Disoriented, Quin lay upon soft dirt and glanced into an unfamiliar night sky. He raised his right hand and looked at it. He couldn't suppress a giddy smile any longer at what he saw.
It was light blue and crystalline with a few milky-white streaks that painted an intricate pattern both on and inside it. When he sat up and looked down at his body it looked as though a sculptor had carved out a rough outline of a human body but had lost interest after that and never finished it.
When he was done admiring his new body, he decided to survey his new surroundings. What he saw was exactly what he had expected, but still depressing. The land surrounding him was cracked and dry, littered with dried-out bushes and trees and wilted flowers.
When he looked behind himself, he saw a gently swirling nexus of energy in various shades of grey and black with hints of violet which was framed by a crudely-made stone arch. The sight was not unfamiliar to him, and he identified the phenomenon as a currently dormant dimensional portal.
Almost all high-level inheritances and hidden planes were connected to the main world by such portals as they could span hundreds of kilometers and required ambient energy densities that were rarely found in the outside world.
Even with his dismal surroundings, he was quite content as everything was exactly as described by the dungeons he had visited in preparation for his eventual reincarnation. It stung that he had to re-cultivate from the start, but that was what made it possible to surpass his old self.
Satisfied with his examination of his surroundings and his body he noticed an itch at the back of his mind. It was as if there was a new metaphysical muscle just waiting to be flexed. As the feeling got more and more intense he decided to give in to his instincts and see what happened.
As soon as he flexed the mental muscle his vision doubled. One point of vision stayed the same, while the second began to move away from his body and drifted higher and higher until it reached a point where he could see the entirety of his surroundings.
What had not been visible before was that the land he was standing on and now also floating above, was a giant island of dirt and stone floating in nothingness, with a wall of mist surrounding it from quite a distance away.
Along with the new perspective came a whole host of new sensations and ways to interact with the world. After a few tries he learned how to move around his point of view and soon he was flying all over the dead land, inspecting every nook and cranny.
Along the way, he learned how to link his sensations to what he was seeing on the landscape. A dried-out riverbed felt somehow itchy to him, and the dried-up plants felt as if there was something on his skin that he couldn't just brush off.
Something he couldn't quite make sense of was a very uncomfortable feeling of congestion or blockage that he had when nearing the central mountain dwarfing every other feature. The deactivated portal near his crystal body felt similar, though somehow different in certain aspects he couldn’t identify yet.
The only thing of note was an indentation in the mountain near the top from which the feeling radiated the strongest.
He decided that since his new senses couldn't give him an answer yet, he would have to improve his familiarity with them and then try again. The first thing he decided to learn was how to use his corporeal and incorporeal bodies simultaneously.
He began by performing an action with each body successively in shorter and shorter intervals until He managed to move both at the same time. His next challenge was to figure out how to use each body autonomously.
To achieve this it tried to separate his mind in two. He knew that other cultivators had done this too, as it was a prerequisite for certain advanced techniques. It took him quite a few tries, but eventually, he was able to split off a part of his mind that he could give instructions to follow. the split part of his mind was only able to accomplish very simple tasks, but he was confident that this too would be something he could improve in due time.
As he was unsure about the physical limits of his crystal body, he set his simple mind the task of running around in a large circle while monitoring top speed, endurance, and energy consumption. He would have to check back in periodically to set new tasks, but at least the most boring parts would be handled by the part of him too dumb to feel boredom.
With his crystal body occupied and having explored most of the island with his incorporeal body, he began experimenting with whether his second body was able to do more than just scout.
It once again took a few minutes of trial and error, but he eventually found that he could create limbs that could interface with and affect the world. As cultivators also developed such a limb during their cultivation he was intimately familiar with its usage.
This so-called spiritual sense was one of the most important tools that cultivators had available to them. It functioned as both a third eye and a third arm and could be used for a variety of scouting, analysis, and intricate manipulation tasks.
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His new spiritual sense differed from the normal one in quite a few ways. For one, it was not restricted to just one limb, his current limit being three. It would remain to be seen whether that number would go up in the future.
Furthermore, two of his spiritual senses were also larger and stronger, more suited to more large-scale tasks, while the third was more similar in size to the one he was used to.
While experimenting with his new spiritual senses He found out that the two larger ones could both suck in and repel materials. Moving earth or send was much more convenient with this compared to using his spiritual senses as hands, as no material got lost in transit and much more material could be transported at once.
