novelraw Chapter 416 - 415 - Soul Strength vs Soul Power
Chapter 416 - 415 - Soul Strength vs Soul Power
Little Shelly turned out to be an old woman who had aged prematurely due to mishandling of her weaving. She was only a little over 3 centuries old so by Sky Realm standards she was indeed young, but now her life span was cut in half at best.
Like Daphne, Shelly's Sky Core had a silvery line but unlike Daphne's, Shelly's was almost solid.
He learned that so long as it was liquid, there was still progress to be made, but once it solidified, all cultivation progress would stop.
"I mastered grade 1 weaving because that is as far as I can go after my mistake. It is the risk we all face without a teacher so you are a very lucky young man." Lind found it odd to be over 2 centuries old and still called young.
Still, he did not do anything and bowed to Shelly. She was a tier 3 Sky Realm like Daphne but much weaker.
"I suppose the first thing you can do is show me some sigils." Her white hair was well down her back but neatly tied in a ponytail. She sat down as her white robes were aglow with weavings! Lind only grasped maybe a quarter of what he saw but they were indeed much lower quality than the East End illusion or the forest one.
Still, his looked pathetic as he scrawled them in the air. Shelly's pale brown eyes were surprised but she said nothing as she rested her head on her fist. She watched as Lind carefully built a Qi gathering and purifying weaving.
It began to work but then shattered easily when she swatted at it with what looked like the same energy Daphne had used to manipulate the East End weaving.
"First, well done on engraving. That step is often very hard for people to grasp.
Second, that is a good practical first weaving. What takes 2 to 3 formations you accomplished in 1 weaving, well done." Lind nodded in appreciation, but knew there was a catch. "You are brute forcing your soul strength rather than gently using your soul power. Also, you just barely did not consume a part of your soul itself."
Lind was curious and then did something he had not done in some time. He only tried to make a sigil as he had once done that felt draining on his soul when Shelly tossed him across her hut! Qi flared to keep the structure safe but she was now looking at him in rage.
"NEVER DO THAT AGAIN! NOT EVER AGAIN!" He swiftly nodded.
"I wanted to show what I first tried before I had enlightenment. So what was I using there?" Lind had a guess but Shelly looked like she aged as she grasped her right arm before sitting down.
She looked at the brightly burning fire that was quite rare in the Circle. She preferred an actual fire to weavings doing the work. Also, she had no water element, so if something went wrong with it, she could not stop it
"You were almost using your soul itself to make the weaving. One more push and a part of you at least would be gone forever or worse…" Shelly then looked hard at Lind as he truly understood the danger.
Even with his dragonsoul, he only had a longer life, not an infinite one. He might have a little leeway compared to a human but he would age rapidly regardless.
"I now understand, senior. Then what is soul strength and soul power?" Lind had studied his soul when incorporating it into his harmony and later under senior dragon soul's guidance for understanding its effects.
Shelly let her fingers glow but Lind recognized it instantly as the same as his! Her glow was white but his harmony always colored everything related to his soul.
"Soul strength is much like body strength. The body has a certain amount of stamina that can be increased with tempering and use. It is not easy for cultivators to find techniques to do so, but the very act of weaving can slowly increase soul strength." She then engraved several sigils that looked remarkably close to Lind's.
They were far more solid and stable but still the quality was very close.
"You are mostly using the muscle to force the Qi into the sigil's shape and then connecting them the same way. It works but will quickly exhaust you. There is a great danger in that as I said that you could slip into using the soul itself." Lind nodded quickly as he had felt that exact exhaustion when making his weavings.
It was like he had run marathons but only made a single weaving.
Compared to the near 100s of elixirs he could make or Forge for days without end before his dantian and mind felt exhausted no matter how much Qi he had to burn, weaving was extremely draining.
"The key to true weaving is soul power. It is hard to describe it, but what actually engraves the weaving in the air is your soul power. Watch." The glow of her fingertips changed but Lind could not discern exactly what she had done. Yet, the instant she made a sigil, it was a night and day difference!
Fire Qi and air Qi were fused into sigils that were then connected like it was a work of art. It was a brush stroke rather than dragging the Qi to each end of a sigil to make a functional weaving.
