Immortal Kingdoms

Day 90.

Silent ripples danced about Leonardo's body as an invisible domain of energy expanded from his body.

This was a domain of death similar to that of Juvia's, albeit Leonardo's control over it wasn't as finite because he needed to split his attention between controlling the domain while simultaneously suppressing the essence of desolation.

The moment the domain was established, a rush of worldly energy gushed from Leonardo's cells following a preset pattern into the blade of his sword. It all happened in the blink of an eye. Leonardo's figure shuddered ever-so-slightly, blood trickled from his closed eyes and down his cheeks as he instantly unsheathed his sword.

It was a seamless, soundless strike.

Neither fast nor slow.

Neither smooth nor stagnating.

Neither fancy nor ordinary.

As the sword left its sheath and cut through the empty air in an arc, it seemed to lag twelve times, but it also seemed to strike instantaneously. Things happened so fast that it gave the illusion that the sword would blast the sound barrier, stop, and then blast through it all over again with even greater momentum than before.

Twelve successive sonic booms that echoed as they were one rumbled through the room. The next moment, the wall in front of Leonardo caved in as though struck by a full moon.

The indentation looked so smooth and clean-cut. With the moon were twelve deep gashes intersecting at its epicenter where an infinitesimally narrow hole formed. Then, water from the other side of the wall began to trickle through and into the room, very slowly at that.

On the other side of the wall, a shockwave traveled in the form of a full moon six feet in diameter, and the shockwave pushed through the deep lake waters for miles unhindered before blasting into an underwater clifside.

BOOM!

A loud explosion shook the lake. On the surface, a curtain of water erupted into the sky, catching the attention of many people. However, they simply attributed it to an aquatic monster playing around inside the lake.

…

Inside the cultivation room, Leonardo opened his eyes, allowing for even more blood to flow. Within his black irises were two vertical, dull gray pupils. Apparently, this was a transformation invoked by partially controlling the desolate martial intent instead of fully releasing it.

However, storing these reserves of death energy in his eyes, especially when Leonardo doesn't have any pupil arts to cultivate with, almost blinded him. This was an annoying drawback he deliberated over for a while now to no avail.

Only now when a fleeting thought about accidentally disturbing Juvia and Pandora with this sudden commotion did he recall something he overlooked for a while now, which was his mind's eye.

If he could cultivate his mind's eye into something similar to Juvia's soul seed but dedicated towards his multiple martial intents. Whatever excessive death essence he can't control, he will simply infuse into his mind's eye.

Wiping the blood off his face, Leonardo glanced over at the wall that initiated a self-repair mechanism. With a huge sense of accomplishment filling his heart, Leonardo sat down lotus style with the sword on his knees.

First, he needs to search for the feeling of Juvia's soul seed from when it was submerged in his sea of consciousness. Closing his eyes, Leonardo began to search in his memories for the sensation with meticulous care.

The entirety of his spirit, focus, and consciousness were invested in this endeavor. Leonardo sank deep into the mindscape of his sea of consciousness, exploring every corner of this ephemeral dimension to grasp a better understanding of this vast and empty space.

However, Leonardo was quickly confused because he couldn't find anything remotely close to a sea, this was simply an endless stretch of nothingness, save for the obvious spiritual fluctuations of the soul.

Not wanting to waste time, Leonardo began to gather and condense the energy of his soul as the blank mindscape began to roil over with spiritual fluctuations. However, Leonardo made a note to himself to further investigate the oddity of his sea of consciousness when an opportunity presented itself, perhaps after the matter with his soul seed is concluded.

If this concept proved fruitful, Leonardo would be able to passively store death essence energy and various other energies derived from his martial intent for a quick, efficient, and harmless release.

Leonardo didn't know this, but this would become one of his most renowned techniques in the future, and it would grow together with him in potential to become his first created immortal grade cultivation technique. In fact, this would become a technique that directly ignores someone's physical potential and focuses on the cultivation of their soul and spirit.

As usual, however, that was another matter for the distant future. As of right now, this technique is nothing but a trash concept undergoing its first stages of baptism in trial and error.

Leonardo's spiritual energy and soul buzzed, and the stagnant space of his blank sea of consciousness began to rumble as invisible waves of energy began to rush in from all corners, pouring into Leonardo's mind's eye at the epicenter of this space.

Since Leonardo had used his soul and desolate martial intent to scrutinize the soul seed in the past, it wasn't that difficult to form his own, improvised soul seed with the former as a catalyst.

…

Inside Leonardo's mindscape, his spiritual energy and soul were rumbling in constant motion.

A crystalline spherical pearl took shape under the molding of Leonardo's soul and spiritual energy. If this isn't the one-thousandth attempt, it probably isn't that far off. He didn't know how long exactly it had been as his sense of time within his sea of consciousness was quite muddled, but it surely wasn't a matter of a few days.

Whenever he reached the final phase of constructing the soul seed, the moment he relaxed his control over it, the power of his soul would slip away leaving the empty husk of spiritual fluctuations behind.

It's not that he hadn't thought of a method to fix it, but that method is nothing short of suicidal, he might even receive irreparable damage to his soul, making him into a crippled vegetable.

That's a risk he wasn't willing to take unless there was no other choice.

Apparently, he truly doesn't have any choice.

However, if he was to go through with it, might as well go big.

Leonardo took a deep breath and closed his eyes tightly, forming some peculiar hand seals. Then, his body began to tremble uncontrollably.

Within his mindscape, in the blank stretch of nothingness, three massive gates appeared.

One of the gates was dark as ink, wreathed in thin filaments of black lightning that streaked across its surface.

Another gate was crimson red and viscous blood trickled down its surface and poured into an open, eerie mouth with two sharp protruding fangs.

Another stone gate silently floated there without as much as a single fluctuation of energy. It seemed ancient, on the verge of collapse. However, it exuded a pressure that eclipsed the other two gates combined.

RUMBLE!

The space shook as vast reserves of spiritual energy surged toward the epicenter of the mindscape, pouring directly into the ephemeral mind's eye.

The three gates automatically moved and surrounded the mind's eye in a triangle formation. Then, as the spiritual energy began to shape the mind's eye into a translucent, crystalline pearl, the mindscape buzzed once more.

The three gates opened simultaneously as the essence of desolation, bloodthirsty, and thunderous poured down in consistent streaks of gray, crimson, and black, slowly merging into the crystalline pearl.

Leonardo's cells churned as endless energy poured from the outside world into them, and they in turn poured this energy into the gates, and the gates in turn poured this energy into the pearl.

Immortal chants filled Leonardo's mind as the image of a moon surfaced above the gate of desolation, the image of a sun surfaced above the gate of bloodthirsty, and the image of countless stars surfaced above the gate of the black thunderforce.

While Leonardo was unaware, an illusive black gate with a vibe of nothingness, an empty abyss that reflected the depths of Leonardo's vacant black eyes appeared above the triangular formation, an image of an endless void above it. However, this gate appeared for but an instant, its doors cracking open ever-so-slightly to pass down a strand of invisible energy before disappearing once more.

BUZZ!

Leonardo grit his teeth and began to forcibly tear his soul to merge it into the crystalline pearl to catalyze the creation of this soul seed. The blank white space began to crack and crumble, countless fissures extending into the distance.

Unimaginable pain wracked Leonardo's body, but he endured it. Blood trickled from his mouth, ears, nose, and eyes. However, he further endured it.

His mindscape began to crack and shattered, but Leonardo ignored it. Eventually…

BOOM!

An explosion went off in Leonardo's head, his skin cracked from the pressure and he felt as though his head split open. However, at that moment, he dropped unconscious.