Chapter 209: The Path Forwards
Yaan cultivated silently.
Another 50 years passed by.
Now, he had been sitting silently in this temple for 100 years.
Finally, he caught a brief glimpse of something.
His heart stirred momentarily, but he quickly suppressed all emotions, continuing to observe with an indifferent mindset.
Pointless emotion and thought would distract him from his pursuit. He could not feel impatience when he found nothing, and he could not feel excitement when he found something.
The glimpse of that certain thing returned to him.
Yaan did not take any action, he simply stared with his internal eye, using his psyche power to gaze into the depths of his being, finally laying eyes on the thing he had been searching for.
His psyche power was of great assistance in helping him to find his mortal soul. Beings with high talent in soul cultivation would be able to locate their soul just by feeling and sensing, but this would take Yaan far too long, it was much more efficient to search with his psyche power.
A grey figure, something half way between black and white, came into view. The figure was a transparent grey colour, but it was surrounded by a very different thick grey mist, a mist which continually cut the figure and caused red gashes to spurt outwards.
The dark grey mist was completely different from the soul, it was a couple of shades darker and it was completely opaque. It moved to and fro like a scythe, continually slashing at the grey figure, drawing a red liquid akin to blood.
With each cut, the figure released bloodthirsty desires outwards. This was the source of the slaughterous emotions that Yaan had been feeling!
As the grey figure was continually cut, the red liquid was absorbed by the sharp mist, causing it to steadily grow stronger.
'This…is my mortal soul…' Yaan realised.
The illusory grey figure without any discernible features, was indeed his soul! After an entire century of searching, he finally found it!
If he were to form a primal soul, he could just use a boundary ascension pill and some other medicines to forcefully begin the soul's transformation before even finding it. After it began to change, locating it would be easy…but for soul cultivation, this couldn't be done.
To form the spirit soul, the mortal soul needed to be untainted by any other sort of external power. Essentially, using medicines would push the soul towards a different path, removing the option of forming the spirit soul. As such, Yaan could only use this time consuming method, spending a full century just to locate his mortal soul.
But to take so long just to find his soul showed that his soul cultivation talent was trash amongst trash.
Regardless, at least he had now located his soul.
This was his mortal soul, not his dao soul. To find the dao soul was an extraordinary feat, there was no way that the current Yaan could achieve such a thing.
To describe where the mortal soul resided was a bit complicated. It was not held within any specific part of the body, in fact, it could be thought to overlap with the entire body perfectly. The difficulty was finding the exact dimension within the body that contained the soul.
It was like blindly searching through trillions of sheets of paper, searching for a faint drawing of yourself on one of those sheets.
Now that Yaan had found his soul, he would not look away. It would be easier to locate his soul the second time, but it would still take a long period of time to relocate it.
He watched his soul silently. The longer Yaan watched his soul for, the stranger he began to feel…
Eventually, Yaan realised that he was no longer just 'watching' his soul, he actually 'was' his soul! He could move ever so slightly, but this was extremely difficult and didn't seem to achieve anything other than causing him immense pain.
He stopped and relaxed himself.
For now, Yaan decided to observe the sharp grey mist. This mist was like countless blades, filled with killing intent that wanted to slaughter him thoroughly.
It didn't take a genius to work out that this mist was the slaughterous power which had previous entered his soul!
The mist didn't simply surround his soul, it was engrained into his very soul! The grey blades cut in and out of his soul, continually tormenting him, draining his soul's strength and affecting his mind.
Now that he was experiencing the pain of his soul directly, Yaan could feel the full brunt of the killing intent.
Unknowingly, he had began to release a shocking slaughterous desire from his body. This slaughter exploded out through the temple, encompassing the garden, and shocking Ga Shu so much that he took three steps back.
Ga Shu stared at the temple with wide eyes. The killing intent emanating from that temple made his heart palpitate wildly, even as an Aztec, his instincts were telling him to run!
For a brief moment, Ga Shu wanted to run.
In the next moment, his gaze landed on his wife's grave…
His heart immediately became calm.
Silently, Ga Shu sat down on the wooden swinging chair, overlooking his wife's grave and the pond. A torturous killing intent bore down on him, but he just sighed, looking towards the temple with concern.
"Lord, you gave me these blissful years with my wife. I do not know what you are going through, but I hope that you can get through this. But regardless…no matter what happens, no matter who you become, or what path you decide to take…I will follow you."
Ga Shu looked away and closed his eyes, engrossing himself in the memories of the times he had spent with his wife.
Compared to this killing intent…
Compared to the threat of death…
These memories were more important.
And the person who allowed him to create these memories was the person that he felt endless gratitude towards. He would not run from that person, even if that person tried to kill him.
If Yaan truly lost his mind and tried to kill him, Ga Shu would do his all to bring him back to his senses.
In the temple, Yaan's killing intent grew stronger and stronger.
