Truthful Transmigration

Though he had now properly advanced to the Ascending Soul Phase, John wasn’t particularly eager to test himself. Not in any real way, of course. A true opponent would require a war, which was exactly one of the things he didn’t want. His continual desire to increase in strength was because it was likely inevitable, but that didn’t mean seeking it out.

Testing his actual combat prowess was also more difficult than it seemed. Two Ascending Soul Phase cultivators sparring would strain the limits of the arena’s safety formations, and the expense of upgrading them was immense- if it was even possible. Creating barriers that could stop the attack of an Ascending Soul Phase cultivator wasn’t the most difficult part, it was doing so conditionally. Not that it was particularly easy to deflect great power, but it was achievable.

He still intended to seek out others to test his power properly, but it would be difficult to get a definitive answer of which party was stronger. That didn’t even account for holding techniques in reserve- even though John wasn’t worried about anyone betraying him somehow, he still didn’t want to advertise any potential flaws in his technique. It would be difficult for any clash between two Ascending Soul Phase cultivators to be truly private.

Still, John was able to test his power in other ways. His diligent practice had increased his control of spiritual energy even at small scale. Minute adjustments like altering the heat while cooking on a grill were used to their fullest advantage. While John didn’t spend much time directly working with the food businesses under the umbrella of the Six Elements Crossroads, he didn’t forget his origins in Astrein. Cooking wasn’t the only area of business where they were making practical use of spiritual energy for otherwise seemingly mundane things.

On the other end of the power scale were grand techniques, both for attacking and for utility purposes. The most pleasant of all of those was flying. Having studied the flying techniques of various sects and clans, John had a decent understanding of them, and had even practiced them to a usable level. However, it was only after his advancement that he felt comfortable truly flying.

It was a matter not just of power and control, but his ability to sustain the usage of spiritual energy. In the early days of his advancement, John could frequently be seen flying around the sect grounds or over Lunson nearby. That was both for his own enjoyment and as a show of strength. It was certainly better than having to show his power in other ways, though none of the factions in Lunson were foolish enough to get up to any trouble that required his personal intervention. Especially not since there was so much for them to lose if they tried to gain advantages through crime. In the decades since the founding of the Six Elements Crossroads, the prosperity of Astrein had grown several fold.

Though John very much found he enjoyed flying, it wasn’t actually terribly efficient wherever it was not required. Even though he could maintain height and impart upon himself sufficient speed and momentum to travel over the course of a day, he wasn’t really any faster than on the ground. Especially within the borders of Astrein where the terrain was mostly flat, with only a small number of hills and mountains, there was little value in flying.

Even simply hovering near the ground was more efficient, as he could push off the ground to impart himself more speed by using earth elemental spiritual energy. Otherwise, he spent all of his effort gathering air elemental spiritual energy and converting his energy from other elements. Not that other elements were completely useless while flying, but air was by far the most prominent to keep himself afloat.

If he was going to be hovering near the ground, he might as well just run along, taking advantage of mechanical forces and this thing humans had called a body. When augmented with spiritual energy, it was much more efficient than moving purely with energy.

The final nail in the coffin was that as the sect head of the Six Elements Crossroads, he wasn’t meant to go anywhere alone. Guards would seem unnecessary until he truly needed them, and if they couldn’t keep up then there was hardly any point to flying quickly or slowly.

Except for fun, and John had to admit that was a good enough reason sometimes. Oh, and there was some utility to be gained from a bird’s eye view of things. Cartographers would probably kill to be able to fly. Though ultimately they would have to train their spiritual energy like everyone else.

Though he had his origins in the element of darkness, John knew he’d changed greatly from his origins. His style would always be influenced by his beginning, and of course he would always find value in his most familiar techniques, but everything he did was infused with combinations of different elements now. And sometimes, he even touched on light element and didn’t immediately regret it.

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John had recently studied light, focused on its interactions with darkness, both for his own sake and for the sake of Ereli. The balance was difficult to manage, even though he understood how it should work.

Light and darkness were odd. They were attracted to each other for mutual destruction, yet also repelled each other to some extent. They were truly difficult to manage as the only pair of truly opposite elements. The power of both together was explosive, and could be dangerous to both enemies and those attempting to make use of it.

Yet John also had examples showing that it was not impossible to achieve a balance. Ereli was one case, who somehow managed even though she was young. Then there was Viriato, who had taken an ill-advised leap to attune to the second element, only to find himself unable to find a path forward. Fortunately for him there was one, he just needed some help.

