22 - Black blood congealed ball

Su Tao woke up from the prison in his mind with a start. But he was completely baffled by the scene that he saw when he did wake up.

In front of him backed into the corner of the room was Su Xue, and in front of her she held a broken hand mirror with with deeply shaking hands. There were tears streaming down her face, and there was a puddle of pee below her. Her whole neck was swollen and black with a handprint all the way around. Blood leaked from her nose as her heart nearly beat out of her chest. Her eyes had gone bloodshot and her face was pale white.

As Su Tao saw this, he looked around, only to see that he was in the bathroom. At the door was a broken handle on the ground and splinters of wood next to it. There were two holes on the ground made to brace with, and there was a puddle on the ground stretching from the middle of the room to where Su Xue was now.

He was only thinking one thing to himself: 'What the hell happened here?'

He could tell mostly what had happened as he thought it through, but he was astonished to find that he was the only one in the room with Su Xue, meaning that he had caused this.

Suddenly, Su Tao spoke. "What did I do? That wasn't me."

Su Xue was hiding behind the mirror still, and she had not yet realized that Su Tao had come to once again. She then opened her eyes and looked into his, only to see that they once again had life, although they still felt empty. Weirdly enough, they had regained their color, green and purple respectively, as well as his tattoos too, albeit they were extremely faint at this point.

But as she looked at him, whether or not he was back, she could not stop herself from sobbing. They were chest-wrenching sobs that shook her whole body. The swelling had gone down a little bit around her throat, which allowed her sobs to now be at least audible.

She had lowered the mirror a little bit, but she was still gripping it for dear life, and her hands were shaking even more than before, with full body waves of trembling happening. Her heart had calmed down a little bit, but it hurt from how hard it had been pounding.

Su Tao could see nothing but fear on her face as she sobbed. She occasionally looked at him, but every time she did she would cry even harder. He felt bad for her, who he knew had just gone through a harrowing experience, albeit he did not know what it was.

Seeing that she was hurt, he wanted to try to help her. But then he decided not to when he realized that she would no longer trust him to help her based on the fear in her expression.

As such, he did the only thing he thought he could. He left. He left her house and left her alone. He had no way to salvage the situation based on what had just happened. He had seen the wall where he slammed her against the wall, and there were cracks on it from how hard he slammed her.

He also felt some pain from his arms and felt deep bruises from where Su Xue had hit him with her inner energy. Although these were quickly healing, he could still feel them and knew exactly what had happened now. But what he did not know was just how much more terrifying he had looked to Su Xue with his empty black eyes and the weird erratic and creepy movements.

The threat from those who had attacked him was no longer there at all, but he dared not go back to kill them since he had no clue how long it had been or if they would be awake, and he also did not know what exactly had happened with his eyes, and he needed to figure it out.

It was the dead of night, and Su Tao could see that no one was watching him. He noticed that the power of his eyes had increased and he could now see twice as good as before, making his vision about two thousand times better than a normal person's.

As he went, he thought of where he should go. He did not have to worry about the threat of being killed right now since no one was following him or watching him, and that meant he could leave the Su family if he wanted.

As such, he decided to go to the forest. There was a forest next to the border of the Su family, and Su Tao would go there often as a child. He did not go far in, but he knew what was within the depths of the forest well enough.

As he walked out of the Su family, he sneaked out past the guards at a point they couldn't see. He couldn't trust anyone to not tell the elders where he was, meaning that he had to sneak out without being seen or run the risk of being killed.

The forest was called the Silver Springs forest. The outer area and the areas near the City of Silver Sparrow had been mostly cleared out of beasts and were relatively safe for commoners to go into. But the deeper you went into the forest, the more dangerous it got.

No one knew just how deep the forest was or how dangerous it got as no one had ever survived, but it was said that there were even three star gold ranked beasts there.

The City of Silver Sparrow actually got its name from the Silver Springs Forest as the 'Silver' came from the forest's name and the 'Sparrow' came from the most common bird in the outer edge of the forest, the sparrow.

Su Tao instantly went into the depths of the forest and past the area where commoners could be, and past the area where the bronze rank warriors could be. He went straight to the place where silver rank people would go.

The poison was still in his system, and it was limiting him somewhat. It made him feel sick and super dizzy, but not much more than that. He could feel that something was inhibiting it from affecting him further, and that it was slowly being dissolved, otherwise it would have already killed him.

He did not think that it was the power of his left eye. This was because currently both eyes had virtually no power left, and his vision was barely maintaining the long distance vision, which he found went away when he used all of the power from the respective eye.

