The four point eight million units of refined spiritual energy settled into the foundations of Lin Xiao’s dantian. But his internal void was far from empty.
Floating beneath the swirling indigo clouds of his spiritual sea was a vast, underground pool of pale white light. Bound for three hundred years within the rotting marrow of the Nine-Ghost Cauldron, one hundred thousand fractured souls drifted in quiet mid-air.
They weren’t demons. They were mortal farm girls who had carried water buckets at dawn, gray-haired village elders who had told bedtime stories around hearth fires, mountain hunters who had stepped into demonic snares, young beast cubs whose clans had been butchered for pelts, and righteous fighters who had fallen defending frontier mountain passes. The Blood Sea Sect had pierced their ghostly throats with blood-spikes, sewing them together with sinew runes so their unending agony would generate the rotting yin-fire that powered the nine ghost dragons.
Now, stripped of their demonic bonds by the Primordial Chaos, they huddled together in the quiet warmth of Lin Xiao’s core. They shivered with the lingering memory of hundreds of years of terror.
Lin Xiao hovered above them, his azure mass softening into a gentle, welcoming dome.
“They look so tired,” Lin Xiao whispered into his sea of mind. “Look at them. Some of those beast cubs can’t be more than a few seasons old. That dried-up old maniac kept them trapped in the dark for three hundred years, burning them like charcoal in a fire.”
“The entities have sustained significant spiritual trauma, Host,” the Dao Spirit explained softly. “The blood-spikes have been dissolved. But the psychological imprints of their deaths remain etched into their soul matrices. In the standard training world, souls subjected to three hundred years of demonic refinement degrade into mindless wraiths, doomed to wander the Hungry Ghost Realm.”
“Not while they’re sitting in my kitchen,” Lin Xiao replied with quiet, stubborn determination. “Nobody leaves my house hungry, and nobody leaves in tears. Let’s draw them a warm bath.”
Lin Xiao focused his mind. From the deepest wellspring of his Primordial Chaos Core, he drew upon his inherent mastery over pure, living water essence.
He didn’t channel the high-pressure smooth-flowing cutting force he used in battle. Instead, he wove the soothing, stone-rich properties of mountain dew, sweet rainwater, and underground springwater into a warm, glowing mist.
The azure mist rolled across the sea of souls like a mother drawing a soft quilt over her sleeping children.
Wherever the water-mist touched a soul, the jagged black frost of demonic torment dissolved. A weeping mortal woman looked down at her hands. She watched the phantom scars of blood-burns vanish into radiant white skin. An old hunter touched his throat, finding the phantom iron collar melted away into fragrant peach blossoms. Beast cubs that had whined in shivering fear rolled onto their backs in the warm light, batting playfully at floating water droplets.
The cold, stone-hard agony that had choked these souls for three hundred years evaporated like morning frost beneath a midsummer sun.
“Soul matrix purification reached one hundred percent,” the Dao Spirit announced, her voice resonating with an uncharacteristic tone of gentle warmth. “The deep ring of the Great Six Paths Samsara has responded to your intent. The Golden Rebirth Gate is unsealing.”
High above the Myriad Spirit Safe hall, the mortal sky underwent an extraordinary transformation.
The warm autumn sunlight suddenly packed into a single, breathtaking pillar of crystal-clear white and golden light that dropped from the highest heavens. The pillar struck the center of Lin Xiao’s hovering sapphire body, lighting up his semi-clear core like a sky lantern.
Then, the souls began to climb.
They didn’t burst out in violent explosion. They rose like an endless, shimmering river of starlight, flowing upward through Lin Xiao’s open core into the sky.
Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of semi-clear white figures drifted through the golden pillar. They were dressed not in rags of blood, but in clean clothes of woven moonlight. Mortal mothers cradled smiling infants. Old farmers waved their straw hats with joyful grins. Young beast spirits leaped through the golden beams like fish jumping in a clear river.
Each soul passed through the golden pillar. Then, they turned toward the blue slime floating in the center of the heavens.
They didn’t offer words of terrifying power. They offered the pure, raw thanks of a hundred thousand rescued souls. They bowed with hands pressed together, their smiles streaming the peace of children who had finally found their way home after an eternity in the cold.
