After resting his sore body for a day Naath joined into the construction of his bar personally. It took him a full 3 days working with everyone to put up his new establishment. Once the finishing touches were done with it he went over to check on the still for the moonshine to find that it had only made a single barrel in these three days. Grumbling slightly be rolled the barrel over to his bar and placed it behind the counter where he put a tap into it with a hammer. After everything was said and done he looked at the bar and smiled happily at it with the rest of his faction. Giving it one final look over and finding no issues, Naath decided it was time to rest for a bit and do some soul cultivation finally.
Naath had always wanted to cultivate while on earth, but there was simply no martial energy to do so. Not only that but his body there had no dantian and there was no way in hell the bones of a human from Earth could handle bodily cultivation. He hadn’t even figured out his True Void Arts fully there so that was out too. Now that he could actually cultivate he found the act of doing so to be enjoyable and even relaxing. If others were to know this they would call him a crazed fanatic. But this was how Naath enjoyed himself in this world, so he went into his own house, pulled out his stump and sat down to start cultivating.
Once he sat down, he started to operate the empty soul method like King had taught him in order to purify and expand his own soul. He let the energy of creation blossom from the energy of nothing that was ever present in his soul sea. As the energy of creation burst forwards a rainbow of dozens of colors and shades burst out in Naaths soul sea. These were the colors of the various types of energies Naath had absorbed so far other than the True Void Energies. As these energies grew more and more abundant they moved and collided with each other and eventually all gathered at a single location as the energy of attraction exploded inwards.
With the energy of attraction running and filling his soul sea, other energies were drawn into it from Naaths body. Eventually all of these energies gathering together caused them to start decaying as the energy of destruction was born. Through this energy all impurities were slowly removed and dissolved. As this happened Naath noticed he was able to focus more clearly on the energies and felt like his mind was wandering less. After his first cycle of the empty soul method was complete King spoke up though.
“Young master, you need to focus on the impurities and isolate them as best you can here. Don’t just passively let your energy of destruction break them away. Imagine the impurities as strings and slowly try to unwind those strings. This way is far more effective and efficient when it comes to purifying soul energy then what you’re doing right now.”
Naath nodded his head took a deep calming breath and then redoubled his focus onto his soul sea, this time actively looking for and gathering impurities to form strings. Once he reached the creation stage, he marked the strings with light energy so that they would be easily visible later. Then, he moved on to the attraction and eventually destruction stage. Once at the destruction stage he began guiding the energy of destruction to the strings and actively erasing individual threads.
After a few hours, Naath had managed to destroy one of the strings entirely, but he was completely exhausted from the effort of it. He looked at the other ones and let out a groan, he still had 11 strings to destroy! Still, after just destroying one, he felt his focus sharpen and as if his thoughts were clearer than before. But at the same time now that his focus was sharpened, he noticed that there were more impurities in his soul sea than he could sense before! Realizing this, Naath let out an annoyed breath and asked.
“King, This isn’t going to be one of those the more progress I make the more progress I realize I still need to make situations, is it?”
“Ah, ahem. Yes young master it unfortunately is, most people end up having about 200 impurity strings all about 6 centimeters long. Most people can only sense two or three at first so you manifesting a dozen is already pretty good. It’s not setting any records, which is a big change for you. Still it can be regarded as a genius level of talent. But the more of these strings you dissolve and remove, the easier it is to remove them. The last 50 or so normally only take a few days to resolve, whereas the first 150 take years most of the time.
On this front you are breaking record young master, the energy of destruction really is unparalleled in this field it would seem. It shouldn’t take you more than a week to fully purify our soul, which is rather astounding, but at this point young master I’m numb to these kind of miracles occurring with you. Since it wont take you long to purify your soul why don’t you just do it all in one go?”
Naath nodded his head and smiled as he once more redoubled his focus and began to work on destroying these strings. As he did he also noticed that the energy in his soul seemed to flow better and a thought occurred to him so he asked another question.
“King, how do these impurities stop my soul from condensing to the gas, liquid, solid and universal forms?”
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“Ah, that’s easy, these impurities are essentially stray thoughts. These stray thoughts lead to disharmony in the energy in your soul sea. This disharmony leads to the energies conflicting even if only slightly. Due to this conflict the energy can never properly settle to condense and wont be thick enough. It’s like how if you have adhd and try to focus on just one task tons of distracting thoughts pop up and lead to you being unable to complete the task without great effort. If your soul cant focus entirely it cant condense properly.”
