"Who knew that the soul which I had swallowed would contain memories regarding the part one of the book! Even I was astonished when I found this while I was going through his memories in my recuperation time. Guess I have to go through his remaining memories once I get the time" said Celes, marvelled at his discovery.
Even he himself had only found the second part of the book, when he was still a 9yr old, late-twenties in human terms. It was due to this book that he could absorb unblemished yang energy, thanks to his divine bloodline of the white tiger. After all, all tigers are descendants of that divine beast.
Who knows whether or not it would have become a part of the multitude of bones buried during the age of the beasts before it could even have a taste of the most addictive substance…POWER!
After it had the strength to roam the world unhindered, it left no rock unturned and no sea un-churned in search of the other two chapters. However, even after a century, its efforts were fruitless.
However here it was, the first chapter, in the depths of some puny human, who happened upon this book as a 7-year old child, when a beggar had the intentions of scamming him of 12 coppers by selling him this bundle of useless paper (or so he thought) which he had found among the remains in a grave, situated in a forest, which he had dug, hunting for treasures.
"There was no way this could have happened. Unless…" Celes' eyes suddenly shone as he thought about this "there is someone who held power unimaginable even to my former self, or the book came from a different world" both these concepts had been proved when he had met those three… no! four, including Eggwu, beings though one of them was extremely weakened, one dead and one was yet to be born. The fourth one might still be wandering around in this world, returned to its abode or was now lying along with the remains of its compatriot.
Though most likely dead or facing a worse fate than death, or else it wouldn't have been separated from its child, whom it was ready to sacrifice itself for, for long. However, he could not ignore the first two possibilities. Especially the first, since Eggwu has now hatched, he must quickly find out a way to prevent it from being recognized, at least until he and Eggwu had the power to decide their own fate and not leave it to luck and the being's temperament.
5 minutes later, Celes had once again entered the space in his consciousness.
Though this time it was completely ivory white and in front of him were 4 spheres.
Two spheres, one made of earth, with bits of stone, twigs and metal sticking out and the other a ball of multi-coloured flame, were orbiting in a horizontal circle, whereas two others, made of clear diamond and lustrous spiritual obsidian were directly above and below the centre of the circular orbit.
pic here: https://www.deviantart.com/celesvajraagu/art/2nd-Space-803997596?ga_submit_new=10%3A1562016127
This time, none of the spheres transformed. Instead, they shifted their positions.
First the Diamond sphere flew to above his head and shone a light onto him, which brought about a sense of serenity, strength and confidence.
Next to fly over was the spiritual obsidian sphere. This black light shone by this sphere also brought him the feeling of being filled with immense strength, but it also brought about many unpleasant feelings such as wrath, greed, lust, slaughter, ferocity, wickedness and cunningness.
Next, both the earth and fire sphere flew over, without breaking orbit, rotating all the while.
As they rotated, with him at the centre, both shone a light of brown and red respectively.
The brown light increased his feeling of superiority, intelligence, curiosity and at the same time fear.
Whereas the red light brought about the bestial feelings in him such as survival, hunger, pride, fearlessness, lust and so on.
Celes was surprised that all four spheres flew over to him, while he was expecting at max only 3.
Celes guessed that the diamond one representing God and Earth representing Man would surely come as he had a bloodline of the white tiger, which represented divinity. The man part being obvious because he was a human.
The flame sphere which represented Beast, had flown over mostly because of his soul being mostly beast in nature (due to his previous life) and also due to the multitude of bestial bloodlines he had.
However, he wasn't expecting the demonic orb of spiritual obsidian to also fly over. Why exactly had this happened? Was this due to the traces of demon blood which could be present in Eggwu's bloodline?
Overjoyed, Celes came out of his meditative trance. Now with all four types, he would be able to absorb all kinds of energy, no matter how fierce. However, this would not be possible right from the start and can be done only after reaching a particular proficiency level in this cultivation method.
Now, it was finally time to breakthrough.
Usually, kids when breaking through to the Spiritual Master realm, accumulate for a minimum of two years before attempting as with every failed attempt, the difficulty doubles and your potential decreases, thus leaving around 80% of the Spiritual Apprentices to be stuck in their realms for many years, if not forever.
