As the months continued to flow by, Dyon spent many months meditating on his wills. When he wasn’t doing so, he focused on control. Whether that be repeatedly slashing the same stroke again and again, or stream lining his wills into needles as opposed to the gush he had used before.
In his master’s memories, he confirmed his thoughts on the levels of mastery when it came to wills. For example, in his master’s prime, she would be able to send an infinitesimally small beam of celestial will that would completely cripple attacks. That not only showed her level of control over the will, but also her understanding of it. Celestial will at its core was meant to purify, but that also implied that it was meant to be focused on flaws. To use celestial will the way Dyon had been could be said to be incomparably wasteful of heaven’s treasures. To one day reach a level where Dyon could sense the crux of a flaw in a technique, and then focus his celestial will there, would have to be Dyon’s goal.
Of course, the other wills had their own ways of perfecting them. Some easier and some harder. But, Dyon knew it was impossible to figure them all out in such a short period of time. So, he was calm and patient. Instead slowly building his understanding as time went on, fortifying his wills more and more.
However, the months were not without problems. Under the pain of Celestial Deer’s Rend, Dyon had managed to reach the peak of the 4th stage in his half a year’s time, but he found this to be horrendously slow. In addition, when he tried to integrate more of the 3 blood essences he had within him, he had only managed to add a half percent of the ones bestowed to him by his master and had made no progress on the one he had taken from the sage.
This was a major surprise to Dyon. He had assumed that the sage essence was only incorporated to a percent because his master was much stronger than the sage, but, it seemed as though he had it backwards: the blood itself was far more powerful than the demon qilin essence or the celestial deer essence.
‘Just who was he… And how could someone so powerful end up in such a state…’
Dyon didn’t let this get him down though. He understood that incorporating different blood lines to yourself was incomparably hard without an expert to help you. He would need high level treasures to replace the help he should be receiving. But, what did worry him was the effect the blood was having on him. The lust he felt due to the demon qilin essence and the sage’s essence set a continual undertone on Dyon’s consciousness. This made him almost happy that he couldn’t incorporate any more for now, or else he had no idea what he would end up doing.
As such, Dyon set aside body cultivation for the moment, and focused much of his attention on his soul and understanding of wills. Although he still lacked a suitable way to use his soul in combat other than array alchemy, he had no choice but to make due. Because of this, Dyon spent a lot of time on his will of crystals as well, so that his arrays would be boosted to the best of his abilities.
His focus paid off. Before he began this training, Dyon was able to speed array low level practitioner arrays. With the weakening caused by speed arraying, the arrays were comparable to the strength of an 8th foundation stage fighter. Dyon had been countering this weakness by layering his arrays with crystal will and making many at a time. This allowed his arrays to be comparable to a low level meridian formation fighter, which is also why he was able to fight the geniuses. However, this was before Dyon had thought to focus his attentions on the split minds drawing technique instead of speed arraying. Instead of simplifying arrays to draw them faster, Dyon decided to invest as much time as possible to split his mind into more and more pieces so that he could draw the arrays in all their complexities in the heat of battle.
The problem with this, and the reason no one had ever tried to do it before, was that the split minds technique took incomparable concentration. This was originally the reason why Dyon had decided on speed arraying instead. But, what Dyon noticed was that although his peak could split his mind 16 times, he could still split his mind 4 times in battle. Which means, if he increased his level in the split minds technique, the level to which he could split his mind in combat would also increase. If Dyon combined speed arraying and the split minds technique, he wouldn’t have to simplify the arrays as much as he does, which means they would lose a lot less power. This would mean a low-level practitioner array that he speed arrayed, might only be marginally weaker than it would be in its full state.
If anyone knew what Dyon was planning, they would think he’s insane. To be able to speed array was already a feat no one else could accomplish. But, to then combine that with another technique that only grandmaster level characters even dared to try? It was ridiculous. Not to mention, the way Dyon planned on incorporating it was ridiculous. Not only did he want to split his mind multiple ways, he wanted to split them up to draw multiple arrays at once. Meaning, if he split his mind 4 ways to create 10 arrays, he would want each of those 4 minds to be working on 25% of each array. The founders of array alchemy were rolling in their graves.
However, Dyon had tapped into the essence of array alchemy. Although there were formulations that were better made in some ways as compared to others, the crux of array alchemy is understanding the laws of the universe, communicating with them through your aurora, then manipulating them to your will. To forge your own path is the exact point.
