The Supreme Soul, Starting with Death

Forget about them. When they "grow up," they'll naturally understand that these are just fantasies.

P.S.: Second update! Please vote and add to your favorites!

Chapter 55 Coke

"True Lord! I've succeeded! I've completed the refining!"

A deafening roar, like the wailing of ghosts and howls of wolves, suddenly exploded in his ears. Gu Shi, who had just fallen asleep, jolted awake and instinctively unleashed a ghostly flash towards the direction from which the sound came.

After the Cero was released, Gu Shi belatedly realized that it sounded like that idiot's voice. He quickly waved his claws to clear away the smoke and dust in front of him.

As the smoke cleared, the idiot who had been hit by a Cero appeared in front of Gu Shi. In addition to the Hollow hole that was already in his chest, there was also a fresh, large hole in his stomach from the Cero. Because the wound was carbonized by the high temperature of the Cero, no blood was flowing out.

Seeing this scene, Gu Shi breathed a sigh of relief. The only fatal weakness of the Great Void was its masked head. With the Great Void's vitality, as long as its spiritual power was not exhausted, a hole in its body was only a minor injury. It could recover by eating something. Even without eating, it could recover about 70-80% by simply absorbing spiritual power from the air through breathing and taking a nap.

After confirming that he hadn't accidentally killed his teammates, Gu Shi yawned widely, wondering if he should tell a story about "I like to kill in my dreams," while glaring angrily at the silly guy who had disturbed his peaceful sleep.

"What are you yelling about during your sleeping time? And what do you mean you've mastered something? Have you become an immortal?"

Jiro, who was also awakened, glared angrily at the idiot who was supposed to be on night watch, and reluctantly withdrew the Cero he was about to fire.

The two men made no attempt to hide their anger, which the simpleton could obviously see. He quickly covered his stomach wound with one hand and apologized repeatedly, but even while apologizing, his tone couldn't help but rise, revealing that he was indeed very happy and excited.

Seeing his expression, Gu Shi couldn't help but feel a little uneasy. Could this kid have actually "mastered" it? Otherwise, why would he be so excited?

Is it really possible to cultivate immortality in the world of Bleach? Did my old Tao Te Ching, which I wasted so much time on, finally come in handy?

Gu Shi cleared his throat, straightened his posture, and then asked the question seriously.

"Hey, tell me, what have you mastered? True Qi? Golden Core? Or Nascent Soul?"

The simpleton was taken aback by what he heard, and couldn't help but cast an admiring glance at Erlang. As expected of Erlang Jushi, he was right. The True Lord sometimes really does say some incredible things. He had never heard of Golden Core and Nascent Soul before. He figured they must be very important things on the path of cultivation.

Silently giving Erlang a thumbs up in his heart, the simpleton quickly shook his head vigorously.

"No, no, it's not about that. True Lord, didn't you say before that the Supreme Lord Laozi used a furnace to refine pills? I succeeded! I refined a 'pill'!"

As he spoke, the simpleton, who was clutching his stomach wound with one hand, stretched out his other hand in front of Gu Shi, with a piece of... coke lying in his palm?

With its dark, irregular shape, bumpy surface, and numerous small holes, it looked exactly like a piece of coke that was common in the era when every household burned coal.

But how could there be coke in Hueco Mundo? There aren't even any real trees here. What looks like trees are all quartz pillars. Even coal can't be produced here, let alone coke, which requires coal distillation to make.

Gu Shi immediately became interested, picked up the piece of charcoal pill and examined it, then looked curiously at the idiot with an expectant expression.

"Tell me, how did you refine this 'elixir'?"

Upon seeing Zhenjun admit that what he had refined was a "dan" (elixir), the simpleton was greatly excited. He even stopped covering the wound on his stomach and excitedly told Gu Shi about his experience of refining dan.

“True Lord, didn’t you say that the alchemy furnace is a sealed large pot with a fire underneath? So I dug a pit and covered the opening with a large stone to use as an alchemy furnace!”

"Then it was time to start the fire! There was no wood to start a fire in Hueco Mundo, but I had observed before that the places hit by Cero would be burned. I stuffed half of a Killian into the furnace as firewood, and after several attempts, I finally managed to start it with a weakened Cero!"

"And another thing, alchemy requires rare and precious materials. I didn't know what rare and precious materials were, so I stuffed all the things I could find that looked powerful into the alchemy furnace!"

"Refining pills is really difficult! The lid, made of such a big stone, was almost blown away by the flames. I held the lid down with all my might, and my hands were sore before I finally managed to refine this pill!"

As he spoke, the simpleton gestured in various ways, sometimes spreading his arms to draw circles to show how big the stone lid was, and sometimes pressing down hard to demonstrate how he held the lid down.

After watching his performance, Gu Shi understood his rudimentary alchemy process, but...

I still can't understand how coke is made!

