Mystical Journey

The atmosphere got heavier and heavier, Garen and the Cthulhu King slowly moved their position, forming a pencil-straight line with the Divine God Palace Master in the center.

The Divine God Palace Masters eyeballs turned slightly, the ink-green longbow on his back glowing with a hint of jade-green. He looked at the expressions and actions of the two in front and behind him, his heart sinking slightly.

"In that case, it might be good to end things here today."

"It’s best if the Palace Master thinks that way." The Cthulhu King chuckled, and stood aside to open up a path. The shape of his mouth was slightly strange, the red needle hidden under his tongue so he could shoot it out and attack at any moment.

The Divine God Palace Master nodded, and still did not use the long bow that remained unused, standing up slowly, his figure turning into a flash of shadow that brushed past the Cthulhu King in an instant, disappearing without a trace.

In no time at all, there was only the Cthulhu King and Garen left on the cliff.

"Together?" The Cthulhu King asked quietly.

"Of course."

Garen nodded.

Although the Divine God Palace Master left, that was just on the surface, if he was still hiding somewhere and waiting for his chance, the dumbest thing to do would be to separate now.

The two of them stuck together, out of wariness for the Divine God Palace Master who might still be hiding, but nothing really happened, following the crack they had fallen down from, every time they leaped up, they could instantly stab the stone wall with their arms and keeping themselves suspended. Then they could leverage on that and leap up again.

Jumping like that again and again, soon enough, the two of them returned to the second floor branch they had used to enter the third floor.

The branch was still covered with a pale blue mist.

The two figures leaped out of the hole on the floor, landing lightly beside the hole, one black and one red respectively.

The black figure was a calm-looking Garen, his golden hair cascading down his shoulder, his pitch-black demon eyes not showing any signs of receding, meaning his Black Water True Technique was constantly channeling at the highest level.

The red figure, on the other hand, was the Cthulhu King with his body full of wounds, his face was deathly pale, and he panted heavily.

"Looks like after going back this time, I’ll need to properly rest and recover for a while."

"Phiros is dead, the situation is extremely unstable now, do you have time to relax?" Garen raised his brow slightly. Now he could no longer compare the events to the original path, he had already turned history utterly upside down, everything had become a mess.

Hellgate did sustain some considerable injuries after defeating Phiros, but after the Daniela War of Destinies, Ender actually did not move at all, so they evidently had some other plan.

The Enderian King(1) and Phiros were two complete opposites, she was mad and extremely active, and most of all, she would not obey any pre-set rules, plus she was herself a peak-level totem user. Compared to Phiros, she had become famous several hundred years ago, and was a long-known peak-level fighter among the previous generation, who knows how powerful her home base was.

This would be yet another world-ending clash.

"Unfortunately… If Phiros had been willing to join forces with me, there’s no way he would have ended up like that." The Cthulhu King shook his head, lamenting.

Garen did not say anything, he just watched the tracks left by the Divine God Palace Master around the area carefully.

The Cthulhu King looked at him.

"This time, both of us reaped a lot of rewards, may I know what plans Palace Master Garen has from here on out?"

"Plans? Don’t you know perfectly well what I want to do?" Garen was too lazy to beat around the bush with him, he was going to lose control of the Living Secret Technique’s side effects. He moved his feet, and instantly became a shadow rushing down the way he had come.

The Cthulhu King cackled, accepting and absorbing two Living Secret Technique Seeds at once, especially the one that he had exchanged with Garen, was not that easy a matter. But the two of them had made a deal and exchanged, neither of them had any intention of regretting it.

Evidently, Garen had also gotten some benefits from that Living Secret Technique.

Garen in front, and the Cthulhu King behind, both of them concentrated on rushing back, neither of them speaking.

Right now, the green and black-red threads inside Garen’s body were interweaving and tangling, darting in and around his body like countless long and thin worms, causing him unbearable agony. Thankfully, his roots were in the Secret Technique World’s peak-level Black Water True Technique, so it was slowly forming a buffer between the two Living Secret Techniques, so that the two conflicts would not be too sharp, and giving him some time to breathe.

The first Living Secret Technique he had gotten was a Frost-type. And the second looked like it would be a Fire-type, but it was actually a Metal-type, the fire devil representing the melting and forging of metal, only the black-red long sword that appeared at the end was the true Seed, the two Living Secret Technique Seeds were tangled up and clashing inside Garen’s body, forming two balls, one green and one black, both spinning at high speeds. The center of the spinning was the core formed from his Black Water True Technique blood qi and the fusion power, that Garen had trained for a long time. But right now, the Black Water True Technique was being burned away quickly, every second he stayed here would cost him another portion of the Black Water True Technique’s fusion power.

Garen’s heart grew more anxious, and he began to run even faster.

Boom!

The stone door to the ruins was broken through explosively, and a black shadow shot out, flying into the dense forest, landing on a small piece of empty land.

There was a black eagle-drawn carriage waiting on the empty land, and a bonfire alit beside the carriage, with Demon Phoenix and Phantom reading their books beside the fire, when they heard the noises, the two of them stood up in unison, turning around to see Garen appear on top of the carriage.

"Palace Master…"

"Leave here at once!" Garen tossed the words at them, darted into the carriage, sat down cross-legged, and fell into a state of self-meditation. There was a slight sheen of sweat on his forehead, as he resisted that immense pain.

Demon Phoenix and Phantom hurriedly put out the bonfire, got onto the carriage, and yanked hard at the ropes.

