The Heavenly Martial Empress Returns: An OP Xianxia Returnee LitRPG

Chapter 131 Part 1: The Gods’ Stories

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Rapidly, I released from my soul dozens of spheres of brilliant, colorful divinities. As they rotated around my body, Credit Points began to fill them, helping them transform, turning them into big, colorful trees made of ethereal and colorful essence, as if they were made of light.

FLUOSH!

Ding!

[You have exchanged 280.000.000 Credit Points and a Large Quantity of Mana!]

[The {Broken Divinities}: {Destruction}, {Eternal Winter}, {Lord of the Mountains}, {Life-Eating Emerald Flames}, {Ancient Weapon of Destruction}, {Undead Authority}, {Chaotic Machine}, {Cursed Forests}, {Treasure Seeker}, {Mother of all Parasites}, {Mad Puppet}, {Endless Carnival}, {Sea Dragons}, and {Seat of Gold} have transformed into their {Divinity Tree} forms!]

[Several of them are in their Imperfect Divinity Tree Forms due to damage, and a Perfect Form cannot be achieved. To repair these errors or wounds within the branches and roots, please fuse them with similar trees.]

“It’s done.”

The 14 trees floated around me, each one with their own distinct appearance, color, and aura, and they were much more beautiful than Broken Divinities, which resembled spheres full of broken glass shards.

“Now… Absorb!”

My Divinity Aura surged from my body as a gigantic tree, easily surpassing the rest in size and robustness, made of golden light and abyssal darkness, emerged.

Its branches and roots pierced all fourteen Divinity Trees, absorbing them into its body and constantly making it change colors.

Slowly, it turned into a beautiful, rainbow-colored, and crystalline tree.

FLAAASH!

The tree branches spread upwards, changing colors from green, blue, red, brown, gold, and so on, and the branches turned black, white, purple, pink, red, green, and more.

The colors constantly changed as my tree continued growing until it finally settled down, its size having more than tripled, emerging from my Divinity Aura as a tremendous thing.

I felt the power of my Divinity of Yin and Yang, which encompasses the two spectrums of all things, quickly developed and expanded.

The amazing thing about this Divinity was the power it had to absorb any Divinity, any Divinity always fit either Yin and Yang; after all, they all belonged to these two primordial elements of creation and destruction.

I felt my comprehension of the Daos quickly increase, with Yin and Yang resonating within me. I saw visions, comprehensions, enlightenments, and memories of these gods that their divinity trees carried.

Their Stories.

I saw the things they did and how they got where they were. Some grew up as greedy gods of the mountains, born from a mountain that gained divinity. Another was an envious divine beast, an insect that envied the original god of insects and usurped their throne after freezing them into a divine frozen coffin, turning her world into an eternal winter.

A devil born with the ability to conjure green flames, considered a cursed power, his parents were killed when he was only one year of age, and he grew bitter and hateful, destroying and killing not only his persecutors but countless innocents until he became a god by force.

A lonely puppet was left behind inside a world that was a gigantic manor, a near-endless building with a dimension of its own with millions of rooms. This lonely puppet slowly learned how to move without strings and went on an adventure to eat any specter, ghost, and people it found, growing into a god after thousands of years, all because it wanted to become a living being.

A man who worked in a carnival as a clown saw his world and his life crumble apart as the carnival closed due to a lack of sales. Blaming those that managed the carnival, he slaughtered and hunted them down one after another, and after growing to like killing, he became a serial killer. Eventually, through a pact with a demon whom he offered the souls and bodies of those he killed, mostly children, he gained his own world, an eternal carnival world where he reigned as its god.

A desolate, ancient machine constructed by an old race of aliens, left behind in a world without a purpose other than destruction, finding out its masters were now gone, it went on a rampage, eliminating the entire civilization of the planet it found itself on, and then becoming its default god. A lonely machine whose only purpose was to destroy.

A king who found solace in his treasures and the gold he accumulated over many years abandoned his family and everything for his treasures, forever obsessed with his riches after he saw his entire family being robbed and slaughtered at a young age. Eventually, he cursed his own soul and became one with his treasures, killing and destroying his entire kingdom and becoming the world’s only god.