After thinking it over, Gu Shi decided to give it a try and sent Erlang to catch a head-kilian to use as a test subject.

The Great Hollow Forest has no shortage of Killian. Before long, Jiro came running back with a Killian by the neck. Whenever the Killian tried to condense a Cero, Jiro would slap it across the face and shatter its Cero.

To be on the safe side, before feeding the "dan," Gu Shi first broke all four of the Killian's limbs, completely depriving it of its ability to resist. Only then did he pry open its mouth and, under the silly creature's pained yet expectant gaze, throw the "charred pill" into the Killian's mouth.

After swallowing the "Coke Pill," the group waited for a while, but nothing changed. Killian continued to struggle and howl.

With each passing second, the fool became more and more dejected, and soon he slumped down, his height of over thirty meters seemingly shrinking.

Gu Shi wasn't too disappointed. He muttered, "Could it be the type that needs to be chewed up to work?" and then punched Killian in the stomach.

With enough force to overturn a 30-meter-high hill, it instantly smashed Killian's stomach into a thin sheet, and at the same time easily crushed the "Coke Pill" that had been swallowed.

The next moment, a surge of spiritual energy suddenly burst forth from Killian's flat belly. This spiritual energy was purer than the chaotic spiritual energy of the Hollows, but its violent feeling was slightly better than that of the Hollows. It quickly flowed into Killian's body.

With ample spiritual energy replenishment, Killian's flattened belly and broken limbs began to regenerate rapidly. After its injuries were fully healed, its aura even strengthened slightly.

Gu Shi gave Erlang a wink, and Erlang immediately understood and pounced on him. With several heavy punches and bites, he dislocated the limbs of the Killian again, knocking the big guy down once more, who was about to retaliate.

Gu Shi, however, fell into deep thought.

[The effect of this coke is actually somewhat reminiscent of a medicinal pill?]

P.S.: The second update will be tonight. Please vote and add to your favorites!

Chapter Fifty-Six: Tianpeng (Second Update)

The simpleton, blindly tinkering, actually managed to concoct something resembling a pill. This fact made Gu Shi somewhat insecure, secretly wondering if there really were gods in the world of Death God? Was the Spirit King also a god? Could there really be an underworld across the sea?

After letting his mind wander, Gu Shi finally decided to let the simpleton refine the pill again in front of him.

Hearing that the True Lord would personally supervise his alchemy, the simpleton was overjoyed. He excitedly took Gu Shi and Erlang to see his "alchemy furnace." When they left, he didn't forget to take the Kirian, whose limbs had been broken, with him as firewood.

Soon, the simpleton demonstrated his rudimentary alchemy method again in front of Gu Shi. After completing the entire process and lifting the stone lid of the "alchemy furnace," Gu Shi personally searched through the pit that served as the furnace and found another piece of coke.

Looking at the mountain-like lid of the alchemy furnace, and then tapping on the inner wall of the furnace, which seemed to have turned into glass, Gu Shi felt that he had discovered the truth about the charred alchemy.

This thing must be a highly spiritual crystal that has solidified!

If, under the same volume, the spiritual power contained in the soul of an ordinary human is one, then the spiritual power of a Hollow like a Killian, even in its weakest state, is at least one thousand or more. It can be said that the body of a Hollow is itself a highly condensed spiritual power entity.

Most of the Killian's head was stuffed into the pit and then ignited by a Cero as fuel. The immense spiritual power contained within it should have been broken down, released, and diffused into the atmosphere.

However, because Gu Shi insisted that the alchemy furnace must be sealed, the fool insisted on adding a lid to the pit and used all his strength to press down on the lid to prevent the contents from escaping.

As a result, the massive amount of spiritual energy released by the burning corpse of the Great Void was trapped in a small space, creating immense pressure inside. As the burning continued to release spiritual energy, the pressure in this small space continued to increase.

At first, this spiritual energy might seep into the surrounding soil, but the speed of this seepage was ultimately not as fast as the speed of the spiritual energy release. As more and more spiritual energy seeped into the soil, the heat generated by the burning of the Great Void corpse, and the increasingly powerful pressure, the surrounding soil also turned into a kind of high-strength crystal, blocking the path for the spiritual energy to continue to penetrate deeper outward.

Ultimately, when the spiritual energy could no longer leak out, the pressure inside the "alchemy furnace" reached a critical point, and the spiritual energy was compressed into a solid.

It's uncertain whether there was a liquefaction phase in between, but in terms of the result, most of the Kilian's spiritual power was compressed into smaller solids by the immense pressure, turning into "charred pills".

Furthermore, judging from the performance of the experimental subject Killian after consuming the charred pill, it seems that the spiritual power of the Hollows, which was originally chaotic due to mutual devouring, was also purified or refined in part during this process of continuous pressure, expelling a large number of impurities and becoming purer spiritual power.

Of course, perhaps because the compressed solid was not stable enough, these spiritual energies became much more violent as they became purer.

