The sound of the egg cracking was the only sound that could be heard in this room which had all it's inhabitants slightly tensed at the same time excited.
Though the parents were excited and tensed as the creature that would come out was directly linked to their child's future, Celes was having the same emotions for totally different reasons.
"Isn't this the same egg as back then!!" Celes' mental state was experiencing turbulence as a certain painful memory resurfaced.
"Will it be hostile? Should I kill it before it becomes a threat?" Many such thoughts emerged, causing him to tense up; However, the very next instant Celes threw all such foolish thoughts and instead had an excited expression on his face as he thought of the benefits, of having an offspring of such strong beings, which far outweighed its danger. "Haa! Celes! Since when have you been afraid of a child which has not even been born yet? Just obtaining its bloodline alone would give me a huge boost, not to mention it'll be soul bound to me after my contract. Even if it does become a threat, I can take care of it then." Celes admonished himself for having such unwisely thoughts. Had he followed through, it would have been no different than killing the chicken for the egg, no…it would have been killing the golden chicken for an empty eggshell. Luckily Celes had come to his senses before such a thing occurred.
When his future hunting brother hatched, which he felt was in a rather comical way, Celes picked him up in his palm and brought him to his eye level to have a closer look and inspection as the one before him truly looked like any other black beaked owl except for the color of its feathers.
"Celes! I think you should name him…" Brian said to his only son.
"How about Hooty? Or mmm~ ya" said Elina snapping her fingers "Owler…now that's a good name isn't it" continued Elina, looking smugly at her hubby as if extremely satisfied with her choice.
Brian facepalmed himself; Ashamed at how bad his wife's naming sense was, but then again though better than her, he too was not very good at it. So, he could only leave it to his prodigal son "I think let's allow Celes to name this little fella".
"Hmmm…" Celes thought for a while before saying, "Since you were an egg till I was five years old and since you are my brother, shall carry my clan's name Vajra." Having come to a decision, Celes announced softly "Henceforth you shall be known as Eggwu…Eggwu Vajra".
Eggwu-This name is a combination of egg and wu. Egg meaning egg (obviously) and wu meaning five. Wu was a word belonging to a language called Chinese from earth, which The Great Sage had learnt a bit of, while reading a form of literature known as light-novel.
"A wonderful sounding name…though I have no idea what it means" said Brian as it was his first time coming across a language from another world.
"Mhm! It indeed sound very good…though I think Owler is better…don't you honey" said Elina looking at her husband for confirmation.
At this, all Brian could do was scratch his head awkwardly before agreeing "Cough! Yeah Cough!"
Elina seemed satisfied that at least someone else felt the same, though she was a bit suspicious about her hubby's reply as he said it in a much lower volume and was literally coughing it out.
"Well" thought Celes "Now that it's done, I think it's about time I breakthrough and actually start cultivating both my body and spirit"
Till the Spiritual Master stage, though called cultivating, it is actually not considered so.
Let's look at it like this. If we say the path of cultivation is like building a structure, till Spiritual Novice stage, it's like listing out and collecting the materials required. From Spiritual Novice to Spiritual Apprentice, it's like planning out a blueprint/design for the base. Spiritual Apprentice stage is where you lay the foundation and finally Spiritual Master stage is when one actually starts building the structure. Promoting to higher cultivation realm is like building an extra layer on top of what's previously built, hence any mistake/haste made in previous realms, affect the limit one can reach and might even cause the structure to collapse.
That's why one is truly said to have started cultivating only after reaching the Spiritual Master stage, or that's what has been mention in the memories acquired from The Great Sage.
Before breaking through, Celes sought to acquire the bloodline of both Eggwu and his previous self which had been stored in the fang.
The latter he easily obtained, since he had prepared for the worst, and hence storing an extremely diluted version of his bloodline, not even 1% of his original bloodline, which even the weakest of bodies can endure.
Though even this caused him extreme pain, as it was just barely within the limits of what his body can endure without exploding to smithereens.
The difficult part was when he was absorbing Eggwu's bloodline; It almost caused his demise.
Luckily, he had absorbed the other bloodline first, which suppressed Eggwu's bloodline, allowing Celes to absorb it. In fact, the bloodline alone was not sufficient to suppress it at first, it was only when Eggwu noticed his master in pain and hopped onto his shoulder, subconsciously helping him by suppressing the absorbed bloodline by releasing its aura, that Celes could safely absorb it.
After successfully absorbing the bloodlines, Celes was about to start his breakthrough.
There were two reasons that made Celes to absorb the bloodlines before breakthrough.
One being, better the bloodline, better the foundation and faster the cultivation.
The second and most important reason being, the incomplete cultivation method that The Great Sage had acquired in his second life her. The Dragon-Tiger-Phoenix-Turtle body transformation method. This was a type of body cultivating, that one can cultivate based on the bloodline one has. It was split into 6 pages; the first page was for identifying the type(s) of bloodline(s) one had. The next 4 pages gave instructions on cultivating the bloodline and hence the fleshly body of the person containing the four- dragon, tiger, phoenix, and turtle- bloodlines respectively. The last and final page taught one the method of fusing them with the fleshly body, thus bringing about a transformation, which drastically increased one's power for a time frame. The amount of power boosted, and duration of time depended on the purity of one's bloodline.
