Sixteen.
That is the number of new spells that were unlocked after reaching the Substance Soul realm. These spells were all related to the Heavenly Dao and, specifically, to the Heaven's Way technique. This version of Heaven's Way is not simplified; it's quite complete.
How is a cultivation technique rated? Different forces have different methods, but the most common way is to rate them by two metrics.
The first is a technique's upper limit—its vision, its ambition. Heaven's Way is one of the techniques with the highest ceiling, so it easily gets an S grade from this metric. Getting a high rating on this metric is easy, but a high rating here doesn't mean much without the next metric.
The second metric is how well the technique lives up to its vision. It would be rated higher if it lives up to or is close to it, and vice versa. Heaven's Way's energy gathering and core formation chapters can be rated as S, which is the best rating it can receive. The initial incomplete Nascent Soul chapter was, however, at best considered E or E+. It improved after Jack completed the Nascent Soul chapter but was still only around B or B-. After all, the core formation and energy-gathering chapters were developed with the help of Jack's main body. No matter how much he tries, he can never develop the technique to that level.
The Nascent Soul chapter had many spells but still lacked a great deal compared to the S quality. That said, the S quality was only theoretical; the S-ranked version doesn't actually exist in this world; only employing outside help, like Jack's true knowledge from the outside world, can help the technique reach the S level again.
The Divine Soul chapter was developed using the Brown Dynasty's resources, so its quality was a bit better, reaching B+.
The latest chapter, the Substance Soul chapter, was developed using the entire database of the Four Great Sects and the Brown Dynasty, along with the books Mike brought from the inheritance of the Daoist Blood Sea. Even with all that, it barely reached A-.
The Inheritance had very few books about the heavenly Dao; most of its high-end books were about the blood Dao. Still, some books were key in calculating the substance soul realm chapter of Ehaven's Way.
The reason it had 16 spells was its A- ranking; if it were B, it would have had 14 or fewer. These spells included:
Heavenly Knife: The caster can use tribulation clouds for his own use; there is a risk of angering the heavens and being targeted by it.
Red Control: The caster can add the red element to his attacks. The red element is exclusively under heaven's control, so using it could trigger heaven's rage.
Good Deeds: This spell is not useful in most situations, but it can be lifesaving in specific circumstances. It can cut off one's bad karma, potentially nullifying some spells that target bad karma. Karma truly exists in this world; if one causes another's suffering, one would automatically be assigned negative karma, while those doing good will be assigned positive karma. As for who judges good or bad, it's obviously the will of the heavens. The way of the heavens is fair in most, but not all, situations. Positive karma is very useful; those who gather a lot of positive karma can receive heaven's help, and those with negative karma may receive the wrath of heaven. If the negative karma increases too much, heaven's will may directly send down a tribulation. Even though karma is very useful, high-level cultivators usually give up on it completely. Heaven's way is fair when calculating karma for low-level cultivators, but for stronger cultivators, it rewards scant positive karma and reduces a lot for even small mistakes. Because of this, usually, nobody bothers with karma. Very few try to reach positive karma.
Sharp Ray: This spell is one of the most concentrated attacking spells; it uses the five elements and heaven dao to produce intense light, which can cut most things. This spell is nearly invincible at the same cultivation stage, but against stronger cultivators, it would be very useless.
Heavenly Screen: This is one of the best spells for calculating one's enemies. It is the strongest at calculating the enemy's location, weapons, and appearance. This spell is very weak when used to calculate one's allies and friends and completely useless for neutral parties; Heaven's way would judge who is an enemy and who is a friend or neutral. This spell employs the help of heaven's way to function, so there is a chance that it would provoke it, which can cause the caster to be targeted by tribulations.
Heavenly Curtain: This is one of the best spells regarding defense against calculations. It can hide all kinds of details from enemies' reach, including location, current situation, looks, etc.
Heavenly Paper: This can produce hard materials that survive millions of years. Jack would use heavenly paper when recording or writing anything.
Heaven's Eye: This spell can be used for calculations in immortal labs. It is not very useful in combat, but it is a support spell used in research.
