Reaper Of The Martial World 37 Forever And Always 1

Dyon smiled holding Madeleine in his arms.

What would I do without your smart mouth

Drawing me in, and you kicking me out

Got my head spinning, no kidding, I can't pin you down

What's going on in that beautiful mind

I'm on your magical mystery ride

And I'm so dizzy, don't know what hit me, but I'll be alright

---

Madeleine trembled. The emotion in Dyon's voice, it felt so clear.

"This is actually a song from the human world from an artist called John Legend. He obviously has no cultivation, but he can still make people feel indescribable pain and love to the point of tears. Why? Because the best instrument you have access to is your body. Nothing connects with what you want to convey more than your voice. You've been communicating with it since you were born. Whether they were gurgles or cries and now that you can use it to its fullest extent, think about how much it would amplify your will of music. Cultivation will always cap you at the 9th level of a will, but, I've come to understand that when you can find the root of a will, its most perfect form… you can make that will emit power comparable to an intent."

Madeleine sat in a state of thought for a while, partly to wait for the tears in her eyes to stop from the song and partly because it seemed that whenever she spoke about cultivation with Dyon, she would reach a new level of enlightenment.

"How'd you figure that out?"

"I must have read hundreds of thousands of books on cultivation by now. Some of them mentioned a state of understanding of wills and intents that surpa.s.s a surface understanding. I didn't understand what it meant initially, but, the human world appreciates vocal music to a much higher extent than the martial world does, so while I was trying it out one day, my musical will evolved. So, I came to understand that a state of oneness with your will can come once you've understood the essence of what the will was created for and what medium maximizes it."

Madeleine smiled, "my master would bow down to you if you explained this to her, no matter how you try to play it off as simple."

Dyon laughed, "if I wasn't at least this amazing, would I be worthy of you?"

Madeleine giggled, "at least you understand."

**

Madeleine had fallen asleep while leaning on Dyon. The trip back was a long one, so Dyon was looking up at the sky in thought.

'I have so many cultivation techniques I can choose from, but I can't seem to decide on just one…'

The truth was the cultivation was entirely too complex for most people. Much like arrays and alchemy, there comes a point when you realize that everything in cultivation is connected. However, when you come to realize this, it only increases your confusion. Almost as if being ignorant to that fact would make everything easier on you.

For example, when Dyon was reading on body cultivation and energy cultivation, he was hard-pressed to understand the difference between them. This was because energy cultivation begins with body refinement, and the body must get stronger in order to accommodate higher level energies as your cultivation improves. But, if you need to improve your body to cultivate energy, then where is the line of difference between body and energy cultivation? It just seemed as though everything was connected to the point where understanding was impossible.

And if that didn't make matters bad enough, you also had to include soul cultivation in the mix, while also taking into account that you need a stronger body to accommodate a stronger soul.

However, after reading so many books, Dyon had begun to piece together what was actually going on. Energy and Soul cultivation use the body as a container, diverting energy from themselves to strengthen the body. What this unfortunately results in is a relatively weakened state of the resultant soul or energy cultivation. Dyon had come to this understanding when his master fused the 2 drops of essence blood with him. Although he was nowhere near acc.u.mulating 100%, his body's power had improved significantly. This lead to his soul power increasing along with it. Which meant his soul had finally stopped diverting its power.

Originally, Dyon had a.s.sumed this increase in soul strength was due to a tempering of his will. For example, after his near death at the hands of Darius, his soul strength had increased, so Dyon couldn't help but link the two. However, that was a symptom and not the cause. The truth was that Dyon's innate soul strength had already far surpa.s.sed any normal human's who had not soul cultivated, because of his innate aurora. However, that soul strength was boxed in and unable to fully manifest itself. Feeling its life in peril, the soul had no choice but to give up some of its energy to power Dyon's body so that it could expand.

When Dyon had powered up his body via external means, his soul was finally able to take back what it had spent and manifest its peak 3rd stage innate level. This may not seem like much, but it's near impossible to find someone with an innate soul strength of the first stage as the innate level of most wouldn't be comparable to a low-level foundation stage fighter. In fact, only clans that specialize in soul type techniques such as the Ragnor auxiliary clan: Saeclum, would have a small percentage of geniuses who reached this level before even cultivating. The fact Dyon had an innate soul strength at the peak of the 3rd stage which would be comparable to a mid level meridian formation expert, was unprecedented in the history of the martial world.

But, now that Dyon's innate soul strength had manifested to its full abilities, Dyon would need a soul cultivation technique to improve it. Before, he had a.s.sumed it would just continue strengthening, but he then found out that for it to strengthen any more, he would have to first reach that level in energy cultivation before his soul improved any more. Dyon obviously didn't like the idea of slowing his cultivation down like that because there was no benefit to it unlike with energy cultivation.

For soul cultivation, Dyon wasn't too worried. What technique could be better than an ancient G.o.d sect's that specialized in the soul due to their mastery in array alchemy? In addition, unlike energy and body cultivation, soul cultivating only had a single method: masochism. Soul cultivating required heart rending pain. To improve, the soul needed to be constantly torn apart and mended. They were only separated by the levels of pain you were willing to endure: common, earth, heaven and divine. In a sick twist of fate, the best technique also required the most pain. The reason being that only the best techniques can completely tear the soul into its most minute bits which would result in not only a purer, but also a tougher and stronger soul.

Dyon, not wanting to do anything by half measures, had chosen the divine soul cultivating technique: Celestial Deer's Rend.

The issue, though, wasn't his soul cultivation, it was separating his body and energy cultivating. Energy cultivation techniques were as plentiful as the stars in the sky, but the issue was that there were so many paths to take, and yet, none of those paths seemed perfect, even among the cultivation techniques of the ancient G.o.d clan. As for body cultivation, the Celestial Deer Sect had only a few, and they were all subpar. None were above the earth level which made Dyon feel a bit bitter, but he had to accept it. Not only were those who understood the deviations between energy and body rare, the ones willing to deviate time into forming good techniques for the body were even fewer.