The Deep Sea

The loneliness would have caused others to go crazy, but ever since his wife had died and he had lost his daughter, Minos only ever felt loneliness, so the feeling was a familiar one.

The blue seas never seemed to change, yet each wave was different from the last, some a bit taller, others wider, some thicker and others thinner.

Just like humans, each wave had its own charm and style, no different from the clouds above, and the fish below.

It seemed humans weren't the only things blessed with individuality in this world, and in fact everything was unique in its own way.

However such a thought just further depressed Minos, reminding him that he'll never find anyone quite like Tinka, as close as they may be.

"Heaven's Forsaken… Perhaps this is the ultimate form of uniqueness, one so extreme that even the heavens won't accept it." Minos said in a whisper as he leaned back on his boat, watching the clouds pass.

"Hahaha, you've finally understood! Took you long enough!" A majestic voice said with a loud laugh, causing Minos to immediately sit up from his lying-down position.

"You always seem to come right when I need you." Minos said, recognizing the familiar phantom.

"Well I am you, aren't I? Anyways, it seems this experience has awoken you to the true nature of the Heaven Forsaken physique."

"I'd rather have never known…" Minos replied.

"This is a fact all Heaven Forsaken have to accept sooner or later, you aren't the first to suffer in such ways, in fact others have suffered thousands of times worse, having lost entire clans to this curse."

"... But why, why do the heavens seem to have such a vendetta against me, what have I done?" Minos couldn't help but ask.

"You'll know that in time, but for now, what are your plans?"

"Keep rowing until I either reach land or die, whichever comes first." Minos said succinctly.

"Harsh, but I suppose you don't really have any better options. Anyways, take this, if you survive the journey, you'll need it."

"Take what?" Minos asked, though before he received an answer, he felt a wave of information suddenly assault his mind, causing his eyes to go black for a moment.

By the time he opened them, the phantom man was gone, and his mind had also had a new technique within it.

'Heaven Forsaken Furnace?' Minos thought curiously, reading over the technique, his eyes widening as he got further and further through the text.

This was a Nux Cultivation Technique, though far from an ordinary one, being so advanced that Minos couldn't even tell where its true level lied.

All he knew was that the complexities of it were something he was far from understanding, but he could at least grasp the core of this technique.

The nature of this technique revolved around the word 'furnace' which allowed it to 'melt' and consume any substance into a part of itself.

In simple terms, this technique could convert anything into Nux, whether physical, elemental, or even spiritual.

More than that, it could even consume other people's Nux, given the user of the technique was skilled enough, and directly convert it into their own.

Essentially, users of this technique could turn anything and everything into their own Nux, which not only gave them tremendous power, but also allowed their cultivation speed to advance hundreds of times faster than normal.

And that was only one aspect of the technique, the second aspect being the ability to then reconvert this same Nux into anything you wanted.

For example, Minos could absorb Fire Nux, and turn it into Water Nux at 100% efficiency at full mastery, without a single loss in between.

It was quite similar to Pure Nux Ascension Technique he already cultivated in that sense, but that technique had a loss of around 90%, so it wasn't at all comparable.

Not to mention the Pure Nux Ascension Technique could only really convert between the five base elements, like water, fire, earth, etc, but more advanced Nux elements like ice or lightning was out of the question.

The Heaven Forsaken Furnace didn't have the same limitation, and as far as Minos could tell, it could turn into virtually any element imaginable.

Of course without a good enough understanding of said element, the conversion efficiency would drop tremendously, so Minos still had a lot of learning to do.

But with his understanding of the five base elements, he was already confident he could get a conversion efficiency of at least 50%, and it wouldn't take long to reach 100%.

Of course, before any of that, Minos had to convert his Pure Nux Ascension Technique into the Heaven Forsaken Furnace.

Normally swapping between cultivation techniques was far from a simple matter unless the two techniques already had a similar nature.

But given the Heaven Forsaken Furnace core ability, this was naturally not something Minos had to worry about, not to mention his Pure Nux Ascension Technique was also one that made conversion easy.

With both techniques already having a similar ability, the conversion between them was an incredibly easy one, only requiring a lot of patience.

With his mind made up, Minos sat cross-legged on his boat, running his Pure Nux Ascension Technique and slowly converting it into the Heaven Forsaken Furnace.

As he slowly converted his Nux from one to another, the amount dropped tremendously, his cultivation slowly receding from the Earth Cloud, to the Water Cloud, and finally only stopping once it reached the beginning of the Air Cloud.

As he finally finished the conversion, Minos looked internally at his Nux that had once again devolved back into its misty-air like form, though his face didn't seem at all dissatisfied at such a change.

This was because while his Nux had seemingly dropped in quality, it had actually massively improved, he himself feeling this change most intuitively.

With a raise of his hand, he gathered a small cloud of Nux, before waving it off into the water beside him.

As the cloud hit the water, the water immediately exploded into a large wave, his Nux pushing through the water and leaving behind a large hole for nearly a dozen meters before finally collapsing.

Despite having lost its solid form, it was no weaker than it was before, in fact, Minos estimated that it was even stronger.

It went without saying that the quality of Nux cultivated by the Heaven Forsaken Furnace was incomparable to the Pure Nux Ascension Technique, so such a change was expected.

Satisfied, Minos proceeded to test out the true core of this technique, which was its absorption ability.

Looking around the water for a moment, Minos waited for a fish to come near the surface before his hand suddenly shot out and grasped the fish before it could even react.

Flailing fiercely, the fish tried escaping Minos's grasp, but unfortunately it wasn't strong enough, soon enough giving up it's struggle due to exhaustion.

Once the fish had finally settled down, Minos breathed deeply, running the Heaven Forsaken Furnace to the same rhythm as his breath.

Gathering his Nux, he slowly ran it up his arm before gathering it around the fish, encompassing its body completely.

Once the Nux was finished wrapping around the fish, Minos proceeded to begin the absorption, his Nux slowly eating away at the fish's flesh, which was a slightly strange sight.

It was akin to watching a carcass rot at a thousand times speed, but luckily without any of the foulness that came with such an act.

In fact the process was quite clean, the fish slowly being shaved away at layer by layer, until Minos's hand was completely empty.

With the process over, Minos pulled the Nux back into his Inner Heaven, feeling for any sort of improvement.

Unfortunately he felt nothing, but this wasn't because he failed, but rather for two important reasons.

First of all, he was new with this technique, so his efficiency of converting the fish into Nux was less than 1%.

The vast majority of the fish had just been destroyed by the process rather than converted, so it's natural his improvement was nil.

Of course more important than that was the nature of the fish itself, it being only a mortal creature with little Nux in the first place.

Even if he could convert it into Nux at 100% efficiency, odds are his cultivation still wouldn't really improve, simply because the fish didn't really have any Nux in the first place.

Though before he could attempt this technique on anything more advanced, he had to master it first, so after a little internal reflection, Minos got to work on catching his second fish.

…

With training to distract his cloudy mind, time passed by in a flash, the first month turning into months, which soon turned into a full half year.

Despite his constant rowing, Minos had yet to see anything, and he wasn't even sure what direction he was traveling in anymore, the occasional storm having long since skewed his internal compass.

Without any aim in mind, he kept going forward, through sun and storm, his rowing never stopped, only taking an occasional break to train before getting right back into it.

However, just as Minos thought everyday was going to be the same, he noticed a dense army of black clouds in the distance, one much larger than any he had seen in the past.