Dyon sat cross-legged with the bed’s headboard to his back. Ri’s knees rested on his calves as she faced him. But, her head was lowered with her forehead rested gently on Dyon’s chest, seemingly trying to stop crying.
“Little feu glace,” Dyon smiled, pulling in Ri tightly, “If you have things you’re worried about, don’t bury them. The same way you want to help me carry my burden, I want to help you.”
“Mm,” Ri nodded, wiping her tears away on her sleeve before touching her belly, “It all seems so silly now…” She said softly, “How’d you do it?”
Dyon chuckled, “Your husband is a genius, that’s how.”
Ri rolled her eyes, pulling away to flick Dyon’s forehead. “Tell me.”
Seeing that Ri was back to her normal self, Dyon felt much better as he began to explain. Ri had always loved array alchemy, in fact, that was basically how they first met. It had been too long since they had a talk about it.
“I’m actually surprised that there’s nothing about seals in my master’s memories, but they’re actually quite interesting.”
Ri nodded, “The Celestial Deer Sect and the Elves were in an alliance, so your master should have known about the Sigebyrht and their manifestation. Might be another clue.”
“Mm, I think so too. Not knowing about a counter to arrays despite being so powerful doesn’t add up.
In terms of the seal placed on you, though, I may have been worried if it was put in place by an elder of the Lebna God Clan that woman is from, but Ulu, I think her name was, isn’t a match for experts on that level.
Also, her seal was meant to counter and lock away your yin and the life qi tied to it, but Ulu wasn’t skilled enough to use life will’s opposite. Instead, she used darkness will as a substitute for death will which weakened the seal from what it could be at its peak level.”
Ri pondered on that a bit before thinking of something, “If seals are making use of wills to form their counters, how is that any different from an array?”
“Remember during our first talk about arrays? And how we spoke about how lower level arrays simulate wills, while higher level arrays become them?”
Ri nodded, “So low level seals simulate high level ones by simply being arrays that counter something. They’re still fundamentally arrays but have elements of seals.”
“Exactly. A true seal requires minimal adjustments and can do a wide range of things. From what I can see, the Sigebryht family manifestation is a high-level seal. When they stopped the death qi from fueling the cyclones, they didn’t have to understand life qi. All they had to do was lock onto a target, analyze, and output their seal.
However, a low-level seal, while they may still use seal-like elements such as targeting and analysis, they need to manufacture their seals from scratch.”
“Targeting and analysis?”
“Yea. Although my master’s memories have locked the information, the Celestial Deer Sect’s library still has information on seals I looked at after treating Eli and while you were unconscious.”
That was also how Dyon got his hands on the Unique Type Manifestation technique despite it not being in his master’s memories. The 25th White Mother had purposefully not destroyed the books within the disarrayed library, even though she locked her memories, because she wanted Dyon to find her trail of clues. Clues she wanted him to learn slowly, and not all at once, because he was too weak to know everything now.
“Targeting is a method in sealing that locks down what is meant to be sealed. While analysis decides what it takes to do the sealing.
These two steps are really flexible if you have access to a high-level sealing legacy, like the Sigebryht do. But, it seems Ulu didn’t have that, or more accurately, the Lebna sealing legacy works differently from the Sigebryht’s.”
“Differently? You absorbed that guy’s memories to learn that, right? What Planet Nix like?”
“I got rid of most of the useless stuff, but there was something quite interesting that I saw, though.”
Ri used Dyon’s thighs as leverage to life herself up and sit in his lap again, before listening.
“There are actually two interesting things of note.
For one, Planet Nix is probably the most united planet in this universe. Here, the Royal God Clan exists, but it’s fairly handsoff – even to the point where the Ragnor and the Pakal constantly war with each other and the Belmont never step in. 𝘦.𝘤𝘰𝑚
But, on Planet Nix, the Lebna and Nuru God Clans both reside peacefully under the rule of the Jafari Royal God Clan.
That said, that isn’t the most interesting thing.”
Honestly speaking, Dyon was a bit apprehensive about this tidbit – even to the point where he was worried that he had given Ulu enough clues to assume that his technique absorbed memories.
In the heat of the moment, Dyon hadn’t had the time to sift through all of Chike’s memories. All he had time to do was check on exactly what happened while he was gone and find a motive.
Unfortunately, after he did that, he asked Ulu if she had really done all of this just to pull him to her side. Ulu had immediately responded with ‘how did you know that?’, which was a logical ask considering the circumstances. If Ulu thought deeply enough about it, she might be able to connect Dyon’s devour technique, to how he knew something he shouldn’t have.
And if Ulu knew that Dyon now had memories of a Nix warrior, and Dyon’s speculations about Chike’s memories were right… Then, there was more trouble than just the Nix revenge to worry about.
Taking a deep breath, Dyon continued. “From the memories, Planet Nix has no history with the Lebna, Nuru or Jafari dating more than hundred years before now.”
“Wait, what?” Ri’s brows scrunched in confusion. The impact of such a statement was much more profound than it seemed. “But…”
Dyon sighed. “Exactly right. No one has conquered a gate in millennia. So if their history in the universe is so short, where did they come from?”
“There’s also… If they weren’t here a hundred years ago, then what happened to the warriors that represented Nix at the last world tournament?”
𝘳𝘦.𝒸𝑜𝘮