70- Purification

Mason looked down at his fingers, or what remained of them. Holding the dimensional door to the Eighth City was not as simple as it had looked. Although Mason’s newly advanced Chi gave him an advantage, the door was still the ripping of space manifested, just as Krahllak had warned.

As a result, although Mason had managed to slip in and close the door, the flesh had been stripped from eight of his fingers, leaving only the clean white bones, with only his thumbs remaining intact. It was quite the horrific injury, but Mason was confident it would heal because of his new powers.

Because yes, Mason had done it. He had taken that step beyond the limit; he had reached the realm above the Awakening Realm, a realm he decided to christen the Foundation Establishment Realm, in classic tradition.

The most direct effect of this breakthrough had been the improvement of all his already existing powers, among which was his healing factor. It was nothing compared to the unnatural one Wolverine possessed, of course, but Mason was quite confident his fingers would naturally recover with time.

Raising his eyes to look at his surroundings, Mason found himself in a horrific landscape. The Eighth City was a prison, so if the books Mason had read in Kamar-Taj were correct, it was built as a barren dimension, a large void with no structures.

But the place Mason had landed in did have structures. Only, they were not made of stone and mortar as a prison usually would, but flesh, blood, and bones.

The corpses varied: a few of them human, most not at all, but perhaps worse than anything; some of them were still moaning, somehow surviving the terrible building practice.

"You… mongrel! You absolute buffoon! You uncultured swine, barely evolved monkey! Do you have any idea of the work you ruined? I have outsmarted you and your ilk for literal generations, only to have an ape destroy it all," thundered a raspy voice. Krahllak’s voice. He was beyond furious, and this time, Mason got to see it for himself.

Looking up, Mason found the demon standing in the sky, surrounded by the phantoms of the seven Immortal Beasts. Krahllak the Beast was an ugly-looking demon, an overweight, humongous beast vaguely shaped like a humanoid. It had the same appendages as a human, but a bloated body and the dark purple skin of a drowned victim. Its limbs ended in large claws, and it lacked any hair on its body.

Its fiery, ruby-red eyes were staring at Mason with absolute hatred as it ground its serrated, sharp teeth together. It was also quite larger than a regular human, since it was mounting Shou-Lao as one would mount a horse, and Shou-Lao was much larger than a horse.

"Save us."

"End us."

Mason looked down in surprise as he heard the voices around him. He thought some inhabitants had snuck up on him, but he was surprised to find that the voices came from the city’s ‘building materials’.

He had missed it at first, but now that he had stood in the same spot for a while, he noticed that the immediate area around him was being purged.

The concept behind Mason’s breakthrough was that he now embodied the Dao of the Sun, or the part of it he understood at least. As such, even when he did not make active use of it, it would still passively affect his surroundings.

And one of the concepts he understood for the sun was that of nurturing and cleansing. So his mere presence was healing, or purifying, those around him. For these tortured souls, this took the form of releasing them from their agonizing life.

This purge was quite slow, and easy to miss if one did not focus on it, but it was there. Mason did know of a way to accelerate the process, but Krahllak interrupted from above, "Like what I did to them? Took me a few thousand years to build a whole city from them. I can assure you your fate will be much, much worse than theirs."

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Mason looked up at Krahllak and the seven chained Immortal Beasts, replying unperturbed, "I can sense the fear in your heart. You are right to be scared."

He was not lying. With his new realm, all three of his Three Treasures had seen a dramatic increase. His Essence was the most affected by far, since it was at the center of this realm. Other than imbuing his three internal energies with the Dao of the Sun, his Chi was now able to form a connection with the Chi of others, transferring force through that connection. This once more reminded Mason of the Haki System from One Piece, as this essentially worked the same as Ryuo, in practical terms, meaning that it allowed Mason to ignore defence to a certain degree.

It would have certainly been a useful power to have against Wolverine’s Adamantium skeleton.

As for his Breath and Spirit, although the changes were more minor, there were some. For his Breath and the associated Divine Sense, he was now capable of not only sensing the intent of people, but also their emotions, hence how he could tell Krahllak was afraid.

