Eternal Emerald Dragon

Chapter 1254 - 1253 - Covenant of Souls

Lind felt like he had been exposed to a lot in the last few moments. He had intense dreams thanks to being a cultivator and knew many of them were far from just dreams.

Still, what he had just experienced was far more troubling. He had seen the past of other living beings as if he had been there and could do nothing as horrific things came to pass.

He had many questions about it but one phrase stood out.

"What is the Covenant of Souls?" Lind expected a grim look or maybe even denial to flash over her wrinkled face but instead he felt a pressure from above!

He looked up and saw no clouds but Heaven and Earth were not happy with his question.

"He has to know. He saw the fall of all True Cultivators." The pressure slowly vanished before a sigh left her. "What we are about to discuss can never be told to others. No Oath can bind you but if others learn of it, it will doom them."

He was curious about it but he had to understand. He was about to sit down when the world shifted instead. He was suddenly back in the white room from before! His feeling of strength left him but the old woman simply stood as if nothing odd had happened.

Oresh also appeared but he seemed to be less severe than before. His dark robes suddenly made something click in Lind's mind.

"You are the first spirits?" The pair did not seem surprised and nodded. Yet, he recalled the deference given to the little girl spirit. Why? His confusion was plain but Oresh actually smiled at it.

"We are not like you. In the spirit world, time is a variable, not fixed. While my sister and I were first, we are no longer the oldest. Do you understand?" Lind felt a headache just trying to grasp the concept.

It was one thing mentally to know time varied like everything else in the spirit world but to have it so bluntly demonstrated hurt his accepted way of thinking.

He could be very flexible when it came to the elements, Laws, and even the races as a whole, but time should know when to be consistent!

"It is worse when we are in Heaven and Earth. Time flows similar to your world yet it can also become like ours. When we return, ages could have passed without our knowledge.

If he still had them, Lind would have a vein throbbing on his forehead by that point! He pushed it aside for the original topic.

"Let us put that aside. The Covenant of Souls, what is it? How did that monster becoming the first Fiend result in all of that?" It was the one mystery he did not understand. Paying for his own sins was expected but taking an entire race with him? How does that work?!

"You physical creatures really misunderstand how life works. Your limited senses are part of it but honestly, as a cultivator, you should grasp the fundamental truth." Oresh sneered like he previously did on their first encounter but Lind just remained confused.

A tired sigh came from the old woman.

"This is why I detest your new attitude even more. Of course they don't understand. If they did, they would never be able to even survive as a race. It would be anathema to them to even act like they do now. Their bodies are the primary cause of strife but their ignorance protects them." The feeling of being a small child listening to adults washed over him.

Lind knew that was not entirely wrong either. Compared to either spirit, he was not even the flicker of a candle despite being alive for thousands of years.

Still, time was flowing forward and the enemy was not kindly waiting for him to get back to a body.

"What is it, please, Seniors?" He cupped his ephemeral hands and bowed low. His solemn request made both spirits surprised and while the old woman was pleased, Oresh was merely satisfied.

"He is at least more transparent than that failure. Very well, little dragon. Listen closely. Where does life come from?" Lind tilted his head as he knew it was not basic reproduction Oresh was looking for.

It was more basic than that. His existence was not even it either. A soul was refined and improved through cultivation but it came from the result of the process of an existing organism first.

Again, not what Oresh was seeking.

Where does life come from was a philosophical question plaguing mankind even in his old world. For all that people knew life existed, aside from keeping meat fresh, no one understood where it originated from.

Gods, systems of belief, and various legends offered up explanations but not a single one could be proven to satisfaction. There were, at times, inexplicable events no one could fully explain away but they could not be easily replicated.

Lind sifted through it all and an image suddenly flared in his mind. An orb of black and white at the center of an ever shifting world. Heaven and Earth were considered the source by cultivators but Lind did not fully accept that either.

It was understandable, considering its influence over the worlds but it smacked him of more as an enforcer of the rules. Maybe even a regulator to safely manage powers that could run amok if not allowed to safely be controlled.

