Trials of the Abyss

Chapter 246: Breaking Fundamental Rules

The giant beehive produced a pupa while I was in Spirit Offering!

Pang Jian deduced this first pupa was likely a Bee Sovereign.

The queen would then likely nurture whatever pupae appeared after.

Its absorption speed is astonishing!

Pang Jian's one hundred and twenty-eight strands of divine sense had shrunk significantly in the brief time he was lost in thought.

His blood essence was also being consumed at an alarming rate!

Pang Jian hastily took out a Soul Nourishing Pill and gulped down buckets of blood from Vicious Beasts right there in the sea of dust to keep himself in optimal combat condition.

***

Back at the previous battlefield, a large stone, wrapped in layers of blood and flesh, floated up from a pile of bones and hovered eerily in mid-air.

Scrunch!

As the flesh covering the stone slowly tightened and fused, the beautiful female face of the statue became increasingly refined and lifelike.

An entity not of this world started to manifest through a blood-soaked process in the stillness of the night.

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!

Several stone spider legs and fragments of a stony spider's body floated up from the ground.

The entity used its power to reconnect the legs to its body in an attempt to form a flawless whole.

Its eyes rippled with waves of light as it searched for a living body to extract flesh from, but none could be found.

It could not reattach the broken pieces of its body and legs unless it had more flesh.

At the moment, the Outer God only had a beautiful woman's face. Its remaining spider legs and body were still made of stone.

The entity floated away from the blood-soaked land in search of new prey, a fleshy head floating among large stones.

***

Hundreds of li away, a ten-zhang-tall wooden figure walked alone across the desolate land.

Its vaguely humanoid form was carved from wood, with slightly blurred facial features and stiff limbs.

What distinguished it from a regular wooden statue were its grayish-brown eyes—eyes filled with the aura of death and decay.

With a glance, the plants, insects, and birds it gazed at shriveled up and died in an instant.

Tap! Tap! Tap!

Its wooden legs struck the cold, hard ground of Spirit Offering like the tolling of a death knell.

A wave of decay rippled out from it, though the range was limited to within thirty zhang.

A group of heretical cultivators engaged in a dispute noticed the wooden figure wandering through the desolate wilderness and reverently bowed down in worship.

It shook its head.

Its sinister eyes brimmed with the aura of decay as they swept across the heretical cultivators.

The group of heretical cultivators were drained of their life force, falling dead to the ground one after another.

***

In a deep valley within the restricted area, a tattered dark yellow banner fluttered in the wind as it drifted out from an altar that had crumbled into hundreds of pieces.

The cloth of the banner had dozens of holes and looked like sharp blades had stabbed through it all over.

Suddenly, the holes turned into eerie eyes.

It was as if beings from another world were peering through the holes in the banner, using them to observe this strange world.

As the banner fluttered in the wind, strange murmurs echoed from the eyes within the holes. It was like countless mysterious beings were exchanging insights—or perhaps the clashing thoughts of a single God, quarreling with itself.

***

Back at the sea of dust, Pang Jian wearily swallowed another Soul Nourishing Pill, allowing the pupa within the bronze pendant to continue draining his mental energy.

Whenever he sensed that he was out of blood essence, he would consume the meat and blood of high-ranked Vicious Beasts to keep himself going.

He poured all his resources into nurturing the pupa.

It was impossible to tell how long this process lasted or how many Soul Nourishing Pills and buckets of blood he consumed.

Finally, the Bee Sovereign, still in its pupa form, ceased its insatiable demands for mental energy and blood essence.

It then sent a faint, unclear message, pleading for Pang Jian to collect divine consciousness.

Pang Jian had not fully recovered and was still feeling slightly dizzy.

He had no idea what divine consciousness was.

When he tried to ask the pupa, he found it had become dormant and was no longer responding.

Divine consciousness—could it be like the divine sense in my sea of consciousness? No, if that were the case, it wouldn't need me to collect it.

If it's divine, then maybe it's something only Gods possess.

Could it be?

Pang Jian formed a bold hypothesis.

After regaining most of his energy and combat strength, Pang Jian resumed his activities in Spirit Offering.

Before long, Pang Jian came across a destroyed wooden statue carved from dark green tree roots.

It was a God from another world.

There were no corpses around the wooden statue and it showed no obvious abnormalities.

I think it's safe to try.

Pang Jian approached and used the bronze pendant to touch the broken piece of the wooden statue.

Bang!

The dark green piece of wood disintegrated into a flurry of wood shavings.