A parasitic alien colony from outer space that parasitized several wild worlds across the cosmos, rapidly growing and expanding, fusing their minds and souls, until ultimately arriving in a world full of magic, which they devoured, creating their queen, a combination of their hive minds into a single entity, a goddess.

A world destroyed by a zombie apocalypse, where no human was left alive, and where even living beings turned into undying zombies of all shapes and sizes. Eventually, when no humans were left, disputes between zombies emerged as they created factions and slaughtered one another. Eventually, the strongest of them all emerged: a young zombie woman with the power to control, combine, and absorb other zombies, their goddess and princess.

And many more...

These were their stories, their tragedies, and their insanity. Some of them had sadder moments in their lives, but they were all irremediable evil in the end.

Maybe some could have become better if only they were given another chance, but the things they did were too terrible to be forgiven anymore.

And so, their story ended when they confronted me as they died.

Though in every one of their Stories, the Barbarian God appeared, asking them for their help. Some of them didn’t even know him, yet they helped him.

There was something he said, though, that convinced everyone when he asked for their assistance.

“Remember those who helped you become what you are now, Gods,” he said. “You could have never been able to do it without them, my creator, and your masters. Now, as you promised, you will repay their help.”

So those that made the Barbarian God had something to do with the ascendance of these other thirteen gods, huh? I guess it makes sense; some of them became gods in very strange ways.

Although some others had risen as gods naturally, some were truly strange, like the clown. Who was that demon that gave him a world? Or that puppet—who was his true maker? Even the emerald flame devil's ascendance shouldn’t have been possible by merely slaughtering; he received help to properly refine a divinity out of slaughter.

There’s someone, a constant force, a group of people, or perhaps a gigantic organization that spans several worlds, perhaps universes, that is constantly working towards the creation of evil gods and their usage in draining worlds out of their energies and powers.

They’re harvesting worlds at a much better pace than most of the other gods of the tower, and they incentivize the growth of new evil gods all the time too.

Hmm, whatever the case, I’ll have time to think about that later.

Now…

Ding!

[Congratulations! Your [Divinity Tree]: [Yin and Yang Harmony Tree (Tier 1: Rank 1)] has successfully absorbed the {Divinity Trees}: {Destruction}, {Eternal Winter}, {Lord of the Mountains}, {Life-Eating Emerald Flames}, {Ancient Weapon of Destruction}, {Undead Authority}, {Chaotic Machine}, {Cursed Forests}, {Treasure Seeker}, {Mother of all Parasites}, {Mad Puppet}, {Endless Carnival}, {Sea Dragons}, and {Seat of Gold}!]

[Your [Divinity Tree]: [Yin and Yang Harmony Tree (Tier 1: Rank 1)] has Ranked Up and Evolved into the [Divinity Tree]: [Harmonious Spiritual Yin and Yang Tree of Divinities (Tier 3: Rank 7)]!]

[Your Divinity Stat has increased +2.700.000!]

[All your other Stats have increased by +5.400.000!]

[You have unlocked two new [Divinity Branches] and [Divinity Roots]!]

[By using Faith, you can make them grow and develop into Divine Abilities and Divine Authorities!}

[The new Divine Abilities and Divine Authorities will be based on the combination of all previously absorbed Divinity Trees plus your own.]

[You have now gained the ability to “Reroll” Divine Abilities and Divine Authorities of something you don’t like using Faith and Credits, but it can only be done while you have yet to choose it! Once chosen, such powers cannot be rerolled.]

[Your Divinity has become much more powerful! You can now access the Divine Techniques innate to your Divinity: [Divinity Aura], [Divine Domain], and [Divinity Manifestation] by spending Mana and other Energies, alongside Faith.]

“Oh, now this is interesting! I can Reroll stuff?” I wondered. “Hmm, not bad! I feel quite stronger now, only quite, but that’s considerable for someone like me… Also there’s Divinity Aura, Divinity Domain, and Divinity Manifestation, huh? Is this big tree in my Aura already part of all of that?”

