"Wearing clothes almost feels weird." Yun Lei remarked in jest as he put on his clothes that were still wet. The rain had stopped but it was still pretty chilly.
Zuzhou Nuo looked on as the scary young man drop down from the trees wearing some really fancy clothes. Of course, to Yun Lei, they were rather simple. The clothes he usually wore were far more expensive, after all.
But to the doe, they were the most expensive clothes she had ever seen.
"You're a noble of some kind, right?" She asked, wanting to confirm her suspicions.
She hadn't reached that conclusion based on just his clothes. The way he walked, the way he talked, it all oozed of this refined charm you rarely found on commoners. Her instincts were telling her that Yun Lei was someone who was used to looking down on people.
Even the bow he used was of far better quality than she had ever seen any other hunter use. She wasn't an expert on the topic but from the quality of the wood and the craftsmanship, it truly seemed expensive.
"I might be." The young man answered.
Yun Lei still wasn't sure if he was simply possessing a body that looked remarkably similar to his own or if it truly was him that was present in that forest. Thus, he gave an uncertain answer. Explaining the whole situation would not only be tiring, but it also wouldn't do anything to help him. It was better for some things to remain unsaid.
"Let's go back. The Deer who came with me yesterday, they should have no problems identifying edible stuff now." Yun Lei continued.
One of the main reasons behind the White Deer Tribe's starvation was because they couldn't identify what was edible and what was not. The digestive systems of the White Deer were a bit better than humans' but the stuff that would kill humans would also kill them. Thus, despite being beast-kin, they had to be very careful of what they ate.
In the wild, not knowing what you were eating was a good way to get yourself killed. Since Yun Lei had pointed out most of the edible food in the area, food would be less of an issue for the tribe in the future.
The abundance of edible sources of nutrition in that forest felt a bit weird to Yun Lei. If food was extremely easy to get in an area of the woods, it was bound to attract the attention of many of its residents. Yet forget encountering any wild animals, he hadn't even encountered tracks that didn't belong to the White Deer or humans.
Despite thinking that this was very weird, he didn't think too deeply about it. The forest was safe and abundant with sources of food. It was better that way. Of course, 'safe' was a subjective word.
"By the way, I was quite curious if you know how to read." Yun Lei asked, turning towards Zuzhou Nuo, who was still walking so close to him that their shoulders were practically touching.
"I know." Came the to the point reply that, Yun Lei was beginning to realise, was a very prominent feature of Zuzhou Nuo's personality. She spoke very little and even when she did, she expressed what she wanted to with a few words before closing her mouth.
She was quite different from the others of her kind in that regard. Yun Lei had found out that the White Deer were rather talkative folks. The camp was rarely silent. The hushed whispering voices of the Deer rang without much rest.
Yun Lei wanted to hear more so instead of saying something, he just continued staring at the doe. The reason for his curiosity was that he had noticed she could read the words on the maps the hunters had. How did someone who had spent her entire life in a forest know how to read?
"My father was raised by humans." Zuzhou Nuo explained after sensing his curiosity. "He came to the Forest of Endless Trees to find his people. He met my mother here and after I was born, he taught me how to read. I teach the little ones when we have free time."
Yun Lei smiled after he heard the last sentence, causing Zuzhou Nuo's heartbeat to skyrocket.
What was the point of teaching a bunch of young children who lived in the forest how to read and write? They would most likely never even touch a book in their lifetimes. So why even bother? Someone might think this and even think that Zuzhou Nuo was simply wasting her time.
Perhaps, she herself hadn't realised it but, in Yun Lei's eyes, this seemingly pointless action was a symbol. A pure and unadulterated symbol of hope. Of hope for a better future. Hope that one day, the White Deer could live a free life where they would have the leisure to read books without worrying about their next meal.
This hope was perhaps the most precious thing the White Deer Tribe had, in his opinion. Despite everything they had suffered, they still had bright eyes that dared to look straight ahead, towards the future.
Yun Lei picked up a stick from the ground and wrote down three sentences. They were all in different languages. The first sentence was written in the Eastern Continent's common language.
In the little cave, Yun Lei had found books written in two different languages. Even though he couldn't understand it, he remembered the contents very clearly. So, for the second and third languages, he simply copied a sentence each from the books.
"I can't tell what these sentences mean."
"You forgot how to read but still remember how to write it?" Zuzhou Nuo looked rather shocked at the revelation.
"I have a pretty good memory. Of course, it's a bit ironic for me to say that in the current situation but yeah. Don't you find it weird that I can navigate through the forest rather effortlessly for someone who only remembers being in it for a few days?"
