It looked like stars of different colors were inside this dark space. With the addition of the glowing spiritual root, it looked like beautiful and majestic scenery.
Without wasting any more time pondering this moment, Ruel used his mind to sort out the particles inside his aperture.
There were particles of different affinities, like water, earth, fire, ice, and many more.
But there was a shocking scene amidst all this. It was a staggering amount of lightning particles!
They surrounded at least a third of the aperture.
A third of the aperture was just filled with lightning!
This was a blessing for Ruel, as he had wanted to use lightning as an affinity for his spiritual roots this time around.
In his previous life, he had pure water spiritual roots, which helped him reach such heights, but in the end, it wasn't suited much to battle.
It was an excellent element nonetheless. With great versatility and malleability, it was effective for defense and maneuverability.
But Ruel needed more than that. He wanted power and destructive ability more.
An element that rampages on the battlefield.
With this in mind, his options were lowered much more than before. Either he could try using fire or lightning.
Darkness was also an option, but it was more corroding than destructive.
And now Ruel had an ample amount of lightning particles in front of him.
He started to drag particles one after another with his mind. It was a slow and meticulous process.
Even though all of them were segregated and were ready to be put to use, it was a difficult process.
Every particle had the property of needing the energy to move. It meant that energy had to be provided before anyone could move.
Ruel's mind was tired after weaving the roots. Much of its energy was drained, but he kept on doing it.
First, it was one particle, then two, then ten, then a hundred. He kept dragging them towards the root.
As he kept adding the particles, the color began to change at the ends of the roots.
It started to turn a bright purple with the addition of more and more particles.
Just as around ten minutes passed inside the aperture, the roots suddenly started shimmering.
Then it all came to a halt.
Ruel thought it was another attack from the Demon Lord when the wind passed him.
Wind?
But there was no wind inside the aperture. It was a desolate space except for the spiritual roots and the elemental particles.
Suddenly Ruel's eyes darted toward the spiritual root, and what he saw left him shocked.
The spiritual root, no, the lightning particles, attracted each other. There was a vortex created around the root.
They attracted each other at twice the speed that Ruel had done!
A wave of happiness flashed across his face.
He didn't need to do anything and his foundation was automatically being formed!
The happiness lingered till he saw some creases on the surface of the root.
Nothing was free in this world. Everything had a price on it.
And the price for this was the destruction of spiritual roots.
The creases indicated that his roots would be destroyed if this continued!
The integration of elements was a slow process. It meant that the roots could adapt to the process of something foreign entering them.
And this was too much even for them to handle!
With a situation like this in his hands, only one thought came to Ruel's mind.
Either suppress or terminate the process.
Terminating it was harder with the amount of mental energy he had.
He would exhaust his mind even before being able to stop the lightning particles. Then only one thing remained, to suppress and counteract the particles.
But then the question came: how?
He couldn't even do anything other than add more elemental particles.
Wait, elemental particles!
An idea popped into Ruel's brain. He didn't know if it will work but that was the only option.
Without even giving the vortex of lightning elemental particle another look, Ruel started.
He used all the earth elemental particles in his aperture, trying to bring them all closer.
This was a more challenging process than moving the particles one by one or in a bunch. He had to gather them all at once.
Gritting his teeth, he gathered them into a big cylindrical shape. Ruel's body was becoming fainter, the more he forced the particles to move.
Yet, he had to do this. Taking a look at the vortex, he pushed all the particles inside, puncturing just a small part of it, but that was all he needed.
The earth suppressed lightning. To give the spiritual root more breathing time, he used earth elemental particles. This was a bad option for his future, but it was all he had.
The more elements one spiritual root had, the worse it became. A pure elemental affinity would show much more power than a subpar elemental affinity.
If a person had a fully formed fire spiritual root and another had just half fire and another element formed spiritual root, the power of the fully formed would be at least twice or more power than the half one.
This difference became more apparent as one progressed through the realms.
Ruel had to do this to keep his spiritual root from being destroyed destroyed. Without it, his path as a cultivator would be over right there.
As the cylindrical structure seeped inside the vortex, it made beautiful dark lines on the purple spiritual roots.
It looked like a mystical tree with dark veins, and the lines became darker as time passed.
They extended from that point, suppressing the lightning within.
Ruel's plan was working!
But there was a flaw in it. The amount of earth elemental particles was much lower than the lightning elemental particles.
Ruel didn't for how much time could they hold the collapsing spiritual root.
The cracks didn't spread out more, but they were still there, they were suppressing and fortifying it, instead of healing the damaged part.
He couldn't do anything other than just keep sending the particles inside. Now he was nothing more than a spectator inside his own body.
This was another kind of weakness he was experiencing here, yet he couldn't do anything.
As the concentration of earth particles diminished, they started forming a net around the trunk of the spiritual root.
Ruel looked at this scene for minutes, and just then another trembling happened. The elemental particles inside the aperture were disappearing at an alarming rate. This process didn't stop until there were none left.
Only a sigh of relief came out of Ruel's mouth.
"Finally"
It was all over, he had done it.
He had prevailed over too much today. In a way, it was more tiring for him rather than fighting powerful cultivators.
Suddenly his body started dissipating into light, indicating that the time inside the aperture was over.
A bout of silence met Ruel's ears as he started to wake up.
Opening his eyes, he looked at the administrator.
Feeling his gaze, the administrator looked back at Ruel.
The people beside Ruel had all changed in the time he was awakening.
Standing up, he went towards the administrator with slow steps, he was exhausted beyond return right now.
Even a task as simple as walking felt tiring to him right now.
Giving him the root stone, Ruel cupped his fists in a farewell greeting and went straight outside.
After some more walking, he got out of the pavilion.
He took a deep breath, feeling the air flowing on his face always felt nice. While looking around, he spotted a person sitting under a tree with a jade slip in her hand.
Moving towards her, he stopped right in front of her, while putting his hand forward.
Without even looking at him, she grabbed his hand, examining his spiritual roots.
She was the inspector for the awakening of Spiritual roots. Every single person who had awakened theirs had to come to her for the inspection of the roots.