Stun Heaven: This spell can stun the will of heaven temporarily, making it unable to do its duties throughout the world. Because of its worldwide effect, its duration is extremely short. Even a Substance Soul level of this spell can barely stun the will of heaven for more than 0.00000000000001 seconds. There is another risk: if the will of heaven finds who stunned it, the caster of this spell can expect tribulations that can even kill perfection cultivators.
Heavenly Rain: This spell can force rain from tribulation clouds. The rain from tribulation clouds would contain red elements with countless uses.
Heavenly Match: This can burn tribulation clouds. It is not an invincible spell, though. If the tribulation is too strong, the heavenly match would fail and enrage the will of heaven even more than before.
Heavenly Addict: This can be used to create immortal drugs. Many mortals, trying to run from the hardship of life, would get addicted to drugs. Cultivators are usually more sane than to do it, but even cultivators are humans. With the heavenly addict spell, Jack can have unlimited access to drugs that immortals are addicted to. Using the drug as leverage, Jack can easily use it to control loose immortals.
Heavenly Court: This spell can summon 'witnesses', conduct 'discovery', and issue judgments. Using this, finding culprits for assassinations would be very easy.
Concentration: This spell can increase the concentration of everything it is cast upon. This spell has little combat use but many research uses.
Heavenly Hitlist: This spell can be used to add enemies to heaven's dark list. It's said that, and Jack knows for sure, that heaven has a dark list, which it writes names of those it considers enemies. Anyone on that list better have a few high-level methods of resisting the rage of heaven.
Heavenly Tissue: This is exactly as it sounds. It is a piece of disposable immortal tissue that can be used to clean certain places.
These 16 spells were the ones he just got; the previous spells were upgraded to the Substance Soul realm.
"I am at the peak of the Substance Soul realm; with all of my heavenly spells, I may be able to defeat weaker Multiple Soul realm cultivators," he thought.
Most find the Multiple Soul realm very challenging; after all, nobody has Jack's experience controlling many avatars.
As someone at the peak of Substance Soul, it is normal for him to start thinking of his next breakthrough, but there is not really any chance he will reach Multiple Souls even in thousands of years. After all, he lacks heavenly Dao knowledge.
Even as a Substance Soul cultivator, Jack could fight two or three other peak Substance Soul cultivators without pressure.
...
"Faith, when you reach Divine Soul, I will gift you something," Jack said to increase her willpower.
Faith nodded and continued caressing Redy,
Lately, Faith had been becoming a bit lazy in her cultivation.
She would only meditate for about 10 hours daily and spend 10 hours as his assistant. She wastes a full 4 hours on useless things, such as visiting faraway cities or looking at her pets, including Redy.
As a legendary horse magical beast, Redy reached Nascent Soul without even trying; he progressed naturally as time went on. After Nascent Soul, however, he no longer grew; he reached adulthood in his species. As a horse species, he is not rare; many horses like him run in the wild, but Faith only likes Redy to an unreasonable degree.
As a magical beast with intelligence, the two depended on each other and loved each other.
Jack wondered whether the two would marry later when Redy reached the Substance Soul realm. Once magical beasts reach Substance Soul, they can transform into human form.
That was until Jack saw something he regretted.
A few years ago, when he was scanning around, he saw Faith, who had transformed herself into a horse and was busy having an intimate affair with Redy. From that day onward, Jack avoided looking at them in private. Even though his mental strength is unimaginable, it was hard to see how his disciple had lost her way.
Aside from Redy, in Jack's view, pets are the most useless thing one can have. After all, they only eat and drink, with many other hardships, and do absolutely no good. Jack didn't consider the emotional support part, as he didn't even consider mental health a real thing. In Jack's view, whoever is weak enough to have time to think about useless things such as love or loneliness doesn't deserve to be a member of his sect. As for Faith's affair with her pet, he was against it but, ultimately, didn't care enough to do anything about it.
In any case, both Redy and Faith were satisfied, so he just ignored it; the two were adult intelligent beings in any case.
Now, with Jack reaching the peak of the Soul Substance realm, the next thing he planned was to find better databases. There are at least five big continents nearby.
If Jack takes them, he might be able to make some progress to the Multiple Soul realm chapter of Heaven's Way.