The moment Solanky made up his mind to commit to his chosen cauldron, every remaining cauldron — save for the harvester's — vanished from sight. Black God Solanky sent a trace of his spiritual body into the cauldron to scan its interior, and what he discovered shook him to his core.
Before he could react, Bragon's will resounded once more, guiding the inheritance trial of the second pyramid. "Proceed to the next floor. There you'll find third-grade materials comparable to third-turn weapons, suitable for refining a weapon to match your technique. You may take at most one weapon, restructuring its elements and components to meld or incorporate them with the materials you selected on this floor. The trial of the second floor has already been passed — the moment you chose your cauldron, you cleared it. But the true test lies ahead: refining a weapon at the third-grade, or third-turn, of the nine peak-turns level. The instant you complete your weapon and forge a technique at the true peak-turns first-turn level or above, you'll be teleported directly to the third floor and granted automatic possession of the second pyramid.
"Be warned — your true bodies will fall into a deep slumber the moment you begin refining or creating these techniques. You may summon them if you wish, but know this: if you die here, no power of time reversal or reincarnation can bring you back."
Solanky was stunned. Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined the harvester was merely a clone. If that were true, her actual body had to be terrifying indeed — perhaps even possessing an early-stage second-turn spiritual body and awareness. The harvester, for her part, was equally floored; it had never crossed her mind that Solanky might also be a clone, his true body hidden away just as hers was.
Weighing the risk of total annihilation, the harvester restrained herself from summoning her true body. She flipped her hand, and the cauldron she'd claimed earlier dropped before her, striking the ground. She settled into a seated position and extended her spiritual sense to envelop it. Flames burst from within, rising to form a protective dome around her. She spread her wings, activated her domain, and began selecting materials and weapons, tossing them one by one into the cauldron to begin her refinement.
Solanky, as the bearer of the source-defying flames, recognized immediately that the harvester's flames burned a tier below his own. Drawing on his connection to Supremo and the vast knowledge of his true body — knowledge spanning everything below the seventh-turn in compact form — he set out to identify them. He determined that her cauldron held flames from a family known as the calamitous flames, ranking just beneath the source-defying flames. Nine distinct variants existed within this family, and their combined fury was fearsome enough to wound fifth-turn peak-turns beings and suppress most structural laws of the beyond realm — an all-out assault comparable to the sixth-turn of the nine true peak-turns level, guardian-level combat.
Solanky was surprised, though not shaken; his own true body commanded flames a full tier above the calamitous flames, and the source-severing blade forged from his source-defying flames stood as proof of just how terrifying they truly were. Still, the harvester's command over 45% of the calamitous flames was no small feat for her level — only calamitous lifeforms at the true peak-turns level could typically wield more than 40% of such flames.
Solanky waved his hand to summon his own cauldron. The instant it materialized, dark clouds gathered in the empty air above the third floor. The moment it touched ground, violent thunder roared across the floor, and sparks of lightning danced visibly along its surface. He settled into a cross-legged stance facing the harvester, planted his axe behind him, and activated the giant world axe domain — a technique that conjured a miniature universe shaped like an axe. He knew that without the power of the second-turn, breaking through his domain would prove nearly impossible for anyone.
He cast his spiritual sense into the cauldron, finding within it a vast realm of dark clouds suspending a hundred-kilometer continent. His spiritual sense took on the shape of his body and descended onto the land below. Though its edges bore the scars of fire, the continent remained intact, lush vegetation still sprouting from its soil. At its center stood an ancient, charred anvil rising several meters into the air.
Without wasting a moment, Solanky waved his hands, and his selected materials appeared, suspended around him. Another wave summoned the heavy hammer into his grip. He struck the anvil with everything he had — yet only the faintest sparks of lightning answered him, accompanied by a few weak rumbles of thunder from the clouds above.
Solanky deduced that forging a true peak-turn-level technique would demand total devotion — hammering the anvil relentlessly until it yielded a true torrent of lightning and thunder. He closed his eyes, lulling his true body in the forsaken realm into slumber, choosing instead to experiment through the spiritual realm, where his efforts would bear far more fruit than his physical body ever could.
His first-turn peak-turn spiritual body fractured into a thousand spiritual clones, each carrying the strength of a half-step peak-turn being, and scattered across the beyond realm. Some slipped into secret regions, latching onto saint transcendent beings and weaker existences; others wandered distant sects and territories, hunting for inspiration.
Meanwhile, Black God Solanky continued his assault on the anvil, the sparks and thunder growing denser and more potent with every strike. He realized the anvil was sealing away a lightning seed — one essential to crafting the weapon he needed to pass this trial. Excitement surged through him; this was the very same lightning Bragon had once used in his own creations. Known as the Nine Lightning Tribulations, this lightning carried enough destructive force to mend any weapon or artifact below the ninth-turn peak-turn warrior's ninth-grade arsenal.
This was also the reason the gluttonous god and the Levian progenitor had once targeted Bragon — hoping to steal this very lightning to repair a ninth-grade weapon shattered by Supremo and Govot. That weapon, once restored, became the very blade that struck down Bragon's true body and wounded his clones.
To Solanky, such knowledge held no use for him now, and so it remained veiled, waiting for the day he grew strong enough to need it.
He had struck the anvil over a hundred million times by now, and he felt he'd finally grasped the fundamentals of forging a true peak-turn technique. With his scattered spiritual bodies observing countless beings across the realms — watching them spar, clash, and unleash their techniques against one another — Solanky began to possess these fighters mid-battle, experiencing their methods firsthand. Most were beings below the transcendent saint emperor level; the instant Solanky's spirit took hold, their power surged, and their wounds healed as if by miracle.
As his thousand possessed vessels fought on, Solanky absorbed their techniques and unraveled the mysteries woven into them. Once understanding dawned, he dissolved his spiritual bodies, their essence flowing back to serve as energy reserves for the thousand beings he'd inhabited. In the wake of this, his own spiritual power — long stagnant at the late stage — broke through effortlessly into the early stage of the second-turn.
Unlike lesser beings, who perish the instant their spiritual bodies are slain outside their original forms, transcendent saint emperors carry their spirituality woven into every fiber of their existence, their internal worlds serving as the very wellspring of their power. The internal world within Solanky's original body surged, flooding spiritual energy throughout his being in an instant — for his clones and reincarnation carriers remained alive and conscious throughout.
His true body slept on, undisturbed, while his tyrannical black god clone remained within the cauldron, hammer in hand. By the time he'd struck the anvil over nine hundred million times, cracks had begun spreading across its surface — and within them, he could sense the stirrings of a terrifying lightning and thunder essence, waiting to be unleashed.