"Earth section, Earth section...", Zhen Liu muttered to himself as he walked through the aisles of several enormous bookshelves, filled with tomes, scrolls and knowledge stones.
As it turned out, Zhen Liu's family wasn't wrong about a wandering ruin being found in the Jade Forest, they just forgot about the important bit about it being underwater.
The wandering ruin was a little stone building that was surrounded by a giant air bubble, located at the bottom of the Jade Lake, which was right in the heart of the Jade Forest. In other words, someplace nobody with zero cultivation ability should be near.
As for the name of this wandering ruin, Zhen Liu had taken up the habit of calling the place, "The Library of Nowhere".
When Zhen Liu first arrived at this dungeon, it was as thanks from Tiny and Mini for almost getting mauled to death in Mini's place. Though it was a good thing he had a good set of lungs on him, since he only had a moment to take a quick gulp of air before getting dragged along a magical underwater journey. Here, he discovered that the inside was much bigger than what the exterior suggested. As he explored, he discovered that the inside of it was filled, wall to wall and roof to ceiling with bookshelves to the point of being a maze.
When he took the opportunity to crack a few open of these books, he discovered that a majority of them were aether formulas!
This whole place was basically a gigantic library full of aether formulas and arts from Creator knows where, Creator knows when, along with some more esoteric and mundane bits of knowledge. Such as, the migratory habits of the flesh-eating rabbits of the Snowy Lizard Island. He didn't know when he would need that, but Zhen Liu made a note of it regardless.
This revelation gave Zhen Liu rather mixed feelings.
On the one hand, Zhen Liu was unable to make use of any of the more advanced arts and as far as he knew, he was incompatible with almost every single aether cultivation technique he had come into contact with. In essence, the library was about as useful to him as an all-you-can-eat pass is to ascetic monk. Literally any other member of his family could make better use of this than him. Granted he also wanted to...not necessarily kill, but violently maim a good chunk of his extended family due to their treatment of him. Things to mull over later.
On the bright side, Zheng Liu figured since this library was filled wall to wall with knowledge from all over Valresta, there had to be at least one technique that he was compatible with, or at least some kind of medicinal recipe or a treasure map to a magical herb that could fix him. Granted this feeling came less from knowledge and more from Thomas staying up late reading novels that had this sorta plot device.
"And here's the Earth section. Alley-oop"!
Zheng Liu proceeded to free throw one of the aether formula manual he had on him towards a shelf that had an empty slot.
Just as the shot was about to go wide and hit the ground, the book suddenly stopped mid-air. A moment later, it shot straight towards the empty slot and slid back into place.
"Okay, so far I have incompatibility with Air and Earth...", Zheng Liu said to himself, "Maybe I'll have more luck with a Water derivative"?
Having finished his task and a destination in mind, Zhen Liu made his way to the center of the library.
Zhen Liu figured out that the library consisted of six "main" sections and about a hundred or so "sub" sections. This corresponded with what he understood as "The Aether Expression Wheel", which Thomas understood it to be somewhat similar to the "Five Elements Wheel" of Wu-xing philosophy.
Once he got into the center circle, Zhen Liu began to slowly turn while muttering to himself.
"Water...water...water", he mumbled after confirming the direction of the Water formula shelves.
Due to countless generations of people and beasts refining, studying and cultivating aether, it came to be understood that the nature, or expression, of one's aether could vary wildly from individual to individual. However, a majority of these expressions fell under one of seven categories or derived from one of these seven categories.
These categories were Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Light, Dark and Universal...at least that's what it translated to in Thomas-Zhen Liu's head. In reality the categories were called: Terraqi, Aeroqi, Ignati, Aquarii, Luxari, Caligos and Omni.
A majority of people were only able to express one category of aether to varying degrees of mastery or a derivative that came from one of the core categories.
There were cases of people being able to express more than one core category, but that was due to their aether expression being technically a derivative of two core categories at the same time.
(Un)surprisingly, aether beasts on the other hand could either express one category of aether, two categories of aether, or...all of them at once. Granted these types of aether beasts were beyond rare and have gone extinct by now. Hopefully. He made sure to go find a manual that was made of wood and knocked on it real quick, just in case.
By pairing the proper expression with the proper formula, one could reach unimaginable heights. He was certain that a formula that he could cultivate had to be around here somewhere. If not, he would reconsider the wandering entertainer thing. Poetry or singing, possibly both. He shook his head at the wayward thoughts and brought his attention back to the present. "Figure out if I'm compatible with a Water formula and then consider the entertainment lifestyle."
"Huh...did not expect the Water section made a distinction between saltwater and freshwater...," Zhen Liu commented once he reached the shelves full of Aquarii knowledge, "I guess I'm gonna have to take a little bit of everything again."
Granted, not everyone could have a proper match of formula and expression.
Years ago, despite Zhen Liu not being able to perform any aether skills at the time, the elders decided to let him participate in the Zheng clan's coming-of-age ceremony, as was tradition.
This ceremony involved participants injecting their aether into a special treasure in the shape of a crystal pillar, that would glow in varying colors and brightness, based on the type and amount of aether in a person. This was the way the Zheng Clan learned what categories of aether the future generation of cultivators would be able to express, and pair them with the proper formula.
Up until this point, many people in the clan had just wrote off Zhen Liu as being unable to store aether or channel it due to his inability to use any aether arts. Basically relegating him to be trash forever and destined to be the universe's punching bag.
It came as a massive shock to everyone, including Zheng Liu himself, that the ceremony revealed that he had an absurd amount of aether for his age and that it was of the Omni category.
While this sounded cool, in reality, the Omni category was a "jack-of-all trades" category. Cultivators with this category had the ability to use skills and formulas belonging to the other six, but never as good as those with more specialized categories. It was the classic trade-off of raw power for flexibility.
Zhen Liu regained a bit of hope that day, even some of the elders and other clansmen thought that he would be able to carry on the traditions of the family despite his unusual quirk. Sadly, that all went out the window when he was found to be incompatible with all of the formulas found in the Zhen Clan's pavilion.
At that point, Zhen Liu had become an unusual oddity for the clan.
The elders were divided on whether to put in the effort to try and fix Zhen Liu or spend the resources on the descendants who had a surefire future. Meanwhile, Zheng Liu's peers had either pity him, actually cared for him or straight up bullied him.
The previous Zhen Liu was sick of this conflicting treatment, which was why he had gone on this dangerous trip in the first place and why the current Thomas Lee dared to drive himself nuts going through every single formula he could.
Which is why he was currently balancing a small tower of books and scrolls in one arm while grabbing more books with the other.
"Lake style...River style...Swamp style? Might as well take that too. So many location based derivatives, maybe I should-WAH"!
*Bang*!
"Ow...".
Unfortunately, he didn't realize that while mindlessly stacking and talking to himself, he had dropped one of those scrolls directly in his walking path.