The doors of the Mo Clan's armory swung open.
From the high, narrow window of the Archive of Refinement, Mo Jue watched the clan mobilize.
Dozens of elite guards, clad in thick leather and carrying lanterns were marching in rigid formation. At their head was Branch Head Mo Tian. The man was a volatile storm, his face a mask of rage. He held a massive halberd that hummed with Rank 3 power.
They were marching into the Northern Ravine, heading straight for the subterranean caves behind the black waterfall. They are hell bent on seeking vengeance.
Mo Jue watched them disappear into the forest. His expression was a portrait of indifference.
"Mo Tian has taken his best grafters and trackers" Mo Jue murmured. "The village's internal security is at its lowest point"
He turned away from the window and walked back into the depths of the restricted section.
Mo Jue had solitude.
He sat down in the center of the circular vault, the ancient stone tablets of the Mo Clan's history surrounding him. He closed his eyes, and the vertical slit on his forehead snapped open.
It was time to initiate the siege.
In the world of the Shattered Heavens, the path of the Dao Grafter or Vessel Master is trechorous. It was divided into nine absolute Ranks. The Mo Clan, in their centuries of isolated ignorance, viewed Rank 3 as the pinnacle of achievement and Rank 5 as the domain of myth.
But Rank 5 is not the true power.
Cultivation is not a gentle accumulation of energy. It is the subjugation of the pieces of Corrupted Dao. Every Rank was divided into four distinct stages:
Containment (Initial). The Initial phase where the host merely survives the same rank of phantom's presence.
Erosion (Middle). The Middle phase where the same rank phantom can still fight back to its host.
Subjugation (Upper). This is when the host has the upper hand in controlling a same rank horror.
Assimilation (Peak). This is when the same rank horror capitulates without needing to be forced.
Mo Jue, relying on his two millennia of demonic willpower, had completely bypassed the deadly Erosion and Subjugation stages of Rank 1. Currently, his Rank 1 state was already at the absolute Peak.
But Rank 1 was merely the foundation. It was known as Chamber Forging. The Reliquary gets refined, expanded, and fortified to act as a prison.
To advance to Rank 2, a Grafter had to construct a Ghost Pagoda.
"The Mo Clan teaches that advancement is a natural progression of age and breathing exercises," Mo Jue thought, a sneer curving his lips. "Uneducated. Advancement is an act of violent perseverance."
He reached into the rippling spatial tear tethered to his chest by the Shapeshifter's Heart. He pulled out the raw Soul Pale. The temperature inside plummeted instantly.
Mo Jue did not hold back. He activated the Blight Scripture.
He drew a massive, concentrated stream of the Soul Pale's energy directly into his skeletal structure. The pain was instantaneous and catastrophic. It felt as though his marrow was being replaced and molded against his will.
Immediately, the Shapeshifter's Heart pulsed, flooding his body with vitality. It repaired the fractures, but it didn't remove the Soul Pale. Instead, it sealed the freezing, dense energy inside the repaired bone.
Destroy. Rebuild. Calcify.
As his physical body became an anvil, Mo Jue turned his attention inward to his Reliquary.
It was time for the advancement.
In his Dantian, the 74% capacity Reliquary was currently filled with drops of soul energy. This is the result of his continuous refinement. A Reliquary could not naturally expand beyond its innate capacity. To build the Ghost Pagoda, the walls of the Chamber had to mutate.
Using his sheer will, Mo Jue seized the pool of soul energy. He whipped it into a localized hurricane within his soul.
CRASH.
A wave of dense, heavy essence slammed against the walls of his Reliquary. Mo Jue's body shuddered violently.
A mortal attacking their own soul was equivalent to a man hitting his own heart with a hammer. It went against survival instinct.
CRASH.
He drove the essence wave into the walls again. The Howling Shadow, pinned in the lower quadrant of the Reliquary was whimpering. Even the Shapeshifter's Heart shrank back, terrified of the self-destructive act of its host.
However, the Aeon Erosion Seed remained perfectly still while exerting assistance. It prevented the Reliquary from completely shattering under the reckless advancement.
"The foundation must break to build upward," Mo Jue's consciousness thundered within his own mind.
He continued the relentless bombardment.
While this is all happening, Mo Jue still had the leeway to think of the Nine Ranks. He remembered what he had learned in his past life.
Rank 1: Chamber Forging. A mere cage.
Rank 2: Ghost Pagoda. The cage becomes a building, giving Phantoms a hierarchy.
Rank 3: Reliquary Core. The Pagoda collapses into a singular power.
Rank 4: Reliquary Soul. The Grafter injects their own human soul into the Phantom Core, blurring the line between man and ghost.
Rank 5: Reliquary Body. The physical flesh is shed or mutated, recreating the host's body as a living Dao Phantom. This was the peak of mortal existence. This is also the reason why the Blight Walker's will persisted inside its core phantom.
Rank 6: Ghost Ascension. At this stage, the cultivator ceased to be human entirely, ascending as a true, self-sustaining Dao Phantom.
Mo Jue's memories flashed to the Sky Rending Peak. He remembered the feeling.
