Reincarnated With A Divine Bloodline System

Chapter 19: -19- Death and Destruction

"A beast, a large, strong beast, killed them all!" Red said, so flustered and happy to finally meet his brother that he didn't hear Silas's question.

"What, a beast?" Could a beast have wiped out his clan? It was unlikely—there shouldn't be a beast strong enough inside the inheritance realm to go unnoticed, enter his Armstrong clan, and kill everyone.

'Wait, the village,' Silas suddenly thought as he began to rush toward the Ironfang village that he had called home for close to a year.

"Yes, a beast! A peak Transcendent lifeform killed everyone! The entire village is dead! It's gone!" Red finally confirmed his fears.

'Dammit!' Silas thought as he ran toward the village. While he wasn't from the village and didn't have any family there, he had grown to love that little village, and he had even started to consider it his village to fill the hole his previous village held in his heart.

Silas eventually crossed Red's path, and after about an hour at his top speed, he made it to the village.

"Dammit!" he yelled. The entire village was gone; what little remained was currently being burned down.

"Not a soul survived. I barely managed to escape," Red said.

Silas walked forward to where the front gate had previously been, and he was surprised at the gruesome scene.

While the beast that attacked had slaughtered and eaten all the humans, it didn't seem to want to do that to the village guardian, the early Transcendent black panther. It had hung its corpse up by its tail on a beam it had planted in the ground.

Silas could tell the beast had fought hard for its life and the village, but it was no match for a peak Transcendent lifeform.

"Dammit, dammit, dammit!" Silas yelled.

He then started to walk through what was left of the village. First, he walked to the place he had lived for the past year, and after that, to the stream...

About two hours later, Kai finally rushed into the village.

"First brother, second brother, are you both ok?" he yelled as he entered the village.

"Yes, we're over here!" Red yelled.

Silas was currently sitting on a rock, thinking about the past of both this village and his previous one. How was his village doing? Was it still ok? Did the war affect it? Had a beast crossed its path and destroyed it?

After another 20 minutes of silence went by, he looked up to Kai, who was standing beside Red on a branch of a tree, and said, "Kai, I want you to go find that beast and bring it to me."

Kai quickly nodded his little head, "You got it, boss."

Kai then took off, following the scent of the beast. They were both Transcendent lifeforms, so they couldn't fly yet, and the beast was clearly not a bird type since its trail was there and easy to follow.

***

Three hours went by, and while Silas was waiting for Kai's message of the mission's success, he was surprised at first and then slightly saddened to see Kai walk back into the village with his hands empty and a sad look on his face.

"Kai, what happened?" Silas asked. He knew something had to have happened—there was no way Kai had just decided to give up on the mission for no reason.

"I'm sorry, boss," Kai said with his head held low.

"I tried, but the beast was too strong... If it was a peak Transcendent beast alone, I could have handled it easily, but it's also a king beast that's managed to touch one lesser Dao of the fire type, so I could at most fight it to a standstill," Kai explained.

"Damn," Silas said with a sigh.

"I'm sorry, boss. If I had cultivated a little more instead of playing around so much, I wouldn't still be an early Transcendent lifeform, and I would have been able to capture it," Kai said, his head down.

"Don't worry, Kai. It's not your fault... Besides, I kind of wanted to kill the beast myself, so once I'm strong enough, I'll do just that," Silas said, making a promise to both himself and the village.

"So what kind of beast was it?" Silas asked.

"It was a red scorch crocodile," Kai said. He then shared a prompt.

[Scorch Crocodile (King Beast) - Qi Cultivation: Peak Transcendent - Body Cultivation: Peak Transcendent]

***

Three weeks quickly went by.

Kai had once again split off on his own, this time saying confidently that he wouldn't play around as much and would actually try to cultivate a little.

Red no longer had a village to stay in, so he followed Silas around and was currently watching Silas battle the lynx while sitting next to the Late Transcendent hawk.

