Wang Wei stopped controlling his emotions, and as soon as he did so an intense wave of happiness and ecstasy assaulted his consciousness.
He was completely over the moon, seeing as he succeeded in creating the beginning of his path to Buddhahood, therefore he immediately jumped out of the lake and started experimenting.
The first thing he noticed when he spread out his spirit sense was that there was a strange light emanating from behind his head, it looked like a sun was rising from behind his body.
At first glance, he was confused as to what that could be, but then he realized that it was the golden light from his cleansed soul that couldn't be contained in his body so it was seeping through forming a halo behind his head.
He was confused why the Nascent-Soul experts he saw didn't have it but then he understood why. The reason that Nascent-Soul experts didn't have it was because they only cleansed the part of the black liquid from each of their particles but none of them have been cleansed fully.
And the second thing he noticed was the Qi in his surrounding, for the first time in his life he was able to see what Qi looked like and he observed it for a while, it looked similar to the spirit energy within his soul except that it moved much much more energetically.
It floated in the air he could see it in the wind, in the grass, and he even noticed that it was in his own body in a much larger concentration than it was in the outside world, that must be the case because of the many many Qi enriched materials he was fed as a child and even his own physical cultivation.
However what intrigued Wang Wei the most was the way it moved in the world, he could notice a type of pattern in its movements, it was as if it was dancing as if it was sentient. And in its movements he could sense a type of innocence as if it was the purest thing in the universe, it behaved like a newborn baby.
But then suddenly while he was observing the behavior of Qi, he got the impression of closeness with it, it rushed close to him as if it saw something alike to itself, and he realized why that was, when he cleansed his soul of that black filth, he became purer and therefore more alike to its purity.
Then he had an idea and he tried to communicate with it using his spirit sense. When he tried to do so he got the impression that it would listen to him, it felt as if he obtained some kind of authority over the Qi.
So then he tried guiding it by using his spirit sense to relay his will to it and he was surprised to find out that it was easy to do so, he succeeded in making the Qi move according to his commands very quickly.
He was amazed at this new ability, because of what it meant, only Nascent-Soul experts and experts above that realm had the ability to control Qi that didn't belong to them. It was this ability that made them so fearsome because they had access to a practically unlimited supply of Qi available to them.
Therefore they are able to use their techniques on an unimaginably vast scale, they could transform all of the Qi in the range of their spirit sense into Fire attribute Qi and create a sea of fire thousands of kilometers long, or they could transform it into Earth attribute Qi and create a meteor that is capable of wiping out mountains.
However, a Nascent-Soul expert's spirit sense was much stronger than Wang Wei's spirit sense, because of their strengthened soul. This meant that they could control much more Qi than him and could even overpower his control over the Qi, it was still an amazing ability to have that made him practically unrivaled below the Nascent-Soul realm.
But in order to do that he first had to experiment and learn to transform Qi into attribute Qi and to control the Qi effectively, so he immediately tried it.
He instructed the Qi in front of him to try to turn into Fire attribute Qi, and even though he succeeded he realized that it was very resistant to change its form, so instead of guiding it he had to impose his will onto it in order for it to turn into the Fire attribute Qi.
Since he had to impose his will on it, his soul was quickly drained of its strength and he could only create a fire the size of a small tree and even then he was very tired after doing so.
However Wang Wei had a hunch that the more he purified his soul the more the Qi would listen to him and therefore he might not even have to use his soul strength to impose his will on the Qi, it might just listen to him willingly.
With his current strength, he estimated that with the combination of physical cultivation together with his Buddhist cultivation he might be on par with extremely strong Golden-Core cultivators and if he were to only use his Buddhist cultivation he might be a match for peak Qi-Condensation cultivators.
However, if he wanted to compare himself with Nascent-Soul cultivators it was impossible for him to even approach them let alone harm them.
Wang Wei was already very satisfied with what abilities he already obtained but he wanted to see if he obtained the biggest ability of a Nascent-Soul realm cultivator, their ability to start comprehending Dao's. Because a Nascent-Soul expert's soul is so strong and their spirit sense covered an enormous area, they could start sensing the Great Dao and learning from it.
So without wasting one more second Wang Wei immediately started using his spirit sense in order to start sensing the Great Dao, but unfortunately, even though he could feel the presence of something mysterious in the world around him, it felt as if it was hidden from him by a veil.
Nevertheless, even if that was the case Wang Wei's intuition told him that if he successfully cleansed his entire soul that veil would be lifted and he would be able to come into contact with the Great Dao.
Wang Wei also wanted to try to see if he could use the signature ability of a Nascent-Soul realm expert, the ability to temporarily leave their body and explore the world with their strong soul.
Therefore he tried to do so straight away, his soul immediately opened its eyes as his body's eyes closed, and Wang Wei tried to leave his body in his soul form.
When he did so, he immediately noticed that the remaining hindrances in his soul were starting to get restless under the impact of the strong sunlight, and even though he successfully left his body, his instincts were screaming at him to immediately return or else the remaining black liquid is going to implode and take him with it.
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Therefore he didn't dare to delay and immediately returned to his body, by his estimation he could stay outside of his body for only ten minutes before the black liquid imploded and he died.
But he knew that that time is going to be extended each time he cleansed his soul again and he even estimated that he would be able to completely leave his body behind when his entire soul was cleansed.
However there was one more ability Wang Wei discovered before he finished exploring the changes in his body and soul, it was the ability to guide the Qi from the outside world into his body, therefore sustaining it instead of food and water.
This meant that Wang Wei basically had no need to eat or drink, and in combination with him cleansing the first hindrance, he wouldn't even want to.
Once he finished discovering and exploring all of his new abilities he decided to return back to the tribe, find out how much time has passed while he was in meditation, and see if there were any new changes.
