Chapter 473: Chapter 354: Heinous Betrayal, Renegade Giant, Desolate Devouring, Desolate Thought!

After passing the Seventh Level Stairs, the radiant silver sphere descended from the Throne, and as it drifted into Su Mu’s brow, his Spiritual Power began to grow rapidly.

In the past, after passing each level of the Illusion Realm’s trials, Su Mu experienced tremendous increases in Spiritual Power, often doubling.

However, Su Mu had already condensed the Crystal Human Form, which was in the process of transforming to a higher plane; his Spiritual Power was vast like the sea, incomparable to before.

Therefore, the direct enhancement of Spiritual Power was secondary.

On the stairs, a look of realization appeared on Su Mu’s calm face.

Back when he was at the Yun Province Beast Cave, Su Mu speculated that there would surely be another form after the Desolate Chain.

Now, his speculation proved to be true.

"After the Desolate Chain comes... Desolate Devouring?"

Suddenly, a strong sense of expectation rose in Su Mu’s heart. Before mastering the Immortal Cells, only the Silver Chains could restrain the black mist. Su Mu had great anticipation for the Spiritual Secret Technique inheritance contained within the stairs.

As Su Mu touched the silver sphere within his Sea of Consciousness, a profound essence promptly surfaced in his mind.

A vast expanse unfolded in Su Mu’s mind. A Giant, shrouded in a golden light with an indistinct face, desperately carried a terminally ill clan member out of the scene.

"Hang in there, I will take you back; I definitely will."

The severely injured Giant shook his head, clearly aware that he was nearing death. Before closing his eyes, he spoke slowly, "After I die, just use my body for your attempt."

"I trust you,..."

The Giant, whose face couldn’t be seen, suddenly shuddered violently. He felt the limp hand of his beloved in his arms and the heart within his chest finally ceased its beat.

The Giant roared frantically, carrying the corpse out of the mountains of corpses and the sea of blood.

The scene shifted to a place with a sacrificial altar. The Giant first prayed to a totem carved with an ancient Giant and then showed intense reluctance on his face. But in the end, he personally crushed his loved one’s skull, reached in, and extracted the still lively, pulsating brain.

As Su Mu’s pupils contracted, the Giant, suppressing his grief, swallowed the extracted brain in one gulp.

From the Giant’s body, a terrifying Spiritual Power surged out, distorting the very Space under its mighty force. The Giant’s form swayed, and behind him, a silver phantom slowly coalesced, only to shatter in the next instant.

The attempt had failed.

The Giant, whose face was indistinct, was grief-stricken, beginning to retch.

At this point, a group of Giants arrived, all witnessing the brain matter mixed with blood being spat out of his mouth and the headless Giant’s corpse.

"You bastard, you damn bastard, how could you do such a thing!"

"Have you forgotten the Elder’s teachings since childhood? Defiling a corpse is akin to betraying the clan... His bones are barely cold, and you commit this treasonous act!"

"Furthermore, he was your brother, and you consumed a part of his body alive... You devil, manipulated by the black mist, how dare you spare even your brother’s corpse? What is your true intent?!"

The Giant, whose face couldn’t be seen, tried to speak, but was violently blasted away by the other furious Giants.

Boom!

The Giant with an indistinct face was repeatedly hurled out, slamming heavily onto the ground, blood spilling upon the earth.

"Get lost!"

"Just get away from here!"

"If I ever see you again, I will definitely kill you, I swear!"

Seeing the familiar faces of his clansmen twisted in anger and disgust, he did not resist, opening and closing his mouth as if to say something, only to eventually rise, battered and bruised, to leave silently.

Banished from the ancestral land, this Giant did not give up on his attempts, continually appearing in areas ravaged by the black mist, wandering among one body after another, continually refining that form through repeated failures. The silver phantom behind him became more and more substantial.

He sank deeper and deeper, becoming in the eyes of all Giants an entity more malevolent than the black mist, his name expunged from the tribe to become a taboo not to be mentioned.

Who knows how many years passed.

The Giant, deemed more malevolent than the black mist, placed his hand on yet another clan member’s corpse, and promptly a silver phantom fully coalesced.

The Giant had his back to Su Mu, yet at this moment, Su Mu could imagine his expression.

Extraordinary pain and release.

This time, he finally succeeded; with a slow exhale, two words emerged from his mouth.

"Desolate... Devouring!"

As his voice fell, the blurred silver phantom lunged like an Evil Ghost at the body’s brow, which then inexplicably came to life, emitting one non-human howl after another.

Finally, the silver phantom detached from the corpse, its once indistinct edges now revealing a definite outline, identical to the body it had touched.

The silver phantom’s brow gleamed, the memories of the body’s life began to swiftly pass through the Giant’s mind.

Seeing this, Su Mu was moved.

In that moment, he seemed to have guessed the true purpose of the Desolate Thought!

...

"At the beginning of my life, there was nothing I could do; after my life began, the nation fell into decline."

"The heavens are merciless, casting chaos and separation; the earth is ruthless, causing the death of my tribe."

...

"If heaven has eyes, why not let the rivers and mountains reunite? If gods have spirits, why extinguish my tribe by the billions!"

"Day and night I think of my homeland, wandering and struggling, finding it hard to see the blue sky."