Rank 7: Phantom Demi God. He remembered igniting the spark of divinity within his soul, stepping onto the path of godhood. He knew the requirements.
Rank 8: Divine Phantom, where the cultivator was reborn as an untouchable God of the Corrupted Dao. At this stage, the goal of the cultivator is to cleanse his Dao of corruption.
And he knew the ultimate goal...
Rank 9: Heavenly Being, the state of extracting oneself entirely from the bounds, rules, and logic of the world. This is to leave this forsaken world of Shattered Heaven.
CRACK.
A sound like snapping timber echoed through Mo Jue's soul.
The advancement had succeeded. The walls of his Reliquary could no longer withstand the concentrated battering of the dense essence drops.
Ultimately, because his body was reinforced, and his soul was supported by the Aeon Erosion Seed, the Reliquary did not explode.
It mutated.
The void expanded wide. The foundational floor of the Chamber solidified, turning from a pile of rubble into a platform of a tall pagoda.
Mo Jue did not hesitate. The moment the foundation was laid, he seized the Howling Shadow.
"Your place is the ground," Mo Jue commanded.
He forced the Rank 1 Peak Stage Slaughter Phantom into the very floor of the newly forming structure. The Howling Shadow shrieked as its necrotic power was woven into the first floor, becoming its guardian.
Immediately, a second tier began to construct itself above the first, supported by the pillars of the Shadow's dark energy.
Mo Jue then seized the Shapeshifter's Heart. "Your place is here"
He pushed the Rank 2 Spatial/Vitality Phantom into the second tier. The Heart's liquid form splashed against the walls, crystallizing into a beautiful space.
The Ghost Pagoda was established. Two stories high, dark and imposing, sitting squarely within his expanded Dantian.
A massive vacuum effect occurred. The surrounding miasma rushed toward Mo Jue, drawn in by the sudden expansion.
The eye on his forehead spun wildly as it took huge gulps of energy. Over time, it turned into a shade of Jade.
At the same time, energy flooded the Ghost Pagoda. It filled the first and second floors.
Mo Jue opened his eyes.
Finally. He had advanced to Rank 2 Initial Stage (Containment). Unfortunately, the pagoda he was able to construct was only 2 stories. Had there been better circumstance, he could have advanced further.
He exhaled a long breath. The breath was visible.
He had done it. In less than two weeks since his rebirth, he had crossed the threshold that took the Mo Clan's geniuses years to achieve.
A Rank 2 Ghost Pagoda meant his essence reserves were now ten times larger.
His ability to manifest his Phantoms into the physical world was exponentially stronger.
More importantly, the Blight Scripture had reinforced his skeleton to the point where his physical strength alone could crush an average Rank 1.
Mo Jue stood up from the floor of the restricted vault.
He felt heavy. His legs grounded. The pain of the internal siege was gone but aftereffects were unavoidable.
He looked down at his hands. The pale skin remained.
"Rank 2," Mo Jue whispered. His voice vibrating with a new resonance manifested from the Howling Shadow.
He tucked the remaining chunk of Soul Pale back into his spatial pocket. It was significantly smaller now after fueling his breakthrough.
With his advancement, his focus shifted to feeding the Aeon Erosion Seed.
Mo Jue's third eye gazed downward...
Piercing through the stone floor of the Archive...
Through the bedrock of the village...
He could feel the faint currents of the Mo Clan's Breath technique. It is funneling the pacified Soul energy of hundreds of cultivators into deep underground.
"A Rank 5 entity" Mo Jue mused, his mind churning with cold, tactical calculations. "Fattened by centuries of offering. It is the perfect sacrifice."
But he could not simply dig down and kill it. A Healthy Rank 5 Behemoth-class Phantom would annihilate him.
---------------
Miles away from the safety of the village. Northern Ravine.
Branch Head Mo Tian swung his massive halberd, the heavy weapon tearing through the oppressive atmosphere. A blinding arc of blue lightning erupted from the blade, unleashing a thunderous roar that instantly incapacitated a swarm of low-level Acidic Wasps. The charred insects rained down.
"Keep moving!" Mo Tian roared, his voice echoing off the twisted, petrified wood, carrying a dense, undisguised murderous intent. "We do not return until I have that beast's poison sac in my hands! I will crush its skull and offer it to my son's spirit!"
Behind him, thirty elite guards pressed forward. Their faces had traces of fatigue. They were veterans who had crawled through mountains of corpses and seas of blood for the Mo Clan, but the Deep Miasma was a place where even veterans died quietly. One wrong step, one careless breath, and a Grafter would be reduced to a pile of white bones.
They marched with painstaking effort until they reached the edge of the abyss.
Before them was a towering black waterfall. The water was not transparent; it was a viscous heavy liquid. The pool below bubbled violently, churning with toxic, petrifying energy that killed any vegetation near its banks.
"Search the caves behind the falls!" Mo Tian ordered, his eyes narrowing into dangerous slits. His halberd hummed with a restless, violent electric charge.
Mo Tian had led his best men, the absolute elite foundation of the Logistics Branch.
But Mo Jue, sitting miles away in the comfort of his room, had not left the cave empty.