Asura sat on a white bench decorated with golden-colored patterns, which lit up with light and died out occasionally. He glanced towards the purple bridge they'd just passed on and felt amazed. When they were passing over, the air overflowed with electricity, making his hair move and rise. Where their steps fell, purple lightning danced like the snakes, yet none of them were harmed.
"Is this the extent to which cultivation can reach? Controlling lightning like a living being, while also harming no one... That's amazing!"
At this moment, Nayi flicked her sleeve and three black teacups decorated with ten different-colored streaks appeared. Asura's and Xia's master placed the teacups before them with elegance and bearing of a nobility. "She must've learnt that from her patron—the Purple Phoenix Emperor."
Nayi hummed a gentle melody as she prepared the tea. However, what was strange in all this is that the fragrance of the tea didn't appear until she poured it into the cups. Asura glanced at a flask-like container used to seal the tea inside and wondered, "Could it be this thing completely isolates all of its contents inside so well that not even smell can pass through?! Then doesn't that mean the tea can remain hot for a pretty long time? What a convenient tool!"
Surely, Asura knew of a thing called vacuum flask, as he had used it himself plenty of times, yet this seemed like an extreme version of a vacuum flask. "It completely preserves energy. Unbelievable!"
Nayi sat down at this moment and soaked her throat with a sip of fresh tea. "Aahh—I can finally relax a bit."
Asura glanced at Xia, who struggled with the teacup. He chuckled and brought his body over closer to her. "Let me help you, Xia."
The girl glanced at Asura, her eyelashes fluttering with every blink like the wings of a butterfly. Asura took her right hand and put it through the teacup's handle, while positioning her left hand to the other side of the cup. "There, try raising it slowly until you get used to it."
Xia nodded and carefully experimented with various maneuvers until she got a hang of it. When she became comfortable moving the teacup around, Asura gently stroked her head while she produced humming sounds similar to a small animal. Hell, even her body language was like some small animal in human form.
Xia took a sip of the tea as well, according to what she had seen Nayi do previously, and then she went, "Oooh! Tasty!" as she put the teacup down.
Asura and Nayi glanced at each other and smiled, intrigued by a little girl discovering the beauty of the world. After taking a sip of the tea himself, Asura's eyes filled with surprise as he complimented, "Wow, this tea is so good!". In the meantime, he was comparing the taste to his previous world and found the closest match to be the honey. The tea made of honey—of course, with many additions in this case. "Well, considering that honey comes from flowers just like the tea, no wonder it resembles its taste..."
Putting the teacup down, Asura looked at Nayi with expectation. "So, master—shall we begin?"
Nayi blinked and replied, "So we should, it seems."
She cleared her throat with a faint cough and gazed into the tea reflecting her persona illuminated by moonlight. "You see, my disciple—I come from a very faraway land. What you two saw in that scene are the consequences of a lost war."
Asura's eyebrows moved as he began processing his thoughts with this fresh addition. Not paying him any mind, Nayi continued. "We fought—and lost. The price of defeat was too big. So big it cost us everything. As far as I'm aware, only I'm left from what once was a prominent family. The last survivor of Celestial Qilin family."
Asura took a quick peek at his master and continued patiently listening. Xia was mimicking his behaviour, but her furrowed eyebrows reflected her confusion. From this, it seemed like she understood little of their conversation. Nevertheless, she still focused all her attention.
Nayi's voice kept on flowing flawlessly as she recalled the past. "When we first came here, as you know, this was a land of desolation. My other nine brothers and sisters were mortally wounded, with no hope of recovering. Instead of waiting for certain death, they burned their Spiritual Flames and isolated this area from the outside world. Then, their bodies, blood and bones all decomposed turning into this transparent rainbow-illuminated lake we are drinking the tea above."
Asura turned his head over his shoulder and looked at the iridescent lake, reflecting the starry sky. In reality, it would be more fitting to call this a pond rather than a lake, but he didn't mind it either way. "So this isn't water..."
Nayi's absent eyes gradually regained their luster and then gazed at the lake as well. "Right. This is what you should aim to achieve when you cultivate—the liquid Spirit Energy."
Asura's eyes slightly narrowed as his mind filled with doubt. "If this is the goal for those who cultivate, why don't they just drink this and use it for themselves. Why must they gather energy from outside?"
Nayi's lips stretched out as a smile of mockery manifested, but it wasn't directed to Asura. "You're not the only one who thought of that. Why do you think so many people died before finally realizing that the curse in this area is too strong?"
Asura's curiosity wasn't satisfied, therefore he inquired again. "But if there was no curse, could they actually use this energy?"
Nayi let out a lamenting sigh. "How could it be that easy? If that was the case, then cultivation could just be passed down from the dying family member to their descendants. Do you know why it's impossible?"