A near-imperceptible wisp of energy escaped the wood shavings and was absorbed into the bronze pendant.

It works!

Pang Jian used the Gate of the Abyss to tap all the pieces of the wooden statue he could find.

As the wood turned to powder, Pang Jian noticed the pendant was absorbing faint traces of energy.

Could this be what the pupa referred to as divine consciousness?

Pang Jian searched Spirit Offering with renewed excitement and caution.

He tested every altar, stone statue, and wooden carving along the way with the bronze pendant.

Some disintegrated into dust upon contact, releasing faint wisps of energy for the pendant to absorb.

Unfortunately, the bronze pendant did not affect most of them as they contained no divine remnants.

Perhaps some Gods couldn't withstand the passage of time and perished in another world, Pang Jian speculated.

One day, after reducing another wooden statue to dust using the bronze pendant, a mysterious force quietly flowed into his sea of consciousness.

A new strand of divine sense emerged from one of his acupoints within his sea of consciousness!

Pang Jian's total number of divine senses suddenly increased from one hundred and twenty-eight strands to one hundred and twenty-nine!

He had just broken one of the fundamental rules of cultivation!

Once a cultivator in the Profound Abode Realm established their total number of divine strands in the early stage, it became fixed and could not be altered.

However, despite being a cultivator in the middle stage of the Profound Abode Realm, he had just manifested an additional strand of divine sense as a result of the bronze pendant's absorption of divine consciousness!

This defied the established rules for Profound Abode Realm cultivators!

Every additional ten strands after one hundred strands is like entering a whole new realm. I'm at one hundred and twenty-nine strands right now. If I can gather one or two more, I'll surpass the threshold of one hundred and thirty strands...

Pang Jian's heart surged with excitement.

According to Ye Fei, no one in the Second World had surpassed the threshold of one hundred and thirty strands of divine sense while in the Profound Abode Realm in the past eight hundred years.

The newfound existence of divine consciousness and the mysterious properties of the bronze pendant gave Pang Jian a glimmer of hope.

I have to keep trying!

Over the next two days, Pang Jian eagerly searched for broken altars and statues within Spirit Offering.

He then condensed another strand of divine sense with the newly absorbed divine consciousness.

One hundred and thirty strands!

Joy danced in Pang Jian's eyes.

He stumbled onto the fragments of a Gilded Chariot from the Star River Alliance a day later

A massive hand rested on the ground, with its palm facing upward.

The massive hand was constructed from the bones of some massive beast.

At a glance, the uniquely shaped altar looked like a massive hand reaching out from the depths of the earth.

A familiar figure sat in the palm of this massive hand.

It was Xie Xiwen of the Star River Alliance.

Chunks of fingers from the massive hand lay scattered around the altar.

Shen Lei's body also lay nearby.

Contented smiles stretched across the faces of the corpses of two Star River Alliance elders.

Despite the eerie atmosphere, the graceful Xie Xiwen sat quietly in meditation, seemingly unbothered.

Her expression was peaceful, and her body radiated a strong vitality.

Pang Jian cautiously approached, ready to flee at a moment's notice.

Suddenly, her long lashes trembled. It seemed she was about to awaken from her meditation.

A look of agony crossed her face. She appeared to be enduring unbearable torment as some terrifying force drove her body and mind to their limits.

Her lips quivered as she tried to speak, but no sound emerged.

Despite the lack of sound, Pang Jian could clearly read the words on her lips.

"Help me, help me, someone please save me!"

Boom!

Pang Jian's head throbbed like hammers were pounding against his skull.

The pain nearly drove him to the brink of a mental collapse.

He froze in his tracks, then slowly backed away, step by step.

His eyes stayed fixed on Xie Xiwen as he whispered bitterly, "I'm sorry, I can't help you. I'm not willing to risk my life."

Xie Xiwen had shown him rare kindness and was one of the few willing to speak up for him in the Primordial Wilderness.

But he simply was not capable of offering any assistance.

Xie Xiwen's lips moved again.

"Little Brother."

Her voice was soft and gentle.

An icy chill gripped Pang Jian when he noticed she had opened her eyes. They shone with a silver glow as they gazed knowingly at him.

Under the starlit sky, her demeanor seemed ethereal and otherworldly, like a celestial fairy.

Pang Jian dared not admire her nor show the slightest hint of disrespect. He continued retreating without pause.

She patted the spot beside her and smiled warmly. "Won't you come sit with me? Let's chat for a bit."

Her melodious voice carried a seductive allure that made it hard to resist. Listening to her left Pang Jian dizzy like he was drunk.