However in order for Wang Wei to be able to go see how far they have advanced he first had to hide the golden halo around his head in order to blend in.
This turned out to be a bigger problem than he expected it to be, as he couldn't figure out the way to do so, therefore he once again entered meditation and started to try to create a technique to do so.
After an undetermined amount of time passed with him trying to create the technique with the help of the Heavenly Will, he finally succeeded in doing so.
The way he thought of hiding the glow from his soul was to guide the Qi from the outside world into the black space that his soul resided in, and then make the Qi gather around his soul in such vast quantities that it condensed into a cloud that obstructed the light.
Thankfully this technique doesn't require the Qi to use attributes, therefore, it didn't require any soul strength to maintain, it only required gently guiding the Qi, and while he was creating this technique he also thought of strengthening his body with non-attribute Qi from the surroundings passively.
So after finishing his meditation he gathered the Qi from the surrounding area and shoved it into his legs, once again as it was non attribute Qi it was quite easy to control, and he jumped out, this with the combination of his movement technique allowed him to reach much higher than before. As a matter of fact, he reached 5 kilometers into the sky.
While he was flying upwards he also got a brilliant idea, Wang Wei thought of a way to imitate the flight ability of Qi cultivators, the way he thought of was to transform the surrounding Qi into Wind attribute Qi and use it to propel himself any direction he wanted.
And seeing as he was as light as a leaf while using his movement technique, the amount of Wind attribute Qi he needed was minimal, and therefore the strain on his soul was also minimized.
He even estimated that he would be able to sustain the flight ability for an entire day before getting tired, as such he wasn't worried about falling at all and he even continued to fly upwards until he could feel the temperature getting too strong for him.
At this point, he was 100 kilometers in the sky and he even estimated that he was close to the dome of the higher realm, which is why the temperature was rising so rapidly, he was getting very close to the sun.
From this height, he could see the entire continent they were on, and even the other continents, unsurprisingly this higher realm was also in the form of a plane and as such he could see much further than if it was in the form of a planet.
This higher realm contained six continents and the continent they were currently on was in fact medium in size compared to the other ones.
However, as the other continents were too far he couldn't see them clearly but what he could see was what was on this continent.
What he saw shocked him, he saw many villages surrounding a gigantic city at the center of the continent, he remembered that that was the location he originally met the tribe and fought the giant snake demon.
The city itself looked as if it was from the middle ages from his previous life.
It was at that point that Wang Wei realized that his secluded meditation lasted for a very very long time, so he immediately set off towards the gigantic city.
It didn't take him long at all to reach the city using his flight technique when he arrived inside one of the villages close to the gigantic city, he immediately spread out his spirit sense and started observing the lives of the people, while he was walking leisurely inside the village.
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Inside the Sun family mansion
An elderly man that looked as if he was 50 years old was sitting at a table slowly drinking some tea talking to a boy that looked barely fifteen years old within the biggest house in the village.
"Chao'er [1], the time is fast approaching for you to continue the tradition of our family and go to the temple of the guardian god! There you shall learn his Heavenly teachings and become a protector of the human race or you shouldn't even bother returning!", the elderly man said with a stern tone.
"Yes father, I shall follow the traditions of my family and devote my life to becoming a protector and I shall not embarrass the family name!" replied the young boy with conviction evident in his voice.
However the man was still not convinced so he said with a bit of warmth seeping through his expression "Chao'er you must not fail, I have failed in becoming a protector and if you don't succeed our Sun family might lose the Imperial decree of ownership over this village! We might even, heavens forbid, be demoted to become a common family with no possibility of ever again becoming protectors!"
After hearing this the boy became worried but soon he steeled his expression and said "I promise father I will not fail!"
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After Wang Wei heard that conversation through his spirit sense he was confused as to what a protector was so he started listening in to other people's conversations, and soon he had his answer.
A protector was in fact a physical cultivator, the reason that they are called protectors was that they are assigned to villages to protect them from the demonic beasts and they were very famous as each of them had a very high status in the villages that they protected.
Also apparently in order to become a protector a person needed to first be indoctrinated into the order of the guardian god, the guardian god being him, and to be able to become protectors they must know the Buddhist teachings he imparted to them by heart, of course, they called them the teachings of Heaven.
And even though not many practiced what they learned, as the mortals were very aware of the abuse of power among the protectors, he was still extremely satisfied as to how Huang Dian handled things in his absence.
What he also learned was that only the strongest protectors also known as the Grand Protectors were worthy enough to protect the capital city.
Grand Protectors were mythical figures to the mortals that lived in villages and they were spoken of as if they were Immortals walking amongst the world.
To be fair to the normal mortal lifespan they might really seem immortal as the only cultivators worthy to bear the Grand Protector title were cultivators at the Organ-Tempering realm and they had a lifespan of 500 years.
There were even rumors that there were people stronger than Grand Protectors, but they were only rumors to the mortals living in the village.
However, there was one piece of information that surprised Wang Wei when he heard, it was that it was 200 years ago that he was last seen.
What didn't surprise him that much was that the person who was known as the emperor was in fact the descendant of Huang Dian known as Huang Xue, he was 100 years old and he was actually a Grand Protector.
He also overheard that Huang Xue recently became emperor after his father died of his lifespan getting expended, the highest cultivation realm he could reach with his talent was only the Muscle-Strengthening realm, and cultivators at that realm only had a lifespan of 200 years give or take a decade or two.
Wang Wei's control over his emotions was upgraded to a whole different level during the cleansing of his soul and the news that Huang Dian was dead didn't affect him at all, but he was intrigued with Huang Xue.
Therefore he immediately departed the village in order to go towards the city and start spreading the Buddhist cultivation technique.