Purity of intent -
This was a major challenge for Hex Masters for many years.
It impeded their potential and restrained them from playing an active role in the world of experts, for many years until this problem was resolved.
Now Alex was stuck facing the age-old challenge once again.
"To purify the aura from my intent, I would need to draw out the imprints bit by bit with my will until it's cleared out.
There are three major areas I need to focus on, to purify the intent to its greatest extent. First is the issue of mental energy, then the problem of my will, and lastly how to prevent further contamination."
Alex pondered these questions for several minutes before finally analysing the most likely solutions.
For starters achieving the purity of mental energy would be challenging, as apart from the mental energy in my natural reserves, all my mental energy is reserved in the membrane of the Sea of Consciousness.
And with its function as the point of resonance, it would be impossible to keep the mental energy stored in it pure.
I also need to purify my will.
Alex said to himself, as he began an in-depth reflection on why his intent would be impure.
My will is naturally released from my soul core, which lies within the Cup of Wills surrounded by compressed iceberg-like soul essence within my Sea of Consciousness. Therefore, the source of my will couldn't become contaminated, my will couldn't be contaminated.
However, whenever I need to condense intent, I have to draw some of it out from the sea via the membrane, contaminating it in the process. It's an unending cycle."
Taking his time, Alex dissected the problems he had observed, and all he could come up with was.
The main contaminators of his intent were the various frequencies of origin carved onto the membrane that stored the bulk of his current mental energy.
Should the issue remain unresolved, his intent would forever be polarised.
Knowing this, however, did not discourage Alex. He smiled proudly, knowing now where that intense feeling within him came from.
"There is no other way to solve all three issues except to create a mechanism for generating intent from outside the barrier."
On realising this, Alex relaxed his mind and began to meditate. He entered the state of Total Calm while using his awareness to inspect his entire mind.
It seemed very contradictory that he could do this, however, unlike within a normal human body, Alex's soul within the trial only emulated the form of his body to encase his mind.
So in other words, he was using the eyes of his soul to peer into the inner workings of his mind, which would have been utterly impossible in a normal environment for all beings except those experts at or above the Grade 7 Divine Will realm, who can nurture a divine will body similar to the soul within them, and achieve something similar to this.
The Origin trials were that rare an opportunity.
With this introspective view of himself, Alex began his first detailed inspection of his mind.
Once the inspection began, the first thing Alex noticed was how boundless the inner world of his mind was.
The entire space was a perfectly still realm of absolute darkness. It had no obvious borders and seemed to stretch out into nothingness. Taking a closer look, Alex noticed the space was not entirely empty, as high up within the darkness, was a faintly glowing orb of light. On closer examination, it was obvious what the orb was.
His Sea of Consciousness, which was wrapped in a massive barrier. On a closer inspection, radiated calm winds into the surrounding space.
These winds were a hazardous mixture of various components, such as his random thoughts, intent, will, and mental energy, among other things Alex could not clearly distinguish yet.
However, these were not what Alex sought as he quickly, returned his attention to the empty space. Alex began to recall the strange feeling he had felt earlier, and slowly as he kept trying to recall the feeling, something began to manifest within the darkness.
A speck of white light.
The moment Alex saw the light in the darkness, he trembled and nearly fell out of his state of Total Calm. However, he restrained the intense feeling.
To his surprise, he had unknowingly summoned the stellar core of his mind. The very concept that was responsible for his intellect and personality.
The moment the core appeared, it started resonating with something deep within the sea of consciousness.
Carefully, Alex allowed the trembling to continue for a while. The stellar core approached the barrier of the Sea of Consciousness tentatively, as though something within it had drawn it out.
Alex maintained his current state as he observed the changes. Slowly, the membrane barrier trembled slightly, and a golden light passed through it appearing within the darkness.
Alex squinted trying to understand what was in the light. Shocked, Alex saw what was resonating with the stellar core was the most recent occupant of the sea.
The Soul Text, the Primordial Glyph - Word.
The moment the glyph appeared, it released a beautiful purple-coloured glyph. The second this glyph appeared the stellar core vibrated violently in excitement, and rushed out to engulf the glyph.
At this moment, Alex felt just like a bystander in his own body without the least bit of control as he watched all this happen.
The soul text's light was dimmed and reabsorbed into the Sea of Consciousness.
Meanwhile, Alex could not take his eyes off the stellar core, paying no mind to anything else as he watched the unique fusion process.
Gradually, the stellar core which was a pristine white, turned violet as it grew larger and seemed to gain a physical form from its previous energy state.
As the stellar core turned completely purple, it slowly began to vanish back into the darkness of space.
Alex immediately tried to stop it, and although he had no idea what exactly was going on within him, Alex still went all out and forcefully used his will to restrain the stellar core.
A faint stream of light stretched out of the sea of consciousness and captured the now violet stellar core.
The core tried to break free of the light ray formed by Alex's will.
The stellar core continued to struggle for a while, spinning rapidly around the Sea of Consciousness, like a planetary body floating at high speed trying to escape the gravitational influence of the larger body.
A minute passed, and the Stellar core still could not escape the light. Gradually Alex noticed it growing thicker and heavier, slowing down as it spun around the relatively massive Sea Of Consciousness.
Why?
Alex was puzzled at this, focusing on the stellar core, he soon noticed that around the core. Strands of what closely resembled mist had condensed on the core, adding mass to the previously ethereal core.
Slowly the core grew larger and heavier the more these mist-like substances settled on it.
Alex, wondering what the mist-like substance was, took a look at the surroundings of the core as he assessed the situation.
He could not be more surprised to discover that the entire space between the barrier and the Stellar core was filled with this mist-like substance.
"So abundant."
Tracing the origin Alex was excited to notice the mist-like substance was pure mental energy that was escaping from the surface of the barrier.
Suddenly a daring idea appeared in Alex's heart
'What if...'
Alex immediately got to work on it. After all, what was the worst that could happen?
Focusing his will on the stellar core, Alex began to spin the core around the barrier, while intentionally sending the compressed reserves of mental energy that had coated the sea's membrane towards the core.
Infusing the core with both his will and pure mental energy, while using the centrifugal force generated from spinning the core around the barrier Alex put his bold idea to work.
The fusion process began slowly making the now violet stellar core proceed to condense as it grew in mass and density.
The process was surprisingly smooth, although the pressure on his soul kept building up as he needed to keep compressing the energy, all the while inputting his will and essence.
He was fully focused on integrating these elements into the core.
Normally, this would not have been possible for most people, in the minds of regular individuals below the Grade 7 Divine Will realm, unless in the case of rare geniuses.
The internal mental structure of these regular people lacked a Sea of Consciousness, much less one that had such an unnatural abundance of soul essence.
Their soul core, the stellar core of the mind, mental energy, will, intent, thoughts and senses were mixed up in a massive soup of soul essence, making it impossible to integrate them independently or even differentiate.
At this moment, Alex had jumped out of the understanding of normal Hex masters. He intended to use his stellar core to condense what can only be referred to as an intent generator, which Alex dubbed - Mind Core.
It would be the engine house of his soul power, driving him to project his abilities into the outside world.
A never-before-seen structure even in the Grade 9 Divine Being realm.
The mind core continued to revolve around his Sea of Consciousness, absorbing the pure mental energy that seeped out of it.
The violet colour on the core began to fade, concentrating in the very centre as the energy around the core thickened.
The moment of condensation was fast approaching.