Naath arrived at the family estate carrying Rhyyth on his shoulder gathering the attention of the family guards. The two of them guarding the entrance to the estate groaned internally, it seemed like ever since Naath regained his past memories things had gotten chaotic. They were used to peaceful days where at most they stopped a thief running by the gate every once in a great while. Now it seemed like at least every week Naath did something newsworthy. Now he was carrying a half dead kid around his own age on his shoulder and into the estate. The guards bowed politely to Naath and let him pass but one of them ran into the house after to get Naaths’s mother and make a report.
When she heard the news she shook her head and slowly stood up and headed towards the guest room where Naath had laid Rhyyth down on the bed. Naath was waiting on a nearby chair for his mother who he knew was coming, thanks to King he now always had the echo soul on, it was to a point where even while he was asleep he was unconsciously aware of his surroundings because it was active. When she walked in she just looked at Naath with a look that was exasperated and wanted an explanation.
Naath smiled wryly and explained what happened at the library and continued. “So mom, I was at the very least going to let him stay here and repay him for guarding me with some good quality medical care. When he wakes up I'm going to ask him about his background and see if we can help his family in some way. Every single injury he has is from standing between me and a group of people who wanted to harm me. While I didn’t need the protection, it stands that he went this far to help me, a total stranger. This is a kind of debt and I plan to repay it.”
His mother slowly started to smile as she heard Naath’s reasoning and nodded her head. “Naath your father and I are proud to have a son like you. That sounds like a fine plan. I will leave you to watch over him since this is your debt to repay. Ah right we have a meeting with the Zhang family in a week, so try to have your schedule open for them.”
Naath nodded and said “it should take me a few days to cultivate my soul to an appropriate level and start to form my true treasure. As long as I’m not at a critical juncture in my cultivation I will be there for the meeting, excuse me in advance if I end up late or missing it.”
He took a nearby piece of paper and wrote down the whirlwind arts he wrote down the martial arts first. After that he wrote down the cultivation method part of it for the family. He handed it to his mother and asked her to teach the cultivation method to the family members who used a wind attribute. After that Naath left the room and went to his own to enter closed door cultivation in order to refine his soul energy. Apparently the library wasn't as peaceful as he had hoped and home was the next best thing. He sat down cross legged on the bed and closed his eyes taking deep breaths in through his nose and out through his mouth.
Soon he entered the state of nothing and slowly began to refine his soul energy once more and in this process began to live through all of his past memories again. This time was different from his training with elder Gui, now he was living it through much slower. He was meticulously going over each and every memory from his past lives and memories. He hoped it would help him to comprehend something he had not yet understood about the true void. He also used it as an opportunity to reflect on himself and slowly rethink some theories and comprehensions he had before.
His souls slowly began to rotate as he fell into his own memories and the soul energy began to go to the core soul and be refined. Time began to pass slowly but Naath became so focused on refining his soul energy and going through his memories he hadn't even noticed. After an hour the speed slowly got back to what it was at the library, when it reached this point again the seed inside of Naath’s true void soul began to shake ever so slightly. It was almost imperceptible like a pebble on a trail moving when one stepped near it. Alchemy was keenly aware of it though and he was shaken when he noticed. He began to closely observe the seed wondering what was happening.
After two more hours he got his answer, the seed was syphoning a little bit of the refined soul energy from Naath and then converting it into an even more pure form of true void energy for each soul. The conversion rate wasn't perfect, the seed seemed to keep a third of all of the energy it sucked in. As time went by and Naath’s souls began to rotate faster and faster the mark on his forehead became resplendent and began to move as well. The seed began to take in more and more energy as this happened as well, it was shaking visibly now. Finally after a full 12 hours a light cracking noise rang out through Naath’s souls.
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Small black colored tips of roots appeared and the seed began to slowly take root. These roots grew incredibly quickly every 30 minutes they seemed to grow a full inch in length. After three hours the seed had 9 little roots that were starting to wrap around Naath’s central soul. The roots look like they are protecting the most delicate thing imaginable like a mother carefully holding her newborn child. Once the roots had completely sealed and wrapped around Naath’s core soul the began to spread through his true void soul. Now a small sprout also came out with transparent bark and flesh. One could see the white veins of sap flowing all through it.