This meant that it could not be his left eye because it did not have nearly enough energy to heal a potent poison.

After moving around for a few minutes, Su Tao came upon a spring. The water in it flowed gently and smoothly. It looked like the reflection was a silver mirror, giving it the name Silver Spring Forest. These springs were all over the entire forest and they all flowed to the center of it, but no one had ever gone there.

He felt that something weird started to kind of bond to his body and change it. Although his body had undergone a major change when he was in the dimension of his eyes, it was still changing little by little.

He had also noticed something earlier. He was able to sense the aura of people much more than before, and he was even able to tell that Su Xue was at the silver rank just based on her aura. Normally this would be impossible since one had to be at the same rank or higher to sense someone's aura, but he was just about able to do so although he didn't know how.

It was supposed to be impossible, but his eyes themselves should be impossible, so he discarded this thought after a little while. But he did find it weird because even his eyes did not increase his sensitivity towards auras.

At the same time, he felt that the weird strange feeling bonding to the rest of his body. He had no clue what this power was, but it suddenly became a part of him, something that he could control. As such, he activated it the way he thought he should.

Instantly, he felt that the weird power was being rapidly used and would drain entirely within only ten breaths (one breath is approximately six seconds). But he saw that there were suddenly tattoos that appeared on the surface of his body, and they were black. Then, a bit of the weird power covered the tattoos and made a black barrier.

However, this black barrier consumed an extreme amount of energy just doing nothing, and he could imagine that if he used it this way, he could use it to completely block about three full force attacks from someone at the middle tier first silver star.

As he saw how much energy it consumed, he instantly stopped as soon as he found out approximately how powerful the barrier was. He was completely astonished because he had no clue what this power was. But it seemed to be part of him now.

He then spent a while experimenting with the mysterious black power. But one thing was consistent through every test he ran. Every time he used that weird black power, it did not come from the dimension of his eyes, but rather, it was merged into his blood.

He knew that this was something that he could learn to control, so he spent the next few hours experimenting with how to use the weird black power, and he eventually realized something. The tattoos the black power brought were similar to the purple flower and green lightning tattoos, yet the black tattoo vanished when he didn't use it.

As soon as he figured this out, he instantly focused on it a lot. He figured that it was better that his tattoos not be seen as they were extremely weird on their own. That combined with the fact that they seemed to be exactly like his eyes and changed with them would draw a lot of attention eventually. Luckily no one had realized the connection yet.

After a whole night, he was able to make the green and purple tattoos fade by more than half, and he continued to do this until the next day had passed. He did not dare go back to the city because there was almost no chance that he could stay with Su Xue anymore due to what had happened, and she was his only source of protection anyway.

As such, he was forced to live in this forest. He had previously stayed in the city because there were always people watching him and he would not be able to get away without being killed. But after he lived with Su Xue, those people stopped watching him and the only ones left were the black robed people who were sent by Su Long.

Now that those people had been knocked out for a while, Su Tao had an extremely rare chance where he could escape without being seen by anyone, and he took it without hesitation. Because even though he could not be killed in the light, those elders would still find a way to kill him in the dark at times when he was vulnerable.

The reason that he chose to go into this forest and stay here for the time being was because if he stayed in the outer area, there would not be many beasts stronger than the weakest one star silver rank, and he could also have access to everything he needed to survive.

The beasts would provide food to him, the silver springs had clean water, and he could sleep in the trees as his senses had gotten stronger, allowing him to be woken up by the sound of an approaching beast or person.

He had seen a few people in the forest, but most of them were just people hunting beasts for money as the carcasses had a few resources that were useful such as pelts and bones. The meat could also be sold as a source of food. And these people were generally only at the outer edges and not where he was anyway.

Beasts were generally stronger than a person of the same cultivation, but humans had the advantage of intelligence, weapons, and teams. As such, beasts were hunted either for sport or for money quite often.

As time passed, Su Tao slowly got accustomed to using the power of his eyes and directing it through his body. A week had passed, and he had managed to get to the point where the tattoos could not be seen at all on the outside unless he used the power of that eye in a large quantity.

When he used the power, the flower and lightning tattoos would reappear. But only when he used something like active extreme healing or explosive strength which fully utilized the power of his eyes. He had also discovered a way to use that black power only in a specific part of his body, but it was not very effective and didn't serve any purpose anyway.

He had also realized through the process of this week that the black power came directly from his heart, and that the black ball was the source of the black blood in his body. The black ball in the dimension of his eyes had managed to move out of that dimension and into his heart to be the source of that black blood, and it produced the power while the black blood itself actually did everything such as the barrier and the explosive strength.