Soon, the 6 months Dyon had given himself were drawing to a close. His movement and sword techniques had increased with his understanding of wills. His movement technique had officially reached the peak of the small success layer of its first stage, and although he had yet to comprehend a sword style of his own, Dyon’s sword and control had become refined much more than it had been.
**
Dyon looked over to the unconscious collection of people from the sage’s world for what seemed like the millionth time since he had taken them in. But, once again, he was disappointed in the results.
With a sigh, he stood and stretched his body. He walked to a lake in the inner world, soaking his body to ease the aches he had undergone in fusing with the essences.
‘it seems like the only way to alleviate this lust is with true yin energy. The Celestial Deer essence was able to balance the demon qilin on its own to a certain extent, but with the sage’s blood, the balance has been thrown off.’
True yin was a specific yin resulting from life forms that had an innate affinity towards it. This could be women, or fruits of that caliber. What it didn’t incorporate were artificial yins which would include men who learned ice type techniques for instance. Although this was also a form of yin, it wasn’t a form pure enough to help Dyon. And, Dyon definitely wouldn’t want that kind of help. He shuddered just thinking about it.
Dyon sighed, “it seems like I’ll have to find some yin fruits. They should be able to help me incorporate the Celestial Deer Essence as well.”
Dyon had no choice but to stop his infusing of the sage and demon qilin blood. Although his own will power was strong, he’d prefer to not even have thoughts he had to control in the first place. This was a bit disappointing because this would also slow his understanding of the Demon Emperor’s Will technique, but a 2x boost would have to be enough for now.
Dyon let his body air dry to try and cool his body further, before checking on messages from Madeleine.
‘it seems like Madeleine has broken into the 4th layer of wills for celestial will, seems she’s surpassed me. And 26 open meridians? She sure works fast,’ Dyon smiled, happy to see Madeleine was doing well.
Dyon knew that opening meridians slowed substantially as you progressed, mostly because the body was acclimating to being tempered by wills. As every martial artist knows, opening meridians requires understanding of wills. You then use that understanding to nourish your meridians into opening. Usually, the more wills you use, the more powerful of a meridian formation expert you are at a given level. However, as you progressed, the will levels needed to continue opening meridians increased. And usually, for those without celestial will, tempering became muddied with impure energy because of the use of energy stones.
What Dyon had been confused about before was why energy stones were used if wills were what were needed to open meridians. However, what he learned with his research was that the meridians themselves were opened by wills, however, the paths between them needed essence to open because they were too fragile to handle the tempering of wills. As you increased in levels in meridian formation, the paths became more and more fragile, so impurity becomes more and more important.
This was part of the reason Dyon didn’t want to start on his path of energy cultivation too soon. He didn’t like the idea of using energy to open his meridian paths. It felt like using duct tape to cover the hole in a billion-dollar yacht. If wills were what gave you your true power, why would you use a replacement like energy.
Now, energy was obviously important in the essence gathering stage and beyond since that was the process of actually filling your meridians with essence. But, you can easily imagine how pampering your meridian pathways during the meridian formation stage would only lead to weaker cultivation in the saint realms and beyond, and often make progression impossible. It frustrated Dyon that no one had spent time on this problem before. Or, maybe they had, but, it was only available to those on an even higher level than the Celestial Deer Sect.
Dyon eventually shook his head, slipping on his usual comfortable sweats and white T shirt. He wanted to take his sword with him, but he decided to use a weaker sword for now. He didn’t know why, but he just felt uncomfortable using a sword who had to nerf itself to his level. So, Dyon instead chose a normal iron sword of similar build. It had no ranking as it was a regular weapon. Its length was still the same 7 feet long and it was a sleek metallic color as opposed to the striking black of Dyon’s original sword.
Dyon had also done this so that he wouldn’t rely on the power of his sword, and instead refine his understanding of sword will. Battling with this handicap would help him improve faster, so he didn’t give it a second thought after making his decision.
Strapping it to his back in a slanted fashion, Dyon called over Little Black, who stood over 1 meter tall now, as he prepared to go out of the inner world for the first time in more than a year.
**
Outside the world, oblivious to all of this, the silver-blue haired girl sat silently in a cave studying the same array plate she had been for the past year. It seemed like there was so much she could learn from it.
She had realized over her studies that this plate wasn’t actually drawn in a conventional way. The master had actually used many clever short cuts that baffled her to no end. When she spoke about this with her father, he too was astounded.
