“Do you feel that?” Dyon asked, eyes still closed in meditation with Ri.
Ri felt like an entirely new world was being opened up to her.
When Dyon had first met his master and she led him to the corpse of her and her husband, the most striking thing about the demon qilin was the tattoos etched into his horns. They were dark and dense and seemed to hold laws unfathomable to Dyon at the time, and even now.
“They’re written into me?”
“Let’s try pouring your consciousness into one of the shallower ones.”
The truth was that this was a ridiculously intimate process. Even Dyon’s master and her husband had never done such a thing.
The legacies of a supreme beast clan were personal and highly guarded. Even in death, it was impossible for Dyon to study the etchings of his master’s husband because he didn’t have a key to understanding them. However, Ri was her own key, and because she trusted Dyon with her everything, she didn’t second guess having him help her navigate.
That said, what was required of Ri and Dyon was an essential perfect union between their minds – to the point where who was who would become nothing but a blurred line.
Had they tried this just hours ago, things may not have worked out so well. Although Dyon and RI had melded their auroras before, it was always for the sake of powering their array alchemy to a greater height. However, the purpose of this was much different.
In order for Dyon to help Ri, he needed a full understanding of exactly what they were trying to delve into. And for that to happen, he needed to essentially be in Ri’s shoes and observe things from her perspective. The melding of their auroras in a situation like this wasn’t for power, but, for better and intimate control.
If it had been earlier in the day, before Ri and Dyon had spoken about everything weighing on their minds, it would be likely that Ri would still be barred off from Dyon. Because of that, their auroras wouldn’t have melded perfectly and the process would have been more detrimental than anything else.
But, now? Dyon could feel everything Ri could feel, and he couldn’t help but sigh in relief. All of his worries were gone, and it seemed the relationship between he and Ri had reached a new level.
“Ri if this is right…”
Ri nodded, determination flashing on her features, “I want to start from scratch.”
“I don’t have another high-level cultivation cleansing pill. But, I should definitely be able to make one capable of cleansing you.”
Dyon immediately began thinking of a course of action.
The cleansing pills he had once condensed from the Celestial Deer Sect were potent enough to erase even a peak celestial expert’s cultivation. However, even if he didn’t have one of those now, it would be overkill to use it anyway. Right now, he could without a doubt make a pill capable of erasing the cultivation of a peak essence gathering expert.
Taking Ri’s legacies into account, or, the ones she had the power to see through right now, the Void affinity Kitsune had their own special paths to take. To Dyon, it was truly fascinating, although completely useless to him.
Over the course of history, it had always been difficult to reach the peak 12th stage of meridian formation. In fact, the peak of the 12th stage had always been reserved for those peak geniuses and was known as the perfect foundation.
However, the difficulty never stopped top tier clans from trying to find ways to circumvent those difficulties and forge new paths of cultivation.
One such example of this would be the celestial deer sect. Using their purity path, they were able to cleanse the impurities of energy to make the path toward perfection easier. Because of the nature of celestial will, it ended up being the most effective at this approach, but, that didn’t mean others didn’t try the same as well.
Fire path users tried to burn away impurities. Water path users tried to heal their way to perfection. And so on and so forth. The only issue with these paths that tried to copy what the Celestial Deer’s did was that none of them were as good at purification when compared to celestial will. In fact, despite not being as domineering as a supreme will, celestial will likely boasted the best purification among all wills in existence except for one.
That said, purification wasn’t the only path. Actually, that made sense. To say that the Celestial Deer were the only in existence to find a way to reach perfection would be ridiculous. If they had been, who would have ever challenged their role as a peak level clan? Their reign would have lasted indefinitely despite who their enemies turned out to be.
So, understanding this now, Dyon was quite intrigued with the solution the kitsune managed to forge for themselves. Or, more accurately, the solution the Void affinity Kitsune forged.
The first thing Dyon had to wrap his head around was that void will was a supreme law. It was domineering and all encompassing. And quite frankly, quite scary when he thought about it.
The void was an abyss incarnate. There was nothing it couldn’t swallow and there was nothing that couldn’t escape its grasp.
Knowing this, it would dawn on anyone why Void Kitsune were so rare. And worst yet, for Ri to have been born with the Void faith seed? Nature almost couldn’t allow such an imbalance of power.
Why? When the void does its job well, nothing escapes it. Not light. Not wills. And most importantly, not energy.
So… What happens when you apply a concept like that to the energy containers of the universe? What happens when your meridians become able to absorb energy without end?
This was exactly what the solution of the Kitsune was.
To have an affinity with a supreme law was so rare, it would almost be a shame if they didn’t take full advantage of it.
