The Bone Sage lay broken at the base of his monolithic tower, his body shattered by Elder Jin's final, devastating blow. His Spirit King life force, though formidable, was fighting a losing battle against his catastrophic injuries. The black needle Wei had implanted in him was not a simple paralytic; it was a key, a tool designed to unlock and dismantle a specific type of lock.
Wei walked forward, his expression that of a scholar approaching a rare and valuable specimen. He ignored the looks from his companions, his entire focus on the fallen necromancer. Elder Jin stood guard, his face grim, while Lihua and Sun Ling watched from a distance, their expressions a mixture of horror and morbid curiosity.
"Your research into the laws of necrosis is profound," Wei said to the fallen Sage, his voice a calm, academic murmur. "To create a stable conduit to the Netherworld, to refine its raw energy into a targeted curse... it is a work of genius. But your vessel is weak. Your understanding of the soul is... incomplete."
The Bone Sage, sputtering blood, could only glare with impotent fury. "What... what have you done to me?" he rasped, the poison from the needle now spreading through his spiritual channels.
"I have introduced a catalyst," Wei explained, as if discussing a simple alchemical reaction. "The poison I created from the Curse Core is designed to resonate with the Grey Rot's energy signature. It is now latching onto your Nascent Soul, which you have so thoroughly infused with necrotic energy. It is not killing you. It is... unravelling you."
Wei placed a single, slender finger on the Bone Sage's forehead. He was not channeling destructive energy. He was beginning the harvest.
The 'Soul Rend Toxin', as he had named it, began its work. The Bone Sage's body began to dissolve into motes of pure energy and information. It was a terrifyingly intimate process. Wei's own Nascent Soul, the shadowy figure forged through the Nine Transformations, acted as a spiritual vortex, drawing in the dissolving essence of the Bone Sage.
He felt the man's entire life flash through his mind—not his memories, but his comprehension. He felt the decades of painstaking research into necrotic arts, the breakthrough moment of opening the pinhole to the Netherworld, the intricate, elegant structure of the Grey Rot curse. It was a torrent of raw, unfiltered knowledge.
Simultaneously, the Bone Sage's vast spiritual energy, refined by the laws of death, was siphoned away, directly into his transformed Nascent Soul. It was a feast. His soul, already powerful, grew denser, stronger. The microscopic cracks on the barrier to the Spirit Emperor realm began to widen, the path to his breakthrough becoming clearer than ever before. He could feel himself standing on the absolute precipice of a new world of power. The final push was all that was needed.
"He's... absorbing him," Elder Lihua whispered, her voice trembling. As a healer, she understood the sanctity of the life force and the soul. What she was witnessing was the ultimate violation, a form of spiritual cannibalism that defied all known laws of cultivation.
Sun Ling could only watch, her face pale. The raw, dark power radiating from Wei was a terrifying, magnetic thing. It was evil, her every instinct screamed it, but its efficiency, its absolute purpose, was undeniable.
The process took a full ten minutes. When it was over, nothing remained of the Bone Sage but his tattered robes and his storage ring. He had been completely and utterly consumed.
[Target confirmed deceased. Cause of death attributed to Host's poison.]
[System Notification: Host has successfully absorbed a cultivator via 'Soul Rend Toxin'. A new method of point and knowledge acquisition has been unlocked.]
[Calculating Rewards...]
[Target Cultivation: Spirit King Realm, Law Domain Stage.]
[Host has received: 120,000 Sovereign Points.]
[Host has received: Fragmented Inheritance - 'The Bone Sage's Necrotic Arts'.]
[Host's cultivation has reached the absolute peak of the Spirit King Realm (Law Manifestation). Host is ready for breakthrough.]
Wei stood up, his eyes closed for a moment as he organized the chaotic flood of new knowledge in his mind. He now understood the Necrotic Anchor, not as an outsider, but as its creator did. He knew its every rune, its every energy channel, its every failsafe. He also knew that the tower's core contained the final ingredient he needed to step into a new realm of existence.
He turned his attention to the pulsating bone tower. "The anchor must be dismantled from within," he said to his companions, his voice betraying none of the immense changes that had just occurred within him. "Jin, guard the entrance. Do not let anything in or out. Lihua, Sun Ling, remain here. Your life-force auras will disrupt the delicate work that must be done."
He walked alone towards the tower, the swirling necrotic mist parting before him as if recognizing a new master. He entered the dark, crack-like opening and descended into the tower's core.
The inside was a hollow, cathedral-like space. In the center, suspended in the air, was a pulsating, black orb the size of a carriage. It was a tear in the fabric of reality, the pinhole to the Netherworld, and raw, chaotic death energy poured from it. This energy was being drawn into the bone tower itself, which acted as a massive, runic filter, refining the chaotic energy before feeding it into the curse array that spread out beneath the cavern floor.
