My Journey to Godhood as a Caterpillar

Chapter 146: The Sage Realm

The sage realm was where one's battle potential achieved the biggest boost, while the God Realm was the peak of both life and power.

A sage could create an avatar which was like an out of body incarnation that could fuse with the owner's body to increase their battle power from 1.3x up to 1.9x depending on the quality of the avatar and the talent of the person who made it.

Yun Jhin's avatar quality was the highest it could be as he fused celestial energy and demonic energy into it to create a being that was neither celestial nor demon.

In Yun Jhin's body, there was a light that was continuously growing, it was currently in an infant form as it resembled Yun Jhin's caterpillar body but at the microscopic size.

The body started to slowly expand as the energy from the pool was entering inside of it.

The expansion wasn't fast, it could be considered rather slow if you would compare it to Yun Jhin's former breakthroughs, but Yun Jhin wanted to have one of the strongest avatars because in the future when he would reach the God Realm, the avatar would be vital to his battle power!

The avatar had a different look compared to Yun Jhin, it was both demonic and celestial at the same time while it had a strange aura surrounding it, its resemblance to Yun Jhin was uncanny, but the difference between them was that the avatar was an energy construct while Yun Jhin was a being made from flesh and blood.

Yun Jhin bathed in the demonic energy pool as the energy that remained in it slowly started to disappear as the avatar in his body was condensing.

In the sage realm, there were 9 stages just like all of the previous realms, the first 4 realms were meant to strengthen the avatar to the point that it was as strong as the main body, making it exert the power of the main body even though it wasn't near it.

At the 5th stage would create a link between their avatar and themselves thus if the main body died they could resurrect themselves through the avatar at the cost of getting their cultivation weakened.

At the 6th stage, one's avatar would start to show signs of evolution, the evolution of the avatar would set in stone the power upgrade one would get at the God Realm so it was important to focus properly on the evolution when one reached the 6th stage if any problems arose at the breakthrough there would even be problems when one reached the God Realm and their future path could be cut.

At the 7th stage, the avatar evolution would be finished and the end product would appear.

At the 8th stage, the avatar would gain sentience.

At the 9th stage, the cultivator should start fusing with his avatar for the future breakthrough to the God Realm.

The power of the sage realm was unique as it used the foundation in the King Realm and the Emperor realm, so if you had a good foundation in those realms, the battle power that you could be able to exhibit in the sage realm could be either extremely strong or extremely weak.

Most people had weak foundations as they rushed through them or didn't have good quality resources to create their jewels.

However, Yun Jhin jewels were of the highest quality and now their power could be exhibited properly at the sage realm!

He could shuttle through space with less ki, his battle power was higher than almost every normal sage realm expert and even most geniuses would have to bow their heads to his arsenal of techniques and jewel powers.

As the energy surged through his body Yun Jhin could feel that the avatar inside of him grew to kid-size.

The avatar left his main body as it entered the pool and started to absorb the energy by himself, Yun Jhin was also infusing energy from his ki pathways directly into the avatar, he could see the avatar's inner organs and ki pathways slowly getting constructed and strengthened, he was practically creating a new life right now!

Yun Jhin's body started to levitate as the avatar stood in front of him and did the same, the energy inside the pool was almost exhausted as the avatar size grew more and more, from kid to teen and finally to adult.

Yun Jhin could feel that the preparations for the breakthrough were 99% done, so he took in a deep breath and started to concentrate on the avatar!

All he had to do now was breathe life inside the avatar and then put it back inside of his body to achieve the breakthrough to the sage realm!

Yun Jhin spat out a bunch of azure-colored blood that clashed with the avatar chests making a metallic sound. The avatar's eyes started to glow as his body started to turn corporeal from transparent, even though he was an energy being, the energy was solid.

Yun Jhin could feel the completion of the avatar was almost there!

Suddenly the avatar stopped levitating as it started to approach Yun Jhin seemingly as if Yun Jhin was a magnet and the avatar was a metal.

Yun Jhin breakthrough was imminent!

The avatar finally entered his body after a short moment and Yun Jhin started to shake as crimson and azure energy started to engulf his whole body!

His caterpillar form grew to 2,50 meters and his body refinement finally reached the 10,000 ranks!

The moment his body refinement reached the 10,000 ranks a notification appeared in front of him:

[Host has reached the maximum body refinement for the artificial celestial caterpillar and can finally evolve into the Artificial Celestial Butterfly, or host can try to find another evolution path.]

Yun Jhin closed his eyes as he felt the internal changes going through his body, and he realized that his avatar could strengthen his battle power by 1.6x times!

The battle power increase was reaching the later stages of what was possible and he didn't even reach the evolution stage of the avatar yet!

