The bright sun had dimmed considerably with the passing day. Ri was an endless faucet of questions. Her eyes hadn’t lost their shine for hours.

“You can even imitate wills with arrays?!”

Unbeknownst to Dyon and Ri, the cave walls had begun to glow with a faint light. They sat together around a flickering light array as they bounced theories off of each other. This was something that was highly beneficial to Dyon as well. .

Although he was very clever in his utilization of arrays, it could be said that his foundation was shaky. It was reminiscent of a fluent speaker of a language being unable to explain why a sentence made more sense one way as opposed to another.

“You can, definitely. For example, take wind will. If you input a command to blow, it might work just fine. But, if you instead input a command to create a vacuum, the effectiveness of the array increases many folds. You can imitate having more control over wind that way. Air wants nothing more than to fill empty space. If there’s suddenly a lack of substance in an area –”

“Something will come to fill it!”

“Exactly. All of sudden, instead of using the array’s energy to create a fake simulation of wind, you’re instead manipulating the will of true wind by understanding how it wants to act and react.”

“Fascinating, I’ve never thought about it that way. But, you still haven’t told me why you simplify your arrays like this. I’ve never seen an array expert do such a thing. In fact, although it’s ingenious, many masters might even see it as a taboo.”

“Actually, it’s just for protection. I’ve decided to wait on energy cultivation, so, I used array alchemy as my main form of protection.”

Ri looked confused at this, “But, your soul is so strong. Why would you need to use array alchemy? For you to have such a high attainment in array alchemy, it’s impossible for your soul to be weak.”

Dyon gave Ri an odd look. He thought that she was too smart to ask that question…

‘There must be a way then!’

Dyon’s eyes brightened. “In my experience, soul cultivation techniques take too long to cast. Is it different here?”

A sudden look of realization hit Ri.

“I see… in your world the soul must be a supplement then, mostly used to defend against those that do specialize in such techniques. The elves actually specialize in soul cultivating. Often, we never even bother with energy or body cultivation. Although, technically, we’re all born with great body constitutions although they may not all be god level.”

Dyon looked on in interest. The Celestial Deer Sect had specialized in soul techniques as well, but that was mostly as a necessity to sustain their love of array alchemy. But, it seemed that it was the opposite for Elves. They loved soul cultivation, and array alchemy was just a logical follow up of that.

‘Maybe that might be connected to why they’re so good at those ancient games?…’ Dyon’s mind wandered a bit.

Ri’s voice snapped him out of this thought bubble.

“I’ve been ignorant,” she said berating herself, “in the Elvin world, your soul is able to manifest into any number of things. For example, the Eostre family is able to manifest their souls as a moon. Actually, that’s often how you can tell which clans people come from.

“But, those kinds of techniques that ensure a specific kind of manifestation are heavily guarded by their respective families because it’s the root of all of their powers. That’s what we’d call a Singularity type technique. Meaning only one possible outcome.

“Those who are completely confident in themselves, or come from poor families with no backing, use what we’d call a Unique type technique. That technique is formed on the basis of the talent and personality of the person. Not many choose this path because it also means finding your own path to soul cultivation.

“Singularity techniques already come with the next steps ready for you, but this isn’t true of a Unique type technique. Also, although I’m calling it a Unique type technique, there’s actually only a single method to awakening your own unique soul manifestation.”

Dyon’s eyes glazed over in thought. ‘Manifestation of a soul?’

Dyon’s mind flashed back to the moment before he stepped into the legacy world. Just at that moment, his emotions were burning and he felt himself resonating with the demon qilin essence within him and an illusory qilin appeared behind him.

At the moment, he had assumed that that was simply what happened when you tapped into your body cultivation… but, when he was fighting the geniuses, he hadn’t been able to replicate the same phenomenon. But now, Ri was describing something that was eerily similar to what he felt at that moment.

‘Was I tapping into the remnant soul of the demon qilin? Or is it just that body and soul cultivation can manifest the same phenomena? Also, why wasn’t I able to do it again? Was it maybe the Sage blood overrunning the demon qilin?

‘But, why wasn’t I able to manifest the Sage then? Is it because I haven’t integrated enough of the essence? Am I not powerful enough yet? Or maybe the souls of the essences within me haven’t reached a proper balance yet?’

Dyon’s mind was running at high speeds, trying to analyze any and everything. Ri sat cross legged with her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands, watching him intently. The light flickered across their faces, and Ri found herself enraptured by Dyon’s serious expression.

‘Wait… flickering? SHIT I FORGOT!’

Although they had set up a lighting formation, it shouldn’t flicker. The only explanation was that the reason Ri called this her secret place was manifesting itself. But, this could mean a ridiculous amount of danger for Dyon!

“Dyon! Snap out of it! You need to go!”

Dyon looked up from his thoughts, confused, “Huh?”

The cave’s walls suddenly brightened even more. Suddenly, a rush of flickering lights swarmed from the depths of the cave.

‘Dammit! It’s too late!’

𝑖𝘦.𝑐𝘰𝘮