“Thank you, Sovereign,” a chorus of a hundred thousand voices echoed through the mountain basin, a sound like a million silver wind-chimes ringing across a meadow of wild lilies. “May your road be long, may your heart be calm, and may your springs never run dry.”
High in the clouds, the sky gateway of the Six Paths Rebirth Wheel appeared—a huge, rotating mandala of jade, gold, and lapis lazuli. The radiant river of souls flowed gracefully into the gateway’s loving embrace, vanishing into the eternal cycle of rebirth to begin new, innocent lives across the mortal worlds.
As the final soul stepped through the wheel, the gateway pulsed with blinding golden light.
A torrent of pure Karmic Merit—the ultimate, incorruptible virtue recognized by the Heavenly Dao itself—cascaded downward like a waterfall of liquid gold. The golden light soaked Lin Xiao’s sapphire core, coating every droplet of his jelly-like being with an iron-hard sheen of sky merit.
Nor did the blessing end with Lin Xiao.
The excess karmic virtue spilled over the edges of the heavens, transforming into a gentle, fragrant rain of glowing golden lotus petals that drifted down across forty miles of the Grand Lonely Forest.
Wherever a golden petal touched the earth, miracles unfolded.
Down in the safe hall’s agricultural terraces, the scorched turnip fields that had begun to blacken under Han Gu’s foul fog burst back into vibrant, emerald life. The turnips beneath the soil swelled to twice their normal size. It glowed with rich spiritual qi. Withered peach trees on the eastern slopes sprouted fresh white blossoms. The Clear-Stone River ran so clear and sweet that the pebbles on its bed shone like polished turquoise.
Down along the riverbanks, Elder Lu Da and the forty-two otters of the Silver-Stream Clan plunged into the foaming waters. The golden lotus petals melted against the surface. That turned the river into a shimmering lane of liquid jade. The otter pups leaped through the spray with joyful chirps. Their webbed paws splashed golden ripples across the reeds, laughing as old aches and spiritual scars from their flight southward were fully washed away.
On the castle walls, Tie Shan held out his star-iron palm. He watched a golden lotus petal dissolve into his metal skin. The jagged ache in his shoulder joint. It had plagued him for fifty years since his arm was cut, vanished in a wave of soothing coolness.
Beside him, Su Ling’er fell to her knees. Her nine fox tails shook as tears of pure, overwhelming thanks rolled down her cheeks. “Master...” she breathed, pressing her forehead against her clasped hands. “You saved them all. Not a single soul was lost to the darkness.”
In the detention pens, forty captured demonic scouts fell prostrate in the mud, sobbing so hard that their shoulders shook wildly.
“Karmic merit...” one demonic lieutenant cried. It clawed at his own chest as the lingering blood-rot in his veins was cleansed by the lotus rain. “He... He purified the Nine-Ghost Cauldron! He gave the souls peace! The Blood Sea Sect lied to us... There are gods in this world, and he’s a god of mercy!”
High atop his rapidly dissolving blood platform, Elder Han Gu witnessed the golden ascension with shattered eyes.
His jaw shuddered so wildly that a yellowed tooth worked loose, tumbling into the void.
“Karmic Merit...” Han Gu croaked, his voice cracking into a dry, breathless wheeze. “The Heavenly Dao is rewarding a water beast with the Merit of a Bodhisattva?! The souls I harvested... The souls that took me three hundred years of slaughter to collect... They’re gone! Entered into Samsara! How can this be?! How can the universe permit this?!”
Han Gu coughed wildly, vomiting another clot of dark blood as his lifespan shrank even further.
In the center of the golden sky, Lin Xiao hovered in pure, transcendent peace.
He watched the last golden lotus petal drift down toward the lower orchard. He felt a deep, deep warmth settling into the very foundation of his soul.
“That was nice,” Lin Xiao thought, a gentle smile rippling across his sapphire surface. “Everyone should be able to go home. No one should be stuck in an old kettle forever. Now, I think my belly is ready for whatever comes next.”
“Host’s karmic balance is now ranked at Total Apex Genesis,” the Dao Spirit chimed softly. “The saturation of the four point eight million qi units and five hundred thousand units of karmic merit has completed the squeezing threshold.”
Inside his dantian, the single point of ancient darkness flared with nine-colored sky light.
The Golden Core was ready to be born.