"Cheng Hao, what do you think about that elder?" The snake was lazily resting on the young boy's shoulder, his mouth gaping and yawning, his eyes squinted, without the slightest worry.
With a grin, Cheng Hao shrugged his shoulders (also sending the one foot long golden snake flying at the same time) "He can be used. That guy's cultivation is incredibly high, probably one of the highest in the Sect. He should at the very least be a Sect Protector, and a high ranked one at that. Seeing how I made quite the lasting impression on him, he should already have eyed me as a potential disciple"
"That old fart has a high cultivation? He is still in the Mortal Realm! How could you say that?" The snake climbed back on Cheng Hao and rested atop his head "You and I have both seen the might of those who had power! That ten million years old Mysterious Beast, the Blood Soaked Flood Dragon, was a beast at the Pseudo Immortal Martial stage, it could erase this continent with little to no effort! And remember, a Heavenly Divine Beast like me would have little problem erasing this whole plane of existence, once it also reached the Pseudo Immortal stage!"
"This plane of existence you say..." Cheng Hao pondered aloud. The Golden Snake nodded, and seeing that, Cheng Hao asked "What about other ones?"
"A lot more effort would be required, but with my former power I did completely erase a plane hundreds, thousands of times bigger than this. I had to sleep for a ten thousand years after that though..." The snake smirked as he remembered the glory of his youth, when he was just a few million years old youth in his early ages, slaughtering his way through the never-ending conflict that had been the Endless Slaughter.
"So, I have never asked you this... But in your eyes what would have my strength have been before I died?" Cheng Hao was suddenly interested "I mean, I DID slay thousands, millions of heavenly guards and generals, and even though I didn't beat Him in the end, I did battle evenly with Lord Tian himself! That should make me quite strong, right?"
The dragon looked back in his past and saw flashes of his memories of Cheng Hao's battling figure...
In both his hands were two flaming gases, one black and one white. Deep in his left eye, the illusion of a battlefield appeared, an ancient battlefield where corpses piled up in mountains and the blood formed oceans. Within his right eye instead, a black mouth with no body kept biting the the space surrounding it screaming and yelling at the human to let it go slaughter.
With a movement of his hand, a golden current surrounded by black and white rays of light materialized and a hundred soldiers, thousands of meters tall, fell on the ground ,letting out screams of pain as their bodies withered and their bodies' strength was forcefully absorbed...
With a sharp gaze, a wheel that was the true form of the mighty golden sun appeared behind Cheng Hao's figure and a thousand black flying dragons hundreds of meters long couldn't resist at all as they faded from existence, absorbed by the metallic rays on the golden wheel's surface.
He kept fighting like that until, for some reason, his usual calm look turned into rage and his eyes blazed from fury. With a slap the air trembled, and an excited black mouth appeared in the battlefield.
As soon as the mouth appeared, the entire opposing army cried in fear, as they knew their ends were near. The black mouth opened its jaws as much as it could as it began to turn golden and transformed into a gigantic golden gate.
The gate hundreds of meters tall materialized, holding within millions of screaming monsters chained inside. The screams were horrifying to the extreme and hearing their shouts, the entire army of millions of beasts trembled and became one big puddle of blood...
Mountains of corpses and an ocean of blood formed. Suddenly, the man's left eye brightened and the image of the battlefield in his left eye overlapped with reality. The corpses and the blood disappeared in the real world to become even more corpses and even more blood in the illusion. The golden sun kept withering and absorbing the corpses, making the man's strength grow exponentially to the number of enemies he killed and absorbed, a never-ending cycle of slaughter...
"If I remember correctly, my strength at my peak should be classified as that of Immortal Realm, Supreme Stage, am I right? However my true potential was way beyond that..."
Goldy pondered for a bit but then nodded.
"Exactly, that was indeed your previous cultivation. While cultivation is dived into stages, there are still three realms: the Mortal Realm, the Ageless Realm, and the Immortal Realm. Mortal being divided into Inferior, Basic, Advanced, Superior, Sung and Reverend stages; Ageless dived into Royal, Saintly, Empiric, Ancient and God stages; Immortal divided into HighGod, Supreme, Eternal and, finally, Immortal stages. Each stage divided into many levels, these stages are used to distinguish cultivators' power and skill level."