For Spirit, Mason was now able to control who he would affect or not. But this aspect of his newly improved power would see little use in this place.

Closing his eyes for a moment, Mason clasped his hands together and released a Spiritual Outburst, one that was effortlessly mixed with the Gravity Dao. Another effect of his breakthrough was, again, that Mason’s whole being became imbued with the Dao of the Sun.

But there was slightly more complexity to that than there might seem. Mason’s understanding of the Dao of the Sun was born from the merge of the Fire Dao and the Gravity Dao. There were some other concepts Mason himself could not name that had gotten mixed in it too, but the two main ones remained Fire and Gravity.

But just as Mason had told his audience just before, his true nature was to take. His limit in the past regarding the Dao was that he was only able to understand so much of it with his limited Divine Sense. What had changed now, other than the intensity of his Divine Sense, was that Mason had ‘stolen’ a part of the Dao.

Before, Mason had to borrow the power of the Dao by communicating with it. That was the level of the Concept. But with his breakthrough, Mason had condensed his understanding of the Dao into his Three Treasures, and claimed ownership over it. Mason had done this with both the Fire Dao and the Gravity Dao. Right now, they had been condensed into an illusory body Mason tentatively called Intent, the level above Concept.

This means that Mason possessed both the Fire Intent and the Gravity Intent, and together they form the Sun Intent. But most importantly, everything Mason could do before had now become part of him, meaning he could use them without any expenditure.

With the Fire Intent coalesced in Mason’s Essence and the Gravity Intent in his Spirit, they maintain the Sun Intent within his Breath. The three Intents form a triangle, the Fire Intent and Gravity Intent serving as the base for the top, the Sun Intent.

A side effect of this is that now, Mason’s Chi is naturally imbued with the Fire Intent, while his Spiritual Energy is imbued with the Gravity Intent.

So, as Mason released his Spiritual Outburst, it was naturally imbued with the full power of his Gravity Intent.

Mason’s Spiritual Energy spread out in a thick bubble-like zone, or domain. Now that he thought about it, maybe calling it a Spiritual Domain would be more appropriate than a Spiritual Outburst. He had always been tentative about the name, not liking it much, and in its current form, Mason felt that Domain fit the attack better than Outburst.

Decided on the name change, Mason’s Spiritual Domain teetered between the physical and spiritual worlds. Spiritual Energy only existed within the spiritual world, while the Gravity Dao could affect the physical world. However, the main energy remained spiritual, so Mason’s Gravity Dao could only affect those who had a Spirit.

In simpler terms, as Mason unleashed his Spiritual Domain, the foundation of this world, the stone beneath, as well as those who had passed away, were unaffected by either spiritual energy or gravity. However, everything else, be it Krahllak and the seven Immortal Beasts in the sky, the ‘building materials’ still alive, and anyone else in their surroundings, got to experience the full power of both.

It started with the usual Spirit suppression. Only those with the strongest will could resist it, and in this broken place, that was only the Beast and the seven Immortal Beasts. And then, they were affected by the Gravity Dao.

The Immortal Beasts in the sky, while not knocked out, were still stunned by the outburst, and with the gravity around them suddenly increased, they started free-falling, their immense bodies working against them as they fell.

As for the carefully constructed city, it started falling apart around Mason as it was also subjected to the increased gravity. While they did not have much mass, they also were unable to resist in the slightest, and buildings made out of people were fragile to begin with.

Moreover, unlike before, Mason’s Spiritual Domain was not a simple, momentary outburst. It did not disappear within a moment of its activation. Instead, Mason fed it with more Spiritual Energy, keeping it up as the gravity kept pressing down on everything.

As the city of flesh and bones collapsed around Mason, the seven illustrious Immortal Beasts fell from the sky, screaming, before they smashed into the ground with all their mass.

Covering himself in Chi, dark golden flames erupted around Mason, melting the collapsed building materials around him like snow in the sun as he approached the crash site.