94 Body and soul cultivation. (1/2)
A week after Li Yang met the various elders of the clan, he finished healing his remaining injuries and could finally start cultivating again. He opened his eyes and stretched his arms and neck, his joints popping as he moved his body. He swiped his interspatial ring and took out a thin book that was crimson in color, muttering to himself as he opened the book.
”Guess I'll start with you.”
The book he took out was the one that detailed how to cultivate the first stage of the Bloody Shura technique, a soul cultivation technique. It was only the first stage, so it could only be used to cultivate to a realm equivalent to the early stage of the Immortal Rebirth realm, but it was better than nothing. It also detailed the various cultivation realms that soul cultivation had, so Li Yang could learn quite a bit from this thin book.
He opened the book and started to carefully scan the pages, making sure not to miss a single word. Each page was filled to the brim with tiny words, so one had to take care to not accidentally mix up sentences. The book was written by someone called Bloody Soul Monarch Long Jintu, Li Yang had never heard the title before, so it was likely someone who had risen to prominence after his death.
The way to cultivate the technique sounded simple but was actually rather complex. One had to kill a cultivator or Demonic beast, the stronger the better, and use a very specific and complex utilization of Qi to compress all their Qi, blood, and soul into a single rune called a Blood Seal. This Blood Seal would then be led into the cultivator's body, allowing it to travel through their veins so that it could get attuned to their Qi and blood so that the two wouldn't reject each other in the future.
Once the Blood Seal was attuned to your body, you had to fuse it into your own mind and allow it to disperse itself, strengthening your currently formless soul. After your soul was strengthened enough, it would materialize itself within your mind, allowing you to fuse future Blood Seals directly into your soul to strengthen it.
Once your soul was materialized it would mean that you had entered the first soul cultivation realm, the Soul Materialization realm which was equal to the Human Rune realm. As you continued to implant Blood Seals into your soul and strengthen it, it would turn more and more corporeal. The more corporeal a soul was, the closer one was to enter the next realm of soul cultivation, the Heaven Reaching Soul realm.
This stage was equal to the Ascending Heaven realm and it meant that a person's soul would be able to leave their body and try to stretch towards the heavens above, the closer the soul could get to the heavens the higher you were in this cultivation realm. Once your soul became able to leave your body, it would automatically form a special type of energy called Vital Essence, the soul cultivation equivalent of Qi. This energy was ethereal and seemingly unreal, perfect for attacking souls and similarily ethereal things.
The next realm was called the Heaven Touching Soul realm, the realm equivalent to the Immortal Rebirth realm, and to reach this stage one's soul had to stretch so high into the skies that it managed to make contact with the heavens. Once it made contact with the heavens, the soul had to start absorbing the might of the heavens, greedily swallowing it and using it to evolve itself. Once the soul had swallowed so much of the heavens might that it had finished evolving, you would enter the next cultivation realm.
This stage was called the Primordial Soul realm and was equal to the Primordial Rune realm. To cultivate through this stage, you had to use the might of the heavens that your soul had swallowed, using the might to hollow out your entire soul. Even though you hollowed out your soul, it would actually grow stronger as it got hollower, the outside of the soul becoming so compressed and strengthened that it would almost be like a physical body. Once the soul was fully hollowed out, one would enter the next cultivation stage.
This stage was called the Heaven Imitating Soul realm, and the way to cultivate through this stage was exactly what the name implied. Using the might of the heavens that your soul had absorbed, you had to form your own pseudo-heaven within your hollowed out soul, filling your entire soul with that pseudo-heaven before you could enter the next stage, the Heaven's Soul stage.
The Heaven's Soul stage was the equivalent of the True Deity realm, and to enter and cultivate through this realm, one had to disintegrate their own soul and fuse it into the pseudo-heaven that they had created inside their hollowed-out soul. During this fusion process, one also had to fuse all their laws into the pseudo-heaven, turning it into a true heaven once all your laws and your entire soul had been fused into the pseudo-heaven.
After the pseudo-heaven had turned into a true heaven, one would enter the peak of soul cultivation, the Soul Empyrean realm. This stage was equivalent to the Empyrean realm and the two were much the same, the heaven that one's soul had become would become an entire universe, spawning living and sentient beings. The soul cultivator could draw upon the strength, faith, and life-force of these living beings, infusing it into every single one of their actions.
After reading through the thin book several times, making sure that he memorized every word, Li Yang put it down and let out a light breath. It sounded simple, but he couldn't even begin to fathom just how many attempts it had taken people to come up with a cultivation system for the soul. How many Blood Seals had ended up wrong, how many of them had ended up being fatal to the one trying them out? Li Yang was arrogant, but even he had respect for people who carved open a new cultivation path for others.
Reading through the description of the soul cultivation realms, it was clear that whoever had come up with the first soul cultivation system had used the standard Qi cultivation system as a blueprint. The last three cultivation stages were practically the same as the last three Qi cultivation stages, forming an entire universe within oneself and drawing strength from it. Just having one universe was enough to cause someone to reign supreme over all creation, Li Yang could not even imagine how strong someone who had two would be.
Li Yang swiped his interspatial ring and took out a clay jug of wine, uncorking it and taking a few swigs. He enjoyed the sweet and fruity taste for a bit, closing his eyes and allowing his mind to get a bit of rest before he started reading through the next book, the Myriad Monarch technique. After taking a few more swigs of the fruity wine, he put away both the jug and the Bloody Shura technique, bringing out the rainbow-colored book that was the Myriad Monarch technique, the body cultivation manual.