DISCOVERY

Ren Qian groaned in pain when he woke up. He felt pain all over him. He then began to recall why he had fallen unconscious. After he had seen the golden energy within the formless energy, he felt oddly familiar. But when he tried to recall, he got a painful sensation in his head and his vision blackened. But, there was one thing that he was confused about. Before his vision completely left him, he saw the back of a woman who had the same golden energy in her hand and that emotion he felt, was one of affection.

This clouded his mind even further. He felt like he was suddenly thrown into a deep abyss with no way of leaving.

He had many questions before and now, he had even more.

But there were two things he was sure of now; he definitely had a past life and he could unlock his memories by seeing familiar things, like that golden energy for instance. However, when he saw that he was surrounded by a green scenery dense in soul energy, all of his thoughts halted.

'What is this place? How did I get to this forest? Am I completely dead now?', these were the clueless soul's thoughts when he looked around.

He tried to touch the energy and surprisingly, there was no resistance like when he touched the darkness in the evil baby soul's domain.

Suddenly thinking of the evil soul, he was reminded of the formless energy that ad been refined by him.

"Hmm? Where is it?", Ren Qian began to move around, in search of the formless energy. The moment he moved, he felt an entity watching him.

He turned around in confusion but he saw nothing.

He continued walking on a particular path in hopes of getting out of the forest and finding out how he could get back to the evil soul's domain.

However, he seemed to be going on and on in circles, making him exasperated.

Then a crazy idea popped into his mind.

At least he found it crazy.

If he could 'see' the soul energy within him, he might be able to get a rough idea as to how he could use it.

So, he began to try and search within his soul for soul energy.

He sat on a branch and ironically, he didn't fall through.

This greatly surprised him.

However, he quickly dispelled his thoughts.

This was no time to have irrelevant thoughts.

'I have to get out of here and find that ball of energy'.

With this thought, he steeled his mind and closed his eyes in deep focus, desperate to get out of the unfamiliar place.

He entered a deep state of mind. Any passerby would have seen him as a dead man.

On the outside, he looked still and calm.

While on the inside, he felt himself roaming in a vast sky.

'Hmm? Another teleportation?', he thought.

But when he looked down from the sky, he could see five islands of different colors, fiery red, crystal clear, black, white, surrounding another bigger island which was golden white.

The five islands were connected to the one in the middle, supplying it with energy through the connectors.

Ren Qian was mesmerized. He didn't know such a thing existed within his body.

Then, he thought, if there is such a big place full of energy, why can't I use it?'

Unfortunately, he might never get an answer to this question until he regained all of his memories.

This was his spirit root.

Before he got teleported, he was a Sword Mortal.

Sword Mortals had the ability to carry the disposition of a sword; sharp and unrelenting.

However, one's true power did not depend on your cultivation, but your cultivation technique.

Ren Qian had, by all means, the best cultivation technique from Ren Jingjing.

This cultivation technique, the Advanced Rootform Technique gave im a strong foothold in cultivation.

However, there was another use of the technique.

When one's soul was severed from his body, their spirit root would reside in his soul and they could cultivate their souls until they found a suitable body to permanently reside in. It was quite common to cultivate the soul, but it was nigh impossible to cultivate the soul outside the body.

The Advanced Rootform Technique had such an advantage but since not many knew about it, this 'fact' stayed that way for hundreds and thousands of years.

'Suddenly, Ren Qian thought, 'Where do these islands get their energy from?'

With this thought, he didn't know he had opened the door to soul cultivation.

Outside his soul, streams of green-colored energy rapidly gathered around him.

Meanwhile, Ren Qian's desperate attempts to find soul energy proved futile. However, he was quite satisfied with his findings.

When he opened his eyes and saw green colored energy circling around him, he was taken aback, however, his gut feeling tld him it had something to do with the islands.

He looked carefully at the green energy but he could not find any anomaly.

He looked at the surroundings and the dense green forest was nowhere to be seen. It had turned into a bunch of shriveled plants.

Ren Qian was suddenly struck by an epiphany.

This meant the energy was sapped from th surroundings.

He then began to study the green energy. The closer he looked, the more familiar he felt. Tis made him joyous because, it seemed his past life was closely linked to this energy.

Subconsciously, he began absorbing the energy.

Ren Qian was in dismay, seeing the energy enter into his soul.

What exactly was gong on?

Before he could process his thoughts, he felt a peculiarity.

He had thought that the energy would go straight to the green island in his soul since it was green.

However, the energy took a certain path within his soul. He felt it curse through him and every inch of his soul experienced a tingling sensation.

Something told him he needed to memorise the path of the energy so he closed his eyes and began to 'follow' the pathway.