Gu Shi pondered for a long time and felt that there should be no flaws in the alchemy process he deduced, which was the real reason for the birth of the charcoal pill.

While feeling relieved, Gu Shi was also inexplicably disappointed. He shook his head, about to tell the simpleton that what he had refined was not a pill, but a spiritual energy crystal, but then stopped himself from speaking.

[Isn't alchemy, in essence, just the process of putting various precious materials into a furnace, extracting the effective components, and then fusing them together?]

If alchemy was a technique that immortals developed gradually from scratch, would the earliest elixirs have looked like this? Without any magical medicinal properties, simply a large amount of spiritual energy condensed together?

Why can't something made by a simpleton be called a pill? Just because this "pill" looks like charcoal, instead of the round, golden, and fragrant pills from the stories?

Am I being too narrow-minded? Even though I've already transmigrated to a world where extraordinary powers exist, why am I still stubbornly believing that martial arts and elixirs don't exist?

[If Erlang's manipulation of spiritual power is precise enough, he can project it outwards to form a dragon shape that coils around his arm. Why can't his slap be called "The Eighteen Subduing Dragon Palms"?]

After silently reflecting on himself for a while, Gu Shi suddenly laughed, solemnly stuffed the "Coke Pill," which was about the size of a person, into the fool's hand, and said with a smile in a different tone.

"I didn't realize you actually had some talent for cultivation. However, what you've refined can only be barely called a 'pill.' It's still quite a distance from a true elixir. You need to continue to work hard, research, and experiment before you can truly embark on the path of alchemy."

"I can't give you much advice, I can only point you in the right direction. You might try to make the pills you refine smaller and purer."

Holding the pills he had personally refined, the simpleton trembled with excitement. "It can only be barely called a pill" was not a blow to him, but an affirmation. He had never lacked perseverance and determination. As long as the direction was right, no matter how arduous or difficult the process was, he could continue to move forward firmly.

Seeing that the simpleton was so excited he was about to cry, Gu Shi, who was most afraid of others crying in front of him, quickly changed to a light tone and gently patted the simpleton's shoulder.

"It's ugly for a grown man to cry like that. Hold back your tears. Come on, give your creation a name. If you keep improving it, maybe one day its name will become a treasure sought after by all worlds. By the way, how about naming it after yourself?"

The simpleton quickly wiped his eyes, wiping away the tears that were about to spill, and nodded vigorously and earnestly.

"I understand! But, True Lord, I... I don't have a name. You all call me 'Fool,' which I don't mind, but I don't want my work to be called 'Fool' too. Can you help me come up with a name?"

Gu Shi twitched his lips with some shame. Unlike Bat and Erlang, he hadn't really considered this simpleton a true partner before. He just thought of him as a passerby who could accompany him for a while. He never thought of asking the other person's name and had always referred to him as the somewhat derogatory term "simpleton."

However, it's different now.

"Alright! Then I'll give you a name. If you were to ask who the most famous fool in the world is, it would definitely be Pigsy."

"However, you might not be able to handle the name Bajie. It just so happens that Zhu Bajie's previous title was Marshal Tianpeng, so you can just call yourself Tianpeng. It sounds nice and doesn't have a strong connotation."

Erlang, who was standing to the side, nodded repeatedly. He remembered that when Gu Shi named him, he also said that he wanted him to be called Yang Jian, but he was afraid that he would meet the real Yang Jian in the future, so he gave him the alternative name "Erlang".

That idiot, no, he should be called Tianpeng now.

As if he had received a mission, Tianpeng nodded heavily, his still somewhat simple voice filled with deep joy.

"Thank you, True Lord, for bestowing this name upon me. From this day forward, I am Tianpeng, and the elixir I refine will be called Tianpeng Pill!"

As he spoke, Tianpeng raised his hands high, gazing affectionately at the pills in his hands, as if he were seeing his future. It took him a while to calm down.

After wiping away the tears that still welled up in his eyes, Tianpeng reverted to his usual憨态 (simple and honest) manner, hiding his tear-stained paws behind his back. He secretly observed Gu Shi's expression with a guilty conscience and whispered his defenses.

"You're right, True Lord. It's not good for a man to cry all the time. But I'm a woman. It shouldn't be a problem for me to shed a few tears, right?"

...A woman?

...A woman!

...A woman!?

Huh! ?

Suddenly, the hole in Tianpeng's stomach, which hadn't fully healed yet and had been created by the Cero, seemed to become glaringly obvious.

P.S.: Second update! Still asking for votes and adding to your favorites!

Chapter 57 Extermination Squad

"Everyone, stay alert! This mission is clearly not easy, so don't let your guard down!"

As the red-haired Grim Reaper tidied his belongings, he solemnly warned his companions.

There were a total of twelve Shinigami, all of whom were ten or more seated officers from various divisions. Just by looking at this personnel configuration, you can tell that the danger of this mission is definitely not low.