When I came to it felt as if my body could not move much, I could hear voices surrounding me, but opening my eyes what I saw was mostly darkness with scarce lights scattered about.

Was I born blind or am I just living in a dark place now?

The answer did not come to me as I could not speak, and therefore no one could answer. I had no way to confirm if this blindness was temporary, natural, or if it was just dark out.

The language around me I started to hear as time crawled by could not be easily understood either. It seems language comprehension was not a gift the Inter-dimensional viking had deemed to grace me with.

I continue looking towards my surroundings and note the similarities between the lights I see now and some of the lights I saw in the River of souls.

I also noticed the voices seem to originate from the same location as the few larger stationary lights in the area.

From the situation it seems like the larger lights are actually souls, which is why there is always one near the origin of a voice. While the smaller lights are kinds of spiritual energy, the same as I saw in the river.

Without the context of having been in the river before and knowing what they were already, I probably would not have realized what they were so suddenly. Though I also feel intuitively it makes sense.

At the very least, despite being blind to the normal world, it seems I can see the spiritual world instead. Is this an ability granted by Einar, due to the soul mutation he mentioned, or it could just be the way people here see in general?

Again I probably won’t be able to figure this out easily.

Given I can’t move I should still be in the body of a recently born child, but I am mostly blind already from birth. I was sent here specifically to be an ‘asset’ in protecting this reality, so there should be a route for me to make up for this flaw in the future.

…then again, Einar was just a random person from Valhalla and not some kind of god, so I can’t exactly say for certain it was not simply a mistake with no accountability for something potentially going wrong at all.

People in positions of power do that kind of thing all the time without regard for people’s lives.

The only immediately available route is to try and leverage what I can observe about the spiritual energy to try and cultivate.

Based on what I know from reading far too much in my last life, Spiritual Cultivation, Qi Cultivation, and Magic Cultivation were the primary types of cultivation that I know of based on variations in supernatural energy and methods from different myths.

Body Cultivation, Mental Cultivation, Meridian Cultivation, Heart Cultivation and so on all used one of the three main methods or some combination of them to have a complete methodology. At least, this is my understanding of them… from reading a bit too much.

They have key differences that make them distinct.

Spiritual is generally the most difficult, but also usually the most important long term. According to what I heard recently, it should be equally useful anywhere in the multiverse, or at least in the multiverse interconnected by the ‘Tree’ YggDrasil.

Qi also often referred to as origin energy, is a type of energy specialized to and originated from the local world or local dimension itself.

It is often the most powerful form of energy within a reality. So long as it actually exists in equal abundance with the other options, because it is the natural energy that evolved along with the universe itself. It exists specifically to work within it’s home universe, and is made to do so.

Qi as a supernatural energy is effectively formed like any other natural resource. Meaning you get supernatural beings with all the same kind of corruption and incentives that applied on earth to normal people. Except amplified, due to the higher stakes of the incentives, where different groups and factions go to war constantly over resources to pursue power and immortality.

Magic on the other hand is more ‘invasive’ or ‘ethereal’. It is generally weaker than Qi in any specific universe, but it is adaptive and can be used easily even outside its original reality. Basically it seems like it is somewhere in between Qi and Spiritual Energy in terms of adaptability and power.

In many cases mana is artificial or originating from specific beings or civilizations, whereas Qi and Spiritual Energy are generally considered to exist naturally.

Powerful beings from the void and particular elemental realms might use magic or lend it to other realities, sometimes in order to get more power in return, or sometimes to get a foothold to invade other realities in the case of things such as Demons.

As a newborn, who can’t speak or understand the language, I will have to guess my way through cultivation if I’m going to try and get ahead.

The stories may or may not have come from real origins, but even if they are not real, they make enough sense conceptually to be used as the basis for developing a system in reality.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

To start making that system for myself though I have to start using something familiar that I understand from my old world. It does not necessarily have to hold true to the way either my old world or this one works, it just has to be logically and intuitively coherent.

In the same way you don’t have to follow the rules of reality when making a simulation or a video game, but it must make logical sense or it just won’t work or do anything useful.

Let’s draw on the concept of black holes and white holes and connect that to the idea of spiritual energy and it’s particles.

One may speculate that some particles involved in black holes would become ‘chemically’ inert in respect to our reality, and transfer either to other dimensions or chaotic reality in between coherent dimensions.

Whereas white holes would instead generate matter or cause events like the Big Bang, where matter from other dimensions comes into the current one through the black hole equivalents they possess.

This was something that was purely speculation, with no publicized method of how to experimentally determine it true or false.

However it is possible one could simulate this being the reality and have it make sense with the models of reality, but that is also true for a number of different models.