"Ah, that is true. I didn't even think about it." There was no necessity to even think about such a minor thing in the first place. The Deer were naturally good at travelling through the forest because of their senses and most hunters knew what they were doing so they had little to no difficulty either. She had always assumed Yun Lei to be a hunter so his ability was something completely normal in her eyes.
"Well, can you tell what these say?"
Zuzhou Nuo pulled herself back from her thoughts before looking towards the ground where Yun Lei had scribbled on.
"I can only read one of those lines."
"Which one?"
"The second one."
"What does it say?"
"The Soul Splitting Art." Zhuzhou Nuo said as she tilted her head, observing Yun Lei's reaction. Clearly, it was the name of a Cultivation Art and if it was in Yun Lei's memory, undoubtedly, his status was far higher than she had initially thought.
There were no changes visible in his face, like usual. Not even a single muscle twitched after the doe was done speaking. However, his mind was racing as fast as the wind. He didn't know what this Soul Splitting Art was but the name alone had made him reach the conclusion: he needed to learn more about it.
Yun Lei was a cripple. If one were to place him in a crowd of mortals, he would appear wholly unremarkable. Other than his astounding beauty, there was nothing worthy of a second glance. But Yun Lei himself knew that there was one more thing that separated him from most mortals and even cultivators. His aura.
His aura was so powerful that it could make someone like Yun Shu, a cultivator in the 5th stage of the Body Tempering Realm, lose control of his legs and fall on his behind.
Aura was one of those things that weren't all that well understood amongst cultivators. There had been no in-depth studies regarding the subject and it seemed like the cultivators simply thought of it as something not worth looking into.
Most of the documents Yun Lei had read in the Yun Library suggested that aura was simply a side effect of cultivation. Aura was described as the effect the accumulation of profound energy in a cultivator's body had on their surroundings. The stronger the cultivator, the stronger the aura. They had reached this simple conclusion and left things there.
But if that was true, how could Yun Lei, a cripple who didn't even have as much profound energy in his body as an ordinary mortal, release aura? Let alone an aura that could paralyse cultivators powerful enough to crush him to death with a single finger.
Was he a stronger cultivator than the Ren Family Patriarch? Of course, he wasn't. Despite that, Yun Lei's aura had overwhelmed Ren Feng's in a direct confrontation. How could this be possible if aura was the result of the profound energy gathered in the body?
The answer was, it wasn't. Aura was wholly unrelated to the realm of cultivation. There was something else that correlated directly to how strong someone's aura was. Something that made Yun Lei's aura stronger than even cultivators. And that something was the soul.
After being almost destroyed by the Soul Shredding Poison, his soul had been in shambles. Just to move his body, he had to use far more soul strength than most people would use even in full-blown combat. This had the side effect of making Yun Lei's soul far stronger than normal.
In order to cultivate, people used soul strength to gather profound energy in their bodies. This act of using soul strength over and over would in turn strengthen their soul, increasing their level of control over the energies of the heavens and the earth as well as make their auras more potent.
Because most people didn't even consider the soul a factor in cultivation, they had missed this simple truth and profound energy had gotten the credit for doing things it simply didn't do.
Since people knew about the existence of a magical energy that could do all sorts of mystical things that would normally be impossible, it was easy for them to think that it was the cause behind phenomena they had no understanding of. Without even bothering to look deeper into it, they would say that it was all because of profound energy and then call it a day.
It all comes back to the soul. Yun Lei had reached this conclusion. He knew there was a good chance that he was simply misinterpreting the facts. An argument could easily be made that he was seeing things through a lens of bias. But from what he knew, his conclusions could be said to be reasonable.
This was the reason hearing the name 'Soul Splitting Art' had made the gears in his head whir endlessly. Any cultivation art that had something to do with the soul would give him more insight into the matter, which would give him a greater perspective on the whole subject.
If his hypotheses were correct, it was more than enough to alter the course of Profound Cultivation forever. It would be weirder if Yun Lei wasn't interested in something that would help him get closer to verifying it.
I guess I am in no hurry to leave the forest. I'll stay with the White Deer till I learn how to read from Zuzhou Nuo. Yun Lei was already beginning to construct a plan for the future.
Yun Lei's thirst for knowledge was something that could only be described with the word endless. Once he learned to read, he wouldn't simply be satisfied with knowledge acquired from the few books he had skimmed through. He would find a way to get back to the little cave and commit every book he could find there into his memory.
"The Soul Splitting Art, huh?" Yun Lei spoke out loud before turning towards the doe. "It seems like I'll have to trouble you to teach me how to read."
"I would be happy to." Came Zuzhou Nuo's reply. And she truly would be happy, since it would mean that Yun Lei would stay with the tribe for that much longer.