Essentially, low level arrays like this couldn’t actually change the laws of the world to sustain its effects. Instead, it used a myriad of tricks in order to reach the same results to a much smaller degree. For example, an amplification array. High level arrays worked at the subatomic level to manipulate energies. Basically, atoms have different levels of energy they can release depending on what interaction they’re displaying or what elements they are. The smaller components of these atoms can be communicated with to change energy outputs. As an example, a noble gas is named as such because it is completely inert. As such, the energies it releases in reaction is practically 0 since they never react. However, if one were to use energy to change these noble gases into volatile atoms such as halogens which are known as the most reactive, all of a sudden you have so much energy you have no idea what to do with it. You essentially use arrays to communicate with the chemistry of these substances, and then use the energy released to fuel your own attack thus resulting in amplification.
However, low level arrays wouldn’t have this high-level ability, as such, they used tricks. They would often feign an amplification by many different means that could include concentrating the energy used better, increasing weight or increasing speed. As such, the level needed to create such arrays was much lower because none needed such fine manipulation. To increase weight, you would only need to convert the energy used to make the array into something tangible at the perfect instance of contact. To increase speed, you could easily use the energy used to create the array as a booster to slice through air, or propel something like a fist or sword forward. Also, concentrating energy was as simple as using the array like a funnel to focus it in a point.
What was probably most important about all of this, was that these were things the blue haired girl had only understood after studying the array plate. Without these things being true, it would be impossible for the master of these plates to have simplified them as they had. What the girl didn’t know is that she was exactly right. Dyon had incorporated his knowledge of the human world into his understanding of the essence of arrays. Whereas someone of the martial world might understand that some energy was more volatile than others and that some combinations are better than others, they had never needed to study quantum mechanics and chemistry like humans had. They had never needed to understand physics and the nature of things outside their own realms of comprehension. The mere fact the blue haired girl had deduced any of these was a testament to her intelligence.
What astonished the blue haired girl, was that the array of the plate incorporated all 3 ‘tricks’ so cleverly. It was efficient in not only deploying the amplification, but also in the way it was drawn. It made the girl wonder what would happen if the master hadn’t used shorts cuts and drew to the best of their abilities… would they receive heaven’s chimes?
Just as the girl was lost in thought, she was started awake by the ring that hung close to her chest.
SNAP!
The ring flew off of her neck, appearing before her. Panicking, she immediately jumped forward to catch the ring, but what happened afterwards had her stunned.
“oof”
She slammed into a firm body. She was about to fall backwards, but she felt a strong arm grab her waist and stabilize her.
She looked up in confusion to find a devilishly handsome young man. She was caught in a daze for a moment before she regained her senses. She hurriedly pushed him away, blushing profusely.
“Are you okay?” The boy asked questioningly.
The girl didn’t respond, her eyes instead fell on the adorable creature by his side before widening in surprise as she noticed the ring she had been carrying for so long was on his finger.
“That… my ring! You took it!”
The boy, who was obviously Dyon, looked at the girl in confusion before looking down at his hand, “you mean this?…”
“Of course! What else would I be talking about!”
“Um.. I think you’re mistaken, this is my ring.”
The girl’s face flushed with fury. She had been dreaming about the master behind this ring for so long. Was she just supposed to believe that a young man around her age was the expert she had been pining for?
In anger, she immediately unsheathed her thin sword, “I’ll give you 10 seconds to apologize and return my item to me. Or else, I’ll kill you and take it myself. It doesn’t seem as though you’re Elvin, which means you’ve come through the array formation. If you want to go back home alive, you’ll give me what’s mine.”
Dyon was astonished. Inwardly, he had several grievances. For one, he had realized that his array had no effect on hiding the ring. Secondly, this girl he had never met before was trying to kill him for something that was obviously his. And lastly, her personality couldn’t be further from what she looked like! How could you be so quick to anger with such an innocent appearance! The only clue you might have to who she was, was her crop top armor and leather pants covered in her kilted short skirt, but even then, the gentle and pure eyes plus the light blue to silver hair overpowered whatever vibes you got from that.
“Hold on. You’re too beautiful to be caught up in anger so easily. Wouldn’t it be a simple matter to prove whether the ring was mine or not?”
The girl was aggrieved. She clearly had an ordinary appearance, but this handsome boy was calling her beautiful as though just that would be enough to calm her anger?
“Fuck you! You think your cheap lines will work on me?!” The girl lunged forward at the flabbergasted Dyon.
Dyon leaped backwards and out of the cave, narrowly dodging her strike, ‘she’s strong…’
Dyon knew he had made a mistake in his words. He had been so entranced by her eyes and hair, he hadn’t even noticed her ordinary facial features. He could understand how his words could be misconstrued as sweet talk to distract her. But, that only added to his list of grievances because he really meant what he said.
