Apotheosis

Generally, it would be quite hard for Zen to defeat an Illuminating Soul Realm master, simply because being half-step into the nature level was far from an Illuminating Soul Realm master's skills. In the battle to the death, Zen wouldn't have won if Seymour hadn't been badly injured.

Even for today, it was a pyrrhic triumph for Zen. But in any case, no matter how hard it was, Zen had persisted until the end.

Just in that moment, a series of dull sounds came from the Eight Diagrams. Zen looked up at the source of those sounds and saw that the statues had slowly moved away from the characters, and finally returned to their original forms.

When Zen didn't sense any danger from the statues' movements, he sat still on the ground to recover. After a short while of rest, he stood up.

His eyes scanned all the bodies of the Illuminating Soul Realm masters, and a sigh couldn't help but escape from his lips. If only they had believed him, the situation wouldn't have escalated out of their control.

'Ah, time can't be reversed. They might never believe me in such a zero-sum game anyway, ' Zen thought as he sighed again. He bent down and started to pick up the weapons in their unmoving hands. These weapons were of high value and strength and among them were quite a lot of low-level spiritual weapons, a small number of medium-level spiritual weapons, and even a top-grade one!

Since all of them were dead, the weapons now all belonged to Zen.

He carefully collected all the weapons and other valuable items and stored them into his space ring. Before he proceeded to the statues, he bent over the deceased bodies of his rivals and stood in silent tribute for a while.

After a few moments, he went and moved the statues based on the method recorded by Chase.

'Three for Heaven, ' murmured Zen, and then he pushed three statues to word 'Heaven'.

'Six for Earth, ' then, he pushed the other six statues to word 'Earth' accordingly.

'For the Water is...'

'For the Fire is...'

'The last one is...'

One by one, Zen had pushed all the statues to their corresponding positions as stated in Chase's record. After all of the movements were completed, the Eight Diagrams engraved on the ground slo

not understand that," he asked.

In turn, Saul only smiled sadly and sighed. "If you were trapped in one place, every day without company--you could only talk to yourself, you would finally not want to talk or even just forget how to speak. I have been alone for thousands of years and would live lonely for the next few thousand years or even longer. Will you still want to live immortally? Or will you look for death, which might be a relief and an end to your current lonely life?"

Saul's gripes made Zen fall into silence. He did have a fair point. To be alone for thousands of years like Saul would make immortality a great torture. And death might be the next best thing. However, Zen was a human who understood the feeling of loneliness, but Saul was a puppet. So, he asked again, "Saul, you are only a puppet, how could you feel lonely?"

Saul just shook his head. "Even though my body was made to be a puppet, my inner soul was an abstract from a human soul. Thus, in some words, I am also a human, with human feelings and soul," he answered.

Abstract human soul to refine a puppet!

That was so strange that Zen had never heard about it. Such technique was so magical that it was almost unbelievable.

When Saul saw Zen's shocked expression, he didn't mind as if he was used to such a thing. "Anyway, I have finally seen you after three thousand years…

I finally saw the fourth person appearing here after waiting for three thousand years," he continued.