And so the long-awaited day arrived. I was as prepared for it as my modest capabilities allowed. I had turned fifteen, which meant Trash Che would be reincarnated in a couple of years. Not much time, and plans galore.
I had spent a very long time thinking about my development strategy, and unfortunately, the Phoenix Trial was something I simply couldn't do without.
Personally, of course, I couldn't have cared less about this immoral chicken that supposedly symbolized "purity of heart" here. It was so hypocritical and absurd that I wouldn't even let myself laugh, despite how genuinely comical the situation was. In canon, the heir of the Phoenix—a bird symbolizing purity of thought and deed—was Trash Che. Isn't that ridiculous?
At the same time, let's not forget that our clan was cursed because one of our ancestors accidentally burned down a small town. The Phoenix flew into a rage and cursed the entire bloodline and all its descendants. That was how I got my "stylish" little mark on my forehead.
And now let's remember canon and the fact that before this, on another continent, Yun Che had cold-bloodedly poisoned several cities and entire sects in pursuit of revenge. Does nothing about that math bother you? The Phoenix had seen his memories. It knew perfectly well what kind of scum was standing in front of it. Add to that the Phoenix's own admission that Trash Che had cheated—because with the Evil God's fire seed, those trials had lost all meaning in the first place.
And despite all that... Ah, whatever. Forget it. Let's just not discuss the hypocrisy.
And there I was, standing before the entrance. I dripped blood onto the symbol and stepped into the darkness of the cave's open maw. A couple of minutes of disorientation—and I was there. Pitch-black darkness all around, and now, with classic xianxia pomp... Yep. Two enormous fiery eyes lit up in front of me.
"Leave, cursed child. You will die if you continue."
"Esteemed Phoenix God, this pitiful junior humbly begs you to grant him a chance to prove the purity of his heart and his strength. My clan is in dire straits, and I cannot return empty-handed."
"Foolish child. My trials are not toys. You will simply die. Leave!"
"Please, great god. Give me a chance."
"You will die."
"Is it not better to die trying to help suffering innocents than to live and do nothing?"
"Even if by some miracle you survive, you will be unable to help your clan. Your sacrifice would be meaningless."
"But I will at least be able to protect them."
"You may become stronger, but only the true main bloodline can remove the curse. You will not become that heir. At best, you will raise your strength by one realm, and more Phoenix blood will take root in your veins. That is all you will gain."
"That will be enough, venerable god. Every little thing matters if it can save the members of my suffering clan."
"You have chosen your own fate. The first trial shall be the Demon's Fiery Purgatory!"
Another second of disorientation—and there I was in the so-called Fiery Purgatory.
And yes, don't judge me too harshly. I know my speech sounded syrupy and weird. But this hypocritical piece of crap was programmed around its own hypocrisy from the start. Am I not seeking power so I can become greater than the gods and show this feathered creature where its place is? I am, of course, but what I said was partly true too. Naturally, I'll help the clan. They're my own people, after all. But that is far from my main motivation.
The important thing was making sure my lines matched its internal scripts perfectly. There's a reason I keep referring to the Phoenix as "it." This is only a mental imprint of a true god's soul left behind on the planet. In other words, not a living deity, but a machine programmed to react to specific triggers. So I was playing it safe.
But since we're talking about roasting... I was the only thing being roasted at the moment. Rivers of lava flowed nearby, while the stone beneath my feet glowed with heat. The temperature started at close to sixty degrees, but it was rising rapidly. My clothes began to smolder, but I didn't move for about a minute.
Everything was clear. The location boss was scripted. I had to reach a specific point before it would deign to appear. The problem was that I liked it right where I was. More precisely, it was perfect here. The air was full of dense Phoenix profound energy, and the heat was crushing my body with terrifying force. Where else could I train my adaptability to fire in general and Phoenix energy in particular this efficiently?
I obviously couldn't sit down, or the phrase "my ass is on fire" would become far too literal for me. So I had to stand. And right there, on my feet, I began circulating the Great Way of the Buddha.