The Void Kitsune completely did away with the purification system of normal energy cultivation. In fact, it could be argued that they did away with the normal meridian formation system entirely. If it wasn’t for the meridians being the perfect framework for their system, it would belikely that it wouldn’t be of use to them at all.
Dyon could only chuckle bitterly as he thoroughly studied the concept. “This talent. It’s not even fair, you know.”
Ri giggled, coming to understand the same thing Dyon was.
She no longer had a need for the stock meridian formation system. Instead of tempering and opening her meridians, she would slowly flood each one with void will. She didn’t need Gama energy, not did she need to bother with any other wills. In fact, if she used those other wills, it would be as a detriment to her instead of a help.
The general idea was to use Ri’s meridians as scaffolding to contain miniature voids within each one. This framework of voids would then act as beds to absorb energy in later levels of cultivation and completely ignored the need to purify meridian paths. In fact, the end of the cultivation technique called for a severing of all meridian paths lest the voids combine and lose stability.
This method was ingenious for numerous reasons.
For one, each of Ri’s meridians would now hold almost five times the normal level of energy. In fact, the truth of the matter was that as Ri became more powerful and her void will became an intent, and then continued on into a dao, this number would only multiply further. This meant that when Ri entered the essence gathering stage and began accumulating energy, she’d have access to more than practically any other expert of the same level.
Secondly, and maybe most scary, this method didn’t slow her cultivation despite needing more energy to move on in levels. Ri’s meridians would basically act as miniature blackholes, sucking up energy greedily and at a pace a normal expert couldn’t compare to unless they used supplementary techniques like Dyon’s Tree of Life and Death.
Thirdly, Ri’s stamina would be exhaustive. Something like fighting for months as she had before would be hundreds of times easier because her meridians would essentially absorb energy from the atmosphere without her having to do much of anything.
In the end, the only drawback of this technique was that usually Kitsune wouldn’t be able to sustain all 108 voids and reach perfection. The amount you reached, heavily depended on your talent. However, even this wasn’t a problem for Ri because she wasn’t a normal Void affinity kitsune… She was THE Void affinity Kitsune. The Kitsune that started down this lineage in the first place. The faith seeded void Kitsune: Kukan.
Aside from this, the only problem was Ri’s foundation stage cultivation. Because of the strain of literally accumulating black holes within yourself, Ri’s foundation stage needed to be as solid as just about any in existence. So, she had to restart.
“I can create an environment about a third as effective as the one Epistemic Tower for you. I just need to set up a few arrays and use the Acacia Family technique to purify and process essence gathering energy into an easily digestible form. With your talent, you’ll probably reach the peak of the foundation stage by day three.” Dyon smiled, already having finished preparing Ri’s cleansing pill.
Nodding, Ri bit back her thanks. Having just been one with Dyon’s mind, she already knew exactly how he’d respond to her trying to say thank you. Instead, she prepared herself to work hard so that she could stand by his side proudly.
However, she couldn’t help but smile even as she took the pill to wash away her cultivation. When she had been in Dyon’s mind, she had found unequivocal proof that he loved her just the same as Madeleine. There was no need for her to be troubled anymore and she through herself in cultivating.
Having finished helping Ri, Dyon prepared himself to begin cultivating as well.
He needed more time to feel ready to move on to the essence gathering level, because he still felt like something was missing… As though there was a piece he hadn’t fully grasped yet. After all, he had only spent just a few weeks with any real concept of what energy cultivating meant at all.
Although he had spent a month cultivating to the peak of the foundation stage, before leaping to the peak of the meridian formation stage, he hadn’t truly opened the door to energy cultivation until he got his meridians. But, even then, he hadn’t had any time to study himself and what that door truly meant… He had gone from fighting Alidor, to fighting a war, to taking care of Ri. He hadn’t had the time.
But, now, his main focus was reaching the lower 6th soul stage. He had been stalled at the peak of the 5th for too long and it was about time he proceeded forward.
The truth was that he had a feeling he would need to forge grandmaster level arrays soon, and he wouldn’t be able to do that unless his soul reach saint level through his manifestation’s boost.
There were too many odd occurrences going on, and with his identity as the demon sage apparently becoming a looming problem he hadn’t though it would become, he needed a solution for it.
That said, the first solution to any problem is power.
Dyon’s skinned reddened under the strain, but his face was completely serene. He had been quite serious when he said he didn’t feel pain the same way anymore. It wasn’t that he didn’t know that he was in pain, or that he didn’t know that it hurt, it was more so that his pain tolerance had increased to astronomical levels.
