Chapter 850: Soul Manipulation: Awakened Soul
While Bai Zemin was lost in his inner thoughts, Lilith's still sleepy voice brought him back to the real world.
"What could be so important as to make you sigh like that two times in a row?"
Bai Zemin adjusted his posture a bit and drew her closer to him. After giving her a gentle kiss on the top of her head and while softly caressing her delicate bare shoulder, he replied in a calm voice, "It's nothing important, just my head thinking about what to do from here on. Go back to sleep, I'll follow you soon."
Lilith did not insist and simply nodded prettily before closing her eyes again to immerse herself in the wonderful dreamland she had been away from for so long but one that thanks to Bai Zemin she was beginning to appreciate again.
A minute later, Bai Zemin felt Lilith's chest rise and fall rhythmically with her breathing. She had fallen asleep again.
Bai Zemin closed his eyes but not to fall asleep because he was trying to find answers to all the doubts he had.
First, he organized all the information he had obtained in his mind and the second thing he did after putting doubts with doubts and answers with answers was to put the matters regarding The Golden Domain to the back of his mind since it was something he could not and would not come in contact with any time soon.
He had learned the reason why the Soul Record pushed all living things onto the path of evolution; it was not something that occurred just by natural law but a necessity.
At the same time, Bai Zemin had also learned that the Soul Record was definitely a being, an entity, or a thing with self-awareness rather than a law. Laws had no consciousness or ability to reason or make decisions, they simply served a fixed purpose just as was the law of gravity or the law of time.
As to whether the Soul Record had a physical body that was machine-like, person-like, animal-like, rock-like, or even the universe itself.... Bai Zemin temporarily could not be sure about it.
Bai Zemin focused mainly on his doubts in order to try to clear up at least a little bit of as many unknowns as possible.
First of all, he tried to understand what was the Spiritual Power that the mission The Path of the Immortal demanded of him.
While it was true that Bai Zemin had read many novels throughout his years as a student and while it was true that the combination of the two words 'Spiritual Power' was not new to him since this was a type of energy mentioned quite often in cultivation type novels, this was not very helpful in the real world considering that Bai Zemin could not sense any 'strange' energy other than the mana that hovered in the air naturally.
The word Spiritual somehow had to be connected to soul/spirit, Bai Zemin was certain of this fact. However, this was where Bai Zemin's second unknown came in.
How could he turn the Mana in his soul into Spiritual Power?
Since he could not answer that question at all with his current knowledge or information, what Bai Zemin did was to look up the records of the skill Soul Manipulation since it was precisely this skill that had been the trigger for everything.
[Soul Manipulation (EX rank passive-active skill) level 1: The soul is the essence of all life, and there can be no life without a soul. Life can be destroyed by anyone, but life can only be created by combining and subsequently manipulating the records that make up the souls of two existences -]
[Currently unlocked effects are from the Awakened Soul phase. ]
[Passive effect (Awakened Soul): All spiritual attacks below the Order of your soul become ineffective. Spiritual attacks above the Order of your soul are weakened by 60% regardless of the number of different Orders. Damaging your soul becomes much more difficult. ]
[Active effect (Awakened Soul): Once every 60 days, you can upgrade the Order of up to 3 passive or active skills for a maximum of 5 hours. The skill goes on cooldown when it is activated regardless of whether you keep its effect active for the currently set maximum time. NOTE: It does not work on skills that increase the user's knowledge in any field.]
If not for Bai Zemin not wanting to wake Lilith up again and worry her, he would definitely have gasped heavily after reading the records of the Soul Manipulation skill.
Bai Zemin had no idea what a rank EX skill was, however, it was more than clear that these skills were even more powerful than UNIQUE skills.
At level 1, the skill Soul Manipulation had not only strengthened Bai Zemin's soul to the point where he was now able to use Overlap Regeneration more freely than before but even granted him defense against the most dangerous type of attacks of all; spiritual attacks!
However, what made Bai Zemin's heart beat fiercely was the active effect.... To be able to raise an entire Order the power of 3 skills regardless of whether they were passive or active was simply insane! This trump card was simply colossal in the hands of a beast like Bai Zemin who possessed terrifyingly powerful skills!
Since the skills were part of the soul, runes engraved in the soul, it was reasonable that the skill Soul Manipulation would have such an ability.
Moreover, this was only the first phase, the Awakened Soul phase, which meant that as Bai Zemin raised the level of the skill Soul Manipulation, more and more effects would begin to appear!
Even though he had not obtained any seemingly obvious or clear clues regarding the Spiritual Power, Bai Zemin could not help but want to jump for joy.
He quickly tried to see what the requirements for evolving Soul Manipulation were but Bai Zemin almost spat out three hundred liters of old blood and died when he saw them.
[Soul Manipulation's evolution requirements -]
[Fourth Order Blood Manipulation: Incomplete. ]
[Fourth Order Gravity Manipulation: Incomplete. ]
[Fourth Order Air Manipulation: Incomplete. ]
[Fourth Order Light Manipulation: Incomplete. ]
[Fourth Order Darkness Manipulation: Incomplete. ]
[Seventh Order Soul Stone: 0/5]
Bai Zemin really wanted to stand up naked, step on the bed, point at the window, and scream at the whole world to go screw itself!