Next were Nik and Melanthina. The two of them cultivated opposite elements, yet they retained their elemental purity and their cultivations were thriving. They worked in harmony, proving it was possible to the world in general and their daughter.

The final example, and the earliest John had encountered, was Cuah’arn. While it was difficult to say that the spirit beast had lived in harmony with darkness, she had still lived with it. For over a century she had survived with one of Ciaritzal’s claws lodged in her, and she was even able to recover to some extent and guide the Golden Tomb Guardians with both wisdom and power. It wasn’t an intentional choice, but she showed that the elements could remain together for a long period of time. Of course, Cuah’arn in particular did so through isolating the elements, which was exactly what John didn’t want.

Darkness wanted to draw things in, and light wanted the opposite. They pulled on each other, and while it was possible to achieve a balance they could also easily fall away from that balance, crashing into each other in a catastrophic manner. John had seen Ereli’s struggles, and he knew that choosing the right totem would be critical. He didn’t simply want a forced and active balance, he wanted it to be natural.

For example, the four core elements inside of him naturally tended towards a balance between them. If he was low on fire, for example, his earth element would naturally support it to grow. Though it might seem like water element would quash the fire when it was weakest, that was actually not the case. There were unstable configurations where that might happen, but just because water could eliminate fire didn’t mean it wanted to.

While spiritual elements in general didn’t have any actual desires, it was still beneficial for water to have fire around. With fire weakened, water was actually weakened as well since fire augmented water. Reaching a truly stable point did require all four elements and an intentional choice of totems, but John could feel his elements working together rather than against each other.

All he needed was to do the same for light… but that required a bit more work. Of course, John still had the entirety of the Ascending Soul Phase to undergo before he even had the hope of choosing a new totem, but he had been perusing his options long before.

Once more he returned to the sea of spiritual totems, trying to find properties that appealed to him. A light element totem that got along with darkness was not impossible to find, and indeed Nik had already attuned to two. John was not privy to the details of the second, but the young man had made an audacious choice to bind to a totem of elemental annihilation, acknowledging the possibility of destruction and embracing it- but under his control.

Meanwhile on the other side Melanthina had bound to the concept of Ultraviolet, something that could be called light yet from the perspective of humans it was darkness. The definitions of scientists on Earth about ‘visible light’ were a useful guide for John’s thoughts, but Cultivation was in large part about perception and interpretation. There were rules, but they could be manipulated to some extent by perspective and will.

However, it was clear that truly erroneous beliefs resulted in failed cultivation- usually in deadly ways. John wasn’t the sort who embraced the idea that there was no universal truth, but he had come to understand that it was certainly broader than individual facts might seem to declare.

The sixth layer of the sea of spiritual totems was, as far as anyone was aware, the deepest anyone could go. That was what made Ursel’s advancement to the Soul Expansion Phase so impressive, among other things. She’d skipped entirely past fifth tier totems and attuned to one at the sixth tier. That was not John’s path, but for her it worked.

The pressure of the sixth layer was difficult for even John to bear for long. Sometimes he could spend half an hour perusing the sea of spiritual totems, and other times only a few minutes. He reviewed various concepts, searching more through intuition and whim than any sort of proper plan at the moment.

Darkened glass certainly involved light, but even if he could find something similar that was a light totem it would dull the power rather than being a useful balance. Totems at the sixth tier were often seen as the final evolution of some previous totem, but John didn’t believe that was necessarily the case. As always, the situation was more complicated.

Would a tree of darkness be the same thing as what John had, raised from a seed? Perhaps it would, but in other ways it might be missing something important. The tree might be exactly the same, but without the emotional connection its effectiveness might lag behind. Then again, that might be an element of John’s personal path, and it was entirely possible that others would find the current state of their totems to be all that mattered.

Having lived only a short stint of cultivation as another person, John couldn’t say for certain that there was any particular universal truth to be had there. Indeed, even the parts of life that Fortkran had lived were now part of him, even if he had only stood on the threshold of the Foundation Phase at his furthest.

Light totems that caught John’s eye whether for utility or simply because of their nature included the following: Light reflecting through glass and especially prisms, rainbows, stars at night, and lights in the city. Prisms and rainbows had little connection to darkness, but representing diverse spectrums of light resonated with John’s many elements. The latter two were light among the darkness, not competing with it but enhanced by that very thing and indeed only visible because of the general darkness.

John was far from choosing his next totem, and he wasn’t even certain if he would be able to follow the path to the threshold of the Exalted Soul Phase, but he was still going to put in the effort to maximize his possible chances, starting from the very first rank of the Ascending Soul Phase.