It was incomplete because it was stated in the 1st page that it had two other chapters pertaining to cultivating one's spiritual energy and one's soul/mental energy.
Coincidentally, Celes in his previous life as the Nine Roars Golden Armoured Divine White Tiger, the origin of this name to be told another time, had acquired the second chapter The Man-God-Devil-Beast Spiritual Cultivation Method.
This once again 6 pages, the first one being identification, next 4 corresponding the bloodline one has and the last page was on fusing and activating the cultivation method mentioned in pages 2-5, simultaneously if one had multiple bloodlines.
The Man part allows one to absorb the gentler form of energy, the spiritual energy, present in the atmosphere as a result of yin and yang energies colliding.
The God part allows one to absorb the Scorching Yang energy present in the surroundings.
Whereas the Devil part allows one to absorb the Chilling Yin energy present in the surroundings.
The Beast part allows one to consume and absorb energy from anything that has been defeated by the user.
The singular rule of the forest, the winner gets all;
spiritual energy, talent, soul, and bloodline. Yes! Even bloodline. This was what had made it possible for its previous self to attain such heights of power.
As a descendant of the White Tiger, he contained a trace of Divine bloodline, thus being able to cultivate the God part, which allowed it to absorb the Yang energy present in the surrounding, thus increasing both its fertility and lifespan.
And as beast, he could naturally cultivate the beast part of the chapter as well.
Coming back to the present, Celes had now started following the 1st page in The Dragon-Tiger-Phoenix-Turtle body transformation method.
The method stimulated one's bloodline, it causes a projection of the progenitor to appear in your mind, the clarity based on the purity of its bloodline, and cry out, before becoming a ball of light.
As Celes finished chanting the method in his mind, with his eyes closed while seated in the lotus posture, with his right hand placed on his left near his abdomen, with the palms facing his chin,
His conscious is dragged into a space containing four clusters, of stars, coloured Azure, White, Vermilion and Deep Black respectively. Three of them started to spin in its place.
First a huge but dim star shot out of the Azure Galaxy, on its way, it suddenly elongates and transforms into an extremely blurred image of a dragon, only who's outline and azure and black colour could be made out. It then gave out an extremely soft but overbearing and tyrannical cry which would make anyone submit, no matter how soft it is.
Next from the White Galaxy, two dim stars shot out, one comparable in size to the azure star and the other extremely small compared to the other two. If the former two were said to be the size of Mt. Everest, this one could be said to be the size of a firefly.
The larger star was white in colour and transformed into a blurred figure of a tiger and the other one was brick-brown and also transformed into a feline figure, but had much more clarity than the other one, still maintaining the size ratio with the other star.
The larger projection gave an equally soft roar as the dragon's but was inherently different.
The dragon's was overbearing and made one to submit, whereas this one was savage and bloodthirsty. Making those who heard to tremble, fear and lose all hope.
The smaller projection on the other hand gave out a somewhat loud, as compared to the other two, and clear 'Meow!', carrying with it a tinge of ferociousness.
The last Galaxy to spout stars was the vermilion one, the black being inactive.
The vermilion Galaxy spat out three stars, one vermilion, one a mix of purple, black and blue, and one Golden in colour. The vermilion star was the same size as the white, and azure star and turned into an extremely blurred image of a flaming bird, most likely a phoenix, and gave out a similarly soft but shrill cry, which brought about a sense of worship and reverence in anyone/anything which heard the cry, no matter the volume of it.
The Golden one was half the size of the vermilion one and also transformed into a blurred image of bird, but this bird was projecting light rather being covered in flames. It also had three legs, two like any other bird, but the third one being positioned slightly behind towards the tail. It gave out a slightly louder but deeper cry than the vermilion bird, bringing about a sense of worship and security, but also loneliness in whoever or whatever heard its cry.
The last star was similar sized to the Golden one. It too transformed into a blurred image of a bird, but instead of being covered with flames or projecting light, it was crackling with different sorts of Lightning around its body.
Its beak, forehead and tail-feathers were black in colour whereas its body was a mix of purple and yellow. 5 types of Lightning were crackling merrily around its body- white, red, yellow, purple and black.
Its cry was as loud as the golden three-legged bird but was slightly gruffer and brought a sense of worship, terror and dread in whoever or whatever heard its voice.
Finally, after all the 6 projections appeared, they all turned back into different coloured stars and returned to their respective galaxies. Each galaxy then occupied different parts of his body's projection in the space.
The Vermilion galaxy occupied his back, between his shoulder blades to be more precise.
The White galaxy occupied the heart region.
The Azure galaxy occupied his abdomen region, just an inch or two below the navel.
And finally, the Black galaxy also occupied his back, but slightly below the Vermilion galaxy, and was situated in the centre. However, as opposed to the Azure, White and Vermillion galaxies, which were spinning ever so slowly, this one stayed perfectly still.
Once this was done, Celes consciousness returned from the space and back into his body, after which he slowly opened his eyes, which were glowing with the four galaxies' colours, just for a brief instance, making it seem like a trick of the light.