Silas still hadn't managed to reach Transcendent yet, but he knew it was any day now, so he kept battling the spatial lynx.

***

Silas was now sitting on a rock overlooking a vast lake, thinking about his new comprehensions.

'How does this relate to death and destruction?' Silas pondered. To rank up as a Transcendent lifeform in his body cultivation, he would have to fuse both death and destruction together. This was the path his Grim Reaper King Fiendgod refinement technique took him down. This was the path of the Grim Reaper King.

As the darkness deepened, Silas stood up and walked to the edge of the lake. He stared into the murky water, seeing only his reflection and the swirling shadows beneath. His thoughts returned to all his training over the past year. His scythe was an instrument of death, its blade the creator of destruction.

But no matter how hard he thought, merging death and destruction, creating a balance between them, seemed impossible. The more he thought, the more he realized he hadn't even begun to grasp the core principles.

"The fusion of death and destruction," he muttered. "How do I merge something so profound?"

His gaze then shifted toward the lake. The reflection of the landscape seemed to shift with the wind, and he watched as dead leaves floated on the surface. They moved in circles, first to the left, then to the right, caught in an endless spiral. As the wind intensified, the leaves were pulled under the water, consumed by the dark depths.

Silas's eyes widened as realization struck him.

"The leaves... they spiral in both directions... but they never stop moving, never settle. They are pulled down into the depths, where they disintegrate into nothingness. That is the balance. The spiral of death and destruction... one feeding into the other."

His breathing slowed, and his senses heightened as he attuned himself to the world around him. He could feel the subtle shift in the air, the creeping chill of death in the night wind, and the underlying current of destruction. Slowly, his thoughts, his body, and his spirit began to merge with these elements, drawing him closer to a greater truth.

The energy surrounding him thickened, and Silas felt a powerful resonance with the forces of death and destruction. His consciousness expanded, touching upon a primal force that had existed since the birth of the universe. He could see it now—an endless cycle of creation and devastation, of life and death. And within that cycle, the path of the Grim Reaper King was clear.

Silas sat down in a lotus position, letting his spirit fully immerse in the dark essence surrounding him. He closed his eyes, focusing on the profound insights that had begun to form. His breathing became shallow, his body still, as he reached out to the eternal forces of death and destruction.

Suddenly, from the darkness of the night, shadows began to gather around him. Wisps of black mist coalesced, forming jagged, ethereal shapes that danced in the air. A faint, eerie glow emanated from Silas's body as dark energy wrapped around him, forming a barrier of shadow. Two enormous leaves of darkness began to manifest—one leaf forged from the energy of death, the other from the energy of destruction. They swirled around him slowly, one turning left, the other turning right, creating a strange harmony in their opposing forces.

The swirling energy drew power from the very air, the earth, and the decay that permeated the forest. The two leaves, black as night and filled with an aura of finality, continued to turn, fed by the inexhaustible well of destruction and death.

At that moment, Silas realized the significance of his breakthrough. He had become a conduit for the forces of the Grim Reaper King, death and destruction. As long as he remained in this state, he could harness the essence of death and destruction without effort. It was the first step toward true mastery.

From the shadows of the forest, a pack of Mortal Dire Wolves watched him from a distance, their eyes glowing in the darkness. The leader of the pack, a hulking black beast with fangs like daggers, growled low in its throat. The scent of death surrounding Silas only fueled their hunger. The wolves began to advance, their bodies low to the ground, ready to pounce on their seemingly defenseless prey.

But as the first wolf leaped into the air, aiming for Silas's throat, the swirling leaves of darkness responded. With a sickening crunch, the wolf was torn apart mid-air, reduced to nothing more than dust. The others hesitated, growling in confusion, but the outcome was inevitable. The swirling energy shredded the wolves before they could even come close, leaving only silence in their wake.

***

***

[A/n: I changed some of the ranks it now goes:

1. Mortal

2. Transcendent

3. Revolving Core

4. Golden Core]