After having his body sheared apart and reformed just to be sheared apart again, it was hard for anything to compare… Even if that comparison was the tearing of your soul.
Although Dyon hadn’t thought about it much, the truth was that what his grand teacher had done for him wasn’t as simple.
Meridians were an organ system, but, not an organ that was simple to replace. For example, transplanting a heart might be difficult, but it was still an acute process and confined to a small work area. However, the circulatory system as a whole is different. One can’t expect to be able to switch in a completely new set of veins and arteries for a person.
That would require creating new infinitesimally small connected between the bronchioles of the lungs, and the ciliary bodies of the brain and digestive system. It would even require replacement of the small vesicles that brought resources to and from something as sensitive as your eyes.
In a way, meridians were exactly like the circulatory system. On the surface, they were like veins and arteries, but they also had the job of feeding energy to the smallest crevasses of the body. The only way to do this properly was to reconstruct Dyon’s entire body piece by piece.
That said, although the process had been painful, it had the added benefit of allowing Dyon to better focus on his soul cultivation. Without being distracted by pain as much as before, he could diligently work on deconstructing his soul to its finest pieces and reforming it into stronger and stronger wholes.
Suddenly, Dyon felt something snap.
The room threatened to fold under the pressure of his soul’s breakthrough, it was nothing like he had ever felt before.
‘Shit…’
Dyon had made a mistake. He had thought that since his soul was still within the essence gathering realm, he wouldn’t have to deal with any break through phenomena. But, he failed to properly understand how his soul worked.
When Dyon called upon his manifestation, he wasn’t using a technique like Chenglei had. It was his actual soul going toward completion… Which meant, that the reason breaking through to the sixth stage had taken so long, was because he was never really breaking through to the sixth stage… This whole time, he had been knocking down the barrier toward a saint level soul!
‘I can’t do this here… Can the ring withstand a phenomenon? No time!’
Dyon’s eyes snapped open as he grit his teeth to try and supress his breakthrough.
Seeing Ri’s meditating figure surrounded by an array that worked to lock in a dense air of energy, Dyon sent her into the ring, not wanting her to cultivate without protection, before he too dove into the ring after hiding it in some floor boards.
Just in time, Dyon appeared in the new world.
“AAGGHH!” Dyon roared in relief, his clothes bursting from him as his soul was baptized with a new energy.
Dyon immediately realized something was wrong.
In energy cultivation, the first three stages were reserved for essence energy. All of the foundation stage, the meridian formation stage and the essence gathering stage only differed, in terms of energy, by the density you were accepting into yourself.
However, when crossing over into the realm of the saints, the energy changed completely.
For energy cultivation, as long as you mastered an intent, you would learn to sense and accumulate saint energy. But… There was no such restriction for the soul.
Many ignored this because of the rarity of a soul cultivator. In many cases, if not nearly all, energy cultivation surpasses one’s soul strength. Therefore, to many, the only way to sense saint energy is to first learn an intent…
That said… There’s another way.
For the truly talented, if one’s soul talent reaches unprecedented levels and crosses into the level of a saint, then this very same person will learn the way of the saint.
Even Dyon’s grand teacher had never heard of this. There had never been anyone in the history of the martial world to reach the level of a saint soul without first becoming a saint because there had never before been anyone in history with as much accumulated soul talent as Dyon.
As Dyon had learned from his grand teacher, his soul talent wasn’t just his own… It was the accumulated soul talent for billions of people over thousands of years. With the seal of the human world in place, no one had had the ability to cultivate at all until Dyon broke through the soul seal… And now he was an anomaly of the world… A meridian formation expert who would sense saint energy…
But, there was a price being paid.
This wasn’t the way things were supposed to be.
Energy slowly accumulated and improved in density over time because the body couldn’t take high densities of energy all at once. There was a reason you needed to temper your body before you could temper your meridians all before you could fill them with energy… Without this steady progression, the body would never be ready for saint energy. In fact, attempting to fill yourself with saint energy before you were ready only meant death…
There was a reason why Dyon had warned Madeleine to never try and cultivate with the dao stones. There was a reason why he, himself, had never tried to cultivate with them either, let alone the celestial or saint stones. There was only death that awaited those who tried to skip into levels they weren’t ready for…
But, what could Dyon do now? He had stumbled into something no one in the history of the world had dealt with before and he only had himself to rely on…
His fiancée was cultivating. His demon generals were of no help in an unprecedented situation like this. His grand teacher didn’t have unlimited reach…
So, he could only stand there in horror as his roar of relief slowly became that of pain… A level of pain he thought he would never experience again…