The little sprout grew slowly compared to the roots only growing an inch for every 2 hours. After 12 hours of meditation Naaths souls seemed to have reached some kind of limit and their speed in rotating stabilized. The growth of the sapling suddenly doubled and the roots were now spreading out at a rate visible to the naked eye. They were growing out along the channels of true nothing and taking root in Naath’s other three souls with three roots in each. The sprout was now a small sapling roughly six inches tall and had its first grey colored leaf that pulled in Naaths soul energy at an absolutely insane rate. His soul energy began to be purified at an astounding rate. Despite this Naath was still leisurely strolling through his memories at the same rate as before.
Alchemy couldn't look away even if he wanted to at this point he was completely mesmerised by what he was seeing. This little sapling seemed to have all the properties of true void and Alchemy couldn't help but wonder where on earth Naath had gotten it from. Especially because it seemed to have a very symbiotic relationship with Naath’s soul and true void arts! The rune paused in thought and wondered if Naath even needed to form his true treasure, this void tree seemed to be part of his soul so couldn't Naath simply carve his true treasure from the tree? Naath was completely unaware of this and was currently reliving his time in the ten thousand beast forest he was thrown into. He recalled that his true void arts seemed to have a lot of untapped potential that he couldn't tap into for some reason.
He was at the point where he woke from meditation and had absorbed an entire tree by accident. This made him start to contemplate things and recall the feeling he had while absorbing it. Slowly his comprehension of the true void arts grew deeper, as this happened his souls sped up every so slightly. After a full 24 hours the sapling had grown into a small tree with a handful of leaves. Each one taking in and refining an obscene amount of Naath’s soul energy and then releasing it out to the appropriate soul. At this point a tiny ringing sound rang out and Alchemy lost his focus on the sapling looking at the source.
Naath had formed a small soul crystal that was rapidly growing in size. It was a crystal of pure white untainted by any impurities in this world, the purest essence of creation given form. Soon the crystal took up the entirety of Naath’s creation soul. After this happened it started to compress on itself and became a small sphere of creation soul crystal. At this point the true void sapling stopped sending out energy to the creation soul and also stopped taking energy in, wrapping its roots around this sphere. Once it stopped, energy came from Naath’s attractive soul, blacker than anything in the world and untouched by light. In fact if any light came into contact it would be swallowed entirely becoming part of the darkness.
The same cycle continued on until a sphere of attraction soul crystal was formed in Naath’s attraction soul. It was much smaller and much denser than the creation soul, only taking up a tenth of the space in the attraction soul. After this the cycle continued and energy was pulled from the soul of destruction. It was a hazy grey energy that made one's eyes itch just by observing it. If one looked for too long they would find their eyes beginning to bleed eventually they would fall unconscious bleeding from the five orifices. The sapling continued to grow and Naath continued to pour over his memories and learn.
Like this another 24 hours passed by swiftly and Naath's soul of destruction had compressed a large crystal as well which the tree wrapped its roots around. Finally the soul of nothingness began to funnel into Naath’s central soul and be refined by the true void sapling. The sapling was now more of a small tree and had a full array of leaves at the end of its five branches. It was a true void tree now and was helping Naath refine his soul energy to an unprecedented clarity. When everything was settled Naath had four masses of soul crystals one in each of his soul and he had poured over his memories nine times over. His soul crystals began to ripple and it seemed like it was time for their colors to be revealed. However the mark on Naath’s forehead took in all of the scanning energy of the heavens and concealed Naath’s souls. This was the gift the true void had given him to hide from the heavens. At least for now.
Ultimately the color of the crystals didn’t change at all and remained their pure colors or lack thereof. Naath slowly opened his eyes, blinking a few times, he felt much clearer than before and had regained his past soul cultivation with a much larger and much more stable foundation. He smiled and calculated the time he was in cultivation for it seemed he still had a day before the meeting would begin. He decided to hold off on forming his true treasure though and talk with the family about a few things.