Chapter 648: Refining the Heart State Domain Once More
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 648: Refining the Heart State Domain Once More
Right now, I am fiddling with a piece of crystallized bone—the bone of a variant beast.
My clones don't just take my own form; they take the forms of others as well. Sometimes they inherit someone’s dying wish or take on their appearance; other times, they atone for a villain's sins or help a good person keep a promise.
These clones, which don't look like me but are still me... they are a way to experience life.
In the past, when faced with unexpected events, I would only escape or treat them with cold indifference because I refused to allow too many accidents in my life. Even when things were merely imaginary and hadn't actually happened yet, I would label them as "bad" and immediately run away.
But after experiencing things through clones that have no such inhibitions, I’ve realized that things can always turn out even worse.
Yet, I have no regrets.
I know that I have experienced these things now. If I were to encounter such events in my actual life rather than through a clone, I am confident that I would handle them better because of this experience.
Life simply lacks enough opportunities for trial and error. Confidence doesn't appear out of thin air; it is something one cultivates. And the prerequisite for cultivating confidence is being strong enough oneself.
Whether that means being powerful in strength—like me, willfully experimenting and constantly experiencing things through clones to enrich my inner self—or being powerful in spirit—constantly trying things in life, refusing to be defeated by failure, and gradually gaining strength.
These seem to be two paths that are both cyclical and complementary...
Back at the academy, I thought too much and realized too much, but I was never able to truly change myself. That was because I lacked life experience. Without experience, knowing grand principles is useless; the understanding isn't deep or visceral enough.
Many famous quotes, grand principles, and "chicken soup for the soul" are merely summaries of a person's own behavior. They don't tell you how to do something; they only tell you that you should do it.
Take overcoming laziness, for example. All the "chicken soup" tells you is to stop being lazy and go study hard!
But it doesn't tell you how to overcome laziness, how to possess executive function, how to defeat procrastination, how to actually apply effort, what to work on, what state of mind is suitable for effort, and what state requires rest.
These are all difficulties that must be overcome to "stop being lazy." How could they possibly be summarized by a simple "go work hard"?
These insights are a way for me to adjust myself, and they are also a form of cultivation.
I have found that the more transparent the mind is, the less it fears hardship.
The less one fears hardship, the more one can perceive the laws governing all things. This aligns perfectly with the cultivation of the Heart State. Heart Sense is the source of perceiving these things; it is the deep understanding of their underlying meanings.
Previously, I simply thought that Heart Sense was just about understanding what the Five Senses perceived. But what lies deep beneath that perception?
It is emotion, and it is desire.
I can learn more about a person through the Five Senses. Whether they are pleading or being sarcastic, mocking or cursing, language is always pale. The expression of emotion and the venting of desire are the true messages a person releases to the world.
Before I began my travels, I was searching for a "carrier" within my Heart State Domain to hold my Five Senses perception. At first, I thought it was the Power of Knowledge, but clearly, I was being too presumptuous. I tried using the Power of Knowledge as a carrier, but it simply turned into a technique under the Power of Knowledge's order system. It wasn't an expression of the domain's order.
Though that attempt failed, I did perfect a technique: a Five Senses perception technique composed of the Power of Knowledge. It was something like... a "Five Senses Eavesdropping Device"?
Ultimately, I categorized this technique under "Annotation." After all, Annotation is the primary technique evolved from the Power of Knowledge. Rather than having multiple techniques for one order, it's better to unify them for convenience.
But during these past few months, have I found a way to integrate the Five Senses into the domain's order?
I have, and it was... incredibly simple.
As for the carrier of the Five Senses order, I had been trapped by my own preconceived notions. Since I had already confirmed that Five Senses perception could be integrated into the domain just like the Seventh Sense (Time Sense), then it was naturally a part of the domain. Therefore... the domain itself is the carrier!
However, the way it is carried and how the order of the Five Senses is expressed was what caught me by surprise...
First, I had to understand one thing: the Power of Knowledge is the manifestation of my own domain's order, but it isn't purely the product of the two Great Spellbooks.
If I hadn't triggered the birth of the domain, the dual-tree structure formed by the two Great Spellbooks would not have produced a domain order—which is to say, the Power of Knowledge. The dual-tree structure is merely the "anchor" for my domain's extension.
