Chapter 4

Three days passed after Zheng exchanged Tiger’s Soul. The other team members also exchanged their enhancements and stats. Extra points and rewards were spent on quite a few useful items such as the Charms of the Three Pure Ones, Freezing Pills, sniper rounds, enchanted arrows, special bullets for the the RPG, and others. This was probably the most enjoyable exchange they had made since entering the realm… The feeling of being rich was great.

Zheng on the other hand weren’t feeling so great. He could no longer use this crimson weapon after upgrading it to A tier.

When the beam landed on him and the sword, Zheng felt that he saw a white tiger lunged at him. Once the beam disappeared, a white mist cloaked the surface of the blade. The mist attempted to gather as though it was alive. However, every time it was about to form the shape of the white tiger, it dispersed. This was obviously not the complete form of Tiger’s Soul but a tier A unfinished product.

“Even an unfinished product… should still be better than the initial version.” Zheng murmured.

He grabbed the hilt. An aura of killing intent exploded from him. The people nearest to him, Kampa and Gando felt a pain on their chest and were sent flying before they could see what happened.

Zheng’s eyes were entirely red. He kicked the two people in the chest. Judging by that speed and power, he had entered Explosion. Kampa and Gando’s chests sunk in and blood was gushing out through their mouths as they lay there. It seemed that they were on the verge of dying.

“Aouh!” Zheng howled. The mist cloaked Tiger’s Soul slashed toward Heng.

Heng had exchanged the Lightning Elven Bloodline so his reaction was also quick. His eyes defocused at once and he rolled to the side before the sword hit him. Yet, a blast wave struck his back even after he rolled a few meters away. His back, spine, and through the chest disappeared.

Zheng didn’t hit Heng with the slash. However, no one remained standing within ten meters at the direction he attacked. A ferocious blast wave knocked everyone down. Heng suffered the most. Half his heart was crushed. Everyone else was wounded. YinKong was the most agile and only spit out a few mouthful of blood.

Zheng hadn’t finished yet. He leaped at ChengXiao who was standing in front of Lan. Tiger’s Soul slashed toward his head with the intent of slashing both of them to halves. A slim sliced mark appeared on ChengXiao’s head just from the aura itself.

“God! Full heal to everyone! Deduct the points from Zheng!” It was HongLu’s voice.

Several beams shot down and shrouded everyone. The beam also caught Zheng while he was still in mid air. He was roaring even when he floated inside the beam.

As the intensity of the beam increased, Tiger’s Soul was pushed off Zheng’s hand. He finally stopped struggling. His eyes returned to normal. He looked around nervously. The floor was stained with blood but everyone was in the beams. They suffered heavy injuries but no one died to him. God’s healing was all powerful. Even if the person was in his last breath, God could heal him to full.

Zheng said with remorse after the healing completed. “Sorry. Everyone… I was completely controlled by the adverse aura. A storm of hatred filled my heart when I wielded Tiger’s Soul. At the time, I wanted to kill everyone beside me. Fuck. This sword is overly evil. I don’t know what was happening with those attacks. They were powerful but every strike felt like dragging my soul out of my body. The world through my eyes were red as blood. Only the sword in my hand was pale white. A tiger’s head in the sword stared at me.”

This struck fears to everyone on the platform. Although they came from a modernized society and experienced horror movies and life and death battles, ghosts and the like that sought to consume human souls were still terrifying.

“Wait. Wait. There are writings on the sword.” TengYi suddenly said.

The others turned to him in surprise. TengYi carefully walked over to the sword then studied the blade. He read. “Hate hate hate hate hate hate hate… Don’t look at me like this. There are seven hate characters on the blade. Then it’s… Seven hatreds born with the world. First hate the passing away of youth. Second hate the non-rewindable time. Third hate the inconstant affairs of life. Fourth hate the unpredictable human minds. Fifth hate the lost of reasons to live. Sixth hate the lack of peace after death. Seventh hate for the heartless world. I exchange my loyalty and righteousness for seven hatreds. Hate hate hate hate hate hate hate.”

The team circled around Tiger’s Soul. Strange characters appeared on the blade that used to be crimson red. TengYi said these characters were the Oracle Bone Script that was the earliest form of hand writing in China. People nowadays could rarely recognize this script. He learned it from his master, who was also a tomb raider.

