Reaper of the Martial World

Chapter Book 5: 168: Second Trial (111)

Book 5: Chapter 168: Second Trial (111)

Dyon took a deep breath. His anger from the past few days was starting to calm, so he felt more focused.

His eyes remained closed as he continuously went through his memories of the first 9 pages. It didn’t make sense for there not to be a way to gain acknowledgement, and Dyon doubted that the originator of this technique would want their successor to give up their talent in order to gain his or her acknowledgement. That would make too little sense, wouldn’t it?

The problem was that if this was the case, then it was likely that the originator would want whoever received their tome to cultivate to the 9^th stage before being allowed to see the 10^th. If this was the case, then that would truly be a depressing reality. No matter how intelligent or talented Dyon was, cultivating this technique to the 9^th stage within a day was simply impossible. This was especially so since he didn’t have any Dragon Blood to even begin with.

For the Viserions, they had long since lost the need for dragon blood because their ancestors passed on this blood to them. So, from birth, the had the necessary materials within them. Unfortunately, Dyon didn’t have any ancestors with Dragon Blood running through their veins.

Suddenly, Dyon’s eyes flashed open, and intelligent light sparkling throughout them. Yet, they held a cold and unfeeling depth to them that made it clear that although he had buried his anger, it was very much still there.

That aside, those previous thoughts of his had led to an interesting conclusion…

Let’s say that the tome really did need its owner to cultivate to the 9^th stage first. On the surface, that would make this a helpless situation. However, Dyon saw this differently.

To someone from a science intensive world, Dyon saw everything as a chain of cause and effect. For the tome to be able to recognize someone only once they reached the 9^th level, there had to be a certain trigger. That trigger could be any number of things.

One example could be vein surface area. Another could be Dragon Blood Integration. Yet another could be Dragon Soul strength. The list was endless, and it might even be a combination of things. However, tis all meant one thing: There had to be something within the book that was capable of checking such things. That meant that Dyon’s first task before doing anything else, was to find what this thing was.

Admittedly, this would have been a task that was easy beyond belief if his soul wasn’t locked away. However, he had no choice but to accept the reality that it was, and therefore, he had to rely on other things.

The most obvious possibility was an array. Dyon didn’t think there were many other things capable of fulfilling such a responsibility.

Unfortunately, Dyon immediately saw two issues with this.

Firstly, this was a body cultivation tome. Although it wouldn’t be surprising for someone of this level to be proficient at many things, Dyon was hard-pressed to believe that they would be capable of creating an array powerful enough to stump so many generations of Viserions while also reaching such high attainments in body cultivation. Soul and Body cultivation were as opposite as opposites got, and not everyone had access to the talents of billions of people to make up for that. That wasn’t Dyon being arrogant, it was just a fact.

The second problem built off of the back of the first. Even if this person managed to match Dyon in both talent and intelligence, there was absolutely 0 chance that they’d be able to create an array Dyon wouldn’t have seen through by now. Sealed soul or not, Dyon’s perception was off the charts. Coupling that with his array expertise, he refused to believe he had been fooled for these past few days.

This wasn’t because Dyon didn’t believe there could be people better or more experienced than him, it was because the level of array theory in these ancient times was too low!

On top of that, this tome was even more ancient than these already ancient times. Dyon hadn’t even seen a single depiction of such a small scale array, capable of fitting into a tome his entire time here. All of the formation or arrays were large scaled and relied on the flow of energy in the earth.

Because of these two reasons, Dyon was convinced that whatever was capable of checking up on the credentials of those studying it was body cultivation related… The question was… What?

In terms of soul cultivation, the process of manipulating the laws of the universe was obvious. Through Array Alchemy, one could fundamentally change things on a small scale, and should your proficiency increase, there might even be a day where you can create a universe of your own. This was why array alchemy was seen as a potential saving grace for a slowly dying cosmos, and also why those of the chaos path made it a taboo.

However, what was interesting to Dyon was that there was an energy cultivation equivalent. Dyon learned of it when he met and was forced to fight for his life against Loki. Although Dyon was still unaware that he had gained the trickster’s faith seed, what he did know was that the energy cultivation equivalent of array alchemy was called magic!

So, Dyon’s next thoughts were quite interesting. Wasn’t the process of forging yourself a completely new set of veins from a species that wasn’t even your own bending the laws of the universe as well? If that was the case… Did he inadvertently stumble upon the body cultivation equivalent of array alchemy and magic?