Hearing this Naath nodded his head and began to once more clear out these impure threads in his soul sea. After destroying the first dozen threads, Naath noticed a distinct change in his soul sea. It was now a hazy mist almost like thick fog. Seeing this he was ecstatic, this meant that now he could use his soul energy in order to make basic formations and start on the path to actually being a soul master! Thinking up to this point Naath paused and realized something. What profession of soul mastery did he want to go into?
Thinking of this Naath froze entirely and stopped his soul cultivation, he needed to know exactly what path he wanted to take as a soul master if he really wanted to move forwards.
“Uh, hey king, what kind of professions are there for soul masters? I just realized I never picked a direction to go with all of this.”
“Young master, there are too many to even count… Everything you can think of from formations to cooking or cleaning can be made into something you enhance with soul arts. It really comes down to what you want to do. The only thing a soul master really needs is there own runic alphabet to work with, or to use a centralized one. That will come later though. Honestly, I have no idea how to even remotely guide what path you should take young master. There is simply too much you can do. My best advice is think about where your passions lie.”
Naath frowned slightly and thought over his life on Earth and the life he has lived through right now. After thinking for a long time he realized he had three big things he enjoyed doing. On earth he loved cooking so he was definitely doing that. Secondly he had always wanted to try alchemy to understand what all the fuss was about in the web novels. Lastly, he wanted to be able to make physical objects with his soul energy which meant walking the path of formations. Having thought it over again and again he confirmed what he wanted to do and told King who responded.
“Well, young master, I went with formation personally so I can really only help in that field, I do know a little bit of alchemy but not much. You will have to find brother Alchemy to guide you for that as for cooking, we will have to find brother Chef. Now then, enough with these distractions! You need to purify your soul, as fast as you can do it, I recommend you spend as much time as it takes for you to reach the solid soul level.”
Naath nodded his head, slapped his cheeks and focused himself entirely to purifying his soul energy for the next seven days. Finally at the end of these seven days, uneventfully Naath had reached the solid soul level. When he was finally done with this, he got up from his tree stump and walked out to the empty spirits bar. It was finally time to open it’s doors and announce to the sect that he had opened one that ran on contribution points! In the time he had been in seclusion working on his soul sea, another three barrels of moonshine had been produced too.
Hearing that the infamous True Void faction who was known for there ruthless torture method and god like talented leader it didn’t even take an hour after the news was spread out for people to show up. What caught everyone off guard though was the notice that only strong drinkers should come because the alcohol would put most people on their ass. Once people started to show up and see the prices, murmurs began to spread. There were two prices listed, one for gold taels and one for merit points, but the merit point price would get you double the amount.
It was an obvious way to get people to spend merit points and it took a while for anyone in the crowd that showed up to order a drink. Eventually a clearly heavy drinker walked up and asked.
“What kind of hic wine is moonshine?”
Hearing this Naaths face soured a little and he said.
“What do you mean what kind of wine is it? There are other kinds of alcohol you know, why does it all have to be wine or shit beer used for sailing?”
“Ah a hic new kind of alcohol? I’ll try some!”
With that the sect disciple payed with a merit point for a big glass. Once it was given to him he immediately took a massive swig of the drink. As soon as he did he slammed the cup down onto the counter and took a deep breath. Naath was glad he went for the wooden cups not glass or that one would have shattered. Once the man stopped huffing he swore out loud.
“Fuck me! That stuff burns on the way down! Good flavor though, did you use raspberries? Whew, I need to sip this but I could hic hic get hooked on this stuff.”
Everyone in the crowd seeing this infamous drinker praise it so much made them all move in and decide to spend the merit points to buy some. It didn’t take long for the small supply of moonshine in the empty spirits bar to run dry. At the end they had about a thousand merit points to spend for the faction! Seeing this Naath smiled and thought to himself.
‘Ah yes, people finding a new alcohol that for some reason just doesn’t exist inside of any cultivation novel! I get it, wine can encompass the dao or whatever, but seriously why no other good alcohol? Well, whatever I’ve brought it to this world now. Next up I’ll start making some vinegars and selling those. I am glad I fell in love with vinegar so much in my last life too, otherwise I’d have no fucking idea how to make alcohol at all.
Now then, what to do with these merit points? I don’t need them much myself right now since I’m elder Gui’s disciple… What about the True Void Faction? I could buy them some cultivation methods, maybe just some resources? Wait… aren’t I the only person on this entire useless rock who knows about compressing energy in their body to improve my cultivation? Why don’t I just give them some cultivation methods I came up with before the True Void Arts and teach them how to properly cultivate, then get them some resources? Yeah, okay, plan made! I’ll have to arrange the meeting.’