Remembering my battle against the Gods, they all used special Divine Domains to try to snatch me and trap me into a sure death technique, though they never worked.

But still, I think I kind of understand how that goes.

“I’ll try it just for the fun of it,” I smiled. "Alright, Typhon, let’s spar!”

“RAAARR?!” Typhon seemed to panic a bit.

I pointed my hands at him and then instinctively released all of this power.

Like they did, they activated the sequence of incantation combined with their own imagination and divinity, right?

The base of everything is imagination.

How I can embody everything into reality through my powers.

I have unleashed other domain-like techniques before, but nothing like what the gods used against me.

Their Domains were much more personal, much more… born from their “Stories”.

And my Story… what can it create?

Remember those memories.

The pain, the hardships, the agony.

All the people I lost, all the people I killed.

Of all my regrets and the times I felt happy.

And of the endless foes I had to fight.

The powerful beings, the Progenitor of all Humans, the Venerables.

It was hard, so damn hard…

But I managed to get back here, right?

Yeah, I can feel it.

I know exactly what my Divine Domain is.

I looked in front of the gigantic metallic, crystalline beast, Typhon, who was readying himself to receive my attack.

My eyes seemed to glow with rainbow flames, and my entire body was encompassed by its divinity aura.

And then, a shockwave of energy was released from my body, distorting space… and time.

“{Divine Domain}: {Primordial Path of Ascension}”

FLASH!

Everything changed in the blink of an eye.

I sensed how my Faith was being spent with every passing second.

But that didn’t matter.

What I saw, though, was incredible.

Murim itself materialized around us: the mountain peaks, the colorful skies, the forests, the temples, and the sects.

“This is my life…”

“Graaaahhh!”

Typhon roared, rushing towards me.

FLASH!

Yet space and time were distorted, and suddenly we found ourselves in the middle of a poor village.

There, Typhon found himself smaller than before.

He was starving and groaning in pain.

Crawling across a path made of mud and dirt.

“G-Graagh? Graaah!”

He couldn’t understand what had happened; Divine Domains had truly reality-bending abilities.

“WOOF!”

And then, a pack of golden-horned lightning wolves appeared, chasing him.

Yes, I remember this scene.

This was when I was just thrown into this hellish world.

When I was starving, confused, tired, and looking everywhere, I was unable to comprehend what was happening.

All of those pains I went through were transferred to my "foe", little Typhon.

This even made it, so he temporarily became much weaker.

And above all, the damn wolves started chasing him.

He decided to fight against them, thinking they were nothing but little pups.

A terrible choice.

CLASH! CLASH! CLASH!

CRASH!

“Gryyaagh!”

Typhon groaned angrily; his claws broke as he fought the wolves.

These measly wolves were among the weakest Martial Beasts of Murim.

They could have killed me and eaten me if I hadn’t run faster than them.

I rolled down the hill and landed on a rice plantation, where the farmers saved my life.

“Over here, Typhon!”

“Raaarrr!”

He followed me as he rolled down the hill and was then saved by the farmers who threw stones at the wolves, which quickly ran away afterwards.

“So that’s how it works, so amusing!”

It was as if my Divine Domain put someone through a trial based on my own memories and hardships.

There were solutions to them that could only be achieved by doing exactly what I did.

But would every enemy be able to figure it out so easily?

Not really…

“Okay, that’s enough for now.”

The Divine Domain came undone, as Typhon was back to normal, but all the damage he took inside the Domain was reflected on his body.

“I’ll heal you. Sorry for that! I’ll use it on enemies only from now on.”

I patted his head after healing him, giving him a few snacks.

“Now, let’s go back. I’ve had enough for today. Let’s relax and have fun. Tomorrow, I’ll return home for a few days. There are some things I need to take care of.”

After returning with everyone else, the festivities continued for a while, but my girls were already too tired of them, so we moved to a personal tent to have some alone time before departing tomorrow.

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