The black eagle that had been resting instantly flapped its wings and flew up, the huge pulling forcing jerking the whole carriage hard, and then it seemed to suddenly grow lighter, rising into the air.

The Demon Cloud Spirit Light that Garen had asked Demon Phoenix to prepare also did not come to much use this time, that thing was to prevent the other two from ganging up on him, the Demon Cloud Spirit Light was best at turning others’ power into his own. It was the most effective in group battles.

As for peak-level power, with the Form Five Demon Phoenix around, added with Garen’s current recovery power, even if he did not make a move, there would still be poisonous and extremely corrosive Spirit Light aura emitted.

Because of the merging with his aura, his Spirit Light was now a deadly weapon on its own, merged with the Demon Cloud Spirit Light, it had just nicely formed a powerful ‘kill - convert - kill again’ mode.

Luckily, neither of the other two set down other traps, if Garen was not so affected by the Living Secret Technique side effects, perhaps this time he would have a chance instead to kill the other two, but unfortunately, he could barely protect himself right now.

The black carriage carved out a line through the high noon air at rapid speeds, and disappeared into the sky in no time.

On the other end of the sky, a blood-red mask appeared slowly, and then disappeared rapidly, while the Cthulhu King’s figure also vanished at the same time.

After both of them disappeared completely, outside the door to the ruins, the Divine God Palace Master’s figure slowly materialized from the air, as though he had always been invisible from the start, and the other two had not noticed at all.

Looking at the direction the two of them had left in, he touched the end of the longbow sticking out from behind his waist, a flash of hesitation in his eyes, but after a second, he still relaxed his fingers, turned around, and walked towards the other end of the forest.

*******************

Inside the black eagle carriage

Garen closed his eyes tightly, biting his lower lip hard, strands of blood dripping down his chin, but he was totally unaware of it.

Strands of black air emanated from the bottom of his body, soundlessly, creating a thin layer of ice on the wooden floor.

He was using his heart and spirit to match the life forces of the two Living Secret Techniques, with the Black Water True Technique as a buffer that was constantly being absorbed and fused by the two Living Secret Techniques, absorbing the parts of the secret technique memories and wills that suited him, and then forming a larger, stronger clash.

The Black Water True Technique’s core grew smaller and smaller, weaker and weaker, if it went on like this, by the time the core had been utterly absorbed, all of Garen’s True Technique roots would be completely gone, becoming the nutrients for the clash between the two types of Living Secret Techniques. After the conflict leveled up, there would be no more buffer in between, and just one clash would be enough to make him instantly explode, with no chance of survival.

Garen tried his best to slow down the expenditure of his Black Water True Technique, looking for a proper rate between the buffer and absorbing speeds.

"No! If I go on like this, I’ll be sucked dry by the Living Secret Techniques sooner or later!" His thoughts were whirring quickly now. He spent so much effort for so long to reach this level, if he was forced all the way back to the start just for this one accident, it would not match his aim for coming here to these ruins.

Reaching out his hand, he opened up his palm, his palm and fingers emitting tiny whiffs of black smoke that seemed to come alive, destroying and absorbing all of the other impurities and traces on his body, fusing away the useful ones and forcing out the useless ones.

He took the Original Eye out from the War Chain on his arm, and fused in the black smoke. Those black flowers with the frost spirit power were also fused and absorbed into the black smoke, forming nutrients to temporarily slow down the two Living Secret Techniques.

Only when absorbing nutrients will these two Seeds slow down their number of clashes, so although he knew this was barely helping and could make things worse, Garen had no choice but to do it. It was better than the very foundations of his Black Water True Technique being destroyed in front of his eyes.

After the Original Eye was pulled inside, the two seeds suddenly paused abruptly, splitting into half each, and greatly reducing the speed of the clashes, after the black flowers were added in, it just slowed the spinning speed of the Frost Seed.

This way, the endgame of being torn apart and exploding to death within possibly a day was extended to at least one week.

These two Secret Technique Seeds were like greedy beasts, continuously absorbing the structures and sources of the same type that they did not have, trying their best to improve and perfect themselves, and as they perfected themselves, they would also release spirit energy to improve their true bodies, if there was just one type, it would just nicely improve Garen’s body, and may even reach the next level. But if there were two types, that would be bad. The two spirit energies clashed with each other, you want to change it this way, he wants to change it that way, and neither giving way. In the end the one being pulled apart painfully in the center was Garen himself.

He knew that he had been careless this time, he did not think that the Living Secret Techniques would be such dominating things, and they had their own instincts as well. But before actually experiencing it, nobody would know that the fusion of two Living Secret Techniques would create such a terrifying clash and conflict.

"It’s not like I really have no way…" Garen’s eyes twinkled, "If I completely ground down both secret techniques, and let the places where they clash round out completely, so that they’re not so sharp, and find the similarities between them, the two Living Secret Techniques can become one. All the power can be converted into mine. Only then will I truly obtain the legacy information for the Living Secret Techniques."

Right now, because of the secret technique resistance, he had practically yet to truly obtain the ways to train and the secret technique information from the Secret Technique Seeds.

"In that case, the required conditions are…" His mind spun rapidly, going through all the massive amounts of knowledge he had accumulated from before, one by one, each of the different systems trying to create models, failing and collapsing each time, then attempting to build them up again from scratch.

Translator’s Notes:

Yep, it seems to be a female ‘King’.