...

"I miss my family, yet where do souls return; my family misses me, yet there is no place to return."

"Weeping blood, I look up and cry to the azure sky, how can one life defy the vast ages!!!"

A mournful and ancient ballad echoed from the Giant’s mouth, as torrents of rain poured from the sky, as if the heavens had finally opened their eyes.

It was unclear whether it was raindrops or tears trickling down from the Giant’s eyes.

"I did it, I finally did it!"

"Some things must be done... Even mighty as our king, even as strong as the Elders, all have fallen; that black mist is insurmountable, and my race cannot just be extinguished like this."

"No tribesman’s death should be in vain, I swear it!"

"I shall bear the sins myself."

The next second, with a trembling right hand, the Giant grasped, and a silver shadow turned into a mass of Silver Radiance.

"I accept your memories, its existence shall not be meaningless... It must play a role, it surely will, even though someone like me, whose name has been erased, perhaps cannot..."

"But eventually, there will be those who succeed and inherit all of this, inherit your and my memories. This is a spark... When thousands of fireflies converge, they can become the radiant moon in the sky, and that will be the moment of witnessing dawn."

With that, the Giant swallowed the Silver Radiance in his hand in one gulp, and suddenly, the Spiritual Power emanating from his body grew even stronger.

Seeing this, Su Mu trembled all over, his eyes gleaming with astonishment and awe.

Such domineering and heaven-defying Secret Technique actually exists in this world.

To be able to devour the souls of the dead to enhance one’s own Spiritual Power?!

The soul is ethereal and elusive, a far more challenging existence to elevate than Qi and Blood.

In the final image, the Giant in the pouring rain slowly turned around, meeting Su Mu’s gaze across millennia, perhaps even more distant ages.

At this moment, the mist that always obscured the Giant’s face cleared slightly.

Then Su Mu was deeply moved.

Su Mu originally thought that, after all these experiences, those would be a pair of extremely weathered, struggling eyes.

But unexpectedly...

Beneath the mist lay a pair of incredibly pure and bright eyes, filled with profound hope and mountain-like determination.

...

On the steps, Su Mu slowly opened his eyes, a deep sense of sorrow and understanding unwittingly showed on his face.

Until this moment, Su Mu finally understood the change in the way of the Giant’s inheritance.

The Giant had always greatly revered martial prowess, no doubt, but it wasn’t as Marshal Yue suggested, that from the beginning, civilization was passed down through brutal means.

To desecrate the corpses of the tribesmen was considered a heinous sacrilege within the Giant Race, even deemed as a grievous crime of treason.

All of this was just the desperate method of a Giant, forced into madness, struggling for survival.

Perhaps at that time, even Su Mu would not understand the actions of this Giant, and might well have been among those Giants who attacked in anger.

And though a thousand years later, even now, humans cannot comprehend his actions.

Thus it became what the present-day Martial Artists of humanity described as cruel methods of inheritance.

But if the perspective is broadened to the level of this planet’s civilization’s survival and demise, then it reveals the underlying faith of this Giant.

"An extraordinary, extraordinary warrior."

A sincere respect arose in Su Mu’s deep eyes.

He could already envision that what this Giant did next must have been even more rebellious; in some ways, Su Mu found that he could very much understand this Giant.

Because they both shared some similarities, they were both madmen.

After all, all the Giant Ruins excavated by humans today might have all stemmed from his hand, at least utterly connected to this Giant.

Even the massive will Su Mu sensed in the Giant Memory World originated from this Giant.

For having devoured too many tribal souls, the soul formed from the convergence of thousands of souls was vast and boundless, yet chaos was lurking deep within.

"Desolate Cage, Desolate Chain... Desolate Devouring!"

Su Mu’s eyes flickered slightly; whether it was the Desolate Cage or the Desolate Chain, they both had great sealing effects on Spiritual Power, or rather, the soul. Previously, he merely thought of it as common Spiritual Secret Techniques of the Giant’s inheritance.

Now it appears, the first two techniques were clearly the Giant’s constant attempts and countless failures in exploring the path of stripping and devouring soul memories, invented during thousands, even more, trials and failures.

"Desolate Cage is the binding."

"Desolate Chain is the stripping."

"And the final Desolate Devouring is the devouring!"

All these were ultimately for this final technique; judging by the errors and misconceptions from the excavated Giant Ruins passed down through the ages, he indeed succeeded.

"However, what is inherited within the Seventh Level of the Stairs is not Desolate Devouring, but Desolate Thought."

Desolate Thought, this Spiritual Secret Technique, functions like a weakened version of Desolate Devouring; it does not directly devour the souls of the deceased but merely extracts memories from the soul.

Why do this, the reason might be simple.

Even the Giant who created this Secret Technique thought it too defying and too wicked.

"So that’s why you left these Ninth Level Stairs as a test?"

"To pass through each illusion, one needs an exceptionally rare character and will."

"Only by thoroughly traversing the nine levels of stairs can one obtain your final inheritance!"

Su Mu slowly rose and looked toward the final two levels above the Seventh Level Stairs, toward the vacant stone Throne.

"Since so, let this sin be continued by me, Su Mu..."

With a silent resolve, Su Mu stepped onto the Eighth Level stair.