Archive - 002

Chapter 002 – Rune

Now that Tai had resolved himself to step onto the path of cultivation and seek his own freedom through that path, he considered his situation a bit more thoroughly.

“Fang... That will be my name from now on, though I kinda like it. Short and straightforward.”, Tai mused to himself.

He knew that his old life was over, this was a new beginning for him and this body. A new name only seemed appropriate, furthermore, the tribesmen knew him as Fang, so there was that too.

The next thing Fang did was delve into the well of knowledge that was the Archive to find himself a cultivation technique.

The one the former Fang had been given by the tribe, wasn't even a complete technique, it was only an incomplete chunk of some other manual. It was obvious that the high-ranking tribe members wouldn't give away their cultivation manuals to the rest of the tribesmen.

Still, even if given the chance, Fang wouldn't take their manual. These low-level techniques could at most guide him through the basic five stages of cultivation. Though they wouldn't be very helpful when it came to the spiritual stage and void stage – the advanced stages of the Energy Gathering system.

Body Transformation and Soul Forging manuals didn't even exist in the whole Wildernis or somewhere else on the Blue Sky Planet, at least not complete ones. These were rare in the whole Mortal Realm, though less so in the Divine Realm.

Of course that only held true in this Universe, called the Bright Heaven Universe, it was very much different in the other eight.

Still, true apex Body Transformation and Soul Forging techniques were rare even there. That was mostly because the easiest path of cultivation for humans was the Energy Gathering system.

Fang nevertheless planned to cultivate all three right from the very beginning, as this would yield him the most power in the long run. It would also make his journey a lot smoother, as these paths weren't completely separate from one another, but could supplement each other.

If one's body wasn't strong enough then one would reach a bottleneck when it came to amassing more spirit essence into one's body. And if one's soul force was lacking, then that would also create a bottleneck, as one wouldn't be able to control the large quantities of energy inside one's body.

Fang took a few minutes to decide on the cultivation methods he wanted to use while looking through the Archive.

In the end, he found three suitable ones that were to his liking.

Energy Gathering, Blackhole Revolving Art.

Body Transformation, Titan Star Law.

Soul Forging, Heaven Swallowing Manual.

Three cultivation techniques ranked at the absolute top of the Nine Universes when it came to cultivation techniques.

There were a few issues though, especially with the Soul Forging technique.

The Heaven Swallowing Manual used one's spirit as a medium to cultivate one's soul, but his spirit was simply ranked too low to be of any use for the technique.

Still, this wasn't an unsalvagable situation. There had once been a powerhouse in the Divine Realm whose child had been born with a weak spirit due to some complications at birth. That Supreme Powerhouse had then devoted several thousand years to create a technique that would allow his child to increase his spirit rank.

He had succeed in the end, and so the Spirit Forging Manual had been created.

Every soul was born in the Origin and came into the world afterward. It was also known that all things related to the Origin were extremely valuable and beneficial to a cultivator. The Spirit Forging Manual used this principle to excavate the potential of one's spirit by bringing it closer to its Origin Form.

This technique had no stages but could be used as often as one wanted to until one's innate spirit rank would eventually reach the highest, Ninth Rank.

This technique however was not only very dangerous and difficult to use but caused excruciating and soul-tearing pain to the cultivator.

Fang knew that he had to use it, as his soul force simply wasn't strong enough to cultivate even the first stage of any of the cultivation techniques he had chosen. He would at least need a spirit of the first rank to start his practice.

In the five basic stages of cultivation, the Dantian was still closed and could not be used as an energy center for cultivation, thus one had to form a seal with a mixture of spiritual energy and soul force in one's mind to attract the surrounding spiritual energy.

These seals would then be moved into one's Dantian after the Meridian Transformation Stage, directly allowing the cultivator to enter the Dantian Opening Stage and step into the Mist Stage afterward. The Dantian Opening Stage and Mist Stage are the first two stages of the Spiritual Stages of the Energy Gathering system.

Such seals were the core of every cultivation technique. The more seals a cultivation technique required to be mastered, the stronger and more perfect the technique.

Most common cultivation techniques on the Blue Sky Planet didn't have more than a few dozen seals, while the one with the most power had barely a hundred at its highest level.

The Blackhole Revolving Art had nine seals in the first stage and 81 in the second stage. It was a cultivation technique that had nine stages in total, with the last requiring several hundred million seals. It was a true peak cultivation technique in all of the Nine Universes.

Sadly that came with a large requirement for soul force. If one's soul force wasn't strong enough to form at least nine seals then one simply couldn't even begin to train in that cultivation technique.

Nine seals weren't a lot and every Meridian Transformation cultivator could form that many seals with ease. But an early Skin Transformation cultivator with an unranked spirit could not.

At most Fang estimated that he could probably create three seals, as that was simply the limit of his natural talent.

The only solution to this problem was to upgrade his spirit. The spirit was closely tied to one's soul and Sea of Consciousness, the higher its rank the larger one's Sea of Consciousness was. The larger one's Sea of Consciousness, the more soul force one had.

Fang knew that only a rank one spirit could give him the soul force he needed to create his seals and start cultivating, so the Spirit Forging Manual was his only chance for practicing a peak technique right from the start.