Watching Dyon calmly dodge her strikes only fueled the blue haired girl’s fury, “are you a man?! Or had you long since lost your balls! Keep dodging like a coward!”
Dyon couldn’t help but be startled again, ‘this girl has such a… fierce mouth.’
Dyon realized that it didn’t seem like she had any cultivation either, but, her body was clearly stronger than normal and her sword will was sharp. She didn’t seem to be making any noise with her movements, it was almost as though the only noise she made came from her mouth. If Dyon didn’t have his aurora as a 6th sense, dodging her attacks would be much more difficult than usual.
‘what ability is that? Is that a will? Or a technique?’ Thought Dyon.
The girl was even more astonished than Dyon. She knew fully well how effective the methods she was using were. For Dyon to dodge as much as he had was astonishing. But, her anger hadn’t been alleviated.
Suddenly, her attacks increased in speed, a cold and harsh aura began to fill the area.
‘ice will? Wind will? Something’s replenishing her stamina too…’
The girls light blue-silver hair raged behind her, flowing freely. Her steps were swift and silent as she lunged forward again and again.
Dyon was beginning to be unable to dodge by normal means anymore. He immediately began using his celestial movement technique. His foot lifted and slowly descended. His body flashed appearing behind the girl.
His eyes immediately flashed with a golden light, encasing the girl in layer after layer of defensive arrays.
BOOM!
The arrays began to shatter, but luckily, the sword stopped before it reached the last one.
Breathing a sigh of relief, Dyon tried talking again, “can we talk this out please? It really is my ring. Assuming you found it in the forest, I can even tell you which tree roots it was buried under… well, actually I can’t because I don’t know this forest well, but that knowledge should be enough! Right?”
The girl didn’t seem to be listening to Dyon anymore. Her eyes were trained on the spherical arrays that surrounded her. The ice cold aura had completely disappeared, instead a face filled with contemplation had appeared.
Dyon looked confused, but her voice finally broke the silence, “show me the array plate you made this with, it’s even better than the one I have! You must be related to that expert somehow!”
‘array plate?’
Dyon waved his hands, removing the defensive arrays, “I made these myself, why would I need an array plate?”
The girl stumbled, looking at Dyon like she had just heard the most unbelievable thing, “don’t bullshit me! I’ve forgiven you once, don’t raise my temper again! Now show me the plate!”
Dyon sighed. He had dealt with this before. So, instead of speaking, his eyes flashed in gold. 16 points of spirals began drawing complex symbols in the air, culminating in complex swirls and moving parts that looked like the gears to machinery.
The girl was silent… unable to find the words to speak.
“You… you’re… But…”
Suddenly the girl took out the array plate she had been studying, “did you make this?”
Although she couldn’t be sure, every array alchemist had a finger print that was impossible to replicate. When she thought about how she had just tried to fight an expert who was centuries old, her heart trembled a bit, but she maintained her normal appearance.
Dyon looked down at the plate and his face transformed into a surprised expression, “how did this get here…”
Dyon’s words were simple, but they made the girl tremble with agitation and excitement.
The girl immediately kneeled to the ground, “please! Take me as your disciple!”
Dyon was startled out of his thoughts, ‘what the hell is going on….’
Dyon rushed forward to help the girl up, “please don’t do this. How could I take a girl my age as a disciple?”
The girl trembled again, “you’re… really my age?”
Dyon gave her an odd look, “of course I am. How could I not be?”
“But, your level of mastery… it’s too high.”
Dyon finally understood, ‘she must have assumed my age from my understanding of arrays.’
Dyon shook his head, “I have an innate aurora, so my affinity for array alchemy is quite high. I was just lucky.”
The girl nearly fainted. Lucky? Even if you just considered having an innate aurora, that wasn’t something that had appeared for millennia. If you then considered his mastery, that wasn’t something an innate aurora could account for.
“Innate aurora… wow… I still insist that you teach me! I won’t take no for an answer,” the blue haired girl’s fiery attitude had all of a sudden appeared once again with her firm assertion.
Dyon could only shake his head helplessly, “how about we be friends first? My name is Dyon. What’s yours?”
“You can call me Ri,” the girl said with a massive grin, tugging on Dyon’s arm to pull him to the cave.
Dyon sighed, “alright, we can do this first. But! You have to take me to deeper areas of the forest so I can hone my skills against some of the creatures.”
The girl was startled for a second, but then she nodded. She remembered how difficult it had been for her when she fought him earlier. Despite the fact he hadn’t begun energy cultivation either, he was definitely no weaker than her.
“deal.”