This was it. The final piece.
He did not immediately begin to dismantle the array. First, he sat cross-legged on the floor, directly beneath the Netherworld orb. He placed his palm on the central pillar of the tower. "Recall," he commanded.
The array, now under his control, began to work in reverse. A deep, resonant purple light pulsed from the tower as the vast, stored energy of the curse was drawn back out of the land, pulled from every petrified tree, every blade of grass, and every silent, stone victim. The energy flowed back into the tower, where it was refined and condensed at the base of the pillar. A single, perfect, black pearl began to form, growing larger by the second. This was the 'Heart of the Curse', the crystallized essence of the entire Grey Rot plague.
As the pearl formed, Wei did not take it. Instead, he began to draw upon the power of the Netherworld orb above him. He used his own Nascent Soul, now brimming with the Bone Sage's power, as a conduit. A stream of pure, unrefined necrotic energy flowed from the orb, not into the tower, but directly into him.
This was the final, most dangerous step. This energy was not refined like the Bone Sage's; it was raw, chaotic, and utterly hostile to life. But Wei's soul was no longer a vessel of life. It was a vessel of poison, of a refined and ordered death. His soul met the chaotic energy of the Netherworld not as a victim, but as a sovereign.
He began to devour it.
His spiritual sea became a raging tempest. The shadowy form of his Nascent Soul began to glow with a black light, consuming the chaotic energy and using it as fuel to hammer against the barrier of the Spirit Emperor realm. The cracks on the barrier widened, spreading like a spiderweb. With a final, deafening internal roar that was heard by no one but himself, the barrier shattered.
His spiritual sea expanded tenfold, a hundredfold. The very nature of his energy changed. It was no longer just the energy of a Spirit King; it was deeper, more profound, tinged with the power to warp space and touch the void itself. His Nascent Soul underwent a final transformation, solidifying completely, and from its shadowy form, two points of cold, intelligent light ignited—its eyes had opened.
He had broken through. He was now a Spirit Emperor, at the initial Void Shattering stage.
[System Notification: Congratulations, Host! Breakthrough successful.]
[Host has advanced to the Spirit Emperor Realm (Void Shattering Stage).]
[All Host abilities have been enhanced. 'Domain of Silent Death' has evolved into 'Domain of Abyssal Stillness'.]
[New 'Mythical' category in the System Store is now unlocked.]
The breakthrough sent a shockwave of power through the tower. The Netherworld orb, its connection now completely devoured by Wei, flickered and collapsed, sealing the pinhole to the other realm. The bone tower, its power source and its master gone, began to groan, massive cracks spreading across its surface. It was about to collapse.
With his new power, Wei simply reached out a hand. Space warped around the 'Heart of the Curse', and the black pearl vanished, teleported directly into his inner world. He then took a single step, and the world around him dissolved into a blur of shadows. He reappeared outside the cavern entrance, a full second before the entire subterranean structure imploded, burying the tower under millions of tons of rock and earth.
He emerged into the grey light to find his companions staring at him, their faces pale. They had felt the terrifying, world-ending pressure of his breakthrough, even from miles away. They did not know what it was, only that the man who had entered the cavern was not the same one who had come out. His power was now so profound, so deep, that they could no longer even properly gauge its depths. He had to actively suppress his aura to keep from bringing them to their knees.
"It is done," Wei said, his voice now carrying a faint, spatial echo. "The anchor is destroyed. The curse will no longer spread."
"But what of the victims?" Elder Lihua asked, her voice filled with a desperate hope. "With the curse gone, will they recover?"
Wei shook his head, his lie now more necessary than ever. "The transformation is complete. Their life force is gone. They will remain as stone forever." He saw the despair on her face and Sun Ling's. "However," he added, "the curse was created from a specific law of necrosis. Now that I have dismantled the anchor and understand its principles, I believe I can create a counter-agent. A specific type of solvent that can break down the petrified material without destroying the underlying physical structure. It will not restore their life, but it will return their bodies. It will allow them to be buried."
It was a perfect excuse. A miraculous cure from a newly advanced cultivator would be suspicious. A limited, merciful "solvent" was a believable act of compassion from the grim Poison Elder.
"You can do that?" Lihua asked, her eyes wide.
"I believe so," Wei said. "It will take time to brew. Let us return to the sect."
The journey back was a somber one. Wei had the knowledge he needed, the power he craved, and the materials for his future research. He had single-handedly ended a provincial-level catastrophe and had stepped into a realm of power his peers could only dream of. And no one would ever know that he had done it by consuming the soul of a heretic and devouring a piece of the Netherworld itself.