He endured the suffering as he experienced his soul's pain. His soul was plagued by the slaughterous power, the power originally derived from his Slaughter Qi. He did not know how it ended up like this, but he could feel that without him realising it, this slaughterous power had grown stronger and stronger, engulfing his soul with endless bloodthirsty desires.
For the time being, Yaan just watched. He watched as the slaughter grew stronger, feeding on his soul and afflicting him with an even deeper desire to kill.
He watched this happen for five whole years.
Eventually, Yaan had seen enough. He had studied the slaughterous power during this time, letting him reach three conclusions.
Firstly, the could not remove this slaughterous power.
Secondly, he did not want to remove this slaughterous power.
Finally, he could use this slaughterous power to ascend his soul into a spirit soul!
It was a crazy idea, but honestly, it was his best shot. He now understood that forming a normal spirit soul would take multiple centuries under normal conditions. Now that his soul was afflicted by the slaughterous power, forming an ordinary spirit soul would be far too difficult!
Forming a spirit soul could usually only be accomplished if the mortal soul was pure and untainted. But Yaan's mortal soul was about as tainted as a mortal soul could be!
But what if he could form a 'spirit soul' by making use of the slaughterous power?
Back then, Yaan had developed Slaughter Qi, a variant Qi…
So then, why could there not also be a variant spirit soul?
Yaan had nobody to consult on this, and really, he had no other option but to try this!
He realised that he could not form an ordinary spirit soul. He also realised that if he did not do something to control the slaughterous power, it would eventually devour his mortal soul entirely!
And so, he attempted to control the grey slaughterous power.
Bang!
Red power erupted from Yaan's mortal soul as he attempted to drag the terrifying slaughter into his soul. The slaughter was like a whirlwind of sharp blades, every spec that was pulled into his soul caused it to experience terrifying injuries!
The slaughter absorbed the red liquid which was akin to blood from his soul. Yaan was not sure what this red fluid was exactly, but seeing how it was devoured so greedily by the slaughter, he guessed that it was like cutting off and killing a portion of his soul…
But immediately after the slaughter power absorbed the portion of his killed soul, Yaan absorbed the slaughter itself back into his soul!
He regained the portion of his mortal soul, along with the slaughterous power!
But that was far from the end. Each time he absorbed a portion of the grey mist, his soul was wracked with unspeakable agony!
More importantly, the killing intent within Yaan's entire being was growing at an alarming rate.
'I can only go all in!' Yaan realised.
He crazily began sucking in the grey slaughter mist, ignoring the pain, the injuries, the building killing intent. His soul was cut to shreds, then reformed by the devoured slaughter.
This slaughterous power was originally his, but previously, it was only connected to his soul, it was not fused into his soul!
As the slaughter fused into Yaan's mortal soul, his soul began to turn more opaque. Gradually, his soul took on the colour of the slaughterous mist, becoming a darker grey and possessing a terrifying sharp edge.
He did not know how long passed, but eventually, all of the chaotic slaughterous power was absorbed into his soul.
For a moment, everything was silent. The killing intent was still exuding from every fibre of Yaan's being, but the chaos in his soul had subsided.
His soul began to change.
The injuries rapidly healed over. Any remaining transparency of his soul disappeared, become dark grey and filled with the power of slaughter.
His soul rapidly grew stronger. Now supported by the full strength of the nourished slaughter, his soul seemed to hit a certain boundary.
Yaan was stunned. In this moment, he realised that he could finally perceive the boundary!
He also realised that even though his soul seemed stable right now, it was anything but.
Once the fusion of slaughter and soul reached completion, his soul had the overwhelming urge to break through the boundary. If it could not break through the boundary, its transformation would be incomplete, it would fall apart into countless fragmented pieces.
Yaan grit his teeth and pushed against the boundary. He urged his psyche power to comprehend the boundary, doing his best to understand this realm limit.
This was similar to the realm boundary for the Spirit Soul realm, only this realm boundary was altered, affected by Yaan's Four Paths Cultivation technique. It was complex, containing countless aspects that required an extremely profound understanding.
Yaan could not break through in a short period of time.
The boundary was solid in some moments, then illusive in others, He saw it clearly at times, then other-times it practically vanished.
Yaan was forced to use all of his strength just to hold his soul together. This was beyond testing on his will power, and in the end, he had to make use of his illusion dao in order to withstand the growing pressure.
He created an illusion around his soul, the illusion of stability. His illusion became reality, causing his soul to enter a stable state.
He then went on to use reveal truth to perceive the realm boundary…
But this did not work.
Reveal truth was a dao spell that Yaan used with his physical eyes. The realm boundary was not something that could be seen.
Realm boundaries could only be perceived, felt and sensed. It was a strange concept, and honestly, even cultivators struggled to understand it. That was why so many cultivators became stuck at realm boundaries, unable to progress further.
