Chapter 1339: The Primordial Heaven-Stealer & The Nirvana Core

The first notification Phei chose immediately proved that ignoring his System for this long had been a terrible habit.

[Ding! Mission Completed:Save Danny Maxton and Steal the Legacy Families’ Coffer.

[Rewards: Primordial Heaven-Stealer (Item), Half Nirvana’s Core!]

Phei blinked at the message before thinking about the rewards, and two objects immediately appeared above his open palms.

The first looked almost ridiculously harmless. It was a great round ruby-like stone, although Phei stared at it for a second and wondered whether rubies were actually supposed to be round in the first place. More accurately, it resembled half of a perfectly carved crimson sphere, its cut surface impossibly smooth while faint patterns seemed buried beneath the beautiful red stone.

For something carrying the name ’Nirvana’s Core’ name, however, it felt strangely mundane.

Phei sensed absolutely nothing from it. There was no overwhelming Essence, ancient pressure or spiritual presence making the cavern tremble, and nothing about the beautiful half-stone suggested it belonged anywhere near something carrying the name Nirvana.

It could easily have passed for an expensive ornament, which gave Phei the immediate and incredibly stupid urge to toss it into the air and catch it.

His wrist even shifted before common sense remembered what he was holding.

"Right. Maybe don’t juggle the mystery Nirvana treasure."

The Dragon Lady glanced over from her side of the cavern, and Phei ignored the judgment in that enormous icy eye while studying the half-core again.

According to the System, the other half remained inside the Coffer, which immediately made his thoughts wander toward Chaos. Phei while he was still a very strong entity had already broken through the hardest seals surrounding that thing before everything became complicated, and if Chaos was anywhere near as powerful as he suspected, there was a very real chance she had already finished what remained and opened it.

He would find out eventually.

For now, Phei flicked his wrist and the half-core vanished into one of his pocket dimensions, earning a satisfied little smile from him.

’Who needs a System inventory when I could carry my own pieces of space around?’

His attention shifted toward the second reward.

That one was much harder to dismiss.

The Primordial Heaven-Stealer resembled an hourglass at first glance, although the longer Phei examined it, the less ordinary that comparison became. Its frame appeared carved from a deep black material that occasionally reflected purple light despite the absence of any source, while the two transparent chambers contained something closer to liquid starlight than sand.

Dark-violet currents drifted slowly between both halves, and even before the System explained the treasure, Phei could feel an enormous amount of power sleeping within it.

The description unfolded across his vision.

(IMAGE)

[Primordial Heaven-Stealer: An ancient treasure capable of extracting a bloodline from one living being without having to kill them as long as they are sufficiently weakened, refining away the original owner’s impurities and soul imprint, essentially devouring every part of the original body’s influence while stripping away their Soul Essence too, residue and corruption that would otherwise accompany the bloodline, allowing the user to transfer the stolen bloodline into another compatible body.

[The Primordial Heaven-Stealer can also store stolen Bloodlines for as long as the user wants, with unlimited storage time and number of Bloodlines!

[Note: The Primordial Heaven-Stealer will retain the Bloodline if an attempted transfer of the bloodline proves incompatible with the new body!]

Phei read the description once, then again, while his eyes gradually widened.

"So that’s what the question marks were hiding." His rewards were the Nirvana Core while the other was hidden in question marks but now it was revealed.

The grin spreading across his face became increasingly dangerous.

"Oh, my freaking fertile me."

He had always thought about Bloodlines in the ugliest traditional way because that was how most cultivation novels treated them. A valuable Bloodline usually meant killing someone, tearing apart their body, preserving whatever could be extracted before it deteriorated and then somehow dealing with all the spiritual residue, corruption and remnants of the original owner that came attached.

The Heaven-Stealer made most of those problems disappear.

Phei did not even need to kill the owner.

He only needed them weakened enough.

After that, the primordial treasure could reach inside a living being and strip away the very Bloodline that made them special, clean away everything belonging specifically to the original body and soul, preserve the purified result indefinitely and later place it into someone who could actually accept it.

’That is disgusting the most wonderful way imaginable.’

Some of the proudest families on Earth built their entire identities around inherited Bloodlines. Ancient clans carried themselves as though whatever flowed through their veins had personally been approved by heaven, while generations were raised believing that being born with the right ancestry automatically placed them above everyone else.

Phei looked down at the Heaven-Stealer again and felt his smile widen.

He could strip that ancestry out of them while leaving the bastard alive to understand exactly what had been taken.

Then he could give it to somebody else.

"This war might be over before it properly begins."

The Dragon Lady gave him another suspicious look from across the cavern.

Phei ignored her and turned his attention back to the Primordial treasure. "System, how do I use it?"

[First, Host, Primordial Rank items are sentient. To make them yours, you need to bond with them, but they can refuse the user if, for example, the user is weak, possesses a lower Soul Rank or insufficient Soul Energy, since these sentient items unlike ordinary ones require constant feeding with your very Soul Realm. Otherwise, use your blood!]

Phei raised an eyebrow.

In cultivation alone he might still technically be seen as weak compared with some ancient monster but Soul Rank and Soul Energy?

Please.

A Sacred Soul approaching Godhood had just moved into his Soul Realm and discovered his Soul Energy was way way way better than what she had spent centuries harvesting. Even Sienna would struggle to put a meaningful dent in what Phei possessed.

If the Heaven-Stealer wanted food, it had chosen a very fortunate prospective owner.

Phei lifted one hand and used the nail of his thumb to prick the tip of another finger. A single bead of blood appeared, and he allowed it to fall onto the Primordial Heaven-Stealer.

The treasure vibrated.

Purple radiance suddenly flooded through the hourglass, illuminating the frozen cavern while the strange substance inside both chambers surged upward against gravity. The light deepened until the artifact became almost completely violet, and Phei felt something ancient brush against his soul for several breaths as whatever intelligence lived inside the treasure examined him.

(image)

Then the Heaven-Stealer disappeared from his hand.

Phei waited for a System announcement and received nothing.

He frowned, checked the connection more carefully and immediately sensed something new resting within it, close enough that he knew he could call the artifact back with a thought.

"That’s it?"

Apparently so.

Phei looked down at the tiny wound closing on his finger and chuckled to himself. He had copied the fingernail-prick move directly from cultivation novels; those guys could be cool sometimes really doing it.

He thought of the Heaven-Stealer again and the hourglass appeared immediately above his palm, its violet currents now moving with a faint rhythm that felt strangely familiar.

Satisfied, Phei dismissed it again before calling up his item list:

[Items:Cuckolding Stole, Spiritual Bond Ring, Page of Infinity Runes, Rune Pen "Of Longing" (Dormant), Void Dagger, Super Abilities Mystery Box — (Remaining Contents), 8 World Transcendent Cores, Dual Souls Scripture, Primordial Heaven-Stealer, Nirvana’s Core.]

Phei’s eyes travelled slowly down the list.