Although they knew what the characters meant, no one figured out how that would be useful to Tiger’s Soul. The sword performed beyond a tier A magical weapon after the upgrade. The power of those few attacks was partially due to Zheng’s own strength but they still surpassed tier A weapons by a lot. It wasn’t unreasonable to rank it as a S tier weapon. Excalibur in comparison wasn’t at the same level as Tiger’s Soul. Though it had a hidden ability and Tiger’s Soul had the flaw of losing control. The presence the sword gave off was still astonishing.

“Unfortunately, even the best weapon is useless if you can’t use it…” This was Zheng’s last sigh.

He researched how to use the sword for three whole days. However, the frenzy overtook him every time he wielded the sword. And the other members had to yell for a heal from afar to save him. Xuan stayed in his room doing strange things. HongLu also said he couldn’t find a way to tame the sword. Zheng had tried everything he could think of. No matter how powerful the sword was, it was worse than the non-upgraded version at this point.

“This is the last try. If I still can’t use it, I will just exchange another weapon.” Zheng took a deep breath and nodded to the team members standing near the edge of the platform.

Aside from researching how to use Tiger’s Soul, he spent his time refining his Qi during these three days. He refined and condensed his Qi little by little in the fourth stage. The gas like Qi became a liquid and even solid. However, as he tried to refine it further, the solidified Qi suddenly turned back to a gas again. This new Qi was more unrestrained, as if it was alive. The Qi flowed lively in his body.

Zheng didn’t know how to use the new Qi. It no longer possessed the attributes of Qi, such as enhancing his physical abilities or gathering to form a destructive force. However, this Qi had the peculiar attribute of fusion. It would absorb both Qi and Blood Energy if they came into contact with it. The energy that it absorbed did not add to the little puff and seemed to just disappeared.

This was the reason Zheng turned to Tiger’s Soul again after he learned of the attribute of the new Qi. The biggest change that happened to the sword was the white mist. He thought that if he cleared the mist, he could wield the sword again. Now then, he wanted to see if the new Qi could absorb the mist.

Zheng shrouded his hand with the new Qi then reached for Tiger’s Soul. A icy consciousness passed through his hand and into his mind. The Qi did not absorb the mist and instead blocked off the controlling property. Zheng’s mind connected with the newly born consciousness that belonged to Tiger’s Soul.

It was the creator of Tiger’s Soul, who killed his loyal mount, the White Tiger, and spawned the endless hatred.

The majority of team China’s members sat near the edge of the platform in case Zheng went into a frenzy and damaged them. No one in the team had the ability to take him on a head to head fight especially when he wielded this upgraded Tiger’s Soul. So they waited in the distance and would yell for a heal as soon as he lost himself.

“It’s taking long this time. He’s still sitting there after three minutes.” WangXia took a look at this watch.

No one else said a word as they stared at Zheng in full concentration. They had been accompanying Zheng through his attempts to tame Tiger’s Soul these two days. The most dangerous time was when he activated Destruction and approached them in under a second. Thanks to YinKong and Heng’s fast reaction to calling a full heal, team China avoided the possible casualties. Taming Tiger’s Soul proved to be a very dangerous task.

Zheng remained calm for longer than any previous attempts. His eyes had the same redness as he slowly stood up. His body was slightly shaking. YinKong stopped the others as they planned to call for a heal. “It’s fine… He can control the killing intent now.”

Zheng didn’t attack as expected. He took a few deep breaths then stored Tiger’s Soul into the Na Ring. The adverse aura subsided. The rest of the team members looked at each other then ran toward him.

“Sorry to make you worry.” Zheng said with a bitter smile. The hand that wielded Tiger’s Soul was still shaking.

“This upgrade to Tiger’s Soul did not change the material of the sword itself. It used a rune word combination to insert an adverse aura that can affect a person’s consciousness into the sword. See the Oracle Bone Script on the blade? That is the source of the adverse aura. I finally realized Tiger’s Soul isn’t a magical weapon once I attempted to gain control of it through my refined Qi. It’s actually a XiuZhen item, or more accurately, Demon item.” Zheng sat on the sofa and said.

Everyone went with him to his room. The girls went to prepare food and the team members listened to his narration of taming Tiger’s Soul.

“I felt the crafting process of Tiger’s Soul at the time, much similar to when we revive team members. My consciousness connected to another consciousness. A man was refining a mineral with fine. It may sound inconceivable but in the scene, the man used the crafting methods you would read in XianXia novels. He emitted a flame through himself to burn the mineral. However, the mineral suddenly melted and tried to swallow him. A white tiger came out from next to the man and swallowed the liquid.” Zheng waved his hand as he saw the strange expressions from the rest.

