15 A faint shimmer of light

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*Grunts*

Sieg was awakened by an intense throbbing sensation of his body, even though he doesn't have any visible wounds, his spirit was spent thus hurting him terribly. It had to be known that a cultivator's spirit is very frail. While body cultivation and spirit cultivation techniques does exists, they are incredibly rare. Since Sieg didn't have any of the said techniques, controlling a very dense amount of Spiritual Energy is a very hard task for him causing his spirit to be damaged.

As he opened his eyes, he saw that he was still inside the barren lands, well it's not proper for him to still call it barren lands after what he saw, so he replaced it by Inscription Lands from now on. Here he saw the six incriptions in front of him glowing with an intense yellow light, they were emitting some sort of an ancient aura and giving Sieg a strong sense of connection, that maybe because he was the one who revived them.

He also noticed that the feeling he got inside this Inscription Lands is somewhat different now. He felt a faint line connecting him and this place, the connection was very faint, almost unnoticable but he felt that this connection holds a certain use.

Sieg sat down and tried to recover. He closed his eyes but opened them in an instant, there was a surprised look in his face as he tried to recall something before he fainted.

"I heard a voice that said that it will give a mantra right?"

He then closed his eyes and tried to recall carefully. As he did, he was shocked because certain words appeared to his mind. As informations gushed out, the 'Ancient Heart Mantra' showed it's brilliance to him.

He was ecstatic. He didn't knew that he would be this lucky to have these sort of technique. He was literally jumping up and down because of joy. Heart Mantras are exactly a type of technique that falls in the category of spirit cultivating techniques and by the looks of it, he can tell that 'Ancient Heart Mantra' is a pretty high leveled one.

After some time of celebrating, he forced himself to calm down. He sat back down and reviewed the technique and digested it properties.

Spirit Cultivation. In this world, there exists different types of energies and 'Spiritual Energy' happens to be the one which is needed to cultivate the spirit.

After the 9 steps of Awakening, Ki refiners will a pillar made out of Ki and enter the the Foundation Establishment Realm, after which they will dissolve that pillar in the purest type of Ki and condense it to form a 'Colored Core', entering the Core Formation Realm and so on.

Reading the contents of the Ancient Heart Mantra, he realized that a cultivator's spirit can also be cultivated just like Ki refining.

Similar to Ki Refining, Spirit Cultivation needs to go through the 9 steps of awakening as well. And parts of the spirit will be awakened by the order of: soul, head, limbs, eyes, ears, nose, lips, touch and mind. After which, the spirit needed to commune to form a Niwan Palace which will be the home of the spirit, thus entering the Niwan Palace Realm which is divided into Early, Middle, Late and Peak rankings.

After the Niwan Palace Realm, the spirit then to enter a communion with an 'Ancestral Star' and form totems of spirits existed on those stars to enter Spirit Communion Realm. This realm is the counter part of Core Formation for Ki Refiners.

As Sieg learned of this, his mind was set into a frenzy, an overwhelming desire surfaced in his heart. It was like a huge door opened in front of his eyes and showed a completely new world. He forced himself to calm down and emptied his thought. He also weighed the advantages and disadvantages of going down this path.

'Ki Refining, Spirit Cultivation or both? If I only persue one then I can avoid wasting time and have a rather smooth path on my journey, Master is there to guide me anyway so there's nothing I shoud be afraid about.'

'But if I become a 'Dual Cultivator' then my path would be full of thorns. Honestly I don't have any confidence at all, and I also doubt that Master could help me specially now that he won't even show his shadow until I passed his trial. But if I do so, then I absolutely think that I can go even closer to the source of that calling.'

'I don't understand as to why I wanted to be so powerful. Is Power the one who's calling to me after all this time? Or a different thing? But the real question is should I answer it or not?'

He thought for quite sometime, he weighed his choices carefully because he knew that once he made a decision, there's no going back.

'You know what? Screw it! I'm gonna do it! If my path shall be filled with despair and challenges then it shall be so, according to master cultivation is already a defiance to the heavens, so what if I cultivated two right? I can tell that I'm not the first one my path either, if they could do it then I could as well. Okay! It's decided then!'

Sieg's perviously frowing brows relaxed, he once again emptied his thought and recalled the instructions for cultivating the 'Ancient Heart Mantra'.

Since it is a Mantra, cultivating it requires Sieg to chant different mantras repeatedly and gain enlightenment from these in order for him to progress. The deeper he understand the mantra the faster his cultivation would be. It would also depend on his understanding whether he encounters a bottleneck or not.

Sieg placed his tongue at the roof of his mouth, he cossed his legs like a bhuddist and his hands form a strange sign. The tip of his thumb touched the tip of his pointing finger, this also applies to the other hand. The back of his palms are elevated at least three inches above his legs.

