Chapter 85: The Fourth Scheme of the Northern Abyss

In the span of a month, Qingxu successfully refined the vessel of Supreme Primordial Mysterious Gold, ignited divine fire, condensed a divine spark, and thus gained a nascent lower-ranked god incarnation. As this was his first attempt at such cultivation, he wasted dozens of points of divine power in the process.

Now, all was prepared except for the final impetus. The next step was to forge the ideal divine king soul. Typically, gods cultivate by merging their souls and true spirits into the divine spark, which then fuses with the divine body. As long as divine power remains, immortality and indestructibility are assured—a feat far beyond the reach of the Path of Immortals. Yet Qingxu harbored a better idea: to use divine power in place of heaven and earth’s spiritual energy, forging a divine soul, which would then control the union of spark and body. This might seem redundant and far more intricate, but promised much greater future potential.

With both a divine soul and a divine spark, Qingxu’s incarnation was several degrees stronger than other gods of the same rank. His divine power was abundant; while perhaps not a simple sum, he was far stronger than a single aspect alone, easily able to wield 120% of his full strength with every strike.

Primordial Purified Water was a wondrous substance of heaven and earth, a veritable amalgamation: innate merit, innate spiritual energy, the lights of sun, moon, and stars… The vast energy contained within was truly staggering.

A hundred years of immortal cultivation had made Qingxu intimately familiar with the process, allowing him now to direct his second soul to absorb the Primordial Divine Power (Supreme Divine Power) with ease—indeed, the process was even simpler than he had anticipated.

Epic divine soul… Mythic divine soul… Demigod soul…

The sensation was like soaring upward in a rocket, so overwhelming that even Qingxu found it excessive. It was as if, in a game, others spent endless effort to slay monsters, while he casually defeated a minor foe and instantly attained what others only dreamed of.

The feeling was exhilarating, but the foundation was terribly unstable. Yet Qingxu was unconcerned. The path of gods differed from that of immortals; while foundation and realm had some effect, they were not so critical, nor were there limitations. Even if he instantly soared to the level of a Divine King, he could always revisit and strengthen his foundation and comprehension. This was a stark contrast to the immortal path, where a weak early foundation could only be remedied later at the cost of tenfold effort.

Every gain comes with its loss—such is the way of all things. The path of divinity offered little hope of true enlightenment, but in many ways surpassed the immortal path.

Lower God Soul!
Middle God Soul!
Upper God Soul!
…

A sudden boom resounded as the second soul exploded, scattering millions of golden points throughout the incarnation’s spiritual palace. For a moment, Qingxu felt utterly disconnected from his second soul. Strangely, his true soul was unaffected. Ordinarily, injury or destruction to the second soul would have repercussions for the true soul, yet now it had dissolved into countless golden lights.

“What happened? Everything seemed fine before. Could it be that the Primordial Divine Power was too much for the second soul to bear? But my true soul is perfectly intact, so the second soul can’t be harmed.” Qingxu was utterly bewildered, unable to make sense of it.

As he puzzled over the matter, a new change occurred. The myriad golden points in the incarnation’s spiritual palace spontaneously formed a vortex. At first glance, the vortex seemed to spin one way, but on closer inspection, it appeared to spin the other—a paradox impossible to resolve. Stranger still, within the swirling circle, dots of inky blackness occasionally emerged, spreading as soon as they appeared. At this rate, it seemed that before long, the entire vortex, aside from the golden lights, would be swallowed by black.

“Could this be a universe?” Qingxu muttered in astonishment, but soon dismissed the thought (not that he had any control regardless). As long as it did no harm, he didn’t care. For him, it was merely a change in form: instead of the imagined humanoid Divine King soul, now it was a universe-shaped Divine King soul (so to speak), with no difference in power.

Soul tier: Early Divine King!

“Early Divine King… that’s equivalent to an early-stage Great Luo Golden Immortal. But compared to one who’s cultivated the immortal path, I’m still lacking. At the very least, others can recover energy from heaven and earth, while this incarnation relies on faith and incense. Many immortal arts are also unavailable, especially since the divine body is still at the lower god level. The transformation and strengthening brought by the Divine King soul isn’t instantaneous, after all.” There were many shortcomings, but Qingxu was still delighted—he had become one of the upper echelons of the prehistoric world.

Sages aside, there were only dozens of quasi-saints in that world, and those at the Great Luo level were peerless. As long as he did not provoke sages or quasi-saints, he was free to do as he pleased. Qingxu’s incarnation was only an early-stage Great Luo Golden Immortal, but if he focused solely on escape, not even a peak Great Luo could be certain of killing him. Great Luo beings could traverse the void at will—without treasures or pre-arranged formations to seal space, once an opponent slipped into the void, tracking them down was impossible.

Moreover, Qingxu’s Supreme Primordial Divine Incarnation was unlike anything in the immortal path—a fact to his great advantage. He specialized in the immortal path and therefore knew his opponents, but, as there were no gods yet in the prehistoric world, no one knew his true foundation.

“Still, when condensing the divine spark, I seemed to sense the presence of many gods, though insubstantial…” This worry lingered in Qingxu’s mind. When forming his divine spark, he’d sensed thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of gods who had come into being before him—some even supreme beings of creation. But none of these gods affected him. He could sense that they, too, detected his existence and perhaps wished to control or erase him, but it was as if they existed in a separate dimension from himself—a mysterious sensation, as if he were watching a film through a veil, the people within the movie aware of him, and he of them.

“The Ancestor of the Dao, Hongjun, preached the Grand Dao thrice in Zixiao Palace. The path of the gods was included—surely, in such a vast world, someone has cultivated it. Could it be the Two Sages of the West?” In myths of his previous life, the divine path originated in the West and was subtly connected with Buddhism; it was natural for Qingxu to suspect this. If those sensed gods were under the control of the Western Sages, it would make sense—they’d avoid confronting him openly, so as not to antagonize the Primordial Heavenly Lord. But could it truly be so simple?

A tangled mess, impossible to unravel!

“Enough! No more thinking. Let matters take their course. For now, I’ll master my new divine abilities, and then slip into the Northern Ocean to fish in troubled waters!” The journey from Mount Wanqiu to the Northern Ocean would take him across East Victory Divine Continent, North Ju Luzhou, and the North Sea—a distance so vast it would frighten anyone. Even with the ability to traverse the void, a Great Luo Golden Immortal would find it no easy task.