The temperature began rising even faster—apparently the birdie had decided to hurry me along. That only worked in my favor. I might never get the hundred-percent canonical immunity to every flame in the world that one famous Trash had, but I was going to develop immunity to one specific kind of fire very soon. Literally within a few hours. And our curse was woven from Phoenix energy too. If I became immune to that energy, then...
The heat was literally melting my skin. I lost all body hair in the first few seconds, and now my flesh was actually boiling. Something had clearly gone wrong with my eyes too, because I couldn't see anything anymore. But the pagoda inside me was spinning furiously, while my body regenerated without stopping. And with every minute of this hell, the rate of recovery slowly approached the rate of damage.
The smell of burned meat... It reminded me of trips outdoors with my father during my childhood on Earth. Back then, we grilled pork shashlik. Now I was the one on the skewer. No big deal, though. Very soon, one particular damned bird would be the one getting roasted.
How was I holding on? How was I enduring the pain? I wasn't. It hurt unbelievably, indescribably badly, and this would probably leave a permanent scar on my psyche. I'd have to watch myself carefully so some exotic phobia didn't bloom in my mind.
I simply had a goal: put the chicken in its place with my own strength. Get rid of the curse before I officially completed the trial. Prove that I didn't need its pathetic little drops of blood for shit. Not prove it to the Phoenix—to myself.
I burned and regenerated. By then it wasn't just my skin, but my internal organs too. And in that endless cycle... Damn it! I almost just thought that I was "being reborn from the ashes like a phoenix," didn't I? This damned world is definitely having a bad influence on me. My psyche is gradually being infected by the local pomp.
The point is, at some point the temperature crossed a critical threshold, and I stopped giving a damn entirely. Then a pure, crystalline chime rang in my head, and the mental pagoda before me abruptly grew in size. I had broken through to the second level of the technique! That alone made coming here worthwhile.
And on top of everything else, if I could somehow magically look inside my profound veins, I would definitely see that they had turned the same color as the Phoenix flames. I hadn't merely adapted to them—I had completely copied and assimilated the pattern of that energy.
Why do I say "almost"? Because I hadn't trained only with fire. A couple of times during thunderstorms, I deliberately climbed somewhere high with an iron rod so lightning would nail me. And over the course of the year, local beasts threw just about everything imaginable at me, which only made me happy. Lightning, wind, stone, some poisonous green fire... But most important of all was water. Water mattered more than anything.
That was why I didn't even kill that poor deepwater turtle. I just knocked on its shell and head a couple of times so it would remember the concussion for a long while, then left the area. I came back to the creature several more times, but never killed it. On the contrary, I even cleared out other predators nearby so nobody would eat my "milk cow." What could I do when water-element monsters were in short supply around here? For me, that was critically important.
Why did I consider water the most important element? We need to dig a little into the lore here. If I passed all the current trials and this chicken didn't start acting like the Ancestral Goddess's hypocritical bitch, I'd receive a textual inheritance. Meaning: blood, a pill, and the Phoenix Ode. And what was that Ode? Just a set of combat skills. Attack techniques specifically, not a proper cultivation manual. Same shit with the Golden Crow—it gives you combat moves, but no foundation for increasing your rank. That wouldn't get me far. I don't have plot armor and a sack full of luck. Even canonical Yun Che never managed to break through into the Divine Realm on this planet on his own—he had to find yet another high-ranking woman to take him by the hand and drag him into the higher realms.
Fortunately, the issue with the acupoints got solved right here and now. Phoenix fire is famous for burning away and purifying everything unnecessary (too bad it doesn't cure hypocrisy). In the end, all my blocked points were now wide open, and from now on my cultivation would fly on the wings of the wind.
So, the points were open, but my current speed still wouldn't let me rocket through levels like some darling of fate. Only canonical Trashes are allowed to fly through ranks on pure luck; normal people grind for years. I needed a first-rate cultivation method, preferably divine-grade. And on this entire backward planet, there was only one: the Frozen Cloud Canon, kept in the palace of the same name.
There were complications, of course. You needed an innate affinity for ice and water, otherwise you wouldn't learn shit. But the system could be tricked. The important thing was having at least some affinity with the water element to begin with. And I, let me remind you, came from the fire-aligned Phoenix clan. That was why every weekend I ran off to harass the poor turtle, hauling valuable resources and the meat of other beasts to it so it would break through to the next rank faster and attack me harder.