"Why did you just tell me all that! I know it already, you have already told me this in this lifetime hundreds of times to show off your strength as a fallen Eternal Heavenly Beast!" Cheng Hao was clearly pissed off and had a splitting headache 'What's more, you only told me about Tian's true power less than a month ago, if I had known Tian was a being at the peak stage of the Eternal I wouldn't have attempted to fight him, even with the support of my heaven-shaking, unique abilities..."
"You did, but the readers didn't!" The snake replied and at that reply even its human companion couldn't help but jump.
"Don't break the fourth wall like that! Who do you think you are, frigging Deadpool?" Cheng Hao's headache got even worse.
"Ahem, anyways! The Golden Blood Drop in your possession is probably a drop of a Supreme or maybe even an Eternal Being's blood, as for that Spark, it is most likely the essence of a really powerful being... So powerful that death could not completely dissipate its soul but only its consciousness!"
The snake shook his head.
"Even I do not know what rank that may be. It might be the essence of an Eternal beast as much as that of a legendary Immortal beast... I can't think of a better explanation"
Suddenly, Cheng Hao slowed down "Somebody is following us... And he seems to be a child. He's pretty clumsy seeing how he trips on the air every few steps... Up until now he mostly completed the distance separating us rolling instead of running."
Both the young boy and the snake cringed as the child following them tripped again on his face.
"To be inside the walls of the Mysterious Light-Shadow Sect's fortress at that age he must have passed he exam... How in the world did he frigging do it? Did he make his opponent laugh to death?"
Bam. Another fall and another face-print on the paved road.
"Cheng Hao, should we go to him instead? I'm afraid he won't survive the blood loss, it's already a miracle how he hasn't passed out yet!" The young boy also frowned and then shook his head
"We do not need weaklings for friends. If he makes it to me then I will at least hear him out!"
+++
"Thanks so much for waiting for me! I was seriously about to die there!" The bleeding figure was lying on the ground a few meters from where Cheng Hao stood. His previous tidy and expensive clothes now nothing more than strips of cloth, he now resembled a beggar much like Cheng Hao did when he first met Liu Biao.
"Do you need anything? Like medicine and stuff?" Cheng Hao eyed the newcomer 'Damn, he's handsome, maybe not as stunning as me but he's a lot more feminine...'
"Cheng Hao, what are we going to do about this brat?" The snake suddenly came out of his pocket and landed atop his head. As he saw the snake, the newcomer let out an extremely high-pitched shrill and jumped backwards.
Seeing the boy's actions Cheng Hao smiled: he also had the same reaction when he had first woken up and saw the reincarnated Primordial Beast Blindlight... Wait... What?
Both Cheng Hao's and Goldy's eyes became as round as four moons and their jaw dropped to the ground: no living being not connected through karma with the golden dragon would be able to feel, let alone see, the small creature, that was the first thing the dragon had told him in his past life and he had had many chances to verify this. To be able to see him it meant he had to have a ridiculously high-quality karma thread connected to the dragon Blindlight.
Cheng Hao was able to see him as the dragon had once accidentally killed one of Cheng Hao's arch-enemies while it was sleeping, unconsciously building a strong friendly karma thread and thus allowing Cheng Hao to meet him and build a friendly relationship with him. Although the beast had endlessly regretted his actions in the future, it must admit that after millions of years passed doing nothing but watching the sky, a breath of fresh air such as this was really appreciated.
There is no doubt that without the golden dragon's help in his past life, Cheng Hao would have had no chance to reach even a hundredth of his cultivation and thus battle evenly against the Lord of the Heavens, Tian.
So it all began because of a single mistake in the part of a sleeping Heavenly Beast and, thanks to that, Cheng Hao and the golden dragon Blindlight could meet.
But this child that Cheng Hao had never even seen before could actually see the golden dragon... As far as he knew, the dragon had deeply hid itself after their defeat by the hands of Tian, so there had been zero to no chance of him meeting anyone or making any kind of Karma connection while Cheng Hao wasn't around so, if he had made any, it would have to have been prior to that. Yet the boy CLEARLY didn't look like some thousand-years-old monster... What sorcery was this?
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Note: If you still can't tell by now, this happens before the events in chapter 5 and after those in chapter 4. It will also be the same for the next few chapters.