Michael did not feel anything in his zen state. He was comprehending the laws at an inconceivable pace. Due to this reason, he did not even feel being buried alive. His body had been damaged beyond recognition and the curse was still ravaging it.

His soul was without any motion - no different from a collection of death energy. This had fooled Ragnar completely.

For a few days, he was constantly inferring the second chapter of life scripture. It was only after 3 days that he finally came back to his surroundings. The reason for that was simple as well - he had thoroughly comprehended the entire second chapter!

The good fortune of this state could be explained by the following comparison. For comprehending the first chapter, Michael took 9 years along with the support of law lake and several medicines and resources. The second chapter, which for all intents and purposes, was much more difficult than the first one. For him to fully comprehend it in just three days was thanks to the state he had reached. It was due to the pressure of death hanging on his head that he managed to reach that state.

This was the exact definition of profiting from a disaster.

After Michael's soul became normal, he used his perfect persona blessing and stimulated his life force. His body, which did not possess any signs of life suddenly started transforming.

All his dead and rotting flesh started to transform and become resurrected. His blood that had dried in his veins became resplendent and started flowing. His different organs started functioning and his heart started beating as well. The curse still tried to stop his body but the vigorous life force was like a prehistoric beast raging to burst out! The curse was repeatedly pushed back and his power started exploding inside his body.

His vital force had ignited! This was the mark of a saint. The vital force was actually related to the life force. Vital force was pretty much the healing power of the body. Igniting the vital force was the same as boosting the healing power of the body. The Saints basically stimulated their life force which increased their healing capacity and improved their body functioning. But this was pretty much a one time deal. Once a person stimulated their life force, they would improve their body significantly and further improvements became more and more difficult.

Michael's method was basically controlling and creating life force. Thus, he could gain the maximum benefits out of his breakthrough. His improvements with the breakthrough were the highest possible for anyone else. Also, his healing power was corresponding to the life force in his body. Thus, his healing power was simply blasting out! In just a few minutes, he was properly resurrected!

The curse was pushed back and was concentrated slowly towards his chest. The curse energy was almost being phased out of his body. But at the moment, Michael did not eject the curse but rather started to use his soul energy to absorb it! The curse had many different foundations but the most important was the death flower that grimjoy personally grew. It was a unique treasure of death. The death aura in the flowers was extremely concentrated. When mixed with the other poisons that Grimjoy only knew, it became a very powerful curse. But now, the curse had stayed in his body for three days and the poison had dried and disintegrated leaving behind concentrated death aura. For Michael, this was a way to break through to the sublime soul realm!

Absorbing the death aura was a slow process but Michael could not really do anything else. Reaching the sublime soul realm was necessary to stand his ground against immortals with soul guards. He had quite a terrible experience of almost dying due to soul-guards already. Thus, he diligently kept on absorbing the death aura from the curse.

It took him a full month to completely absorb the curse energy. At this point, his soul was overflowing with death aura and his body was completely filled with exceptionally powerful life force. He concentrated the death aura in his soul and attacked the bottleneck to reach sublime-soul. The pressure in his soul increased like crazy before his soul-cultivation evaporated into mists and merged with his soul.

Sublime Soul Realm.

The power of his soul increased rapidly and his soul became comparable to perfect-soul-realm.

After attaining the breakthrough, Michael finally rose up from beneath the ground. His clothes were muddy and he was extremely dirty carrying a stench of death. But, the life force in his body was boiling.

This was a transformation in Michael's life. He had managed to reach the sublime-soul-realm. Now, he no longer had to bear the constant pain of soul-cultivation. And he could feel it - the reason for 18 years of pain. The Styx-incarnation-art.

He could now convert his soul into the image of the underground river of death - river Styx!

As soon as Michael attempted the transformation, the surroundings went dark! Light and life withered away like fleeting transience. A permanent and eternal aura came from Michael's soul and settled in the world. It was as if he was the incarnation of death - permanent and everlasting. If there was anyone around Michael at the time, they would have to bow to the majesty of death itself!

While he could not maintain this form indefinitely, it was enough for a fairly long fight. In terms of power, it was comparable to immortal-soul. Finally, Michael was confident in holding his own against anyone! In terms of cultivation-realms, he was still a bit below his previous peak. But he had a few trump-cards this time - the power of laws, powerful martial arts and the battle experience. Thus, his combat power was much higher than his previous life and Michael was confident of fighting even immortal-slayers.