He could of course use a technique of lower quality and train until his soul force reached the required level, as the soul force of a cultivator always rose with every breakthrough. That would however make his foundation imperfect, something he absolutely refused to let happen.

The Spirit Forging Manual only required one to create a very special seal and fuse that into one's spirit. Doing so would induce a change in one's spirit, where the spirit would undergo a metamorphosis and rise in rank. Like a caterpillar shedding its cocoon and emerging as a butterfly.

Of course, not everyone could just use such a supreme technique, as it also required one to infuse the seal with a trace of Origin. It was no problem for that Supreme Expert to gather a silver of Origin with his own strength even though it came at a significant cost, though for everyone else doing so was but a pipedream.

Fang's soul though was still connected to the Origin though, through unknown means, which had solved this problem before it could even come up.

He also knew that to raise his spirit from Unranked to Rank One, he would only need to form that seal one time and infuse it into the little fox spirit of his.

Before he started though, he needed to make some preparations first. Fang knew that he would probably scream to high heaven from the pain when the metamorphosis happened. So he couldn't just go with it, as that would cause a rather large commotion.

He wanted to avoid drawing attention to himself as the 'former' Fang had been a loner and mostly kept to himself. There was no need to make anyone suspicious or risk someone checking on his Sea of Consciousness. They would directly realize that his spirit had changed, something that should be impossible, and probably try to torture him on how he had done so.

Fang did not need that kind of attention.

Grabbing the dead snake-type beast, he used his dagger to cut it open and let the blood drip into an empty bowl, completely draining the snake's corpse. Afterward, he skinned the snake, put its fangs, poison sack, and beast core to the side, and started to cut out a small rectangular piece of its skin.

Fang wasn't hesitant or disgusted by this rather gory work, even though he came from a modern society where he had never done such a thing. The memories of the previous host of this body had shown him such a scene countless times.

Taking the poison sack and cutting it open carefully, he let the poison drip into the bowl with the beast's blood. The beast core followed shortly after, while he used the handle of his dagger to crush the best core into powder before dropping it into the bowl.

Mixing the tincture with his dagger, he used that very same dagger to draw line after line onto the piece of skin he had cut out before.

It took him a few minutes to do that as he had to be careful not to draw the lines wrong.

When he finally finished, beads of sweat could be seen on his forehead because of the mental focus it took to complete his work without a single mistake.

Using his soul force, something he had never done before, but was familiar with through the memories of Fang and the Archive, he infused the small seal he had painted on the skin with it.

The seal on the piece of snakeskin gave off a dim glow before vanishing again. The only obvious difference from before was that the 'paint' had dried up.

“My first rune. Even badly crafted, it should do the trick.”, Fang whispered to himself.

Rune Crafting was an occupation like Pill Creating, Formation Drawing, and Weapon Smithing, i.e. Alchemist, Formation Master, and Refining Master.

Using materials with spiritual energy contained inside, it was possible through the drawing of a seal to create a rune. A rune, if activated, could create different effects, according to the materials used and the rune drawn.

There were teleportation runes, flying runes, burning runes, explosive runes, etc. The difference between runes and formations – a craft that also used seal drawing at its foundation – was that runes had a limited usage count while formations were lasting constructs.

There were exceptions to this rule though, as runes were also used in creating high-grade weapons and armor to give lasting effects to the weapons which technically made them formation. Though due to the size of the construct, they were still classified as runes and not formations.

The rune Fang had just created with the knowledge obtained from the Archive, was an lowest-class Unranked Rune called Paralyzing Rune.

Unranked Runes, like Unranked Beasts, were runes only useful in the basic stages of cultivation.

His Paralyzing Rune for example could only paralyze a Skin Transformation cultivator for about half an hour, while a Flesh Transformation cultivator would only be paralyzed for a few seconds. Bone Transformation cultivators on the other hand were completely unaffected by this type of rune.

This rune would keep Fang paralyzed while he used the technique from the Spirit Forging Manual, so he wouldn't scream and alert the whole tribe that he was up to something.

Retreating into his mind, Fang started to form the seal necessary to start the Spirit Forging process.

It took him more than two hours to form the seal correctly because while it didn't take more soul force than he could provide, it was incredibly complex and difficult to synthesize.

Without the Archive's perfect knowledge transfer, he would have had no chance of completing it even if he had all the time he needed.

The seal hovered above his soul force lake inside his Sea of Consciousness, giving off a very similar feeling as the bright orb that hovered nearby.

That orb was the Archive – a gateway to the Origin Law. Fang only had to focus his mind on it to receive all the knowledge he sought.

The seal created by the Supreme Powerhouse required a hint of Origin in it, which only made sense considering that it pushed one's spirit closer to the Origin itself, thereby excavating any hidden potential.

Laying down on his bedroll, Fang didn't waste any time before he directly activated the Paralyzing Rune with the meager amount of soul force he had left in his body.

Feeling the rune do its magic and paralyze his whole body, Fang had to consciously suppress the panic he felt at this uncomfortable sensation.

Preparing himself mentally one last time, Fang called his spirit from inside the dangerously empty lake of soul force.

The small fox had a blank gaze and looked just like a normal animal, though its form was a bit more ethereal. Directly pushing the seal into the little fox's body, Fang waited for a reaction.