CHAPTER 252: POSSESSION [PART 1]

Satisfied with his stats, Xiang Yu closed the system interface.

His expression immediately turned serious. Without hesitation, he dove into his spiritual sea, appearing in his soul form.

He concentrated intensely on his void flame, causing the flame mark on his forehead to spread its darkness around him until the darkness swallowed his soul completely. In the next moment, Xiang Yu found himself standing inside the void space.

It was exactly as he remembered—an endless stretch of absolute nothingness extending in all directions. In this vast emptiness, only a single being existed: the small, round, fluffy creature floating motionlessly in the dark.

Xiang Yu floated over to it. He crouched down and inspected the creature closely. Just like before, it showed no signs of life whatsoever. No breathing, no movement, not even the faintest twitch. It simply existed there as if frozen in time.

Xiang Yu thought to himself that for his clone technique to work the way he wanted it to, he was still missing a crucial component. Even if he managed to get his current implementation to function properly, it would essentially be nothing more than a puppet technique. He didn’t want that at all. What he craved was the ability to control a clone natively while still maintaining complete independence from physical contact.

The only thing he knew that could achieve such a feat was his void flame. He could always control his flame perfectly, even when the fragments were completely disconnected from his body and scattered across vast distances.

At first, he had tried using a split flame as some sort of makeshift brain, embedding it within a constructed body to control the vessel remotely. But that approach had failed. Well, technically it had worked, but it wasn’t what he had intended—it was still essentially rigging the body like a marionette, just substituting the spiritual manifestation technique with flame fragments instead of telekinetic control.

Another approach he had experimented with involved partitioning his mind and attempting to carry that partitioned consciousness through the flame, then implanting it directly inside a clone body. But that method had also proven impossible.

It seemed he simply couldn’t get his consciousness—even a partitioned segment—to leave his original body. The only way consciousness could separate from the physical form was when it was properly housed within a soul, which brought him right back to his original fundamental problem.

No wonder even someone as powerful and knowledgeable as the Empress had stated it would be impossible without reaching the Soul Formation realm. It seemed this core limitation simply couldn’t be bypassed, unless you possessed a special dao body like the demon twins.

Xiang Yu was on the verge of abandoning this entire project when suddenly, an absolutely insane idea struck him. He stretched out his hand and placed it directly on the fluffy creature’s motionless form.

Xiang Yu’s idea was audacious beyond reason: he was going to possess the creature. That’s right—he planned to become the Abyssal Void Flame himself.

Part of what drove him to consider such a drastic measure was fear. Ever since he had first discovered this mysterious creature dwelling within his flame, he had lived with constant anxiety gnawing at the back of his mind.

He wondered endlessly when that creature would finally wake up from its eternal slumber. And when it did awaken, would it view him as an enemy? Would it try to destroy him from within?

When his void flame had advanced just the day before, the very first thing he had done was frantically check whether the creature inside had shown any signs of stirring. Based on his calculations, he had predicted that it would most likely awake during the very next upgrade.

Xiang Yu absolutely refused to take such a monumental risk. He figured it would be infinitely better to seize control of the entire situation before the creature had any chance to develop its own consciousness.

If he successfully took over the flame’s essence, there were two possible outcomes he could envision. First, his soul might become the flame’s new consciousness entirely, essentially gaining a completely new body made of pure flame energy.

This transformation would mean his original physical body would be left without any soul of its own, but Xiang Yu didn’t consider this particularly problematic. He reasoned that he should still be able to cultivate and eventually form a golden core, which would naturally generate another soul for his original body. Though he wasn’t entirely certain about the feasibility of having two separate souls simultaneously.

The second possibility—and the one he was leaning toward as more likely—was that his soul would become completely unified with the flame itself, essentially creating some sort of mutated soul hybrid. This would mean he would retain his soul, but it would be transformed into something special and unique, possessing properties of both the original soul and the void flame.

Either way, the end result would grant him the ability he sought. He would finally be able to split the flame into multiple fragments and partition his consciousness into those separated pieces, since they would all be genuine parts of his essential being. This would allow him to create true clones exactly as he had originally envisioned.

So which outcome would it be?

Well, there was only one way to find out...

...

Xiang Yu made his decision.

The hand that had been resting on top of the creature suddenly phased through it, entering inside. Without hesitation, Xiang Yu guided the rest of his soul forward, diving headfirst into the abyss...

As he dove deeper into the creature’s essence, Xiang Yu thought to himself that this really wasn’t like him at all. He was taking an extremely huge risk, the kind that went against every survival instinct he had carefully cultivated.

But he simply couldn’t resist the potential benefits that success would bring. With their enemies becoming stronger and more dangerous by the day, he desperately needed to fix his overly cautious nature and finally take decisive action. Otherwise...

Xiang Yu slowly regained consciousness, feeling disoriented and confused. "Did it succeed? Where am I?" he wondered, trying to make sense of his surroundings.

He looked around frantically, only to find himself floating in an endless dark void that seemed somewhat similar to the void space he was just in.

"Did I fail?" he wondered, instinctively reaching up to scratch his head in thought. But something was wrong—he noticed with shock that he didn’t have hands. He didn’t even have eyes.

Finally realizing his transformed state, he examined what his body had become. He was now a small burning dark flame, barely noticeable in the endless darkness except for the tiny white sparks that flickered from within him like miniature stars.

"The flame?" he realized. He remembered that the Abyssal Void Flame had looked exactly like this when he had first acquired it. He wondered if what he was experiencing now were actually the flame’s memories.

As he pondered this possibility, he suddenly noticed something that made his heart almost stop. Well, not really but if he had possessed a heart, it would have definitely ceased beating entirely.

Because of the overwhelming darkness surrounding him, he hadn’t noticed it initially. But as his perception gradually adjusted to the absolute blackness, he finally saw "IT."

He didn’t know how to describe the entity except with one word: MASSIVE.

The creature extended as far as his senses could perceive, seemingly without any conceivable end. And from this incomprehensible being, dark flames of different shapes and sizes, similar to Xiang Yu, were constantly shedding, slowly drifting away into the infinite darkness.

As he stared in absolute terror and awe at this incomprehensible entity, something suddenly happened.

It opened its eyes.

The eyes were just as impossibly massive as the rest of the creature. Xiang Yu could see no end to them. But even with their overwhelming scale, they seemed to lock onto him directly.

The creature then spoke, its voice reverberating through the void:

"Well, would you look at that..."

...

Author’s Corner

Rip, it was nice knowing you.

Okay so at first, i wanted him to merge the three scriptures with the ten elemental palms to create some sort of elemental cloning ability where he can create clones of the ten elements (kinda like noah from infinite mana) but after some though, i figured someone must have tried something like this or similar and if so, then the empress would know or at least have an idea, not say that it was impossible. This is why I went in this direction where consciousness can either be housed by the original body, or the soul. I didn’t want Xiang Yu to make something impossible suddenly possible just like that.

What do you guys think?

Will he be stronger than Li Yao now? Place your bets...