A Cultivation Tale: The Godly Punisher

Chapter 280: Soul-Entity Creation stage

When the sky changed, Alex's uncle appeared at the roof of his mansion and looked into the distance. He looked towards the building that was below the blood-red sky. Then when he heard the furious bellow that gave him the feeling that a horde of gigantic ancient beasts were roaring, he gave a smile.

'This boy' He thought inwardly.

***

- Immovable Mountain Academy -

In a particular room that was grandly decorated like a queen lived in there, a couple of beautiful young girls could be seen standing before a girl that was peerlessly beautiful. This girl was seated on a throne and a radiant, joyful smile as she spoke could be seen in her face. Although she sat on a seat that gave one the feeling that she was in a place of authority, she didn't exude the aura of authoritativeness, and of arrogance that was supposed to emit from her. The couple of girls seated before her who were also full of smiles and were listening to her as she spoke with her endearing, attractive voice just couldn't help but gaze at her admirably. While a cute young girl who was chocolate-skinned could be seen sitting beside the gorgeous and beautiful girl that was seated on a throne. This little girl was Nailah, Alex's adopted younger sister.

Without surprise, the alluringly gorgeous girl before them was Olivia, while the group of girls before her were females that belonged to the faction that she had established before she left the academy and appeared at Nailah's village where she met Alex.

Her faction was named the 'Fire Goddess' faction. So at the moment, they were having a meeting on how to make more female members join and push their faction to the peak, a peak that couldn't be reached by any other faction in the academy, whether they were created by high-rank genius-level males or females.

Then before they would round up their meeting, a harsh blood-red light suddenly shone in the room and dyed everything blood-red, including the immaculate white sexy gowns that they wore which became dyed in the color of blood.

Their hearts skipped a beat.

What the hell was this?

They asked inwardly.

Suddenly, Olivia got a feeling that this phenomenon had to do with Alex. Only him had a special body and peculiar mind to be able to cause unusual and frightening phenomena like this one to manifest. Same with Nailah, she knew how demonically strong and devilishly powerful her brother was.

"Nailah, stay here. Let me go see outside" Olivia hurriedly said to Nailah.

"No, I would like to go with you. I want to see what's happening to my brother." Nailah said with worry in her tone.

Once Nailah said that, the other girls in the room terribly shook from what Nailah said.

Her brother?

Her brother is the cause of this bone-chilling phenomenon?

They couldn't believe what they just heard.

Olivia looked warmly at Nailah and said softly "Okay."

Then she grabbed Nailah by the hand and flew out of the window of her large, excellently decorated room to the roof.

Olivia couldn't deny Nailah her request, as this was her first time asking for something from her. And she was the adopted sister of her future, very soon-to-become-extremely powerful husband. She therefore couldn't deny Nailah. Besides, it was a request that wouldn't cause harm to Nailah, or she would instantly reject it and force her to stay back.

Now appearing on the roof of her room with Nailah and the other girls that were in her faction, they saw the female and male leaders of many other factions already on the roofs of their residences with perplexed and curious gazes in their eyes. Also, fear and horror could be seen in them.

When they saw Olivia, they quickly concealed the fear erupting from their gazes and simply nodded at her. And who were these were people? They were people that were senior to her in cultivation. Some where in the peak-phase, Heaven Adept stage, and the others in the Saint stage. So, being engaged to someone who was related to Houston had caused them to give her more respect and admiration.

When they nodded at her with genuine smiles in their faces, they looked back towards where the sky was blood-red. Same with Olivia and Nailah whose heart shook in the next moment when they saw a massive blood-red blade that unceasingly emanated an extremely bright, blood-red light. While the ghostly and wraith-like rebuking and resentful cries that thunderously boomed out from them caused their bodies to grow stiff from exceeding fear. Although they were scared by the sounds coming from the blade, what caused them more fear was that would Alex be able to survive such a vicious attack of the realmverse.

'But what sort of tribulation is this?'

'Is that bastard practicing an evil art?'

'When he is done with his perverse tribulation, I am going to finish him off with scathing words. Does he actually wants to make me a widow already?'

These questions came to Olivia's mind without stop. She was simply tremendously pissed off by the appearance of this Tribulation which she was exceedingly sure had manifested because of Alex was doing something that didn't conform to the norm of their cultivation realmverse.

'That bastard, he's surely going to hear from me' Olivia said with great rage in her heart. She couldn't wait for the tribulation to end and rush down to where he was and beat the hell out of him, even if she knew that she couldn't physically overwhelm Alex.

