Soul Land 5: The Rebirth of Tang San-Chapter 846: Creating the New Artifact

Mei Gongzi was stunned. She didn’t fully understand what he was saying, but it still felt rather awe-inspiring.

As Tang San spoke, he took out the Celestial Plume that Mei Gongzi had given him earlier.

The Celestial Plume seemed to sense Mei Gongzi's aura, and its silver light flickered as if it was trying to express closeness toward her. But Tang San suppressed it with his divine consciousness, rendering it motionless.

Tang San lightly tapped the Celestial Plume. "Behave. I’ll only make you stronger, and in the future, you’ll have real power. In fact, you might even become capable of affecting the entire Falan Planet."

As he spoke, Tang San pulled out another object, the one he himself had received after winning the Ancestral Court's Elite Competition—a thick, ancient-looking book.

The Tome of Duplicates could copy bloodline abilities. Tang San had tested it, then taken it apart to study it and put it back together. As it turned out, its effects were limited. It could only freely copy abilities of beings below the tenth order; as for higher-order ones, it required additional resources, not to mention the cultivation requirement on the user. Moreover, each use of an ability would destroy that page, and eventually, the entire book would be used up. It was essentially a consumable piece. frёewebnoѵēl.com

The Ancestral Court wasn’t generous enough to give away truly powerful artifacts. This book could be very practical in the right hands, but it was limited in number of uses—otherwise, the Celestial Fox Demon Emperor would have surely taken it for himself.

Tang San extended his right hand and started tracing patterns in the air with his index finger. Strange golden symbols appeared in the air and dropped onto the floor, gradually forming circles that surrounded Tang San in the center. The entire floor began to glow with a golden hue.

Mei Gongzi stood to the side, watching everything unfold. She could clearly feel a sacred aura filling the room. For some reason, this sacred aura felt strangely familiar to her.

The sacredness came from a genuine source—it was the divinity of the Sea God. Over the past days, Tang San’s divinity had been growing steadily through the continuous absorption of the power of faith.

Most of his bloodline imprints remained at the tenth order; only his transcendent bloodlines had ascended to the eleventh. There had been hope to elevate his Undying Fire Phoenix bloodline to the eleventh order in Fire God City, but Mei Gongzi’s signal had forced him to postpone that. Solving the issue here was the priority.

By contrast, Tang San’s divine consciousness, nourished by faith energy thanks to his divine seat, had long since surpassed the average eleventh-order being, and that was even though he was constantly compressing and refining it. It was simply overwhelmingly strong. Even if he had fought the Scorching King not in the Endless Blue Sea but instead on land, Tang San would have still had a decisive advantage in terms of divine consciousness. Combined with his transcendent bloodlines, he feared no one under the Emperor level.

As Tang San's divine aura spread, the restless Celestial Plume instantly quieted down. The same was true for the book, and they both basked in the glow of divinity. For artifacts like these, it was the most delightful experience.

Divine artifacts were known as such because they had a measure of sentience and were able to communicate rudimentary thoughts and impressions through divine consciousness. Most of them also had the potential to evolve, but the process was incredibly challenging. One way was through a master craftsman, who could enhance the artifact by adding superior materials and engraving arrays; the risk of failure, however, was rather high. Another way, unquestionably the best way, was by being nurtured by a powerful individual. This was what Tang San had done with the Sea God’s Trident for the longest time.

However, nurturing an artifact was no easy task. First, the owner had to be stronger than the artifact itself; only then could their power benefit the artifact. Otherwise, they would simply be draining the artifact instead of improving it.

Generally speaking, there were two ways a divine artifact could accept a master. In most cases, the artifact sensed that someone had immense potential and agreed to work with them, helping them grow stronger; in this case, it would only see the benefits in the future. In other cases, the artifact simply submitted in front of sheer power—in this case, the benefits would be immediate.

There were many ways to nurture an artifact: through one's life energy, blood essence, or divine consciousness, and so forth. But the most irresistible energy for divine artifacts was, in fact, divinity.

Being called a “divine artifact,” after all, did not imply having anything to do with a divine realm and true gods. They were considered “divine” because they reached a certain level of power, and that level of power varied quite significantly between different planes.

Items that were divine in the most proper and unquestionable sense of the word were born or forged in a divine realm and nurtured by a true god through their divine consciousness and divinity. Divine consciousness was certainly beneficial, but it paled in comparison to divinity—the latter belonged to the highest level of existence, and was naturally irresistible to any entity that could absorb it.

Thus, when Tang San’s divine radiance enveloped the two artifacts, they began to emit soft glows, and an aura of excitement emanated from them. The Celestial Plume even seemed to forget that Mei Gongzi had once been its master.

Tang San continued to inscribe golden runes on the floor, and soon the entire surface was covered in circles of golden script. The divine energy in the room grew increasingly dense.

It wasn’t just the two artifacts that were affected; even Mei Gongzi could feel the excitement of the Asura Sword within her, as well as its growing closeness to Tang San. He was also connected to the Asura Sword, even though he was not its owner right now. His divinity had been nurturing it and the trident all along. Now that he was no longer suppressing it but instead radiating a massive amount of it, the absorption of faith energy from the Endless Blue Sea accelerated, greatly benefiting the two transcendent artifacts.

Tang San picked up the thick tome. His eyes slightly narrowed, and his fingers gently brushed over its pages. Dense divine light danced at his fingertips, flowing continuously into the book.

He began to turn the pages, and every flip left a trace of golden divine light on the page. As he went through the book, it started to emit increasingly brilliant light. It was... evolving!

Off to the side, the Celestial Plume was practically leaping with excitement, even becoming somewhat impatient. How much it wished it was in Tang San’s hand instead of the tome! Using divine energy directly to enhance an artifact in one go was normally an extravagant waste, yet Tang San was doing just that. How could these two divine artifacts not be elated? By now, they no longer resisted him in the slightest.

As the energy infusion continued, the book seemed to become somewhat thicker; at the same time, it felt much heftier and more substantial. Tang San's eyes narrowed slightly and he nodded in approval. Things were actually going better than he had initially expected. Although this book had no power of its own, it absorbed divine energy like a sponge, much faster than Tang San had anticipated, and it seemed that its capacity to hold energy was quite considerable.

This was certainly a good thing. The more energy a divine artifact could withstand, the more power it was bound to have in the future. Thus, Tang San didn't hold back, continuously infusing divine power into it, while his divine consciousness ensured the book was perfectly stable, allowing it to absorb this pure energy as effectively as possible.

In his hands, the Tome of Duplicates was like an unpolished jade, and the first carving of such jade was the most important. Only by laying a solid foundation could the artifact unleash real power in the future.