Five Manipulation-type skills?! For the love of everything pure and impure in the universe!
Bai Zemin had barely managed to obtain two Manipulation-type skills during this more than half a year of so many battles to the death and none of them was in the Fourth Order yet!
Besides... 5 Seventh Order Soul Stones... Even the most powerful existence Bai Zemin knew of, Lilith, was a Sixth Order soul evolver! Seventh Order beings were existences on the level of the legendary archangels like Michael or Gabriel that were so prominently mentioned in the bible!
Not only did the evolution of Soul Manipulation demand that Bai Zemin should get skills he had never heard of or seen, but it was even asking him that if he wanted to reach the next stage he would first have to defeat beings that were only one stage below beings like the biblical god himself or the legendary satan!
If it wasn't for Lilith sleeping like an innocent and adorable little angel, Bai Zemin would have really cursed even if he didn't know whether to curse the Soul Record or the skill and its stupid requirements.
Fortunately, Bai Zemin was a considerably rational person even if he was no longer able to keep his mind cool like a perfect combat machine as when he had the skill Stone Heart.
After calming down, he finally realized a fact he had been ignoring.
Yes, the skill Soul Manipulation had evolution requirements just like all the other skills. However, hadn't Bai Zemin managed to evolve several of his skills by improving his own understanding of them? Maybe, if he could understand souls better those requirements would disappear or at least become easier.
With Kali's help, Bai Zemin had managed to understand the composition of souls which was probably the Awakened Soul stage he was currently in. In the future, with the help of the little porcelain doll, Bai Zemin hoped to understand how each compound worked and how to break them down.
By understanding the composition Bai Zemin gained the power to improve those compounds in the form of improving his skills.
When he gained knowledge of how the compounds of the soul worked, Bai Zemin was confident that he would be able to manipulate to some extent the souls or at the very least his own.
Finally, Bai Zemin believed that decomposition was the last stage he needed to learn..... In this stage, Bai Zemin would probably be able to end the life of any living being just with a thought and even if it wasn't that far-fetched he would definitely possess terrifying power.
'Six years from now on...' Bai Zemin finally sighed for the last time before going to sleep.
* * *
Two days later.
Two days had passed since Bai Zemin met the 15-year-old girl who completely changed the course of his life. In fact, to say that Kali changed Bai Zemin's destiny was not an exaggeration at all, since if it were not for her, Bai Zemin would not have come to understand the composition of souls and therefore he would not have known that the universe was in imminent danger.
Although 6 years was a long time in the eyes of a guy like Bai Zemin who was barely 20 years old and had only been evolving for 7 months, the reality was that 6 years could no longer be considered a long time when it came to the almost total destruction of all life; another proof that time was relative in the eyes of living beings and the circumstances around them.
During the past two days, Bai Zemin tried to help Lilith so that she could obtain the skill Soul Manipulation, but apparently, it was not as easy as searching through the internet for the location of the treasure already discovered by someone else in an online video game. However, Lilith told him that she would not give up and would continue trying to uncover it by her own means.
In addition, because Bai Zemin did not want to worry Lilith too much or make her feel bad about the short time he had to get ready, Bai Zemin did not tell her about The Golden Domain forget about the mission 'The Path of the Immortal'.
Bai Zemin spent half of his time training with a mutant beast sinew to master the use of a whip. As for the other half of his time, Lilith simply looked at him in confusion as he sat like a monk cross-legged on a rock with his eyes closed.
She had tried to tease him the first day, telling him if he was playing like the cultivators in the novels he used to read and often talked about. However, Lilith frowned in confusion when Bai Zemin did not respond to her joke as he usually would and instead stayed serious and focused on his task. This made her suspect that he was hiding something from her but it still wasn't enough to be sure, therefore, she continued observing him closely with more attention than before.
Except for 4 hours of sleep and his three main meals a day, Bai Zemin only trained to master the whip and tried to understand his own soul better in search of the so-called Spiritual Power. Since his soul was the total result of the seven types of souls, if Bai Zemin could understand his soul then understanding the others would be a simple task.
Sitting on the same rock he had been sitting on every time for meditation, Bai Zemin let out a frustrated sigh before opening his eyes and slowly standing up under Seraphina's curious eyes.
"Orc, you've been sitting there for 4 hours straight doing nothing." She said with a weird expression, "If you didn't wake up soon I was considering throwing a bucket of ice water on you."
"Sorry for the wait, ponytails." Bai Zemin jumped off the rock and started walking south, "Let's go, Kali should be almost done by now."
Seraphina rolled her eyes and muttered under her breath, "It's only eight in the morning, I don't think Kali will be done too soon."
Even as she muttered, the youngest princess of the Gales Kingdom followed him obediently.
Arriving at Kali's house, the two quietly entered and headed straight to the small room she used to work with her runes.
There, Bai Zemin gaped at the little porcelain doll drawing with her delicate hands, and for the first time, he felt that a person's movements could be so refined. Every movement she made was packed with elegance and beauty capable of captivating anyone.
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