My Journey to Godhood as a Caterpillar

The intense light from the river immediately attracted Yun Duritz towards it, it was almost like his soul had been bewitched by whatever was in the water.

The shining glow on the river bed was immediately identified as Yun Duritz placed his hand in the water and scooped up a small blue pearl.

The blue pearl was inscribed with runes and Yun Duritz could feel it heat up in his hand, it was getting so hot that it was almost ready to immolate his skin.

However, with an easy application of ki to the hand that was holding the pearl, he easily insulated it making it fire-proof.

The pearl color started to turn red from the normal blue from before, Yun Duritz wasn't really familiar with the pearl as it was something he had never seen before as a specialty of the celestial realm.

He inserted his ki into the pearl but there were no reactions which left him with only one other option, he inserted a strand of his soul willpower in the pill and he could feel it getting burned, but it wasn't painful, it was just like taking a hot bath, actually, his soul was getting tempered by the heat.

The pearl then turned to blue again as a deep coldness attacked his soul, it seemed the pearl could be used to temper the soul using the dualities of Yin and Yang.

As Yun Duritz looked around he could see a lot of those glitters in the water meaning that there were approximately around 5000 pearls.

He popped the pearl into his mouth as he crushed it with his teeth, the hot and cold energies inside it were then rushed towards his mind palace where his soul resided, it was quickly tempered by the assault of dual energies.

His eyes widened as he felt his soul become more 'whole', the soul that controlled this body was only a fragment of Yun Jhin's main soul but the pearl he used made the fragment increase in size, he was basically 1/10th of a soul but now he was 1.5/10th of a whole soul.

The pearls could make this sub-body of his a whole clone!

This would come with so many benefits that Yun Duritz couldn't list them all at this moment.

His eyes became fiery as he opened his mouth and absorbed all of the pearls into his mouth where he disintegrated them into a river of energy that he sent to his mind palace.

His soul felt like a lone boat on a stormy ocean night, his soul was growing at a visible speed as it grew from 1.5 to 2, 3, 4, 6, and it stopped around at 8.5/10th parts.

Yun Duritz could feel the size of his soul and how his connection to his body was way more secure than before, it was almost as if this body was truly his!

As his soul grew into the shell he created that meant there was no disagreement between the body and soul, if a strong soul entered a weak body it would either need to 'dumb' itself down to the level of the body to not destroy it, this applied in the reverse for a weak soul in a strong body, up till now Yun Duritz couldn't use 100% of his bodily strength due to his soul not being accepted properly by the body.

But now as he clenched his fist he could feel the space around him tremble and cracks appearing in the space-time around him, he stopped clenching his fist as he didn't want to trigger any traps from the tomb and he continued to look around after he consumed all of the pearls there was nothing of worth remaining in the river.

The valley didn't have any herbs or something of worth besides the river and the waterfall so he decided to approach the waterfall and see if there was anything of note near it.

The waterfall was falling at high speeds and Yun Duritz decided to go under it, the waterfall battering his body didn't affect his speed at all as he went through it only to find that there was no cave behind it... in most situations, a cave would be situated behind a waterfall but here he was sorely disappointed to find otherwise.

He found a good rock that he sat on enduring the falling water from above... maybe the waterfall itself was special?

As he endured the pressurized water attacking his whole body with its weight he didn't actually feel anything, his body was tempered to the limit and it couldn't get stronger anymore and the water didn't help his soul strengthen itself nor complete it as it remained at 8.5/10 parts.

Were the pearls the whole thing or was his body too strong to get the benefits from the waterfall?

He shook his head, well it was time to arrive at the last part of the tomb.

The destiny around him reached the peak as he disappeared from where he was and arriving in a dark room full of sarcophaguses.

Each sarcophagus had a vivid human face on it that showed how the dead person looked when he was alive, there were also inscriptions of the history of the person along with a couplet left behind.

Yun Duritz looked at each sarcophagus and read the couplets:

"What life in death but a fleeting moment, cultivation is meant to lengthen the moment but why are we running after eternal life?"

"Eternal life is like the sands of time, always existing but still ongoing, will I be happy if I achieve it?"

"Death doesn't scare but what scares me is the unknown after death, what is the afterlife like?"

"I slew until I couldn't move but in the end, I still fell."

All of the couplets told the last happenings or musings of these people before they died, and Yun Duritz found them to be rather cliched, he had already thought about those questions for a lot of time, and his obsession with eternal life never faltered, he was sure these people didn't even reincarnate once and they were already faltering, they didn't have any backbone!

But he did get something from reading their couplets, he had got some inheritances in the form of cultivation techniques that he didn't really need, these people must have been the underlings of the soul emperor and they were buried with him.

Yun Duritz ignored most of the sarcophagus as he walked further into the darkroom that was only being illuminated by a small light coming from the end of it.

As he arrived at the end of the room he could feel the room's temperature lowering, his teeth started to chatter even though his body couldn't feel the cold due to how strong it was, it was a cold that infiltrated his soul!

"Finally... someone with destiny."

A disembodied voice was heard coming from the light and a vile sarcophagus appeared in front of Yun Duritz's face, the sarcophagus face and his were so close that they were almost kissing, and considering how ugly and disgusting the face was, Yun Duritz would have vomited if he was of a weaker will...

The light was embedded on the forehead of the face, it's closed eyes suddenly opened as the sarcophagus opened and tried to suck Yun Duritz in.

Yun Duritz let himself be sucked in as he was embraced by a mummy, the mummy tried to bite his head only for its rotten teeth to break, Yun Duritz chuckled as he looked at the mummy:

"Only leaving a soul strand behind and trying to take over my fleshly body with such a weak and decrepit reserve body?"

The soul Emperor existence had weakened all of his attempts at reviving himself this way, actually, it wasn't even the soul emperor anymore as the main soul should have either arrived in the afterlife and reincarnated by now, it was just a stubborn piece of soul willpower that didn't want to leave.

Yun Duritz easily broke the mummies body and took out something from its chest, it was an azure tome inscribed with the words of soul emperor doctrines on it.

The soul light tried to possess Yun Duritz's body but it wouldn't have been able to even when he was at 1.5/10 parts.

The light was assimilated into his soul as he easily got the whole inheritance of the soul emperor... well not whole because it was only a part of the soul and it was already very old, but did he get what he wanted, the knowledge of the laws that he needed so much, actually for someone of the celestial realm this would have been a useless endeavor as they would have been born in the realm and by now they would have learned some of the laws in preparation for their advancement to the God Realm.

The soul emperor's treasure stash could be considered rather poor but this was also considering that Yuan Fang must have gone through the same stash once and the things he had left behind were because he either felt they were useless or he was too encumbered by the number of treasures he had on him.

Regardless of everything Yun Duritz got what he needed so it was time to leave, he flexed his body as the sarcophagus broke down and he left it only to see mummies starting to crawl out of all of the other sarcophaguses.

He shook his head as his aura started to materialize:

"I guess I will take all of the inheritances from you, you just have to force my hands don't you? Well, I guess I will take your gifts then!"