Yun Jhin chuckled as his body started to compress and his height lowered, it was time to achieve his human form!

Yun Jhin's bipedal form reached around 1,95 meters in height and he had waist-length wild azure-colored hair, his body was ripped with lean muscles and his azure colored eyes would bore through anyone's soul the moment they pierced into their eyes.

Yun Jhin's naked body was trapped with his Ying-Yang 4 elemental celestial beasts clothes as he felt his cultivation settle down.

He took in a sigh as he looked at the remaining energy in the pool, only a bucket worth remained and he took it and used it to temper his clothes and his halberd.

His body wasn't used to the energy inside the pool but the remaining energy wouldn't be able to help him further his cultivation anymore so he used it to strengthen his equipment.

Yun Jhin started to teleport away from the pool, now that he was at the sage realm he could teleport through space and due to his spatial jewel the consumption of ki for this activity was reduced by 80%, he could also teleport faster and he could rip through space more easily compared to others.

In hell, it was considerably harder to rip through space due to the adverse environment and the gravity that applied itself even to space, but Yun Jhin could still teleport better than the inhabitants of hell due to his spatial proficiency.

This way he would be able to travel through hell way easier than before and find demonic energy pools quicker cutting through time, at this point he could live for almost 250,000 or more, and even though he wasn't even in his thousands yet, time would pass by in a blink of the eye when cultivating!

For his sage realm breakthrough, it took him around 25 years! And it was still considered pretty fast as normally it would take 100 to 250 years for the average person to break through the sage realm.

As Yun Jhin teleported through hell, Yun Jhin's new subordinates, the male devil, and the succubus were currently finishing the long civil war between devil and demons.

The devil side won and the God realm lord from the 9th layer was very pleased, thus he sent one fragment of the treasure he found to the 7th layer for them to enjoy.

Yun Jhin returned to the public city where the devils dwelled after he searched for more demonic pools but failed to find them after 2 more years, his cultivation increased by a bit but he was quite far away from reaching the 2nd stage of the sage realm.

The moment he entered the city, he was escorted to the biggest tribal building where he met the male devil and the succubus who both kneeled to him the moment they saw him.

Yun Jhin waved his hand indicating they could get up and asked:

"Where is the treasure?"

The male devil came forward and took something out of his clothes, it was a piece of multicolored rock-like thing, it was only a small piece of it but Yun Jhin found it to be familiar.

He frowned as he took a bigger piece of that rock from his spatial dimension and compared them, suddenly on the bigger piece a mouth appeared that devoured the small piece in one big gulp!

If Yun Jhin's ears weren't fooling him the smaller piece also let out a cry of pain and fear as it was eaten!

Yun Jhin looked at the multicolored rock as the mouth disappeared from it and frowned, he knew that it was sentient and alive but what was it used for? It seemed it was something of a hell specialty as Yun Jhin didn't know what you were supposed to do with it.

Even though Yun Jhin had dealings with hell he didn't dare to walk in the 9th layer by himself, so he didn't know much about the special treasures there, the devils or demons wouldn't trade their special treasures either so Yun Jhin was in the dark about this piece of rock-like thing.

The male devil looked at the multicolored rock and said:

"The Lord said that the rock would help you to have faster breakthroughs if you won its approval, but he didn't say how that should happen, he only said that it would only approve those that were worthy of it!"

Yun Jhin frowned as he realized what the demon lord meant by those who were worthy of it, that meant those with fortuned constitutions!

Yun Jhin knew that the rock was useless for him so he threw it back into the spatial dimension, Yun Jhin didn't know why Hao Tian couldn't use the rock to quicken his cultivation, maybe even fortuned people needed to get acknowledged by it before it would help them?

Yun Jhin wasn't sure why such a thing existed in hell in the first place, technically speaking Hell had the worst ratio of fortuned ones spawning in the realm!

The mortal realm had a fixed rate of every 500 years which seemed to have broke during his current reincarnation as he found 3 fortuned persons in a span of 100 or so years.

The celestial realm was supposed to be full of fortuned people but Yun Jhin wasn't sure if this information was reliable, even though he had celestial blood running through his veins as a celestial caterpillar, he wasn't actually a fortuned person, even as a celestial caterpillar somehow the universe still hated him, it seemed even the system couldn't fool the universe perception of him.

Yun Jhin shook his head, if he couldn't use the rock he would just let it stay in his spatial dimension, or maybe enslave a fortuned one and then nurture him into his death combat slave.

The building he was currently in had multiple balconies as Yun Jhin chose one and looked at the whole city, everything seemed calm on the surface but things were still boiling under, Yun Jhin could feel hell wasn't as peaceful as it seemed to be in the upper layers, soon something will happen, something monumental!