Chapter 204.3: Eight Years in Seclusion, Dao Fruits Finally Formed! (III)
Inside his cave residence, Lu Changsheng remained completely unaware of the effect his condensation was having on the world outside. He was wholly absorbed in the process, with no thought to spare for anything else.
He simply followed the structure of the Mental Black Hole, arranging and rearranging, recombining again and again as the countless streams of Mental Principle within him gradually coalesced into a blazing mass of radiance. The light was a pale gold, formed entirely from the continuous condensation of the Mental Principle. Deep within it, something seemed to be slowly taking shape.
Finally, after a full fifteen months, the golden radiance erupted.
A golden mark appeared in Lu Changsheng's mind, radiating a pale golden light that inspired a quiet sense of awe. Within it, a terrifying power lay dormant, as though a single provocation would unleash an earth-shaking force of devastating magnitude, one that required no support from the Mind Space to be activated directly.
And yet, Lu Changsheng could not shake the feeling that the mark was hollow inside, as though something was still needed to awaken it. Without that something, it had no way of releasing its full and terrible power.
At last, Lu Changsheng opened his eyes.
Yes! This is the Divine Ability Dao Fruit!
Lu Changsheng had finally condensed a Divine Ability Dao Fruit. Only a single step now separated him from advancing to the Divine Ability Realm, and that step was using Heavenly Spirit Water to fully awaken the Divine Ability Dao Fruit and transform it into a true divine ability.
Lu Changsheng invoked his Status Panel to assess his current condition.
[Status Panel]
Host: Lu Changsheng
Perception: 110,800 (Praised for a Hundred Generations)
Mental Black Hole: Divine Ability Dao Fruit (Not Transformed)
Lu Changsheng's Perception had surpassed 100,000 points, and his tier had shifted from Dragon Among Men to Praised for a Hundred Generations. However, over these fifteen months of condensation and the six months before that devoted to devising divine techniques, his Perception had only grown through those divine techniques reaching Perfection. He had not practiced any other martial techniques during that time, which was why his Perception had not risen as much as it could have.
Even so, what held his attention now was the Divine Ability Dao Fruit. He had condensed it, just as he had hoped. The divine ability bore the same name as the technique it was built upon: the Mental Black Hole.
"Heavenly Spirit Water..." Lu Changsheng murmured to himself.
He knew that all he needed now was Heavenly Spirit Water to transform the Divine Ability Dao Fruit and advance to the Divine Ability Realm. But he was in no hurry. This was only one of the three divine abilities he had planned to condense!
Next should be the Five Elements divine ability...
He began devising again, this time using the Lesser Five Elements Annihilation as his foundation. Its power was fearsome, and that made it the natural starting point.
This time, however, Lu Changsheng set aside the Wind Principle entirely and worked solely with the five Principles of Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, and Earth—a pure expression of the Five Elemental Principles with the Lesser Five Elements Annihilation as its guiding direction.
Having a clear direction made the process go smoothly, but even so, it still demanded time. The divine technique he was aiming to produce had to surpass the Lesser Five Elements Annihilation by a significant margin, and for that, he had to push himself to the very limit of what his current Perception could achieve.
One month passed, then three months, five months, eight months, ten months...
As expected, devising a Five Elements divine technique took a considerable amount of time, as it involved not one Principle but five.
Finally, exactly one year later, Lu Changsheng's Mind Space gave a faint tremor, signaling that a new divine technique had finally been born. A five-colored light blazed forth and then swiftly merged into a gray-black current of energy. Everything in its path dissolved into nothingness.
Lu Changsheng opened his eyes. At a single thought, the new Five Elements divine technique appeared before him.
This new divine technique draws on the properties of the Five Elements. The world itself is fundamentally composed of the Five Elements, and anything that falls within them will be broken down and reduced to ash upon contact with this technique. It's a pure force of decomposition, dissolving the five elements, which is effectively the same as dissolving the world itself...
Lu Changsheng could not help but feel a jolt of awe. It was only now that he realized just how terrifying of a divine technique he had produced.
Let's go with... Five Elements Decomposition.
With that, he started practicing the technique, pushing it to Perfection almost immediately.
A line of small text appeared before him.
[Five Elements Decomposition divine technique reached Perfection. Perception increased by 15,000 points.]
Fifteen thousand? Huh, even more than the Mental Block Hole, which means... even more powerful!
This was not entirely unexpected. Powerful as the Mental Black Hole was, it was derived from a single Principle and could not compare to something built from five.
Ultimately, devising the Five Elements Decomposition had taken an entire year. Now, it was time to condense the Divine Ability Dao Fruit.
Lu Changsheng manifested all five of his Elemental Principles and brought them into collision with the corresponding Principles of heaven and earth.
By now, he was quite familiar with the process. Relying on the overwhelming strength of his Mind Space, he met the Five Elemental Principles of heaven and earth head-on and gradually absorbed them. Before long, all five of his Five Elemental Principles completed their transformation.
The condensation of the Five Elements Decomposition Divine Ability Dao Fruit began, and with a single thought from Lu Changsheng, a deep rumble echoed through the air. The disturbance above his cave residence surpassed anything before it.
Within a radius of a hundred li, the winds howled and the clouds churned, gathering into an incomprehensibly massive vortex that stretched a hundred li across and blotted out the sky. The heavens darkened as though the end of days had arrived.
"Here it is again..."
"This looks even scarier than before..."
"It's still above Senior Brother Lu's cave residence."
"Senior Brother Lu must be condensing a divine ability..."
Even the most oblivious person could now tell that something monumental was happening. Indeed, the Ancient Region Heavenly Sect was about to witness something extraordinary.