Now decrease in potential might not seem so bad now, but is actually very important as one goes up the ladder in cultivation, as in some of the higher realms, failure in breakthrough means only one outcome…DEATH!!.
It is just like the leaning tower of Pisa. The weak foundation had almost negligible effect in the start, however as the higher stories were built, the building started to lean and become unstable. If built anymore, it might even cause the collapse of the whole building.
The same case in cultivation except, if your cultivation collapses, so do you as there will no longer be anything replenishing your life force and energy consumed.
However, this was not the case for Celes, though he himself had no experience regarding the human body, one should not forget that he has the experience of one of the greatest human beings in existance, The Great Sage.
Thus, Celes only required fifteen minutes of preparation to set up an array blocking out all disturbances, twelve minutes to set up a protective shield which can sustain 3 attacks from the Spiritual Master realm and finally five minutes to enter the meditative state.
What geniuses of powerful clans took 32 days to prepare for, was done by Celes in just 32 minutes!
The first stage of the breakthrough was a breeze. He followed the Man-God-Devil-Beast Spiritual Cultivation method to gather the Yin, Yang and every elemental spiritual energy along with heaven and earth essence which he could absorb a tiny amount of due to him having consumed his fang (remember the inheritance?) before attempting the breakthrough.
What Celes had done in the first stage of breakthrough, could be credited to him having the heaven encompassing spiritual veins, as any other spiritual vein allows passage to only one type of energy at a time, unless one had a special type of constitution, in which case he would be able to occupy at most two if not three types of energy. However, a normal constitution itself is as rare as 1 in a billion and these special constitutions are 1 in a billion of those regular constitutions.
Heaven compassing spiritual veins on the other hand allows one to contain any type(s) of ownerless energy present under the heavens, thus allowing Celes to what he just did.
Usually breakthrough will have only 2 stages, gathering and seed formation, however in cases of multiple energies being present, there is a stage in between, that is regulation, thus making a total of three stages.
The second stage of breakthrough involves Regulating the different types of energy as a tiny miscalculation might lead to failure in the seed formation stage, leading to energy bursting out, hence injuring the body in the process and failing the breakthrough.
This stage to was completed without much difficulties, due to the experience of The Great Sage breaking through with three elements, thus making him one of the most powerful of him time.
However, the final stage was to be treaded very carefully even for Celes. As no matter how many times one has done this process, one can't be too careless, especially with 9 types of different energies (Yin, Yang, 5 elemental spiritual energies-Fire, wind, water, Lightning, Earth) which are to be compressed to a solid spherical core like substance and made as small as possible.
Smaller the better, since after formation of core, one feeds it energy for its growth.
This core is in reality a seed and each seed have a particular limit to which it can grow, after which it has to germinate into a plant with properties related to the element of energy used in the core formation.
Based on the number of leaves a sprout has, the potential growth of the cultivator can be predicted. More number of leaves implies a higher chance to advance to further cultivation levels.
Celes slowly but surely compressed the energy in his body, first if it was like gas the size of a lake, it soon became like fog covering the size of a pond, soon it became a well full of water, which decreased in size and became a semi solid jelly like substance the size of a pot, now it had become extremely difficult for Celes to compress any further, however since a core hadn't been formed yet, giving up would result in failure, which was not a result Celes could accept since, if first time itself was this difficult, if the difficulty doubles, then it would be impossible. Hence Celes persisted and finally formed a core, though it was very rough looking and was the size of a tennis ball. A size of a tennis ball meaning a mid-tier core giving him a mediocre potential and talent, hence Celes wasn't satisfied. However, he could only give up as he had no more energy to continue further compression, without causing the destruction of the core and a waste of all his efforts. Just as Celes was about to give up, he could feel a slow but steady course of energy flow from his shoulder to his heart, revitalizing both his body and soul.
This gave just enough energy for him to compress the core to the size of ping pong ball, representing a high-tier core, just below a top tier core the size of a marble, thus barely passing Celes' expectations of himself. High-tier core gave one High potential and Prodigal talent, thus allowing one to reach much higher realms which would have needed several times the hard work and time to reach had one been a mid-tier.
Top-tier is something that grants one monstrous talent, potential and cultivation speed.