Yep, here I am again. The start of a new arc. I'm planning on making this one longer than the others COMBINED. Hopefully things go well. I might make the chapter a bit shorter, not too short, maybe around 1800-2100 instead of 2400+. I don't know if I'll ever write another 3800 word chapter again anytime soon ahaha...Anyway, sorry for the infodump-like chapter. It's quite necessary, because the seventh stage is a huge jump (though there is a little sneak peak into what happened within his soul). There's also some lore in there from Sol'keer's universe. Don't read too far into any of it, it's not significantly important. I'm going to start writing the next one after I'm done posting this one, so hopefully chapter 38 will be out either thursday or friday.

Enjoy.

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As Kyte was walking down the path toward the stadium, he silently sighed to himself. He never expected that he would become sterile after what happened. Or, maybe he isn’t sterile, but his body just lost that function? Kyte doesn’t know, and it doesn’t matter to him at the moment. However, knowing that he possibly can’t have children kind of depressed him.

That’s one of the most primitive and natural goals of everything in life - to create offspring. Now that Kyte knows that he won’t be able to possibly have children, he felt like he lost something. It’s not that big of deal to him, since he knows that once he reaches a high enough power level, he can create children without having to do the do. At least, that’s what he thinks.

He thought to himself that he’ll get over it in a few days. It’s not the end of the world, and it honestly doesn’t affect him significantly. The only thing he wants to focus on right now is understanding all of the new information within his head. It feels like that one thing you just can’t forget; it’s stuck in his mind and it’s quite hard to not let the information fully unlock. Now, however, he can let it all out and begin to sift through the information. Kyte has been waiting for this day for months, and now it has finally come.

After entering the stadium, and passing through the guards at the entrance, Kyte used Windwalker to move to the middle. As he looked around, he could see the devastation within the arena. All of the spectator seats were cracked or destroyed, there were large indents in the ground throughout the arena. There was one gigantic crater off to Kyte’s left, and Kyte himself could feel a residual energy wafting around it.

Yeesh, I did this? I wasn’t even physically conscious for any of it.

Kyte slowly exhaled after he sat down cross-legged. He closed his eyes and finally released his restraint on the information brought forth from breaking through into the seventh stage.

BOOM

It was like a dam being destroyed as information flooded into his mind. Skills, names, abilities, items, and other information rushed into his head. Kyte began to sweat from the overload of information that swirled within his mind. It took about an hour until he finally calmed himself down and sorted the information.

The seventh stage. It’s known as the first real step into becoming an Immortal. In Sol’keer’s universe, the universal name for the seventh stage was Saint. The name for the Bloodrage’s seventh stage was Blood Knight, but Kyte knows that he no longer follows the path of the Bloodrage Sect. One of the most infamous abilities of a Saint is flight. Lower stages were also capable of flight, however, their energy wasn’t powerful enough to sustain flight continuously for long periods of time. A Saint’s flight ability is ten-fold stronger than a sixth stage’s flight ability.

Another great asset for a Saint is there large increase in life span. On average, a Saint’s life span would increase by three hundred years. If a cultivator’s foundation was strong, their life span would increase even further. However, with these new positives comes a negative. The work required to breakthrough into higher stages is many folds higher than before. If it took someone fifty years to reach the seventh stage, it would take them five hundred years to reach the eighth stage without any luck. That’s how difficult it is to breakthrough if you don’t have massive amounts of luck and natural talent.

Another way to increase cultivation speed is by strengthening the soul. The more powerful a soul is, the faster one cultivates. However, the techniques to train the soul were extraordinarily rare in the Mortal plane. Only people that were supremely lucky to find a soul-practicing technique were able to train their souls. Other than that, an Immortal had to descend from the Heaven plane and give out the secret to soul-practice.

Once someone reaches the twelfth stage, they wait for their time to ascend into the Heaven plane. There’s a tribulation that they have to beat in order to ascend, though it isn’t that powerful. However, if someone purposefully mocks the tribulation, adds more participants to the tribulation, or is incredibly evil, then the tribulation increases in power. If someone ends up failing the tribulation, they either die or their soul miraculously survives and is able to wander in the Mortal plane until it dissipates into nothingness.

Kyte has no idea if there will be a tribulation once he reaches the twelfth stage. He’s part of an entirely different universe, so he has no clue. He doubted that Sol’keer would know, if he were awake to give an answer.

People who breakthrough into the seventh stage all require the minimum amount of knowledge in the Laws of the world. There are many different Laws, for example, the Water Laws, Fire Laws, Darkness Laws, Energy Laws, and many others. Each Law are seemingly boundless. People who ascend have never been able to fully comprehend a Law because they are so deep and immeasurable. However, by understanding a Law, the user would be able to apply their understanding to their cultivation. That includes their attacks and defenses. People are also able to comprehend more than one Law, though it’s better to train in only one because the more a Law is understood, the higher the power a person gains from it.

The Law that Kyte gained enlightenment in? Even he doesn’t know. If the same logic applies to his universe, then Kyte comprehended the beginning of a Law. If he does follow that logic, then that means that the black light most likely involves a type of Law within his own universe. Kyte’s curiosity only deepened, so he went ahead and submerged himself within the deepest part of his mind. He gained this ability because he had already been to the deepest level of his consciousness, and the final wall was even shattered before being repaired.

Within the lowest level was an ocean of black light. It spread out so far that Kyte couldn’t even see the end surprisingly enough. It was actually quite freaky, although it was within his own soul, because looking at the sea of black light gave him a deep feeling of emptiness. It was as if a void had opened up within him, quickly spreading throughout his body. Kyte willed himself to move closer to the ocean of black light, and then he touched it.