Grand Elder Lu Tong was not as animated as the others. Rather, his reaction was one of astonishment mixed with a faint sense of puzzlement.
"The disturbance is even larger this time. Does that mean the last attempt did not succeed?"
"Most likely. The attempt was probably like an experiment. This time he must truly be condensing a Divine Ability Dao Fruit."
"Even so, that first attempt was clearly the right approach. The presence this time is far stronger than before."
"The heavenly phenomena that occurred when we were condensing our own Divine Ability Dao Fruits were nothing to what Lu Changsheng is unleashing right now."
The Divine Ability grand elders exchanged looks of quiet wonder. With heavenly phenomena occurring against and against, Lu Changsheng was almost certainly on the verge of truly condensing a Divine Ability Dao Fruit.
But this time, the wait was even longer. Three months passed, then eight months, fifteen, eighteen...
In the end, it had taken twenty months for Lu Changsheng to awake again. A new mark had formed in his mind, radiating a brilliant dark-golden light that seemed noticeably more powerful than the Mental Black Hole's Divine Ability Dao Fruit.
"Twenty months..."
He was well aware that this seclusion had stretched on for a very long time. He had been in his cave residence for years now, marking this as the longest period of seclusion of his life. Even so, he was not done yet; he had only condensed two of the three Divine Ability Dao Fruits he had planned for.
There's no foundation whatsoever for this next technique I'm going to devise, so it's probably going to take even longer than before...
What he needed to devise now was a divine technique built from the four Principles of Land, Fire, Water, and Wind, with no existing divine technique to use as a reference. In other words, he had to construct it entirely from scratch.
The Five Elements Decomposition had taken a year, and this new technique would almost certainly take longer than that. Still, Lu Changsheng was not bothered by that. At this stage, it was entirely normal for a single cultivation session to take several years.
And so, he began once more, working with the four Principles.
Five months passed, then ten months, one year, two years...
In the end, it had taken him two entire years to complete this new divine technique.
I did it! The Four Symbols Prison!
Lu Changsheng had devised a supreme compound divine technique based on the Four Symbols Principles, designed for capture and binding. Just as the world could be said to be composed of the five elements, it could just as well be said to come from the Four Symbols.
A divine technique wielded through the Four Symbols Principles could transform into a cage of heaven and earth from which none could escape. Combined with the Five Elements Decomposition, Lu Changsheng's overall combat power would reach a level that defied imagination.
He immediately began practicing the Four Symbols Prison, and before long, a line of small text appeared before him.
[Four Symbols Prison divine technique reached Perfection. Perception increased by 15,000 points.]
Judging by the Perception increase, the Four Symbols Prison is roughly on par with the Five Elements Decomposition, he pondered.
It was not unexpected. The five elements and the Four Symbols were naturally matched as equals.
Next came the condensation of the Four Symbols Prison Divine Ability Dao Fruit.
Rumble!
The heavens stirred with yet another phenomenon. The people of the Ancient Region Heavenly Sect looked up at the sky and exchanged glances, unsure what to say. This was the third time such a phenomenon had occurred, and so everyone had become almost numb to it. Most people just shrugged, thinking that whatever was happening was Lu Changsheng's doing.
The Divine Ability Realm grand elders, however, were left utterly dumbfounded.
"Again?"
"This is the third time, isn't it?"
"Does that mean the last attempt failed as well?"
"He has done this again and again and again. What kind of Divine Ability Dao Fruit is Lu Changsheng trying to condense?"
None of them could make sense of it. They had assumed Lu Changsheng was attempting to produce some extraordinary divine ability, but to try for a third time? Was there really any purpose to it?
"Let's wait and see..." Lu Tong had nothing more to add. He was just as clueless as the others, but he did not dismiss Lu Changsheng's attempts as futile. If anything, he was growing increasingly excited about Lu Changsheng's final result.
Condensing the Four Symbols Prison Divine Ability Dao Fruit had ultimately taken Lu Changsheng exactly twenty months, the same as the Five Elements Decomposition, confirming that the two Divine Ability Dao Fruits were roughly equal in standing.
Lu Changsheng opened his eyes and finally came to a stop. A third mark had emerged in his mind, its hue dark golden and its appearance similar to the mark of the Five Elements Decomposition.
At last, three divine abilities! But what tier are they? Supreme minor divine abilities? Or... major divine abilities?
Lu Changsheng had no idea what tier these three divine abilities were. The three Divine Ability Dao Fruits—two dark-golden and one pale-golden—seemed somewhat different from the ones he had read about in those manuals, so he couldn't quite determine their exact tier.
However, that was not an issue. He could just ask Grand Elder Lu Tong directly.
Besides, he had condensed the Divine Ability Dao Fruits, but his divine abilities had not yet transformed. Strictly speaking, he was somewhere between the Dao Foundation and the Divine Ability Realm. All that was needed now was the Heavenly Spirit Water.
Heavenly Spirit Water... Grand Elder Lu Tong mentioned the Ancient Region Heavenly Sect had some set aside, and that they would do everything in their power to help me transform my Dao Fruits into true divine abilities!
Lu Changsheng rose to his feet. Counting back from when he had first begun deducing the Mental Black Hole, he had been in seclusion for exactly eight years and one month.
It was finally time for him to re-emerge.
Eight years, three Divine Ability Dao Fruits condensed...
Lu Changsheng made no particular judgment on this long period of cultivation. The time he had spent did not concern him. All he hoped was that these Divine Ability Dao Fruits would not disappoint him. After all, he was one step away from the Divine Ability Realm.
Woosh!
At last, after eight long years, Lu Changsheng finally went out into the world.
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