Lind tried to push his Heaven Eyes but nothing revealed itself. It was not Qi. At least it was not only Qi.
"You need to feel the parts of your soul. A soul is not simply the real you, it has parts just like the body. Instead of organs, it has a core, the anchor that keeps together. Cultivator's foundations are all built on that core." Shelly seemed in a trance but her smile took centuries off her aged face.
Lind focused on her words and actions and slowly, his eyes lost focus as he fell into himself. Emerald fire was everywhere but at the heart of the field was a massive form. It had a sinuous body but it was wrapped around itself in sleep.
It was not a large place but it felt infinite to Lind. He carefully looked at the dragon that was his soul and understood he was being too literal. A soul was not a body, but it mimicked one.
The soul did not create the body but the body gave the soul a form. He had to strip away what came after, and find the true essence of it. His training as an elixir master suddenly sprang up.
Herbs and ingredients were useful for pills and other uses but for elixirs, Lind wanted the purest form of their traits and elements. He wanted no impurity and no incompatibilities. He just wanted the purest form but those essenes had aspects he could peel away for Heaven grade elixirs.
He let his spirit flow and Shelly nearly started as Lind's body glowed with emerald light. All 6 elements danced around him and her own Tri Sky Core shook in joy. She had never felt anything like it in her life.
Lind was lost in feeling his soul when he felt something like currents. There was a wild and nearly overpowering current that was very familiar to him. When using his harmony, it was the same feeling it gave.
It was the same feeling when using his weaving. If senior Shelly was right, he was feeling the soul strength and the name seemed appropriate. It was an unrelenting and unbeatable flow in his soul.
The vitality, emotions, and living thoughts seemed tied to it as well. Strength, it was the expressive side of his soul instead. It was what he was most connected to and his draconic soul was clearly heavily part of it, but there was more.
There was the part of him that was not so loud. He loved knowledge, grasping things from all he had seen, the love for his family was always there. It was never overt nor overpowering but it could not be denied. It fueled him.
So many things flowed through Lind at that moment but Shelly suddenly felt like she was in the presence of a monster! One mention, one example was enough for him to grasp what took decades for others!
She thought he was a natural but Lind had been studying all aspects of cultivation from when he was just a Soul Realm. It had been almost a full century when all he could do was study!
Such a firm and diverse foundation allowed him to grasp what many powerful cultivators had to slow down and start from scratch to do. Studying the path to power could blind cultivators to other knowledge they deemed unimportant until it became vital later.
Lind was the reverse.
He took far longer to get to the Sky Realm than many thought possible but by the time he had, he was a compendium of theoretical and practical knowledge. Further, he had 2 derivative professions that demanded a flexibility of the mind few could match.
All of those facts combined into his current change.
The hard wall to tier 3 thinned considerably as his fingertips glowed once more. Soul strength was needed to engrave but soul power was what gave the sigils strength, not forcing it out.
The same sigils he made before were being painted into the air but the difference was night and day. Where before he had functional but very crude sigils, there were now fine lines slowly connecting together.
The complex connections were also so much easier when he let his soul power guide the Qi, his strength engraved into the air. The weaving was only the size of his shoulder breadth but before it was at the limit of his arms width!
Qi began to condense and become incredibly pure slowly. It was still only a low grade 1 weaving but it was far more stable than before and Lind realized he could do it again immediately!
He looked up to find Shelly staring at him in awe. She was slowly blinking while Lind was about to talk when he felt a pinch in his Sky Core.
The wall to the 3rd tier was still thinned but now there was a faint silvery line around ⅓ of his Sky Core. Already? It was already there?
She saw his shock and grimaced.
"Congratulations on becoming a grade 1 weaver, Lind Frey." Lind then understood. The moment he truly started weaving was the same moment the silvery limit appeared. It only confirmed to him there was something more.
Heaven did not cut off all paths! It was fair, there had to be a reason and he would find it!
"Thank you senior, I would like to keep learning more." Shelly smiled at him and they began to speak in depth about different sigils, how they could be combined, and her elemental applications as Lind's first real weaving quietly made her hut full of high quality Qi.