Sky Realms were gods to World Realm and below but their power had limits imposed to keep the lower realms safe from them.

The power was not allowed to be used wantonly without a steep price.

So it was not the source either. If it was, all life would naturally adhere to those rules without a qualm.

Lind felt like the 2 spirits were looking at him with pity before he simply shrugged.

"Where I came from originally, the only answer I accepted was the most contentious answer. I think therefore I am." He expected Oresh to sneer widely and look at him in disdain while the old woman slowly shook her head at his foolishness, but instead both looked at him in shock.

Lind was suddenly up against the wall as Oresh held him by the throat.

"WHERE DID YOU LEARN THAT?!" He did not understand the panic in Oresh nor the shock holding the old woman in place. His words seemed to snap the old woman out of her stupor.

Lind was truly confused. How could a philosophical premise elicit such a reaction?

"It was a philosopher! My old world had a lot of them that pondered existence and its origins. It was just one of many but one that appealed to me." Lind had no breath to worry about but he did not find being held comfortable.

"Impossible! Mortals are nothing! They are idiots that can't even properly live let alone understand the basis of all life!" Lind's eyes narrowed at that. The question was where does life come from, but he realized that despite living thousands of years, he had yet to find any treatise or even a reference to such study in any cultivation records.

Cultivators pursued strength. They pursued survival. They pursued personal goals of all kinds, but had no desire to waste effort on just thinking about the mysteries of life.

They had time, after all, to pursue what they wanted. Only the limit of the cultivation realm stood in their way of gaining more and so all their pursuits went into it.

"Death. The source of life is death." His words made Oresh stumble. The old woman looked confused but he did not stop. "Even the most basic living being knows death and wants to defy it. Your question was not what created life, but its origin. Life is created by thinking how to defy death."

Lind was lowered to the ground slowly.

"That is not entirely right, but close enough. It seems we must make a point of studying souls from your world more in the future. That, however, is the key to the Covenant of Souls." Lind focused but Oresh was the one who supplied the rest.

"Thought gives shape to life, just as you stated, but life, itself, has no such distinction. All life is essentially one." Lind had heard similar ideas. Life was a symbiotic relationship. Predators and prey did not exist in a simple stalemate. It was a complex layer upon layer of interactions that allowed the living to thrive.

Yet, the next words from Oresh shocked him rigid.

"To be precise, for each set of elements, all life is tied together by them. Thought, Qi, and souls all connected together. Thus, Heaven and Earth made an agreement. To be able to use Qi, all life must be treated equally. The Covenant of Souls means that if one of them violates the very foundation of the Qi, all life tied to it must pay." Lind narrowed his eyes.

The Covenant of Souls was how people could cultivate! It was the basis of everything! Weavers were the closest example of what the Great One had done. Using other souls was punished by withering the user. Karmic retribution was another, but they were actions punished under the system of Heaven and Earth.

Why make such a covenant in the first place? What were the rules? His questions must have been obvious but the old woman shook her head.

"It was not made by Heaven and Earth. It was–" The moment of revelation was coming but a thunderous rumble shook the room. All 3 flinched as clearly that was going too far.

"The part that is important is this. Part of the Covenant is that Qi is inviolate. Abuse Arts, skills, and techniques all you want, but the Qi itself is to be left alone. That villain changed the Qi to absorb souls directly as a resource! Of course that was a double sin in that case!" Understanding flooded him.

Whatever created the Covenant of Souls to allow cultivation made such that violating that very agreement would take anything tied to the elemental system! Fear filled him as he understood how insanely dangerous he was!

He had all 18 elements at his command! If he screwed up, even as an accident, just how badly would the damage spread?!

The spirits were right. Who in their right mind would take action if they felt the weight of all life hinging on their choices?! What group would chance an infraction if they knew of the Covenant of Souls?! Cultivators would be lucky to reach the World Realm under severe restrictions even then!

Even the Great One, for all his desire to live, may have given serious pause to what could happen if he broke the Covenant of Souls. All cultivators had been dancing on a knife edge and none of them knew it!