Strongest Among the Heavens
Chapter 486: Gazes

Chapter 486: Gazes

In the darkness, Dasha felt it. The gazes of other gods. The gazes of the ones beyond.

"I can feel you. If you are concerned if I will encroach on your Territories, don’t. I have no intention of doing so. I have my own business to conduct."

From everywhere and nowhere arrived the echoes of the divine.

"You...promiiise?"

"Great sin, do you promise?"

"Make a soul pact with us."

"DO IT!"

All different gods. All afraid of him.

Dasha let them speak. He let them insult him, plead with him, threaten him, and beg him. He understood quickly what was happening. He understood quickly who these gods really were.

"I wonder...which gods exactly live in the Slums? In the Underground where the light does not touch." The immediate silence almost caused him to laugh. "You are forgotten gods. Those who people no longer worship. You have no power over me. You could kill me if you liked—unless you cannot. Unless you are trapped in your little Territories, unable to move for fear of flickering out of existence."

"THE GREAT SINNER! YOU GREAT SIN! DIE! DIE!"

"Youuuuu....you must diieee....the goddess will make surrreee of it...!"

"Make a Soul Pact. Make a Soul Pact. Make a Soul Pact. Make a Soul Pact."

"Diediediediediediediediediediedie...!"

Dasha turned his back on the voices. "Just shut up and watch from your little corners. Once I’m done with the goddess sisters, I will come for you."

The further away he walked and denied, the more the voices evaporated. One by one until they were gone from his reality. Dasha planned to sit and meditate. Xavier intercepted him.

"You...you are not Jack the Ripper..."

Xavier spoke with emotion Dasha had never heard him in before.

"No...no, this is NOT what we agreed upon. Daughter, we agreed for Jack the Ripper. A serial killer that we reasoned could be controlled. Not the Great Sinner. Not him." Xavier looked up at the ceiling, to where Daughter was perhaps listening, then the map, and then Dasha. "I know you. You have no conscience. You are the controller of mankind in its worst forms. You enslave people. You send children to be soldiers. You test them. You sacrifice them. You don’t even blink. All you care about is...is..."

Dasha was genuinely puzzled. He knew of him. He knew of what he did on Earth. "I was told Earth was impossible to gazed upon for those in the White Abyss."

"Everybody knows you. The Great Sin. The devil of the modern era that Lucifer himself decreed. You have killed, raped, enslaved, and sinned more than any other. With Jack, at least there was a logic. A reason, a pattern. But you...all we know about you is that you commit grave sins without qualm or reason. That you will take your place in the deepest, darkest pit of hell."

Xavier raised his hat and for the first time, Dasha saw his burning black eyes.

"Without qualm or reason? It seems you really are like the rest of them," Dasha hummed.

"How do you know you won’t betray—"

"Enough."

That was Daughter’s voice, an echo that should not be here. Xavier stiffened. He stumbled back, froze up again, and from his mouth, puked out thick, black smoke. The smoke pooled and pooled until it took shape and formed into a dark silhouette of the leader of the Whispers.

She stood there, corporeal and with a frown. She looked around. "Tch, I was too late. They found you, hm?" Daughter sighed and pinched her nose. "If I had known you were going to go to the Slums, I would have stopped this."

"Daughter," Dasha called out, half-impressed. "You are here."

"A goddess approached you. Who?"

"Tisiphone."

"How are you alive then?"

"We are to have a trial by combat in two months."

"Two months? Two months to make yourself powerful enough to defeat three Class Seven goddesses? You are an ambitious man, Dasha Pang. Are you confident in your chances?"

"Very."

"And the other gods? The forgotten ones? Are they crawled up in their Territories? Did they speak to you from there?"

"Indeed. There is nothing to fear."

"Save for the creatures and followers they will send forward. Be on-guard."

"I will."

"...."

"..."

Daughter stared at him, smiling. "Is there anything else you would like to ask?"

She knew.

It didn’t come as a surprise. Dasha knew she knew a long, long time ago. He was not Jack the Ripper. He was who he was: he was Dasha Pang. He was the Great Sin.

Daughter told no one, it seemed, not even the trusted Xavier. Dasha understood her plan: she wanted to groom a player that could gain power quickly. By meddling and changing the intrinsic properties of Jack the Ripper’s mask, she bestowed him the Sorcerer Class and the Dark Sorcerer Class. Classes that some players could never achieved throughout their whole tenure at the Heavenly Games.