The principals of the academies in the city had activated the buried, mega-defensive formations in their academies. However, their action was totally unnecessary. But one couldn't blame them as they were taking defensive measures. Why they did so in the first place was because of the huge fright that the huge blade gave them. It had caused boundless fear to set in their hearts, which then took over their bodies as it caused their bodies to turn stiff, cold and tremble unceasingly. However, the blade was something that could be easily destroyed by them. But one shouldn't underestimate the arcane and colossal, soul-severing corporeal blade that had manifested just below the ominous-colored sky. If the blade appeared at the level of power that they were at, they would be instantly destroyed by just the suppressive pressure exuding from it. This was Alex's final soul-tribulation and had appeared at the rank of power that he was at. His tribulation should have ended with the soul-lightning tribulation. But because he made mockery of the abilities of some unseen, quasi-sentient mysterious forces in the realmverse, they generated a stronger attack that should kill him. Their will was that all things must conform or bend to the rules or statutes of this world, or they should be ready to be obliterated.

***

Once Alex screamed "Come".

Like the blade was responding to Alex, a powerful boom rang out from it which caused his blood to violently roil. And since his blood was churning ragingly within him, Alex coughed out mouthfuls of blood.

He then wiped his blood off his mouth and prepared to defend his body and soul from the blade-attack that was going to descend upon him soon.

With a thought, strengthforce energy flowed from his energyhouse to his hands. Once this energy got to his hands, they immediately condensed and shaped into massive blades that radiated the power of Might. Then permeating his eyes with speedforce energy, he was enabled to see everything in his vision move in slow motion. Then apart from turning his strengthforce energy into solid-weapons which was impossible to do by any other cultivator since they could only shoot cultivated energies off their hands as focused beams or blast, Alex saturated his leg muscles and the bones of his arms with his strengthforce energy.

Then once the blade in the sky shot downwards at a furious speed towards him, Alex generated immense power in his legs and leaped into the sky towards it.

Why Alex used his strengthforce energy was because of the suppressive force that was acting on him. The force was inhibiting his movement, making it seem like he was in a body-sized cage. But upon spreading strengthforce energy throughout his body, the strongly inhibitive force that encompassed his figure and restricted his movement vanished like it was never there. The energy bestowed him with the power of Might and made his body super-strong to withstand and resist the inhibiting force coming from the blade. Also, now that he had regained his movement, his blood which also continually churned because of the great pressure acting on it and causing him great discomfort began to flow smoothly once again within his blood channels. Then the other reason why Alex created blade-shaped energy-weapons using his strengthforce energy was because it was only them that possessed the solidness and denseness to impact the tribulation-blade attack and shatter it into smithereens. Being an energy that possessed primordial or originforce energy in it, it was able to reach the Heaven Adept rank in quality (density), becoming a quasi-Heaven Adept energy.

However, Alex knew that what he was doing was risky, but he decided it do it anyways as he was sure that this was the last attack that the tribulation-unleashing, pseudo-sentient forces of the realmverse would bring upon him. Why it was risky was that, him using strengthforce energy that radiated pulses of power which would match that of peak-phase, Heaven Adept stage cultivators, could cause his other tribulation-attacks to ascend in the level or amount of destructive power or devastating force that they could produce upon impact with his body, and at the same time, with his soul. But since this was definitely the last attack which was what he thought, he then went on to use his strengthforce energy.

Then apart from the great suppressive force acting viciously on his body, it also acted on his soul. However, due to the uniqueness and greatness of Alex's enhanced and refined soul pillars, they were actually able to resist it on their own. Despite the level of the suppressive force which could cause the soul pillars of others to shatter into bits, Alex's own couldn't even show pressure marks, talk more of slight cracks.

If one looked into his soul-dwelling region, one would see his pillar-shaped Soul Cores looking invincible, mighty and brilliantly resplendent. Also, strange and glyphic character-inscriptions could be seen on their surfaces, increasing their level of profoundness. If these could actually appear in the outside world, they would invoke the feeling in everyone that they belonged to true divine ancient gods, and not mortals like them.

...

As Alex was shooting into the sky towards the descending enormous blade like he was flying, and at the same time, effortlessly resisting the great pressure that exuded from it and acted upon him and on everything else around him, causing them to instantly develop cracks, the blade which was tremendous in size began to radiate many forms of power as it shot downwards at a great speed towards Alex. The myriad forms of power the tribulation-blade emanated were the power of Soul-Severance, Ominousness, Gloom, Slaughter, Suppression and Corporeality. The power of Soul-Severance that it produced which acted upon Alex alone, as he was the target intended to be totally destroyed, would cut everything into two or halves, bringing about their complete ruin and instant death or oblivion. No soul, whether mortal or immortal, can escape from this power that would sever the souls of all things in the realmverse; no matter how galactic or titanic they were. While the power of Ominousness, which was also called the power of Balefulness, would make the soul to be completely engulfed in blood, and prevent it from being able to release any form of soul-power. The the power of Gloom would endlessly drown one's soul in the unbounded sea of sadness, misery and horror. The power of Slaughter which was also called the power of Butchery would cause the soul to be reduced into the smallest bits by unseen thousands of blades. The power of Suppression would produce a force that would constrict or inhibit the soul. Then finally, the power of Corporeality which would make a soul-attack become substantiated that it would be able to cut or pierce through physical things, for example, the human body.