The black light behaved just as it normally did. Nothing happened, and of course Kyte couldn’t actually feel anything. However, it was still eerie. Staring into that endless ocean, completely void of color. Instead of being white, however, the ocean’s color was black.

Pushing down the small hint of fear within him, Kyte willed himself into the ocean of black light. Once he was submerged, he suddenly lost all sense of direction. The black light was completely dark and seemingly empty while being full; it was as if it was its own space within Kyte. Despite this, Kyte willed himself downward. If the direction he was going was downward.

The deeper Kyte went, the denser the black light became. Despite the complete darkness he was within, Kyte suddenly saw a small distortion far away from him. He willed himself toward it, not daring to let it out of his vision. Once he finally approached it, he was confused at what he was seeing.

In-front of him was a small sphere. It looked as if it was absorbing the black light, and the form of the sphere seemed to be either spatial distortions or just a weird reaction between it and the black light. As Kyte intensely stared at it, he saw a small, faint glow of light within the sphere. It was ever so faint, however, it was there. What this light was, Kyte had no clue. For now, Kyte only thought of getting out of there. The entire thing was too creepy for him, someone that didn’t like large bodies of water. He knows there’s nothing within the endless sea of black light, but his mind couldn’t help but involuntarily think of different things.

After a while, Kyte finally made it out. The ocean of black light was there, as still and silent as it could ever be. Its foreboding nature only made Kyte want to leave quicker. So, Kyte left his deep consciousness and began to go over the last parts of information.

Another unique ability only available to the seventh stage or higher is weapon and armor refining. By first forging a piece of equipment, the forger could then start the long process of fusing their Internal energy with the equipment. If the forger knew how to manipulate their soul, they could infuse Spiritual energy with it as well, creating an even stronger weapon or armor. This ability was mostly used by cultivators that didn’t have access to equipment that were forged by people of a higher stage. A cultivator’s weapons and armor were all very precious to them, especially if they forged them themselves.

However, Kyte doesn’t really need that because of his new equipment in the storage necklace. The first significant equipment was the Bloodcursed armor. It was personally forged by Sol’keer when he was at the ninth stage. In order to breakthrough into the tenth stage, he needed something that would greatly affect his Internal and Spiritual energy. When he finished the Bloodcursed armor, he directly broke through into the tenth stage. Thus, the Bloodcursed armor is a peak ninth stage armor. Though, Sol’keer never used it because he ended up forging a new set of armor because his power was much higher than before. Regardless, he kept his first Bloodcursed armor despite the many more powerful versions he forged.

The Bloodcursed armor gives supreme defense and offense capabilities. It has built-in formations that allow the Bloodcursed armor to harden itself by absorbing the blood within the user. Likewise, it’s able to explosively increase the user’s offense by absorbing the blood, purifying it, and then releasing the pure energy into the user. The more blood the user gives, the stronger the effects. Because of this, the fatigue builds faster within the user.

The only way to counter this would be to use blood from an outside source. The easiest way is just to kill surrounding people and use all of their blood to increase the defensive and offensive capabilities many folds higher than normal. Of course, by doing so, the user would sacrifice their sanity for their own personal power. Within the information that was given to Kyte, apparently it’s happened many times. People get too absorbed and drunk off their power that they finally snap, killing everyone around them. The most insane users murdered their entire families, their minds were completely consumed by the Bloodcursed armor.

Another piece of equipment that was significant was actually a ring. By fusing Internal energy with it, the user would be able to create waves of invisible energy that acted upon any object. The ring’s ability reminded Kyte of the Force, though the power from the ring is much more powerful. He can also use its power to interact with more than one object. Basically, the ring’s power grows with the user’s power, since with each higher stage the Internal energy becomes higher in quality. The ring’s name is Divine Hand Ring, mostly because it’s as if the user is grabbing objects with their hands.

Other than those two, there were a few other items that didn’t really suit Kyte. What surprised Kyte was that, instead of being gifted a weapon, he had to forge his own. However, the bad part about this was that it takes a long time to become proficient at forging. Even if Kyte was able to obtain some skill in forging, to create a weapon that suits his needs at the seventh stage would take too long. With all the information about basic, intermediate, and advanced forging, Kyte knew that there was no way he was going to become an advanced forger in order to forge his weapon. It would probably take a whole week just to be proficient at the basic level, let alone the advanced level. Kyte only has three weeks until he leaves for the Core, so there was no time.

One thing he could do was begin advanced formations. Information regarding all the basic needs and practices for advanced formations was inside his head, so he could definitely benefit from obtaining advanced formations. Apparently, advanced formations are supposed to last Kyte until he reaches at least the tenth stage. The tenth stage is where the power of advanced formations begins to dip compared to cultivators. That’s where Master formations begin; around the tenth stage and until ascension. There was no information about what came after ascension other than the name Heaven plane, so Kyte didn’t dwell on that subject.

Other than those items, and more formation information, there were three mysterious pills. When Kyte took one out of the storage necklace, he was completely shocked. The pill itself was a deep red and it looked like the inside was moving. On the pill casing was a black emblem in the shape a laughing demonic face. From the information, Kyte knew that this pill was called Inner Demon Pill. It’s a type of forbidden pill, created by the most evil cultivators. It takes over the user’s mind and makes their Internal energy go berserk, increasing their power by ten folds. If the user survives, they would drop a full stage without being able to absorb world energy for a whole year.

The aura given off by the pill was suffocating. The dense evil and wickedness made Kyte’s eyes slightly water, so he quickly put it back into the storage amulet. Kyte’s eyes felt like someone had squeezed lemon juice over them; that’s how bad the burn was. Beads of sweat rolled down the side of his face as it seemed like he was exhausted just from holding it in his hand. The power that single pill holds is immeasurable. Kyte doesn’t know if he would ever use it, but if he had no other options, he would.