But there was one method that Yaan realised actually worked when it came to perceiving realm boundaries.
His psyche power!
Generally speaking, a Qi refining boundary was perceived through the Qi. A body tempering boundary was not really perceived, but forcefully broke through using ferocious medicines. The soul cultivation boundary was perceived with the soul.
All of the boundaries of the cultivation paths were overcome by embracing the essence of the path itself.
But there were two exceptions to this rule; dao and psyche power.
Dao comprehension could be of great assistance when it came to perceiving realm boundaries. Each dao was different, but cultivators could often find a way to make use of their dao, using it to perceive and comprehend the boundary.
Psyche power was more direct. Psyche power could help a cultivator to locate the realm boundary by using countless deductions to find its position. Once the realm boundary was in sight, psyche power could then be used to continually unravel the mysteries of the boundary, using the mind to consciously comprehend the boundary.
Using psyche power to perceive the boundary was different than the normal method. Using the mind required a strong conscious understanding, but it sometimes lacked the innate understanding that stemmed from the depths of the heart.
Regardless, it worked. In fact, psyche cultivation was actually an essential tool required to perceive the boundary to the Nirvana realm in the Four Paths Cultivation technique.
Yaan devoted every trace of his psyche power towards perceiving the Vital Qi Spirit realm boundary.
When he first arrived on the Blood Plane, his psyche cultivation was at the Hundred Sage Grade realm and he had the ability to manifest 230 psyche avatars. Since then, Yaan's psyche power had grown much stronger as a result of him studying dozens of powerful formations, but also due to his century of secluded focus.
He could only form 250 psyche avatars right now, but that was only because he had not practised creating more. If he devoted some time towards the development of more psyche avatars, Yaan estimated that he would be able to manifest at least 400!
And this number was actually limited because Yaan's psyche power improvement stemmed solely from his study of complex things. If he were to undergo the second type of psyche power training, the 'self-torture' method, he would definitely see extremely rapid progress.
But he didn't need to use so many psyche avatars for his current pursuit. He summoned one powerful psyche avatar within his sea of consciousness, then nine weaker psyche avatars. He deduced that this would be the best way to perceive the realm boundary efficiently.
He not only needed to comprehend the complexities of forming a spirit soul, but he also needed comprehend the actual boundary for the Rank 5 Vital Qi Spirit realm!
Doing this with the conscious mind was beyond difficult. Trying to understand something on a conscious level was sometimes easier than understanding its essence within your heart…but sometimes, it was instead countless times harder.
In this case, it was many times more difficult, but for Yaan, who had pitiful soul cultivation aptitude, it was definitely the better choice.
His psyche power was continually drained as he forcefully held his soul together. His soul was in an extremely unstable state, if he did not maintain this constant control, it would immediately collapse.
The only way to complete the fusion and form a stable soul was to break through the boundary.
This was a unique boundary in the cultivation world. It was as if two boundaries had overlapped and fused together; these were the Spirit Soul realm boundary and the Vital Qi Spirit realm boundary.
He needed to form his spirit soul, entering the first stage of soul cultivation. He also needed to manifest this spirit soul within the Vital Qi core within his dantian, entering the Vital Qi Spirit realm.
The realm boundary was complex and contradictory. After perceiving its mysteries for what felt like an eternity, Yaan realised the potential danger contained within this breakthrough.
If he ended up forming his spirit soul anywhere other than within his Vital Qi core, he would immediately die. A portion of this boundary was actually directing him into forming the spirit soul in his 'spiritual aperture'.
A rare few humans with a certain unique constitution possessed a 'spiritual aperture' in place of their dantian, but Yaan did not! If he truly followed this direction across the realm boundary, he would certainly die!
If a person was truly talented in soul cultivation, wouldn't they inevitably find and follow this feeling, forming their spirit soul within their non-existent spiritual aperture?
In this moment, Yaan felt enlightened. He once again realised the importance of psyche cultivation in the Four Paths Cultivation method.
Psyche cultivation allowed a cultivator to consciously comprehend the realm boundaries, rather than feeling and sensing their way through the breakthrough. This was countless times more difficult and time consuming for most people, but when it came to the Four Paths Cultivation technique, it was basically essential.
But Yaan realised something in this moment…
In order to completely perceive and understand the Vital Qi Spirit realm boundary on a purely conscious level, he would need to possess Rank 5 psyche cultivation, the Myriad Sage Grade sea of consciousness!
Yaan's sea of conscious was two entire realms below this, he couldn't possibly succeed if he tried to comprehend the boundary with purely conscious methods.
His only hope was to continue assessing and analysing the boundary, whilst also attempting to perceive it using typical sensory means, using his soul to 'feel' his way across the boundary.
Finally, Yaan had found the correct path forwards. His success was uncertain, but the flame of hope had been ignited within him.
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