Eternal Emerald Dragon

Chapter 729 - 728 - Soltara

"I am unsure what you think I am capable of exactly, Senior Soltara."  Lind sipped at his tea as he looked at his host.  If the structure was really a representation of her condition, she looked remarkably well considering.

The crystalline structure was fractured but stable and the Law Binding had no ripple he could feel but his senses were limited in that regard.

"Your theories echo in the lost time.  It resonates with what we lost when the song was shattered above.  It was the death of our hope but you have rekindled it anew."  Lind saw her summon a copy of one of his treatises on the elemental relationships.

It was very worn and he smiled to see it.  He summoned an up to date copy for her to go over.  She smiled and happily sunk her senses into reading it.  The instant she focused on the jade slip, he saw the damage to her skin.

It was faint but visible to his Eyes.

He said nothing but he itched to examine her if he could.  Still, even he knew decorum would be abandoned if he did so.

"I see you learned from those locked away inside the Sealed Wall.  Thank you very much for what you did.  It meant a great deal to us."  Lind glanced out the door and she shrugged.

"He was very appreciative.  We are not able to pass on so easily when constrained by the acts of cultivators.  Even so, you are one of those beings that stole from us even if it was in ignorance."  Lind's head whipped around at that in shock.  What had he done?!

"I so–"  She held up her delicate hands to stop him.

"I misspoke.  Talking to one of you is not common for us.  At least, not anymore.  When the bonds broke all that time ago, desperate Immortals came for us to try and extend their lives."  Lind's visage darkened as emerald light lined his body.

"How dare they!!"  Lind felt darkness rise in him and it snapped him out of it.  He calmed himself with slow breaths and practiced the very things Qing made him do each day.  He confronted his thoughts and recognized a very old echo of his first heart demons.

A gentle touch also went through his body and he felt the darkness fade.

"You have led a harsh life it seems but you never took a shortcut as many before you did.  Why not?"  Her question seemed obvious to him but he considered his answer.  There were shortcuts that had no moral issue with them but he had avoided them.

Part of it was simply cost.  He could not afford pills in the amounts needed to regulate his cultivation, plus he felt it was wrong.

Everything his mother taught him about pills was based on the theories that ignored 6 elementals so he tried to pursue his own path.  It was slow and frustrating but he had some luck too.

Yet, even when he finally advanced to the Sky Realm, he still avoided pills for the most part unless made by his mother or other alchemists trained in the new approaches.  Why?

Nothing stopped him but as he pondered it, a sad smile stretched over his face.

"I wanted to prove them wrong.  I wanted to show them there was another way."  He spoke words not even his wives knew.  Hell, he had not known about them either.  He had come so far but he was still trying to prove them wrong about 6 elementals.

A soft laugh came from Soltara but she did not seem to be mocking him.

"They were not wrong, simply unable to hear the song.  They could only create their own and ignore the rest as they always have."  He looked up in awe at her.  What was she saying?  Was she saying he had stumbled on to something already known?

Why was it not recorded anywhere?  Even now, the wider Heaven Realm powers benefited from his theories and teachings but none had found more than a few attempts as he had to try and make things 6 elementals could use.

Even those were not quite right as he had to adapt them later with what he knew of his harmony and cores.

Now, he was a mid Sun Tier but still struggling to step forward.

He had elixirs, Forged items, and weaving to carry him onward but even then, he only used it to study and understand.  He recovered but he did not use even his own items to progress as others did.

"Will I lose the song if I use them?"  He was curious and he saw her nod.

"Once you do, the song is muddled and unable to be ever found again.  It is a very difficult road you walk but it is one I resonate with.  It echoes in the lost time."  It was the second reference she made to what he assumed was the Cataclysm but specifically to the loss of her people.

That was something he had never heard of regarding cultivation.  He knew why most cultivators would dismiss it.  The plain fact was humans and demons could only go so far so fast naturally without pills or other treasures.

Aether children did much better but that made a great deal of sense considering how they were born.  Naturally born aether beasts also lagged behind manifested beasts from what studies he had reviewed over his life.

Ethry was a bit of an exception to that but both her parents had been Immortal and she had a pure Divine Bloodline to boot.  It would be weird if she did not advance quickly.

Yet, Soltara clearly told him that cultivating naturally was what he had been doing and he suspected only 6 elementals could do it too.  It was why no one knew about it.

Luck also played a part in Lind's advancement, no question but the massive improvements in other cultivators seemed to counter Soltara's words.

She seemed to expect what he was going to ask next.

"It is why I have called you.  I only know the song thus far, but you seem to know more.  It may not be conscious, but it is precious to us.  It may save our future."  Lind began to understand.

"You were dying and it helped you recover, didn't it?"  She nodded as she smiled at him.  "I will need to ask a lot of questions and I need to better understand your cultivation path.  I know you create or discard a part of yourselves when you advance."  She nodded and then her chest became transparent.

Compared to the last Immortal Realm he met, the complex patterns were stunning.  His head hurt just looking at it but then it was like something clicked in his head.

He lit up with all the elements he possessed.  Natural, demonic, and traces of Celestial were all connected by emerald light between them.  He saw the circular heart was bigger on the inside than it seemed.

He found a sliver partially transformed into a shard deep inside the complex pathways down into it.  The core was crumbling regardless but Lind felt like he understood it unlike anytime before!

There was an error.  It was old but it was balancing the elements incorrectly.  His emerald Qi flowed into the fractures and adjusted the structure around it all just slightly.  The instant he did that, he fell backward in shock.

Sweat covered his body and his Qi was essentially gone!  His head was spinning and trying to grasp what he just learned was hard.  He almost lost it, but got a piece of it back!

He looked up in shock as Soltara was glowing with a healthy light.  What had he done?

A projection suddenly appeared just as stunned as he was.  It was a male and Lind would bet it was the same one that tried to squash him like a bug.

"H-h-how?"  The handsome man looked down at him but Lind shrugged honestly.

"My harmony.  I think it is a Living Law."  Shock flooded the man's face as his eyes narrowed before a sensation focused on Lind's dantian.  He felt it was far more intrusive but also destructive!

He tried to resist but it was about as effective as an ant stopping a foot all alone.  He was going to die!

A blast of lightning shattered the projection and saved Lind, but he was now barely holding on to consciousness.

"Hold on!"  A gentle flow of Qi flowed over his body and his dantian quickly absorbed what it could.  He felt immensely better.

A smiling Soltara looked down at him before she looked up in anger.

"How dare you harm him!  He helped me and you repay him with near death?!  He is not like the others.  Do not return here again!"  Lind felt a pressure trying to get back but she easily rebuffed it.

Lind focused on his own recovery while the 2 Immortals worked it out.  He also tried to grasp what he had just done.  Unlike any cultivator he had examined, Elementals were not static beings.

He realized they were a coherent flow of Qi and if they got the balance wrong, he could fix it!  He just wished he knew how.  He focused on the fuzzy memories but they were fading even as he tried to hold them.

Why?!  Why can he do things but not keep the memory?

"Let it go, Lind Frey.  The rules of Heaven and Earth are there for a reason.  You will only hurt yourself if you try to go beyond just traces of Laws."  Lind opened his eyes to find Soltara looking much better.

He also saw that while the structure had improved, it was still fractured.  She was still old but the feeling of vitality was much better.

"Can you teach me what I did?  At least answer what I can understand?"  She nodded and poured more tea for them to drink.  He had a lot of them.