hopefully, the next time I see you, you will have formed your Spirit and broken through."
Alex smiled genuinely. "I hope so too. I’ll take my leave now, senior."
With that said, Alex left along with Bladedance and walked outside, in time to find Sunflare lost in idle conversation with his daughter.
"You’re out," Sunflare said. "Is the meeting over?"
"Yes, senior," Alex answered.
"Then let us not waste any more time. I need to confirm the status of my God."
Half an hour later, Sunflare left Alex’s Soul Space with a satisfied smile on his face.
"Thank you for showing me that it was unhurt. My worries had been eating at me from the inside for many years now," he said.
"I apologize for making you go through that, senior," Alex said.
Bladedance appeared a second later. "So, what now?" she asked, turning toward Alex. "Are you leaving for your shopping soon?"
"Uhh... not yet," Alex said. "I think I’ll stay until the Artifact God is done with her current work. I don’t know when she’ll be needing me."
Bladedance raised an eyebrow. "Is she close?"
"She said she was about a year away," Alex said. "I’ll stay around for the year. I’m trying to learn a new Dao, so maybe I’ll do that. I also need to form a Spirit out of my Origins. Speaking of which, do you have any suggestions on how I can achieve that, Master?"
Bladedance shrugged. "Forming a Spirit out of an Origin is hardly a difficult task. It is slightly monotonous and will leave you with severe mental fatigue if you try to speed it up, but other than that, it’s quite simple. All you need to do is focus on your Origin and make it hatch."
Alex blinked. "Make it... hatch? Like an egg?"
"Yes. That’s how I did it," Bladedance said.
"That’s it?" Alex asked.
The woman shrugged.
"Forming a Spirit is, in fact, a simple task," Sunflare said from behind. "But it is not as simple as what your master makes it sound. The difficulty depends entirely on the sort of Creation you’re forming. The more complex it is, the more difficult it will be."
Alex turned. "Could you help me understand what I should do, then, senior?"
Sunflare sighed and nodded. "Your Origin is nothing but pure Energy that wants to be an egg. And through Transcendence, you’ve placed inside of it an understanding of what it should hatch as once it’s done incubating. However, it needs a proper shell to incubate. For that, you take part of the Origin itself and convert it into a shell. That shell takes a form, in part, of what you’re making a Creation out of, forming the perfect shell for incubation."
"That shell, in essence, is the Spirit. A portion of your Origin, now available for your use. And when the incubation is complete, the Spirit breaks, and the Creation emerges from inside of it."