Thus, the Power of Knowledge is my domain's order; it simply took this form under the influence of the two Great Spellbooks.
Without those two books, it would likely look very different. But there are no "ifs" in reality, so my previous confusion was just a matter of perspective.
Consequently, as Five Senses perception integrated into the Heart State order, its manifestation remained... "Power of Knowledge."
I suppose I only have myself to blame for giving it a confusing name, but I don't regret it.
The Tree of Great Knowledge holds a vast reserve of information, so the Power of Knowledge has the ability to manifest knowledge. The Tree of Great Wisdom Enlightenment represents the inspiration of wisdom and the deduction of wisdom, so the Power of Knowledge will constantly perform deductions and iterations.
During my experiment in the dream, I also discovered that this deduction of knowledge can even surpass the stored knowledge that the Tree of Great Knowledge lacks.
So... theoretically, I now have two ways to acquire knowledge. The first is relying on the Tree of Great Knowledge to obtain it directly from the outside world. The second is relying on the Tree of Great Wisdom Enlightenment to deduce knowledge, obtaining higher-level information. However, the second method is very difficult; I've only succeeded once so far, and even then, it was unintentional.
Now, setting aside the two Great Spellbooks, my domain order "Power of Knowledge" has revealed a brand-new characteristic.
An order originating from Body Cultivation!
Vision, hearing, smell, taste, touch.
The Five Senses perception transformed into domain order. Countless corresponding manifestations constantly formed within the domain as "eyes," "ears," "noses," "tongues," and "hands"...
These are a layer of "manifestations," "inherent impressions" acting as representatives of perception. This is the Heart State.
If it weren't for the two Great Spellbooks, this is what my Body Cultivation domain would look like—and it would be terrifying!
It would be like a living purgatory!
The manifestations of human senses would constantly appear in a way that would assault one's sanity.
But as I said before, there are no "ifs." As these manifestations integrated and harmonized with the domain, they ultimately... transformed into "Power of Knowledge," a very peculiar kind of Power of Knowledge.
How would a Power of Knowledge that inherited "Knowledge" and "Wisdom Deduction" express the Five Senses?
Instinct is always faster than my subjective thought, and it provided the answer.
The imagery of the Five Senses transformed into Rune Rituals representing "Vision, Hearing, Smell, Taste, and Touch"!
And these five Rune Rituals are of a brand-new type—at least, I have never seen runes like these before.
I think I must have gone mad from studying runology lately...
Furthermore... these aren't necessarily runes! But they are the Power of Knowledge, the order of the domain. My domain has endowed them with the meaning of runes and their corresponding rituals.
They will be the most "basic" and "indivisible" minimal Rune Rituals within my domain!
Each rune represents the full meaning of one of the most intuitive Five Senses.
After these five runes were born, I began to wonder: can these runes form composite runes?
If I give them spell frameworks and spell rituals, can these Rune Rituals—which belong purely to the power of "Body Cultivation"—give birth to "spells" that belong purely to Body Cultivation?
Where, then, is the boundary between "Body Cultivation" and "Spell Cultivation"?
Or is this a case of "different paths leading to the same destination" in the interpretation of the "Transcendent"?
There are no answers to these conjectures yet, as these are questions I must explore for myself.
I continued to fiddle with the beast bone as I headed toward the distance. I was approaching my destination because a massive rift had appeared in the sky above. It spanned across the horizon, impossible to miss.
The creator of this miracle was the spatial rift caused by the Witch Sisters merging small worlds. It was a natural fissure connecting the Core World and the Expansion Realm—the largest such rift, one that had not fully healed even now that the Expansion Realm had completely integrated.
I recalled learning about it—the rift that had opened above the Horaso Swamps in the Main World Core World—but I hadn't paid much attention to it then.
Moreover, after I developed the Qi Observation Art, it seemed that no more rifts were born.
My goal this time was to come here and witness this miracle for myself.
Although I had traveled between the Expansion Realm and the Core World several times, even using the established stable teleportation channels, that didn't stop me from wanting to understand the wondrous phenomenon of space being forced open in such a primitive, violent manner!
