Inheritance of the Soul Controlling Sect.

Pressing on the bright pink dot on the back wall unlocked a door, and after walking down a short hallway, Xavier entered a large room. In the center of the room was an ominous array painted on the floor with a rainbow-colored mist flowing inside. The walls were covered in writing. The cultivation technique, various spells, instructions on how make tools and weapons meant for cultivators. It also explains where the inheritance came from, the Soul Controlling Sect.

The Soul Controlling Sect was a very powerful sect in the mainland. The sect had three branches: ghost cultivators, body cultivators, and corpse cultivators. And since the founding ancestor's parents were ghost cultivators, the inheritance before him was for ghost cultivators. After the founding of the cult, the other two branches founded martial art sects to recruit cultivators and left their branches inheritances. Soon many sects from the mainland created forces on several continents with the goal of recruiting cultivators. This gave birth to Heavenly Demon Cult and it's 100 Demon Sects, the Unorthodox Faction, and the Heavenly Alliance.

These three factions were merely copies of the three factions of the mainland and were viewed as nothing than disposable tools for recruitment. To keep these new martial arts sects from being massacred by rival cultivator sects the three factions agreed to not interfere, and they could only destroy the sect they founded after taking back their inheritance.

After finding the cult's inheritance and learning of the inheritance of the other two branches, Xavier spent a few years looking for them in the ruins of the other demonic martial arts sects. He found most of the inheritances. It wasn't hard, unless the Heavenly Alliance were truly thorough in their extermination of the demonic martial arts sects, there would still be clues left to find. Only a few times did he fail to find the inheritances or found them but didn't know how to safely get to them. 

He did find the inheritance of the other two branches, but they weren't much help to him. The body cultivating needed to be started when young to get the maximum effect and he was almost sixty years old when he found it. As for corpse cultivating, that required money, a place to buy the necessary supplies, and a safe place to refine the corpses. But at that time, he was still being hunted by the Heavenly Alliance and still too new of a cultivator to be able to stop long enough to do it. For the rest of the inheritances he had found, most of them were useless. Those that didn't need to practice that sect's cultivation technique required him to do things he couldn't or wouldn't do. Murdering newborns, rape, eating people, or mutilating his body in various ways, including castration. 

Xavier knew every word on these walls, he had trained all these spells and techniques to absolute perfection. When he left for the mainland, he foolishly believed he had accomplished some great thing and that he was a godlike being among those of similar power. Only to find out that his peers from the sect had mastered hundreds of spells and techniques he had never knew existed. And the great treasures and the riches he had fought hard to accumulate were laughingly inadequate to be call treasures and riches.

But this time would be different, he would no longer have to struggle to understand how to cultivate. He knew all three inheritances, and had a young body full of strength and no one was constantly hunting him or trying to kill him for the bounty. This time when he returned to the sect, he would still be poor, but he wouldn't be so far behind the others to be labeled as trash. No matter how slim, this time he would have a chance to enter the inner sect. He would no longer just scrape by, doing grunt work for almost nothing. 

Taking a breath and letting all the thoughts of how his life would change from now on fade into nothingness, Xavier stepped inside the array and sat down. Being inside the swirling rainbow-colored mist was cold, far colder then walking in the snow. The mist was soul energy harvested from those who trespassed into the cult's forbidden zone and refined over and over again by the array till it was absolutely pure. Cultivating here would be a hundred times more effective than if he had stayed at home.

The soul energy would increase the speed of his body's transformation from a normal human mortal to a cultivator's body. The process should be a weeks or months long process of drawing in small amounts of spiritual energy in the air and slowly tempering his body to be strong enough to survive being a cultivator without damaging his body or exploding. But there was a downside to compressing a long slow process into a few hours or days, it was painful. It felt like millions of ants crawling around your insides biting and tearing you apart piece by piece. It so painful that Xavier had to stop and start the process over a dozen times before he grew numb enough to complete it. This was the price of power, to endure pain for speed or have the patience for the slow way.

The moment he started cultivating, the rainbow-colored mist began to swirl around him as it was sucked inside him. His insides felt cold, like he fell through the ice of a frozen lake, then came a tingling throughout his body which quickly turned in to pain, excruciating pain. His forehead became covered in little droplets of sweat, after a few minutes his entire body was covered sweat and began to form a puddle under him. 

He wanted to scream but couldn't spare the energy to do so. He wanted to quit for now and start again later, but focused everything he had too barely suppress that urge. The pain was so bad he lost track of time and couldn't tell if he had been cultivating for minutes or hours. Xavier had to keep telling himself to hold out for just a bit longer, just a bit longer and the pain will start to fade till it wouldn't hurt anymore. He told himself this over and over again, so many times that he lost count, even if he didn't lose count, he wasn't sure he knew the names of the numbers that high. 

After cultivating for an hour, the pain did slowly start to decrease. A few hours after that, the pain was gone, replaced with a feeling of strength and power. Xavier wanted to continue to cultivate but his body was trembling and covered with sweat, and a wave of exhaustion overcame him. His body had gone through a lot and needed to rest and recover.

Being underground, it wasn't cold or warm, it could only be called cool. It defiantly wasn't a temperature that he should be sleeping in while soaked in sweat. Walking to his pack, he stripped off his clothes and spread them out on the ground to allow them to dry. Taking a towel and a fresh set of clothes, Xavier dried himself off the best he could before putting on extra set of clothes. Dragging his cloak to the corner of the room he wrapped himself inside it and began to find the most comfortable position to sleep on the cool stone floor. After adjusting himself for a few minutes, the sound of light snoring echoed inside the chamber, and would continue till almost noon the next day.