Meanwhile, the mysterious purple and green marbles had somehow reappeared in the dimension of his eyes as if they had not fused into that black power which was now in his heart. Little did he know that they had only combined to form the black ball that was now in his heart and they simply separated and went back to normal after.

That black blood was always in his body, and he could activate it at any time he wanted. Through this, he was able to make a barrier on his body that could completely block the full force attack of someone at the middle tier one star silver rank.

He knew this to be true based on the fight he had with the middle tier beast at the one star silver rank, in which the beast had charged at him and rammed into his chest, but he had summoned the black barrier which almost completely blocked it and let him simply get pushed backwards a bit.

That blocking had used up about a third of the black blood in his body. Although he was physically stronger than one star silver ranks by quite a bit due to the black blood changing his body, he was still far off of a beast that was basically made of nothing but solid muscle.

As such, he could only rely on his skill and agility, but he did not have any weapons to kill the beast with, meaning that he could only rely on the black blood's and his eyes' power. It was at this point that he finally realized just how weak he was in comparison. He did not have any weapons, and he could barely take on a beast at the middle tier one star silver rank.

Just how would he survive the pursuit of those at the second or even third silver star who he knew wanted to kill him.

It was at this moment that he decided to try cultivating again.

He had tried breaking through to the silver rank before, but he felt that no matter what he did, the bottleneck in his body repaired faster than he could break it, making him have no progress whatsoever.

He then sat down in a tree and sensed the Qi between heaven and earth. Suddenly, there was a small speck of golden Qi that formed in front of him, followed by another and another until there was a stream of golden Qi that was flowing into him.

Every drop of Qi that went into his body was instantly distributed across his whole body, and it brought a warm and comfortable feeling with it. At this moment, Su Tao could once again feel the existence of the bottleneck.

He once again attacked the bottleneck with the Qi, but not much happened. But he felt that something was different this time. Because even though not much happened, something was still happening. The progress he made was no longer being healed faster than he could break it.

When he felt this, he was overjoyed. He previously wondered if he would ever be able to break through to the silver rank with this seemingly impossible bottleneck, but from the looks of it, it simply needed the power of his eyes to combine into that weird black power which went into his heart and changed his body.

As such, he continued to grind at the bottleneck barrier, but it still stood strong even after a long time. But he was not discouraged because the average person took twenty to thirty years to break through, and he should not expect to be so fast as to make substantial progress in only a few hours.

This was why people were so astonished with the city master's daughter's cultivation speed. Breaking through within two years of starting cultivation, probably even less, to the second silver star. Such speed was simply unheard of in the City of Silver Sparrow, and even in much bigger cities she would be considered a genius among geniuses, hence the assassination attempt on her. If nothing unexpected happened, her future would at the very least be at the gold rank.

Su Tao continued to cultivate for the rest of the night, and he managed to make some progress. About one percent of the bottleneck was gone, ground away by the golden Qi. Such incredible progress speed was only below that of the city master's daughter.

She had managed to get two percent of the bottleneck ground away on the first day, showing just how incredible her speed was. It was twice as fast that of Su Tao's despite them having the same amount of Qi that they could summon.

This was the difference between talent and potential. In terms of talent, Su Tao and the city master's daughter were approximately the same with the latter only being a bit more talented than him. This referred to the speed at which they could summon Qi from heaven and earth and direct it into their body.

But when it came to potential, Su Tao had almost none. The city lord's daughter had completely beat him in terms of potential as she had been born with potential.

Su Tao even felt that he only managed to make as much progress as he did based on the mysterious eyes and their power which had merged together now.

He felt as if that black blood within his body was somehow restricting the bottleneck in his body and preventing it from fighting back or healing, otherwise, even with the amount of Qi he could summon, it would make no difference.

If one had an extreme talent and extremely low potential, what would end up happening was one of two options.

They would reach their limit, but they would push on thinking they could endure it. But when they broke through to the next rank, the bottleneck which they had to break through would break itself, which broke their source of inner energy and crippled them forever.

Or, they would simply not be able to grind away at the bottleneck at all no matter how much Qi was used, because their potential was bound to their life force, meaning that if they tried to force the bottleneck to break, they would just die instead. This was what Su Tao's body previously had.

This was why it was so dangerous to forcefully break through to the next rank and why it was rarely done. He felt that the only reason he was not meeting this scenario was because that mysterious black blood in his body was restricting that bottleneck and weakening it, making it easier to break through and not allowing it to repair itself as well.

The next morning, he cultivated for the entire day and only stop to eat and drink a couple times. He had had no issues with beasts since he stayed in the safe area, so he did not need to worry about that.