Fortunately, my fears proved unfounded: thanks to the Way of the Buddha, affinities with other elements had successfully taken root in my body.
And yes, the curse had vanished from my forehead completely. Hooray. I could end the circus there and move on. Just like in canon, I took exactly ten steps forward, and a three-meter fire creature began rising from the lava in front of me. Or rather, "began rising" was generous—it tried to. I'm not some damn pompous novel protagonist who stands there waiting for the boss to finish its spawn animation, am I? I didn't let it get out of the lava. At every bit of speed I had available—and thanks to my personal movement technique, that was one hell of a lot—I flew at the golem and slammed my leg into its skull with a spinning kick.
Lucky me. The so-called energy core that held the construct together was hidden in its head. How unexpected and pleasant.
A flash, disorientation—and now I was in a somewhat cooler location.
"The next trial," came a voice in which hysterical notes were already clearly breaking through, "the Phoenix Arrows."
And no introductory instructions on what I was supposed to do with those arrows. Catch them? Eat them? Shove them up the Phoenix God's... ahem-ahem.
I'll put it simply: this was where I was openly cheating. Yun Che had nothing on my calculations. How? Remember what parameters I'd built into my foundation. Speed and reaction. For the first half hour, I dodged purely with my body's physical abilities, without any special effects. Then there were more arrows, falling in denser clusters, so I had to bring in my homemade explosive-step skill.
I'll be honest: over the next couple of hours, I managed to polish that technique damn well and feel out the direction I needed to develop it in, but I was completely wiped out. I don't remember canon putting Trash Che through anything this brutal or keeping him running around the arena this long. Had our virtual chicken fallen into righteous fury? But in the end, either it simply got tired or the server battery died, because a system notification in my head registered victory.
"The third trial: Corruption of the Heart Flame."
And silence. What about all the pompous canonical declarations that only a little over three hundred candidates in all of history had managed to pass this stage? What about at least a minimal briefing on what the trial was supposed to be? Nothing? Has the little god decided to sulk and spit bile?
The location changed, and I ran into the most banal crap imaginable. I found myself in the house where I currently lived in the village, with my mother from this life standing in front of me. Did I love her? I'd say I deeply respected my parents in this life and behaved like a dutiful son. Even now, I regularly visit their graves to tidy them up. But unconditional love? That's difficult when you remember a previous life.
But the main joke was that from the very start I knew with crystal clarity that it was an illusion. And when "Mother" stepped forward, hugged me, then drove a knife straight into my heart with a warm domestic smile... I didn't even raise an eyebrow.
"It's all right, Mom. If this benefits you, then do it. The important thing is that you and Father are safe."
Personally, I didn't believe my own acting for even a second. But what kind of lie detectors does the Phoenix have? No idea. Did that hypocritical creature believe me? Apparently, the script worked as intended.
"You have passed all the trials worthily and will receive a drop of my noble blood. Sit. I will help you assimilate it."
"Great Phoenix God, I beg you, allow me to take this drop to the worthiest practitioner of our clan. He is stronger and nobler than any of us, and moreover, most of our clansmen see him as our future chief."
The Phoenix fell silent for a long time, considering my words. It clearly didn't like me. Its artificial intelligence was especially short-circuiting over the fact that I'd developed immunity to its signature clan curse. But whichever way you looked at it, the very idea of self-sacrifice fit perfectly into its basic "purity of heart" settings. The blood? Let someone else take it. One drop couldn't remove the curse from the whole bloodline anyway; it could only raise one person's personal limits.
"Very well. I feel that you speak from a pure heart. Do it. You are a worthy son of your clan. I bless you, descendant."
And the most beautiful part was that I hadn't lied with a single word. The person I had described so colorfully—the strongest in the clan, the future chief—was me. And the drop of blood? It was an insanely expensive, concentrated divine resource that could be sold or traded on the outside market for a hell of a profit. Why not? Pragmatism defeated the ancient chicken, 1:0.