Asura's eyes narrowed as he spoke in a serious tone. "The Heavens won't allow it."
Nayi's hand twitched a bit as her gaze turned slightly more serious while looking into Asura's eyes. "Where did you hear that saying?"
Asura shrugged and explained. "I didn't hear of it anywhere. In fact, I just thought of it. It seemed logical that the world won't allow anything to threaten its balance, so that saying just kind of popped into my head."
Nayi nodded. "Yes, that's right. The world won't allow something like that. Everyone who wishes to cultivate has to put in effort, even if there is a liquid Spirit Energy reserves here. Furthermore, not everyone can use it—just those who have top grade bloodlines and Fated Souls."
Asura smiled as he raised his fingers and pointed to Xia and himself. "Like the two of us?"
Nayi nodded. "Yes. Actually, not that high grade. Your bloodlines are way too special to be classified as top-grade. Only saying they are unique would be fitting. In short, the prerequirement is lesser than you think. That's why so many had tried forcibly invading this land and they don't seem to have given up on it to this day."
Asura muttered. "Possessing a treasure is a sin in itself, huh?"
Nayi closed her eyes with a sigh, confirming his words. "Those fools think too highly of themselves. This world is so lacking in energy compared to—"
Noticing that Nayi had stopped here, Asura didn't press on the matter but took a mental note of these words.
Nayi felt relieved that he didn't take the chance to poke his nose in and sighed with relief before recollecting herself. "Anyway, you two need to start cultivating. You said you already had a cultivation technique, right? Can you describe it?"
Asura raised two of his outstretched fingers. "Not one—I have two. One seems to be a body cultivation technique as for the other—I don't know what type it is."
Nayi's eyes narrowed. "Two? Could it be ... twin Fated Souls?!"
Asura nodded with embarrassment, but even he didn't know why he was embarrassed.
Nayi let out a heavy sigh. "Unbelievable! How much more secrets do you have?!"
Asura twitched as he thought, "A lot... so much that it would scare you to death," but he didn't dare say those thoughts and kept them to himself.
He closed his eyes and focused on the fragments of the first technique he had received. The contents of "The Art of Chaos" technique spread out before him as he gave it his all to understand. After a period of silence where he was processing what the technique entailed, Asura started speaking once more.
"The Art of Chaos—the only technique of its kind. When used, it absorbs the energy from any source and turns it into Chaos Energy. After certain conditions have been met, a Chaos Core forms in the body, after which it will start converting blood into liquid Spirit Energy. The Chaos Core consists of four different parts, each of them in one of four states, namely solid, liquid, plasma and supersolid."
Asura paused and looked at Nayi, who grasped this chance and spoke. "Wait. What are those states? I know about solid and liquid, but what are plasma and supersolid? I've never heard of that."
Asura faked a helpless expression on his face. "If you don't know, how could I?"
In reality, his heart filled with fright when he found out that the core contains plasma and super-solid state. Plasma is extremely hot, even hotter than the surface of the stars, while supersolid state is in a world of its own. Even back on Earth, the science hadn't reached the point of uncovering all the mysteries of supersolid state. "So this means... I'll literally have a miniature star in my body? Wha—... how terrifying is this thing?!"
Nayi shook her head, indicating that she did not know about any of this, either.
Asura then resumed his narration as he recalled the rest. "When Chaos Core first forms, it will form all four states at once to achieve a perfect balance. The outer shell of the crystal represents a solid state surrounded by Chaos Energy in liquid state. After diving deeper into it, one would encounter supersolid state next and finally, a plasma."
Asura took a short break to catch his breath. "In this way, the solid part will isolate the blood from mixing with the pure energy inside. The fluid part is the weakest energy state of the four, and is separated from superhot plasma—a terrifyingly powerful energy—by two layers. The order in which states go is as follows - liquid, solid, supersolid, plasma. This is so confusing!"
Nayi nodded her head. "Agreed. This is, indeed, very confusing."
She then glanced at Asura's troubled face and felt sympathy. "So there is something even you don't know, huh?" she thought to herself.
Little did she know she had fallen pray to Asura's trickery. How could he not know what he was talking about? It was just he didn't want to explain his past, so he pretended to be annoyed because he couldn't understand anything.
Xia had long given up trying to understand what the two talked about, and had closed her eyes. Her breathing gradually became even and steady as she fell asleep.
Asura let out a troubled sigh and continued once more. "The Art of Chaos contains myriad secrets of the world and is extremely hard to cultivate. Its base compression index is one thousand."
The moment a number '1000' came out, Nayi's teacup decided it didn't want to face the sky anymore and was currently rolling around on the table as the tea from it spilled all over. This resulted from Nayi suddenly shooting up from her seat as if she sat on a needle.