Knowing for certain that many dimensions exist, and they are interconnected by spiritual energy, I know at least one type of particles actually behave in a way similar to this : the spiritual particles I see.

Perhaps different kinds of magic, qi, and other particles could be used for cultivation, and may even be better.

For now, the only thing I can see is spiritual energy. So that will have to be my focus for cultivation, I cannot really do much else for now anyway.

—

The newborn member of our band is strange. It’s pupils are white, as though they cannot see. Yet the child despite being at an age where it should not even be conscious, seems to pay attention to people’s voices and its eyes clearly focus on them when they speak.

Could it be the child’s eyes simply look malformed but function properly still?

We’ve discussed this with the parents, and while they seem uncomfortable they are still preparing to care for the child for at least a while to see if it is okay. We already lack children who survive to adulthood, and we cannot afford to lose the child if it holds the potential of contributing one day.

—

Based on what I’ve observed and felt in the blacks whites and grayscales of this spiritual world I can see, there are differences and similarities between all of these particles.

All spiritual energy connects this world with one or more other worlds.

Any given spiritual particle holds one or more of these connections, and it is these inherent connections, interactions and changes between spiritual particles and their interactions with the souls bound to this reality that allows the spiritual world to form things like the river of souls that interconnects realities.

The dark spiritual energy seems to try and ‘absorb’ other spiritual energy away from our reality into others.

The white spiritual energy seems to be ‘producing’ new spiritual energy into this reality.

Grey spiritual energy seems to be neutral, being connected to components of potential realities that do not yet exist, and thus can neither absorb or donate energy from our reality.

As the forces of dark and light spiritual energies continue to clash and affect the fabric of our reality, a balance is maintained by the grey spiritual energy.

The spiritual world almost perfectly controlling the power that flows through it naturally, as though designed to keep itself separate yet omnipresent in the world.

Souls seem to be composed of a mixture of all of the spiritual energy types.

However, the properties of the spiritual energy seems to change fundamentally when it is a part of a soul. Taking on new characteristics despite seeming to be similar in nature in a way I can’t yet explain.

Obviously it is because it is tied to a living being, but I don’t feel happy with that level of explanation. Maybe I’ll find ways to dig deeper as I make progress in cultivating.

A general rule seems to be that a larger body yields a larger soul here.

As I’ve noticed from the few times I’ve seen and heard larger beasts encroach upon the group at times.

The first time before hearing the fighting I had ignored a larger soul encroaching, thinking it may just be another person. Having heard the combat from afar I could tell it was some kind of large predator. Wouldn’t make that mistake again or I might end up food myself while still being a child.

I then always made sure to give the groups early warnings when I saw them approaching or stalking us. I didn’t want avoidable deaths to happen on my watch. I made sure not to make noise if they seemed like they were passing by so as to not invite additional fights.

After the first few times they seemed to catch on. When I would yell out they would get ready to move and fight.

From my observations, some of the animals would have peculiar patterns surrounding their souls composed of white spiritual energy. In what has felt like months since I was born here, I’ve only seen these kinds of beasts twice.

These beasts were abnormally strong and fast. Even with an early warning, there was no stopping them from taking a person away.

More than likely, they have some form of primitive natural cultivation that bolsters their souls over time. To me, this indicates there is likely some sort of Qi on this planet.

Generally in lore, beasts will adapt to natural Qi before intelligent species by chance due to evolution. Whereas in a magic scenario intelligent species usually wield magic first by receiving it from otherworldly beings, or it just being designed for them, and the pollution then creates magic beasts.

Which means, there may be people somewhere on this planet that know Qi cultivation. Or there may not be. But this group I am with does not know it at all, or I would see similarities with these Beasts that clearly use Qi.

For now, I will call them Origin Beasts, since they seem to cultivate Qi, the energy of ‘origin’.

Humans, especially these humans I am with who seem to have no significant technology or cultivation, have no chance whatsoever of fighting Origin Beasts.

It also seems like the hope of unraveling the mysteries of how they cultivate might be a long shot as well for now.

As time has passed, I’ve refined my understanding and learned how to manipulate spiritual energy in my surroundings as well.

I will simply have to create a cultivation method based on pure spirit energy from scratch and hope for the best.

—

As the child grows, its peculiarities become more evident. After the first time where a beast snuck up on us and the child cried out, people thought it was a coincidence the child had seen it. However, before that the child had hardly cried out at all.

In the following times where the child cried out, our people would instantly be on the alert.

Could the child’s eyes be special or better than ours instead of impaired?

But then some people seem to be thinking the child is calling the beasts to us, that it is cursed, and that is dangerous.

But I don’t think we are facing any more beasts than usual, if anything I think we have fared better because of it.