By the end of the day, about two-and-a-bit percent of the bottleneck was broken, and it seemed to be getting weaker to him.

He also felt that his control over the black blood in his body was getting better, and he could now have the tattoos not even appear on his body unless he wanted them to. His body also continued to get slightly stronger every hour, with the black blood changing his bones, muscles, and skin. But by now the effect was essentially nothing anymore.

He also felt like the amount of the black blood was slowly increasing, or maybe the power was getting denser, because he felt that the black barrier could now maybe take four hits from a middle tier one star silver rank before running out of energy.

He could defeat less experienced one star silver ranks without the use of the black blood, but those more experienced or more powerful would require him to use some of that black blood power or the power of his eyes in order to beat them. But it had an advantage over the power of his eyes; it could block attacks.

As such, he figured that he would use it only for blocking an unavoidable attack such as the fiery man and the icy man's slashes on his back that he could not avoid. But even then, he would rather take a hit from them and use the power of his left eye to actively heal it while blocking an attack from someone like the corrosive woman or the disruptive woman instead since they were more dangerous.

He had also found that he could use the black power to heal wounds, although it was not as good as the purple power of his left eye.

On the third day, he once again spent the whole day cultivating, and he realized that it was not him hallucinating, the bottleneck was getting weaker by the day, and he had already broken through about three and a half percent of it by now.

At this point, his speed of progress was still much slower than the city master's daughter when she started, but his speed was only going up as the bottleneck got weaker. He felt that this was very likely due to the black blood that was constantly changing his body. Although the changes were miniscule now, he could still feel them, but the changes were reaching an end and would no longer affect him soon.

But one thing that he did know for sure was that across the entirety of the world, the City of Silver Sparrow was fairly weak in comparison, and there were sects and families that even had three star gold ranked warriors in them as well. There was even rumors about people of the platinum rank, the rank above gold ranked warriors.

Platinum ranked warriors were rarely seen by the world, and they were the sources of legends. They had been rumored to have the power to turn the earth upside down and kill gold ranked warriors in a single strike. They had reached the realm above the martial path, the martial king realm.

They almost never had a platinum star on their chest, however, as they were beyond the ranking of the martial path. As such, people simply called them martial kings or queens if they ever got the chance to meet one and platinum rank was only a title.

Su Tao knew that there was almost no chance for him to ever meet a martial king, and even less chance to become one himself. So he set his goals to currently reach the gold rank. With these mysterious eyes of his and this new weird black blood, he felt that this was achievable.

He would have already started to move towards a nearby city, but he had things to do here. He had originally agreed to help Su Xue, and he intended to. Although she probably would never be able to trust him again, he still had grudges to settle, people to kill, and a promise to uphold.

Even though he had gone through the trials of his eyes and was immune to emotions, pain, and empathy, he still had an honest heart, and he would uphold his promise even if the other party didn't want him to. Otherwise, it would create a heart demon that would limit him in the future.

He still felt his emotions, even though he was able to use them to do exactly what he wanted to do instead of acting based on the emotions he was feeling. In this way, he was not immune to emotions, but rather, immune to the effects that they brought on his behavior. As such, he would still be mentally affected if he broke a promise since he had an honest heart.

As such, he continued to cultivate here. Only by reaching the silver rank could he do what he wanted to do without as much fear of dying.

After another week and a half of cultivating, Su Tao had made significant progress. It had gone far smoother than he had expected, and the bottleneck got easier to break with every passing day. He was now about thirty five percent through the process of breaking through.

But he felt that something was wrong. He felt that it was seemingly too easy to break through. At this time, he had just passed the city master's daughter in terms of cultivation speed. Such speed was unnatural, even for the eyes and black blood which he had been given.

He was a nobody previously. He would be lucky to ever reach the third bronze star in his life, and he would certainly never reach the silver rank. But now, his cultivation speed was equal to the top genius of the city, a genius who would be of a high tier even in the larger cities, sects, and families around the world.

This led him to believe that something was wrong, but he had no clue what it could be. Every day he felt the bottleneck get weaker, and the speed at which he broke through increased. From a standpoint of his speed, it was now just higher than the city master's daughter, but he had started from nothing.

He had previously thought that this speed was due to his potential being increased by the black blood, but he suddenly realized that this speed was just too fast, even for his eyes and the increased power of his body from the black blood.

He then tried to sense the bottleneck in his body, and instead of just looking at how much had been ground off, he tried to sense the bottleneck itself. What he sensed shocked him. The bottleneck was cracked, and it looked like it would break if he continued to break through to the silver rank.