Not long, Alex and the massive blade appeared before each other.

With the energy-blades tightly grasped in his hands and trying his best to resist the myriad arcane powers that emanated from the blade and acted on his body, Alex struck out at the blade with immense heaviness using the dense and solid energy-blades composed from strengthforce energy.

Bang!!

A thunderous bang sound rang out as the huge blood-red blade instantly developed many cracks all over and explosively shattered into fragments like glass.

Then before the fragments of the myriad of powers that constituted the blade could dissipate away, Alex who was falling at a rapid speed back to the earth because of a tyrannical wave that was released from the explosive shattering of the blade and struck him, quickly uttered with resoluteness in his tone "Absorb!"

Then abstruse symbols appeared on his body and released a type of power that would absorb every other power in the realmverse.

The resplendently glowing fragments that were formed out of the arcane powers that the blade was created from, were instantly acted upon by the attraction power coming from Alex's body and were then pulled towards it. The instant that they arrived before his body, the solid fragments of condensed power turned into mist-like slivers of power that penetrated into his body and were then pulled to his soul-dwelling region where they infused into his soul pillars and blended with it, becoming one. And so, a new color that was blood-red and represented ominousness or balefulness and menace appeared in Alex's pillar-shaped Soul Cores. Once this hue appeared in his soul pillars, the five powers that emitted from the gigantic blood-colored blade began to also emit from each of his sixty soul pillars, along with the ripping visible power of Ice and Frost, Fire, Poison and Corrosion, and Electricity.

The blood-red sky rapidly thinned out and completely faded away, causing the sky to return to normal.

While Alex who had summoned a pair of treasure-wing to his back so that he could fly began to slowly float back to the ground.

***

Within Alex's soul-dwelling region, the soul pillars which were towering in size, terrific because of the numbers of waves of powers that they released, and were multi-colored in appearance, began to tremble. They were trembling as they began to gradually take Alex's physical form, but that of when he was a baby. And to grow from their baby form into Alex's current teenager form, a massive amount of soulforce energy would be needed.

So, with the artifact-wings self-floating in the air and with Alex's eyes now closed, he pushed his energy and essence attracting and devouring power once again into the far distance. And as soon as he did so, a vast amount of soulforce energy began to rage from the distance in all directions towards him like gigantic and exceedingly violent floods.

They heavily impacted his body that soulforce energy which was incorporeal in form like that of a ghost actually caused Alex's body to tremble like he was being hit by something. Then the moment that the raging, tidal currents of soul-energy collided with his body, they entered it and rushed into his soul-dwelling region where they infused into his energy-hungry soul pillars.

Once the soul pillars got infused with insane amounts of soulforce energy which also seemed to be unending, the soul pillars quickly transformed into babies. But these baby forms of Alex's soul were actually like giants as they were towering in size. Anyways, this was because of Alex's overly huge soul pillars. Despite the seeming, intense tempering process to remove numerous faulted areas away from his soul pillars, they were still monolithic in size. And as the energy continually infused into them, the baby forms of Alex's soul began to grow. Now, they looked like a two-year old. Then as the tremendous amounts of soulforce energy rapidly, boundlessly and interminably flowed into them, the child-forms of Alex's soul swiftly grew to reach the exact age that Alex was at.

When they got here, their growths stopped themselves. Therefore, no matter the amount of soulforce energy that Alex would pump into them now, they wouldn't grow more than this. This meant that he had reached a Cultivation Limitation Boundary which he had to break through to continue cultivating his soul to higher levels. However, at this junction, Alex could be said to have broken through into the 'Soul-Entity Creation' stage.

Once Alex's soul pillars transformed into soul-beings and looked exactly like him; hair color, skin color and so on, sixty extremely strong soul presences began to emanate from him, as well as intense and overwhelming waves of multi-attributed, soul-based power. But Alex quickly retracted the overpowering presences and unbridled, multi-characterized soul-power emitting from the numerous Soul-Existences that had been birthed in the vast and unbounded, soul-dwelling region in a space in his head. And once he did so, he took back control of the flight-power of the treasure-wings and flew gently to the roof of his organization's building. And when he sat on the roof in the lotus position which was also the cross-legged position, he sent his perception into his soul-inhabiting region to observe his soul-beings. The instant that he did so, he was shocked to the extreme by what he saw.