Pain.
It was all Di Tanxue could feel.
It was a pain akin to thousands of ants violently biting onto his body and devouring it bit by bit. To be honest, Di Tanxue would've preferred it if they were actual ants but unfortunately they weren't.
The Oceanic Fragment was an amalgamation of thousands upon thousands of souls belonging to the phantoms, a race unique to Crimson Echo, the planet they lived upon.
To swallow such an object was as good as inviting these souls to devour his body and to become a part of him.
It was a mutation. It was a metamorphosis. It was also an evolution into a higher lifeform.
"Serves you right, you lunatic, tsk."
Watching Di Tanxue writhe in agony the woman clicked her tongue with regret.
"What a waste;*
Shaking her head, she gave Di Tanxue one last look and left the underground passage.
There was no point in staying here for the time being now that the Oceanic Shard was gone, there was a high likelihood of the World's gaze being concentrated on this location in a short while. As long as one wasn't tired of living, they wouldn't want to be noticed by the World.
Left behind, Di Tanxue let out a silent sigh of relief despite the pain he was in.
The immediate danger was taken care of, fortunately.
Standing up somehow with a trembling body, he crawled towards the exit of the passage.
As one of the secret passages connecting the Lunar-Spark palace to the wilderness outside, he was sure the inquisitors from the church and the Jade Dragon Pavillion would be here soon to search for any individuals that might've escaped.
He wasn't as afraid of being devoured by the phantoms as much as he was of being discovered by the church, or even the other two hegemons for that matter.
A tinnitus ringing in his mind, his vision turning red from exhaustion, pain and something else. Di Tanxue somehow managed to reach the end of the passage and venture a distance into the wilderness when his body finally gave in.
Falling down on the grassy field in an unknown portion of the wilderness. Di Tanxue silently gazed up at the night sky feeling his body liquify bit by bit and be corroded into blood elemental essence.
It would be an understatement to call it just painful but it was also not as horrifyingly tormenting as having the quintessential qualities of his body be sucked dry.
Di Tanxue was a nineteen years old young man, a person who had been sold to the market at the mere age of eleven and was bought within the same month by the Ling Family, the overlord of the Lunar-Spark Palace to be used as a blood cauldron.
Having spent eight long years as a blood cauldron, it could be said that he had a certain degree of resistance to pain, especially the pain related to his dantian. Heck, the number of times he had experienced his dantian being destroyed could be counted in double figures.
In comparison, feeling himself being corroded into blood elemental essence was… strangely euphoric. He could actively sense himself becoming a part of something grand and nearly omnipotent.
It was a sensation comparable to a child being embraced by her mother. Peaceful, serene and above all else, safe and secure. It offered such comfort that one would find themself giving in to this feeling with no resistance.
Di Tanxue himself would've surrendered to it if not for the foreknowledge of what it would entail. He had not survived all the pain and suffering for the last eight years just so he could watch his sense of self be erased and be merged with something cursed at this moment right?
Heh. Letting out a scoff, he turned his mind away from the near hypnotic sensation and concentrated onto his lower dantian.
Approximately three finger-widths below the navel, in an ethereal state of existence was a tiny point of space housing a whole subspace roughly two meters in diameter.
It was the lower dantian. A semi-artificial organ of sorts used by the cultivators of Immortality to store their elemental essence reserves.
Just like any other second stage Mortal Transcendence cultivator, there was a tiny elemental pond filled with elemental essence of a single type occupying the middle of his dantian.
Di Tanxue was a practitioner of the elemental path of blood among the seventeen elements as such his essence pond was made up entirely of blood essence. But it wasn't the elemental pond that he was concerned with, instead it was a three-section rocky pillar suspended above the pond that had his full attention.
With an eye-catching engraving adorning its upper sections and the middle and bottom section having just a plain rocky surface, the pillar appeared to be somewhere between the points of being real and illusory, seemingly as if still incomplete.
Still, if anyone were to witness the presence of this pillar inside Di Tanxue's lower dantian they would be left completely and utterly speechless.
Anchor!
It was an actual Existential Anchor inside the dantian of a puny second stage Mortal Transcendence weakling!
More surprising however was the existence of the engraving on the anchor's upper section. It depicted a humongous feline Beast with an arrogant(?) smile amidst shattering earth and a crumbling heavens.
The engraving gave off the impression that even if heavens or earth were to cease their existence one day, the feline Beast would still remain standing tall with an intact body and soul.
Blood-Severing Beast the Unconquered!
The engraving actually contained a likeness of a super big-shot from the ancient past!
In simpler words, Di Tanxue owned an inheritance straight from the Blood-Severing Beast. And it was from this very inheritance that Di Tanxue hoped would help him somehow survive his current predicament.
"Huu.."
Letting out a sigh to muster his courage, he let go of all the sub-conscious resistance he had held against the complete formation of his anchor and finally merged his entire being to it.
An anchor or rather an Existential Anchor is the culmination and collective of everything that represented a person's being and their very existence.
The manifestation of an anchor was a significant feat that only those at the seventh stage Mortal Transcendence could achieve, yet Di Tanxue had deliberately kept himself from achieving a full manifestation despite having a chance to do so as a second stage newbie.
He had simply never tried as it would cause too much of a ruckus which in turn would alert the ones keeping him captive and make his already miserable life as a blood cauldron come to an even more miserable and unfortunate end.
Who would want to have their body be chopped into pieces and be used to boost somebody else's strength?!
Laughing in amusement at his own misery, Di Tanxue finally completed the full manifestation of his Existential Anchor and the world came to an immediate halt as if in awe of this spectacle.