It first pushed though vessel-like structures within his hand then all through to his head and finally down to his legs.

This circulation went on for about five times.

And though it seemed easy, the path along which the energy travelled was clogged with impurities and it had to be purged.

After the five circulations, the green energy became golden white and flew into the island.

It went on till the energy was completely refined.

However, he didn't feel any different like he had expected.

He looked around for anything else but since he didn't find anything of importance to him, he jumped through the crack that had appeared on the land for some reason, betting it all on fate.

Thankfully, he succeeded in getting away by using that crack.

He found the evil baby's domain had diminished slightly and was replaced by a spherical body.

Looking closely, a world could be seen within that body and surprisingly, when he looked through, his eyes widened.

It was the same place he had been kept for hours, where he had discovered the green energy.

Ren Qian began searching for the evil baby but didn't find him.

He flew over to the other side and he felt surprisingly lighter than he used to be.

There was a smiling boy sitting in a chair made out of golden energy.

'Who is this?'

Ren Qian thought.

He drew closer to the boy and he asked, 'Who are you?"

The little boy turned his attention from the waterfall to him and frowned, ignoring him.

This made Ren Qian feel strange.

He reframed his question, "Umm..sorry. Could you lead me to the baby that used to be here? "

The little bot was quiet for some time before he turned and bared his now slightly developed fangs.

This shocked Ren Qian.

He knew what that meant.

This little boy was the same baby.

'Does this mean a long time has passed since I got lost in that place'

Ren Qian still could not believe it. He needed to speak to evil baby to know more about the situation.

He left that domain and flew closer to the dark domain.

He charged through and he was subconsciously absorbing a part of the darkness.

He didn't react so much this time. He stopped to closehis eyes and fully absorb the energy by circulating it.

Soon enough, a stong gust of energy moved rapidly towards him. He continuously absorbed the energy, not caring about its implication since he had seen a black island within him.

He then began to feel strength in him and he felt slightly more tangible than before.

So, the first soul cultivator rose within the body of a kid in the realm of vampires.

He then heard a loud bellow, 'Who dares to draw my soul energy?"

'Evil baby? Why does his voice feel deeper than his usual voice?'

Ren Qian came out of his cultivation after thatvthught.

A boy came from the shadows.

His face looked scarred on one side and smooth on the other side. Both his eyes were blood-red.

When he saw the 'culprit'. He was about to charge straight at him , but when he saw his face,

"Silly boy?", he called out , this time he was speaking.

Ren Qian smiled, "It seems you have forgotten me".

The evil baby quickly dispelled his attack and went closer to him to make sure it wasn't an illusion.

"I thought you had died in the new soul's domain", the little boy concealed the happiness in his eyes and spoke calmly.

"New soul's domain?", Ren Qian said out loud.

So that was where he was.

Ren Qian came to the realization that the energy he had been tasked to be protect had run rampant in the host's body.

Another thing he found out was that time moved extremely slowly in the new energy's domain.

He looked apologetically at the evil baby, (now a boy)

If he had not lost consciousness, maybe all of this wouldn't have happened, and things would not have escalated to this level.

The boy could naturally guess Ren Qian's thoughts so he said, "Silly boy, you are not at fault. It was bound to happen."

Ren Qian suddenly looked up at the boy,

"So, what is your name?"

He snorted, "You mean the host's name?"

Ren Qian nodded eagerly, waiting t hear what name had been given to the host.

"His name is Dimitri, named after his great-grandfather."

"How do you know that?", Ren Qian asked.

"I just know. Now, keep quiet and make sure you do everything quietly. I need rest."

Ren Qian nodded and when the boy disappeared, he began to absorb the surrounding energy whose attributes he had affinities to.

Meanwhile, deep within the domain, the little boy who was about to sleep on the shadow bed suddenly became highly alert.

'How can he absorb my demonic energy so fast? Wait, how is he even absorbing it?'

Absorbing demonic energy required a specific technique that extremely few people knew about.

In addition to that, from his knowledge of demonic energy, human souls could not absorb or use demonic energy but this…this was simply unbelievable.

'It seemed he had gained a lot from being stuck in that domain,huh', the boy thought.

He thought that Ren Qian might have stumbled upon a demonic technique in that domain.

But, on second thoughts, such techniques were coveted treasures and it was impossible to find it lying down somewhere.

Then, he made a conjecture in his mind, albeit uncertain of it.

There were two categories of people who could absorb demonic energy;

Demon souls like him or The Chosen.

The Chosen were special categories of people who were favored by nature and the heavens.

"Is he a Chosen?"

He didn't know but he was going to slowly find out.

So, just like that, Ren Qian left a demonic soul pondering over who exactly he was.