Chapter 2167: Tower Boy

“Leave! This tower is mine!”

The hoarse and rasping roar shook the surrounding void, merging with the constant whispering around them. The sound pierced into Shang Xia’s mind like an awl, stabbing straight at his sea of consciousness.

"An assault on my soul?" Shang Xia was slightly surprised, but far from alarmed.

The opponent’s revealed strength was merely that of a mid-level Sage, and though his spiritual attack seemed to share the same strange resonance as the strange whispering, such power was insignificant before Shang Xia, whose divine soul was nearly perfected.

After all, even the eerie whispers themselves could not harm him, how could a mere imitation of their power pose a threat?

In the instant he deflected the assault, Shang Xia countered. His divine soul condensed into an incorporeal strike, a manifestation of his Divine Killing Spear. Even without a weapon, he unleashed the powerful strike.

Shang Xia’s Divine Killing Spear pierced and annihilated his enemy’s soul.

The shriveled cultivator before him froze as his soul was shredded, his body collapsing backward.

Shang Xia raised an eyebrow, realizing that he might have just done something that played right into the hands of the strange whispers.

Sure enough, the fallen man’s body jerked upright in a grotesque motion. The clarity in his eyes faded rapidly, yet his dull gaze locked stubbornly on Shang Xia. Step by step, he began to approach again.

The sight was not unfamiliar. Shang Xia had just recently faced a swarm of similar corpse-like beings who tried to surround him.

The two clashed once more, but this time, Shang Xia swiftly gained the upper hand.

After a moment’s thought, he refrained from killing the man. Instead, he unleashed his Five Element Annihilation Yin Yang Ring, imprisoning the withered cultivator in place.

Ignoring the captive’s increasingly desperate screams, Shang Xia turned and calmly walked toward the towering spire more than 3,000 feet tall.

At first, nothing seemed unusual. But when he came within several feet of the tower’s entrance, he stopped abruptly, a faint frown forming on his face.

The ever-present whispers in his ears, he realized, had grown quieter.

And thinking back, he recalled that the closer he drew to the tower, the fainter the whispers had become.

Yet he did not feel that the tower itself suppressed them. It was more as if the source of the whispers had deliberately weakened, almost anxiously, as if afraid that he might not go inside.

His gaze sharpened as he examined the tower once more. Extending his divine soul, he scanned every inch of its surface. When he tried to probe within, however, he met with strong resistance. Forcing his perception deeper, he found it distorted, returning only fragments of bizarre, incomprehensible impressions.

“To truly understand what’s happening inside, must I go in myself?”

A smirk tugged at his lips. With a casual sweep of his sleeve, he raised his arm and slashed downward at the towering spire.

"Why bother entering? If I destroy it, won’t I see just as clearly?"

The towers of the Pagoda Forest were said to be unbreakable, but Shang Xia intended to test that claim.

Clang...

There was no grand explosion, only a sharp ring of steel as a streak of sword light burst from his raised arm and struck the massive spire.

Shang Xia lowered his hand and stepped back two paces, lifting his gaze toward the immense structure. The tower appeared untouched.

Had his strike truly done nothing?

On the outside, he remained calm. Yet behind him, the withered cultivator, who had been struggling violently while bound, suddenly went silent.

Shang Xia turned to look. The man’s body, still bound by the martial intent, was disintegrating.

He opened his mouth as if to speak, but his tongue and lips dissolved into dust before any sound could escape. The last trace of clarity in his eyes shattered and vanished.

Before Shang Xia could make sense of it, a crisp sound drew his attention back.

Crack!

From the point where his sword light had struck, fractures began to spiderweb across the tower. Within moments, the cracks multiplied beyond count, and the colossal structure collapsed completely.

Shang Xia’s figure rose higher into the air as the fragments drifted outward instead of falling, scattering through the void like floating ash.

Hovering over the spot where the tower had once stood, he sensed it immediately. The precise point where the surrounding origin qi was being drawn together.

He descended to that spot, and in his mind, the Crimson Soul Tablet began to absorb the surrounding origin qi that had been released.

This time, Shang Xia had successfully taken the place of the tower itself.

The absorbed energy no longer gathered into the tower, it was drawn wholly into the tablet.

Though curiosity lingered about what purpose the towers served after absorbing origin qi, or why the withered cultivator had been so desperate to protect his own, Shang Xia chose not to dwell on it. He focused instead on letting the Crimson Soul Tablet draw in as much as possible.

Before long, the tablet had completed the collection of all eight distinct origin qi required for his rank eight advancement formula. The excess energy he gathered afterward would serve as his reserves.

Meanwhile, new text appeared upon the tablet’s surface, expanding its projection of the formula.

Advancement Medicine: Eight Trigrams Immortal Golden Pill

Prerequisite: Grand Completion Stage of the Seven Star Realm

Main Medicine: Eternity Artifact

Secondary Medicine:

Auxiliary Medium: Starlight Curtain (9.9 x 3.3 feet)

Required Medium: Origin qi from different Star Fields (8/8)

Remarks: Martial Intent suitable for current cultivation realm (5/7), Soul at the grand completion stage.

Compatibility: -

Success Rate: -

Shang Xia stared at the Eternity Artifact listed under the main medicine and fell into deep contemplation.

From what he could think of, its appearance was less the result of the tablet’s deduction and more a new revelation unlocked after it absorbed the origin qi from all eight foreign Star Fields.

And the reason the tablet had deduced the term so quickly was likely because of the Star Origin Lord, who, before many witnesses, called the Crimson Soul Tablet an Eternity Artifact.

The Crimson Soul Tablet’s true body had always existed within his sea of consciousness, yet it had never once included itself in any of its advancement formulas. Shang Xia suspected it was because it had never been fully repaired.

𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

Even now, after he had collected the origin qi and world origin of so many Essence Worlds and the eight Star Fields, the tablet still contained faint cracks so fine that even his divine soul could barely detect them.

Those hairline fractures were proof that it remained incomplete.

Still, his instincts told him that the tablet’s full restoration was near, perhaps only awaiting a single opportunity.

As his attention turned toward perfecting his final two martial intents that had yet to reach perfection, the destruction of the tower had already stirred a reaction.

From the distant Pagoda Forest, he started to detect some movement. Those soulless, whisper-driven beings, and perhaps other things lurking even deeper, had sensed the change.

To that, Shang Xia remained perfectly calm. In fact, he began to feel a faint anticipation for what might come next.

At the edge of his vision and divine soul, vague silhouettes flickered in the haze, hovering, circling, but never daring to draw any closer.