As a test, he used the suicidal technique - Vitality Burning. Instantly, his life force seemed to burn and turn into pure energy that started flowing through his body. As soon as it happened, he used the life law to create more and more life force. It immediately formed a balance.

This was his trump card! While others could only use this method as a suicidal attack, Michael could use this technique for a protracted period. His realm increased like crazy - reaching the perfect realm and growing all the way to peak-perfect-realm. Michael could not breach the final bottleneck to reach the immortal realm just yet. This was not due to the limit of life force to burn but due to the limit of the technique of vitality burning. In fact, due to his enormous willpower, he had much more life force available to use. Using the perfect persona blessing, he could forcibly reach the immortal-realm as well. Though this was also not possible to sustain indefinitely and he would get tired as it put a strain on his conscient, but using both the things together, Michael could almost reach the power level of immortal body and soul. This was sufficient to do as he wanted in Aterna.

Michael's thoughts were running at full speed. He had pretty much risen from the dead and suddenly become much much more powerful.

While his being alive may not be a big secret, his power level was currently unknown to everyone else.

As long as he played his cards right, he could take care of multiple enemies in the shadows and establish his authority and leadership firmly in Aterna.

Thinking so, he headed to the direction of the neutral-empire. He planned to go back to his home.

The trip was extremely smooth. As a saint with almost inexhaustible life force, he was able to run tirelessly for months if need be. As long as his conscient was not too tired, his stamina would be there. As saints naturally ran at a much faster speed than emperor-realm experts, Michael's travelling speed was almost comparable to a flying steed.

He reached the nearest border city in a few hours. Initially, he was planning on getting dressed and revealing his identity. But passing in the streets, he heard that the elven immortal - Ragnar Lislechis had declared war on the Atrexia family. It seemed that the negotiations between the parties fell through. Rumour had it that Ragnar was asking for the defining treasure of humans as compensation but the Atrexias refused.

Michael cursed under his breath. Ragnar was way too unbridled. He was asking for too much. The human race had a defining treasure - called as the light of dawn. It was actually a jewel which had formed naturally and was given to the human ancestors by the god-beasts race to serve as a cornerstone for the entire race. The other major races had their own defining treasures as well. Whether a race had one or not decided if the race held any weight in the plane or not.

If Ragnar obtained the treasure, his power would grow to match Karslon or Kevin. It was only because the treasure had been refined by the blood of countless humans across the history of humanity that other race experts could not draw its full power. But an expert of the human race could.

It was a treasure that added the ability of light to the one who wielded it raising their realm by a full level. It meant that a perfect-realm expert could fight an immortal-realm expert evenly with it! All one needed was energy-crystals to power up the treasure. There was no backlash either. This was the reason why the king of humans needed to have perfect-realm cultivation base. Michael was definitely not going to let Ragnar succeed.

He needed to get the treasure before Ragnar could. Thus, wasting no time, he used vitality burning and perfect persona blessing to reach the immortal-realm prowess. He charged straight to the city lord mansion.

The rest was too easy. He was like an angry storm. No one could hold a candle to him and they were all blown back by the mere pressure of his movements. Most of the guards could only see him as a phenomenon and only saints could catch a blur. Even the city governor who was in perfect-realm could only make out an indistinct figure passing by.

Though he accumulated some injuries due to forcing his body, they were pretty minor as he had only improved his power by a single realm and not multiple realms. Also, the extra life force that he had was constantly healing his internal injuries so it was in total balance. He was indeed capable of exuding immortal-realm prowess as long as his conscient could hold on.

The city governor understood that an immortal-expert had visited the castle. He immediately contacted the headquarters for backup but there was no stopping the immortal in the meanwhile. In fact, the expert could easily kill them all and be on his way never to be caught. Thus, he did not do anything and waited for the immortal to do whatever he wanted.

Surprisingly, the immortal-expert only took his flying steed away. He even left behind a note saying that he would compensate for it later.

The governor heaved a sigh of relief. If they could give a flying steed to an immortal-expert, it was, in fact, a good thing. He did not know why this person needed a flying steed now and why he did not want people to know him, he did not bother with these things either. As long as the immortal-expert took notice of him, he would have a powerful backer in the plane.

As Ragnar's army was moving towards the Atrexia city, Michael too was heading towards the same location.