Of course, understanding the essence of space would also help my comprehension of the "Eighth Sense Space Sense."
I had missed the opportunity for insight when I encountered the space maze last time. Although I gained a deeper understanding of material space, I didn't produce the Body Cultivation Eighth Sense Space Sense; I hadn't even touched upon its prototype.
So, I hoped to gain something from this trip.
As I drew closer to the area, the rift became clearer. It was like a scar across the sky, with countless smaller cracks around it showing how massive it once was.
But what I found even more unbelievable was that the cause of these spatial rifts was... a mountain ridge formed from World Origin Soil!
Beneath the ridge, everything was composed of various transcendent substances transformed from World Origin Soil. Furthermore, there were vast amounts of material space expanded by spatial attributes, forming a solid-state space maze surrounding the ridge and the mountains!
I moved further ahead. The terrain here was steeper, as if the earth had been squeezed and faulted in the most primitive way.
Between the terrestrial faults, one could see countless torn root systems—these had once been the foundation of a civilization's development.
After feeling the great power of heaven and earth, I felt satisfied with this part of my perception cultivation.
This was not just the power of nature, but the power of the Transcendent!
To conquer nature, to transform nature.
Though all of that was still far from me, I was moving forward, step by steady step.
If the students of the Transcendent Academy saw these peaks made of World Origin Soil, their eyes would surely light up, wouldn't they?
However, if one were to name the "least valuable" of the World Three Source Elements, it would be World Origin Soil.
Because it is the most stable of the three.
Transcendent Origin Crystals are unstable because they are energy; they can drop in energy level and release energy at any time.
But World Origin Soil is stable—so stable that even using my strongest power, I cannot budge it.
From the information collected by the Tree of Great Knowledge, I had learned about the properties of World Origin Soil. It can transform into any substance, even rare transcendent materials, but this isn't a manual process. Even experts who have ascended to the Transcendent level cannot rely on brute force to turn World Origin Soil into other transcendent materials.
It requires special techniques.
Only one kind of existence possesses the technique to transform World Origin Soil: the World itself.
The World itself transforms World Origin Soil into the resources that enrich it. The prefix "World" is added to "Origin Soil" because only the World itself can transform and utilize it.
Normally, World Origin Soil has no properties of its own—or perhaps it contains infinite properties—but it is the most stable material and the most constant resource exchanged between worlds.
For us, however, its best use is for building houses. Then, you would have the most stable house in the world, one that even a Transcendent could not destroy.
Of course, there is a prerequisite: the house made of World Origin Soil must be a single, unified whole.
Such a massive mountain ridge was spectacular, but it also drew a massive population of variant beasts.
Such an environment was clearly unsuitable for human habitation.
After arriving, even with my domain expanded to its limit, I couldn't sense anyone building shelters or settlements. This place was essentially a forbidden zone for humans and a paradise for variant beasts.
The World Origin Soil at the foot of the mountain, already transformed into various transcendent materials, also formed a massive space maze. While it didn't shift like the one in the Seed Vault, the area covered by this space maze made the ley line convergence point of the Seed Vault look like a mere pittance!
However, before truly studying that spatial rift, I was more interested in the "ecosystem" formed by the massive variant beast population here.
With that thought, I looked at the beast bone in my hand and then toward the distance, as if I had discovered a brand-new toy.
The reason I was so interested in the variant beasts of the Expansion Realm was that I realized they weren't just pests that needed to be eradicated; they were a part of the Expansion Realm's composition.
In that case, there was no harm in giving them a helping hand.
Besides... the transcendent materials exposed on the surface of the Expansion Realm would eventually be dug out.
The Expansion Realm needed a stable, cyclical output.
Variant beasts were exactly the kind of product I had in mind.
They had great potential for development and would also be a "treasure trove" where every part of them was valuable.
Therefore, they needed wisdom and power. They were the treasure trove, but they were also its guardians.
Just like the crystallized bone I was fiddling with—it was a highly valuable transcendent material.
The inhabitants of the Expansion Realm could even develop a brand-new power system based on these variant beasts. The power I had given them was, after all, just "starter gear."
The development of civilization and the path of the Transcendent required them to forge their own way.