At this moment, in Will's mind, an infinitely ancient voice echoed through his mind saying, "The moment you lose all hope and give in to despair is the moment you truly die," followed by a sigh that seemed to travel through time and space as it echoed through his mind.
At this moment, Will realized something. Despair was the opposite of hope. Despair was a disease, it corrupted even the most incorruptible hearts, and it made anyone, no matter how strong, turn to a lifeless husk, going through life as a living corpse that took anything it was given, no matter how bad the treatment.
To be truly in despair meant to have no hope, no ability to recover, and no ability to change. Only when one truly had no hope would they truly die, becoming the lifeless corpse walking around continuing through life as they accept anything that happened to them.
Even when Will was serving prince James, he still had an extreme amount of hope, but when James had beat him nearly to death, the moment he ran out of hope was the moment he nearly died, only surviving because of the blessing of the goddess Sophia.
After this realization, a stream of information started to flow into his mind. The first thing he read in this was a cultivation manual called the "Ruby Heart Manual" in this manual, it showed Will how to use the ruby heart to absorb the Qi of this universe, along with his hope to become stronger, and how to use it to refine his body and spirit, leading to an increase in strength.
This was the first cultivation manual he had ever received, so he had no ability to judge its grade. However, based on how profound its content seemed, he figured that it should at least be at the mid foundational grade. He could not believe that he had gotten such an amazing technique for free. And it was unique to him: he was sure that no one else in the universe had this technique.
'I got such a unique skill for free?' though Will as he went through the manual in his mind.