“Don’t give me such looks. That is really what I saw in those few minutes. The man became enraged. He ignored the tiger’s plead then grabbed it near the tail and pulled out its spine. The liquid formed the blade of Tiger’s Soul, which is the semi translucent part. The tiger’s spine became the center and hilt of the sword. The man then confined the tiger’s hatred and adverse aura into the weapon in order to further increase its power, which formed Tiger’s Soul. The power that he used is the same as my refined Qi. He called it Xiuzhen energy… one of the powers that can safely use Tiger’s Soul.”

A short silence followed then WangXia and Gando cried in a shock. “Xiuzhen? The martial art that leads to ascending to an immortal?” They looked at each other then turned to Zheng.

“Correct. That’s the energy produced from Xiuzhen.” Zheng gave them a bitter smile. “I kind of knew from the feeling that the man crafted this weapon to fight… the Saints who reached the fifth stage. There were many people with the same power as him doing preparations. I don’t know what happened afterward. But Tiger’s Soul became an item you can exchange from God. I think one of the suspicions Luo YingLong mentioned could be the items we can exchange from God.”

Seeing that the others were confused, Zheng continued. “This is merely my conjecture. HongLu, do you get what I am saying?”

HongLu twirled his hair then picked up a cup of red tea on the table. He nodded. “I can guess what you meant. You are referring to the origin of the enhancements and abilities, correct?”

Zheng nodded. “Right. The origin of the enhancements and abilities is the first question I had after I reached the fourth stage. Logically, these enhancements and abilities should come from different people. They will likely create some abilities after reaching the fourth stage. Perhaps they created abilities suitable for other forms of organisms in order to continue their growth, which resulted in werewolves, elves, vampires, and the enhancements from comics. This is possible but there’s a flaw to the specualtion…

“Why would those who reached the fourth stage and higher choose to alter low tier genes? I would never choose the useless low tier genes. My sight will only fall on those that can make me stronger. Though, currently I can only optimize the hibernating genes in my DNA. It takes mid-fourth stage and higher to actually alter them. The questions comes back to why would they bother altering the genes for the weaker organisms or bloodlines? Why would they create the weak abilities? Could it be that they were aware of our existence in the future at the time?”

Zheng breathed out and continued. “So my conjecture is the enhancements and abilities don’t necessarily all came from the Saints. Many of them could be created by the enemies of the Saints. The accumulations over time led to the variety we have now. And Cultivators… might be enemies of the Saints.”

HongLu laughed. “You still haven’t said whether you can use Tiger’s Soul after a bunch of words. What about your Xiuzhen energy? Can you keep producing it or control it?”

Zheng nodded. “I can use Tiger’s Soul with a big limitation. That is I need to have Xiuzhen energy. It’s not only a weapon. Regular people without Xiuzhen energy will become enraged from touching it. Good thing is it doesn’t consume energy at a rapid rate. The Xiuzhen energy may look like a little but its very durable. I will have to refine large amount of energy in order to use it in the movies.”

The team let out a sigh of relief. One, the weapon didn’t become a waste. It would be a pity if Zheng couldn’t use such a powerful weapon. Two, Zheng wouldn’t go into enrage mode again. They were bound to have casualties if he entered enrage after he grew in strength.

Zheng laughed then said. “But with fortune comes with this unfortunate event. ChengXiao, you still recall the eight flags you got from the Lord of the Rings?”

ChengXiao paused for a moment. “Uh? The eight flags? Yeah, you have them right now.”

Zheng nodded. “I was thinking since my refined Qi is a type of Xiuzhen energy, can I use the Qi to control these flags? You never saw the terrifying power of the flags. I couldn’t resist them at the time and almost died in the battlefield. It was all Zero’s effort that I barely survived. My power will grow ten folds if I can really use the flags. Haha. We aren’t powerless if we were to fight team Devil again.”

Kampa said. “Then hurry and try this Xiuzhen item. I also often read Xianxia novels. Is the power really world breaking as depicted in the novels?”

“Nah, not so powerful. Those are novels. We aren’t in a novel here.” Zheng waved his hand. “I want to give them a try but unfortunately I have spent the Qi I refined over the last three days on controlling Tiger’s Soul. We only have six days left in God’s dimension, which will only get me two times the refined Qi I accumulated before… There isn’t enough time. I have to exchange for days in the movies to accumulate a large quantity of refined Qi. Then… we will not fear the movie worlds anymore!”