If he asked, he was certain she would say:

"I lied," Daughter said. "It was one of many tests I set-up. Judging by his psychological profile, Jack would opt to specialize in sorcery in his second attempt. But you didn’t."

Yes, she knew from the very first day. To be more accurate, when Xavier met Dasha and reported back to Daughter on the new player, she purposely and intentionally lied and told her spy that he was Jack the Ripper. At the time, Dasha was weak. His soul had not developed to the comprehensive black hole that it was now.

Yet she knew.

Daughter wielded Sekhmet’s Kundalini, the soul power of the serpent. She offered to heal his scarred face with him. To be able to heal the body and soul in such a profound way meant she could perceive it in such a way. From his time in the White Abyss, that was among the rarest of skills. Not even Mastered Cultivators like Wang Lun could completely perceive it with their Qi Sense.

Daughter could.

She likely wouldn’t mention that even if Dasha did not want to pursue the Sorcerer Class, it made for a good experiment. She wouldn’t mention that since the mask belonged to Jack, she used Jack as a way to hide him from the eyes of the gods.

This woman was smart. Calculating. The act of wearing one mask spun into motion a man that should have been identified as humanity’s devil a long time ago. Because of her interference, he managed to stay hidden. The mask acted as a haze smoke around him.

Dasha knew this woman well. In turn, she knew him well.

They both knew fretting over what she did or didn’t do meant nothing. Nothing at all They weren’t here to be friends. They were here to gain power.

"I will be meditating for some days. You can tell Xavier he can leave."

Dasha dropped down, folding his legs in the lotus position, his hands resting upon his knees. His white Venetian mask remained.

"Still keeping the mask, hm?" Daughter’s smoky form began to fade as she laughed. She laughed and disappeared from the Slums.

Xavier was on both knees, coughing and sputtering.

Before Dasha went to meditate, he produced a small, obsidian flask from within his robes. Inside was a liquid that shimmered with oil slick hues, shifting from deep crimson to abyssal violet. An S-rank elixir, a creation of his own making. In terms of quality, it was a cut above most and almost matched Xuanwu’s Ascension Pill.

Over the past weeks, he learned from the best scientists in experience. Dr. Elise Thornton, Viktor Lysenko, and especially Aya Nakamura. Not in books, but true experience.

The ingredients were not for the faint of heart: Abyssal Serpent’s Gallbladder – harvested from a Class-5 beast at Valhalla’s Colosseum, known for its ability to refine toxins into pure vitality. It enhanced Qi circulation and eliminated waste. He specifically asked for this from Charles Mackley and in turn gifted him another pound of Dream Meth. The former Templar was addicted.

From the Moon Club, he bought the Blood of a Thunderborn Beast, an essence-rich fluid filled with lightning Qi, designed to expand meridians and sharpen control, as well as Celestial Lotus Petals, famously expensive and famously known to stabilize cultivation breakthroughs and prevent internal collapse.

Last up was Black Sun Dew. This was something of Dasha’s creation. They were metal scraps of the Dark Tower turned into condensed droplets. Put simply, it was centuries’ worth of Yin Qi.

It took a full five weeks to prepare. A week of tempering, boiling, refining, and filtering through special arrays—each step purging impurities until what remained was absolute, unfiltered power.

Dasha uncorked the flask.

A scent like storm-churned oceans and burning metal flooded the room. He drank without hesitation. The moment the elixir hit his tongue, his meridians caught fire. A tidal wave of raw, surging Qi crashed through his body. His bones ached, his veins pulsed, his Dantian churned.

A lesser cultivator would have ruptured instantly—exploding under the sheer density of what he had just consumed.

But Dasha Pang was not lesser.

He dropped into meditation.

His legs crossed. His breathing slowed.

Tu Na Breathing.

Spit and Collect.

Exhale the impure. Expel the waste. Purge. Cleanse.

Inhale the essence of the world. The mana-thick, foul air of the Slums was so utterly saturated that most cultivators would have struggled to separate the filth from the gold.

Not Dasha.

His body did not simply accept the filth—it conquered it.

Every breath was a war waged within his Dantian.

Every cycle of inhalation and exhalation was a battle between corruption and purity.

His three Dantians—Upper (Spirit), Middle (Qi), Lower (Essence)—began to churn like whirlpools.

Three separate systems. Three rivers of power, flowing independently.

This was the wall that 99% of cultivators never overcame.

The problem was simple: how does one force three rivers to merge into one?

Many sought external help. Rituals, sacred elixirs, divine guidance. They required ceremonies to force their bodies to understand unity.

Dasha?

He had no teacher. No rituals.

Only himself.