48 Where He Stood (1/2)
The next morning, in the boy's personal courtyard.
The boy was training his martial arts and exercising the body.
”I'm getting married! I'm going to have a friend for life!” Shura shouted in joy while he moved his body.
In this life, he was still called Shura. This didn't happen out of coincidence or fate, however. Shura himself decided on his name.
As for the story of how he did this, it was a funny one. When his mother gave birth and he was 'present' for a few brief moments, he managed to cry out, ”Shura” a few times, so his parents named him 'Shura'.
His parents were surprised and thought that their newborn was a genius and immediately named him. Of course, all the things that happened while Shura was growing up proved otherwise.
Since babies couldn't talk, Shura made the sound with the power of his formidable soul. If his parents didn't take the hint and named him something else, it would've been a wasted effort. Fortunately, his little trick worked and he was still called Shura up to this day.
Shura thought it was important that his name stayed the same. He WAS his name. It was how he can understand who he was. The person with this experience and that experience, the person that did this and then that, it was Shura.
They weren't just things that happened, they happened to Shura. He didn't want to forget who he was and where he came from. All of his successes and failures, they were him, they were Shura.
On this day Shura returned to the invaluable habit of cultivating while he waited for his marriage to happen. He was making the preparation for the marriage, in his own way. The first thing he did on waking up and realizing the limitless things that he could now do, he immediately used the power of his profound soul to excavate the talent and potential of his body in order to create a strong foundation to cultivate strength.
There was a limit placed on 'strength' in this world. Nothing world-destroying and calamity-inducing would result from a wave of a person's palm, but the situation of a one person holding his own in a fight against a hundred was possible. This was an extreme case and the limit of strength. It was also only possible through sheer strength, speed, endurance, and stamina of the body.
People could at most become superhuman in the world of the Empire. People could become stronger, faster, and more durable to a superman degree, but there was no one who could fly or make things appear with a wave of their hands. There were no saints, immortals, or gods either.
Cultivation and personal power was pure physical strength in its myriad forms.
Right now was the most important period in cultivating. The body was still young and pliable. If he acted now he would be able to make a truly sturdy foundation which all successes in his adult life would come from.
This was a perfect time for him to mold and train his young body in energy control and martial arts. By the time of his marriage, anything could go wrong, but he would not accept an accident that came from someone more powerful messing it up. Whatever problem came up then, he would deal with it. But if it was a contest of strength, then the work now was to make sure there would be no such contest at all.
Shura immersed himself in training and he became stronger. No one else knew how powerful the boy was, not even his own family. He had kept everything a secret. The more concealed something was, the more potent it became at the crucial moment.
…
Some time before Shura was reborn.
Something happened when Shura died and was on his way to reincarnate. It was an eye-opening experience. Although he didn't have 'eyes' then and the metaphor wasn't enough. Although he had used metaphors before, he couldn't really come up with one apt to describe how that experience felt. Saying that he was a blind man who saw for the first time couldn't do it justice at all, because it was that, and much much more.
Shura glimpsed at a portion of what he could only describe as 'Profound Truth' of reality and existence. He had seen it with his own 'eyes' as he floated in the void after death and approached his next life. In the great beyond of death, there wasn't ground, sky, or space. There were no plants, trees, buildings, natural phenomena. There were only 'souls' of people, innumerable specks of light in the dark that formed their own constellations like those of stars in the night's sky.
And in that brief period of time where he saw all these 'souls' that were people, something happened. Out of nowhere facts and information became known to him. It occurred in an instant and he understood it all within that same instant as well.
Each individual being had a Truesoul. It was more ethereal and intrinsic than what he commonly knew of as a 'soul'.
Only life was capable of cultivation. Only living beings had Truesouls.
Each of the myriad lives that existed had a Truesoul that they were oblivious to. Their Truesoul limited their maximum attainment in cultivation. There was no need to foolishly try to make a breakthrough when one was old and feeble hoping to transcend to the next level before they bit the dust. If such individuals could see their own Truesoul, then they would know that they were trying in vain.
The better quality one's Truesoul was, the higher level in cultivation one could reach. The world was nigh endless and there were countless universes being created and destroyed along the endless river of time. But it was all one coherent system, one involving and dominated by Truesouls.
At the peak, the summit, was the Supreme Truesoul. Like what it sounded, it was Supreme. There could only be one Supreme Truesoul. With a thought, they could create and destroy things and peoples. At this level was true omniscience, omnipotence, and immortality.
They were not considered a cultivator anymore. There were none that was their equal, the Supreme alone stood at the top. They were omnipotent and omniscient. Capable of creation and destruction. To give such a being the appellation of a 'God' would not be in vain.
Below the level of a Supreme Truesoul were the levels of the innumerable life who could cultivate. They were the Great Truesoul, Heaven Truesoul, and Earth Truesoul.
Finally, below them all was the Man Truesoul. This was the Truesoul of mortals who could not cultivate.
Knowing this new information made Shura informed. Rather than blindly doing something out of only hope of it being true, he knew what was true and false, and he could make a decision safe in the knowledge that it was a sound decision based on the truth.
As for the fact that one's Truesoul limited how far one could go on the path of cultivation, to not know it wasn't important. It was still common knowledge that some people just couldn't reach a certain level of cultivation. Some called it a lack of talent, others called it a lack of ambition and drive. Although they might not know what it's called or why it was so, people still knew of it.
It was now that he came to touch reality that his mind became the clearest and most profound it had ever been. He knew he had a Heaven Truesoul: he was average. He did not have equal opportunity with all the great experts of the past, present, and future to become the strongest possible. As for becoming The Supreme, those knowledgeable people with Great Truesouls could try and hope, but Shura could not even entertain the thought.
This was the reason why he had stopped thinking of cultivation ever since he reached the Godly Realms: his Truesoul had almost reached its limit. It was not his conscious intention at all to downplay cultivation or ignore it, It was a spiritual, psychological, and physiological thing that happened automatically.
He could continue to cultivate a bit more, but he wouldn't even get past a major level, and while he could flex and stretch his cultivation and strength a fair bit, he could at most rank below the middle-power experts. He could never touch the top, even though that top wasn't the highest top.