Apotheosis

Before heading to the Ginkgo Pavilion, Lavender had thoroughly considered the pros and cons of her journey.

With the authority and confidence she possessed, it was sure that this tenth grade sacred place in the Dark World would submit to her and her alone.

But subduing a tenth grade sacred place was practically meaningless to her, and it was in fact, dangerous. It would help her very little in her fight against Elena and would alert the enemy too.

All of her activities would have to be done in secret. The fewer people knew about it, the better.

The Ginkgo Pavilion had been set up in Auspice City by the Purple Bamboo Sacred Place. It was basically a trade-hub that spent much time trading with the other forces in Auspice City, which meant it always had a rich collection of treasures and abundant resources at hand.

After taking a look at the resources they had, Lavender merely shook her head. None of them had caught her eye.

After all, the Dark World was just a small place at the outskirts of the Upper World, and was nothing when compared to the Mist Palace. These resources might have been extremely precious to some ordinary warriors, but they were of no use to Lavender or Zen.

She was far more concerned about the secret treasures of the Dark World.

In any case, although the resources and treasures that lay there did not catch her eyes, she did pick up quite a lot of life vitality jades.

Every year, when the Ginkgo Pavilion traded with the other races, they turned over the life vitality jades to the Purple Bamboo Sacred Place, which meant that there was an abundance of them in here.

To not arouse suspicion at the Purple Bamboo Sacred Place and protect Nela, who was in charge of handing over all the life vitality jades to the Purple Bamboo Sacred Place, Lavender only took about one fifth of them. Even then, the number of life vitality jades she collected was close to thirty thousand.

Zen no longer needed life vitality jades because of the enormous changes that had happened inside his body. However, the more money and treasures one had, the better. It might come in handy some day. Previously, Zen had risked his life to gather about a hundred life vitality jades. To any warrior of the Soul Sea Realm, these thirty thousand life vitality jades were no less than an enormous fortune.

After staying in the Ginkgo Pavilion for two days, Nela resigned from her post in the Purple Bamboo Sacred Place. Then she found an excuse to leave and set out to the Eternal Night World with the jade slip that Lavender had given her.

At the same time, Zen quietly returned to his residence in Auspice City, waiting for the arrival of Lincoln.

Some months earlier, Lincoln and Zen had agreed to meet each other in half a year. In the blink of an eye, time had gone by and now, only some forty days or so were left till the day they were supposed to meet. Zen was actually worried whether Lincoln would arrive here at the scheduled time or not.

One and a half months later…

Zen was still immersed in his cultivation.

After breaking through

r when activated by chaotic energy would increase several times. For that reason, Zen had strong expectations with his experiment, and was quite confident that the chaotic energy would be able to generate the "demonic life vitality".

As Zen practiced the mind method in the Heavenly Ogre Fist, the chaotic energy within his body boiled…

A trace of chaotic energy extricated itself from Zen's cinnabar field and circulated along his meridians. Finally, it shot out from his fingertip. A thin strand of gray chaotic energy, much like a thick mist began to float around his hand.

'This strand of chaotic energy was activated by the mind method of Heavenly Ogre Fist. I wonder if it possesses the devouring power.' Zen was a little nervous, but in the blink of an eye, his nervousness completely disappeared and eagerness took its place. He laughed and thought to himself, 'Even if I fail, I can look for another method. Who's there to stop me? What is there to be nervous about?'

Thinking about that, he reached into his space ring and brought out a supreme life vitality crystal. Streams of thick life vitality were preserved in this small stone.

Zen did not immediately crush the life vitality crystal. Instead, he gently tapped the stone with his finger and a small hole appeared. A wisp of pure life vitality flowed out from the hole!

Before it could properly escape, Zen injected the chaotic energy on his fingertips into the life vitality crystal, his eyes staring straight at it with a firm gaze.

"Not working?"

Through the transparent stone shell, Zen could see that the brown chaotic energy was continuously swirling within the life vitality crystal. It didn't fuse with the milky white life vitality within the crystal, nor did it show any signs of trying to devour the life vitality…

Zen curled his lips. It seemed that he'd been too naive and the experiment had failed.

'Ah well. Wait!' Just as Zen was about to put the life vitality crystal back into his space ring, the entire crystal suddenly exploded right in front of him!