When he tested the limits of this new way of using his spiritual senses, he found out that anything that was sucked up to his second body got stored in a separate space that could accommodate quite a large volume of materials.
He did not find an upper volume limit during testing, but he also didn't try very hard since he didn't want to create a giant hole somewhere only to have to fill it back up again.
One idea that popped up during his experimentation but that he quickly discarded was whether it was possible to store his crystal body in case of an emergency. He had no intention of destroying his body in an accident birthed by curiosity.
Over time, his options for experimentation dwindled more and more though, and the thought of how convenient it would be not only to store the body but also to be able to quickly put it back down on another part of the island would not leave his mind.
He eventually couldn’t contain his curiosity any longer and decided to just risk it and see what would happen. The most likely outcomes were that it either worked as he thought or not at all, meaning that nothing would happen. There was always a slight risk of injury and a very small chance of death, but that was just life.
Commanding his second mind to pause its exercises, he connected one of his large spiritual senses to it and began the suction process without hesitation. After a short moment of resistance, the crystal body shot into the air. It did not get transferred into his storage though but was instead immediately sent down his other large spiritual sense.
While not a complete failsafe in case of an emergency, it was still highly useful for movement around his island and would keep his body safe in most instances.
Now that he had a convenient method of transportation for his crystal body, he decided to try and solve the congestion issue with both bodies working together. He once again connected one spiritual sense to his body, while the second connected to the mountain peak where his issue lay.
With a light pop signaling the displacement of air he vanished and reappeared at the mountain peak. The sudden change in elevation beneath his feet made him stumble, but he quickly found his footing and surveyed the landscape from his elevated position.
He knew from his earlier exploration, that there was a deep indentation in the mountain near the top, but it was near invisible from above due to an overhang. He quickly found the correct spot though and jumped down into the indentation. He had already tested the durability of his crystal body as best as he could and though he hadn't found its limits yet, he was confident that a fall of 10 meters would be unable to harm it in the slightest.
He looked around for a while to see whether he could find any indication of the source of his discomfort, but the stone was smooth with no discolorations or any other hints. Since he didn’t know where to start, he randomly picked a spot and decided to dig down there to see whether something could be uncovered.
His fingers parted the stone with surprising ease, and he quickly managed to make clear progress. It almost felt too easy to him. He still remembered the years of training his body in different martial forms and it was only when he reached the foundation-building stage that he was strong and durable enough to not injure himself while trying to destroy rocks with his bare hands.
After excavating a hole of roughly his height he heard an ominous rumbling and then a cracking sound. He quickly escaped the hole he had dug and only stopped the retreat when he had reached the rim of the indentation.
Only a few seconds later the hole erupted. Stone rubble was catapulted high up into the air alongside a rainbow-colored mist. Stone debris lay everywhere and the air was heavy with spiritual energy In such a concentration that it was almost visible.
The mist quickly dissipated and to ordinary eyes, the hole looked empty once more, but to those with the ability to see spiritual energy, which evidently Included him, a steady stream of rainbow-tinged air was still emitted from it.
It seemed that the land had only waited for this to happen, as soon the area around the mountain began to green. Previously dead trees turned from gray to brown while crumbled bark regenerated and leaves and fruits rapidly sprung from the branches.
When he shifted his incorporeal body downwards to observe the changes in greater detail, he also noticed various grasses, bushes, and ferns unfolding into a dense underbrush. The change flooded steadily outwards like an unstoppable wave and only ended when it reached the rim of the island where an invisible wall made sure that the energy stayed contained within.
As the land recovered, so did Quin. His connection to the land had been noticeable before, but the connection was much clearer to him now. His spiritual body felt significantly stronger and the feedback from the land felt much crisper than before. Now, it was however a source of additional strength and comfort instead of irritation.
His crystal body was also affected significantly. More and more spiritual energy entered through previously atrophied channels and filled previously unnoticed internal reservoirs. As he felt spiritual energy rush through his crystal body, the contrast to before was showing him just how limited his obviously magical body had been without it.
He resigned himself to doing all the exercises again, as all the previous ones had seemingly been done with him running on fumes. He was now a magical creature and as such spiritual energy was a large source of his strength.
Another welcome discovery was that his crystal body also came with a set of innate abilities. He resolved to test them out as soon as possible, but there was another pressing issue that commanded his attention.