Upon finishing his preparations, he started chanting the first few sentences of the mantra.

"A faint shimmer of light is all what my heart needed."

As soon as his voice fell, his body released a fluctuation that echoed for about three meters around him, the roaming Spritual Energies became slightly agitated, for the first time in thier existence, they felt a calling.

"Where does my light exists?"

Sieg breathed out the second line and he felt a floating feeling inside his body, he felt threads of spritual energy entering his body and looking for a place to settle down but it can't find any. As he felt this happening he immediately chanted the next line.

"Does my light hear me?"

As he chanted the third line, the spiritual energy inside of him calmed down and waited, obviously for the next chant of Sieg.

"It was the light of the day and the glimmer of the night. Sun and Moon chasing one after the other that my light was born and made it's existence known to me."

Then the Spritual Energy rotated inside his body, it was going slowly at first but the speed was continously picking up as time goes on. Sieg knew that he needed to chant every line of the first part so that the rotation would be finished so he decided to chant it after the 'Spiritual Energy' is already purified.

"It lifted me up to the skies, held my hand, touched my head and nestled in my crest."

These words fell and the pure spritual energy roamed inside Sieg's body, he held his breath as this happened and observed it until it gave him a sign that it needed the next chant to proceed.

"And then finally, as I opened my eyes, my light finally showed itself."

What happened next was unexpected for Sieg, the condensed Spritual Energy disappeared for a bit and he felt a strong sense pain in his mind. It was so intense that Sieg nearly fainted due to it. He was confused as to why he was feeling this type of pain when the whole process before it was smooth, so he instinctively moved the 'Spiritual Energy' and spat it out along with few mouthfulls of blood.

"What happened? Did I do something wrong? I didn't even do anything at all, the Spritual Energy was moving by itself."

He frowned and remembered what exactly happened, he also recalled the words he chanted and checked if he read words differently.

"The words I chanted were correct, so what was the problem?"

He went even further back and recalled the introduction about the mantra and the intructions for it, and then he finally saw where he went wrong.

"Damn I'm an idiot! I got overly excited and forgot that the 'Ancient Heart Mantra' relied on understanding! I needed to understand what the chants mean so that it can succeed! I really am an idiot!"

After finding out the reason why it failed, Sieg started pondering the meaning of the chants, he started line by line and tried to understand it first before trying again.

'A faint shimmer of light is what my heart needed. This is the first line, I totally ignored it but when I chanted this words, my body involuntarily released some fluctuations that agitated the surrounding Spritual Energies around me I'm sure. But why is that?'

Sieg pondered for the answer and after an hour of pondering he finally guessed what might be the answer.

'Calling! The first line if about calling for the for the Spiritual Energies around me! And since the energies heard a calling there would be a response for it which was the effect of the second line!'

'Does my light hear me? This line is a question not because it was just what the one who made the mantra felt like writing, but because it was asking for the 'Spiritual Energies' around him to answer the call! And since Spiritual Energies can't talk then they would answer it by action and allow themselves to be absorbed! How profound!'

Sieg's eyes were glittering in fascination and awe because of his realizations, just like before another huge door was opening itself before him and showed him a completely new world. He didn't stop and continued to find answers for the third line.

'It was the light of the day and the glimmer of the night. Sun and Moon chasing one after the other that my light was born and made it's existence known to me. As I remembered the Spritual Energies inside me was purified and flowed through my body on it's own. What does this mean then?'

Another hour passed and once again Sieg found the answer he was looking for.

'Rotation! Yes, yes that's it! Sun and Moon chasing one after the other, this refers to the Spiritual Energies inside of me rotating in attempt to purify themselves in their purest form that it resembles a light! Then what comes after purification is circulation which was established by the fourth line!'

'It lifted me up to the skies, held my hand, touched my head and nestled in my crest. The pure Spiritual Energy inside me divided it self and circulated on my legs, feet, toes, shoulders, arms, hands, fingers, neck face and my hair follicles and went back to my stomach and stayed there, waiting for me to chant the last line.'

'And then finally, as I opened my eyes, my light finally showed itself. Now this is the most confusing. What exactly does this means? Do I need to open my eyes after I chant this or what?'

Sieg pondered over and over again, he refused to even make a move, not until he solve this predicament of his. And for the third time, another hour passed but unfortunately Sieg can't solve this riddle.

His body was aching due to the way he sat and his mind was exhausted because of constant pondering but even though this was the case, he refused to move, which shows his dedication.

Seemingly rewarding Sieg for his persistence, a fleeting thought passed through his mind.

'Cultivators have three eyes right?'