Consuming Earths, Devouring Skies

The sensation of omnipresence, no matter how limited, was extraordinary to anyone. Yan Zaizen, like many cultivators of his city, did not practice Soul Cultivation for many reasons. Yet, he possessed spiritual sense. Spiritual sense maintains a direct connection while transmitting the information to the mind in real-time. This would give one an often mistaken sensation like their five sensory perceptions have been enhanced but in truth, it only gives that impression.

However, Soul Cultivation required specific materials or soul-attributed essence. Unlike standard essence liquid or crystals, which utilizes the world's all-present and varied essences to cultivate qi, Soul Cultivation's soul-attributed essence was far rarer and more difficult to obtain.

If you had a variant soul, then cultivating the soul typically had other requirements that could be filled rather than soul-attributed essence. Unfortunately, he did not possess one - at least to his knowledge.

So one can imagine his bewilderment.

The angry wasp didn't seem to forget its intentions as it dived towards Yan Zaizen with fury, little did Yan Zaizen know that when he ran earlier, he had almost stomped this little wasp to death. However, when he went unconscious and started glowing with an unknown glow, the wasp turned tail and ran without even conceiving the notion of revenge. Then, Yan Zaizen woke up and the wasp had found his enemy once more. Unlike before, he didn't have the black light surrounding him, thus it decided to strike!

Unfortunately for the wasp, due to Yan Zaizen's enhanced perception and current cultivation, it was far from being Yan Zaizen's match. A wave of the hand and a surge of Qi later left the wasp without its life.

"Incredible!" Still shocked by his discovery, he couldn't help but direct his gaze to the Meteor Ring. Was it because of this? Being unfamiliar with the concept of Soul Cultivation, he didn't know how much he'd progressed, but he could actively sense his surroundings of up to one hundred meters around, and passively feel the surroundings of about three to four meters. If he focused in a single direction, even reaching five hundred meters was possible!

Unfortunately, only grass and hills were around and no pretty girls, otherwise he'd hope to use this new perception for...better things. However, he fully intends to do so when he returns. A mischievous grin couldn't help but form on his face.

An idea formed in his little head after a while. Perhaps...

He sent his newly acquired Spiritual Sense into the ring, and suddenly felt that his surroundings were no longer filled with just grass and hills, but a myriad of colorful and random assortment of items. It was like his perception was split, one outside and one inside the ring. His soul form, a characteristic that only Soul Cultivators possess, seemed to take shape inside the ring. Soul Forms is classified as the body of your soul and determines its structure, characteristics, and status of your soul. Seeing his soul form, he felt odd.

He was like a thin light. There was no silhouette of himself, but more so just a thin, squiggly line of light. He could see around the inside of the ring and even move at almost unsurpassable speeds inside, but it felt a little underwhelming being a line of light. Was this his soul? He'd never seen storage ring where one can send their soul into. Most storage rings were constructed using spatial-attributed essence and materials to create a small pocket world, this pocket world can then be interacted with using one's Qi. Spiritual Sense wasn't required.

However, this ring obviously required it for usage.

From what little he did know of Soul Cultivation, it was divided into three aspects: Spiritual Sense, Soul Form, and Soul Flame. Spiritual Sense is awareness, Soul Form is one's soul body, and Soul Flame is the energy source that powers the Spiritual Sense and allows one's Soul Form to maintain itself. The Soul Flame is an essential aspect of Soul Cultivation, as it determines the strength of one's soul, and any damage to it essentially means damage to one's core existence.

He couldn't see his soul flame in this form. It didn't surprise him much, cause he didn't know much about cultivation relating to the soul, but it still gave him a start. He decided to put this at the back of his mind, and focus elsewhere.

Like, the stuff in the ring.

The ring seemed to be boundlessly vast, but only a very small area was occupied. Looking around, he could see a myriad of different items. From liquids to crystals, to random stuff he didn't recognize like a piece of inky black wood, a compass that radiated a slight white light and a few books. The inky black wood gave him a sensation of death, so he stayed away lest he loses his poor little life carelessly. As for the compass, it was odd, when he picked it up using a strand of soul energy, it opened and revealed a compass with six orientating arrows. Typically, a compass only has one - pointing north. This one pointed in all directions except directly east and west. It was as if it was missing a double-sided arrow.

"Odd," he placed it down gently, trying to not do anything he'd regret. Turning to the books, he picked one up and they all seemed to radiate a sensation of ancientness, and it gave him a weird feeling. I mean, how many times does one actually feel ancientness? The first book was titled in a language he didn't understand, but it had a violet cover and only a single silver dot at its center. Flipping through it and feeling uneducated, he tossed it aside and picked up another. The second was the same. Once again, feeling like these books were mocking him for his lack of knowledge, it was thrown to the side.

The following books all meet the same fate, each one was more violently thrown in frustration than the other. Until he came across the last book. It had a muscular male figure on the cover, but the figure was entirely white as if shaded thoroughly. The characters on the top read: Immortal Herculean Method. Immortal?!

That word shot into Yan Zaizen's mind like a firework. Did this book lead to immortality? He didn't hesitate to open it. When he did, he felt like someone played a prank on him. The book was blank. Each page held nothing but blank whiteness that left one frustrated. It was as if the greatest secrets of the world were written on the page and someone wiped it clean.

"Shit! You bastard, if I get my hands on...wait." He realized he was inside the Meteor Ring, and well, wouldn't that mean the Meteor Ring was the one who wiped it? He let out a sigh of resignation. Well, since it was useless, he was going to toss it aside very violently. He pumped his soul energy into the book to get a good grasp of it so he could chuck it to the edges of this boundless space. However, the moment he did, the book vanished from his soul form's grasp and sank deep into his soul form.

"What?" Bewildered, he looked at his soul form to see a small white crystal located within. Initially, it just stood there. After a while, he started spinning rapidly within his soul form dispersing little motes of light into it. Surprisingly, there was no pain, no sensation outside of feeling a little full. Thus, he remained calm.

It had been about an hour before the crystal stopped its spinning. It shot out of his soul, leaving countless motes of light, and turned back into that once blank again book. During this hour, he just went about and explored the area. Outside of the odd items he couldn't conceive, he realized he was stupid rich. Yes, stupidly rich.

The liquids and crystals in the ring were Essences!

Essence is a vital part of cultivation. Essentially, everything has essence within it. World Essence is the Essence of the World and the most common type of Essence that is in abundance throughout the entire myriad realms, even in the air. You have elemental-types of essence, which contains essence of the natural elements or laws. Condensed essence has three forms - air, liquid, and crystal. Each form has different grades, ranging from Low, Mid, and High.

World Essence Liquid was the most common form of currency in the myriad realms. Typically, the liquid form is used to recover energy, enhance one's cultivation, strengthen one's body using various methods, power formations/arrays, used in alchemy and armament creation. While crystals were even more valuable, let alone World Essence that is attributed, those are worth beyond one's imagination. They could be used to greater effect than liquid essence. A substantial part of the resources withheld from him by the clan was predominantly essence liquids.

The Qi Revolving Realm requires an abundant amount of World Essence to convert it into Qi, enlarging one's Qi Revolving and strengthening one's cultivation. It was this detail that left him stranded in the initial-Stage of the Qi Revolving Realm for eight whole years. If he possessed abundant resources, disregarding his lackluster talent, reaching the peak-Stage of the Qi Revolving Realm would've been quite easy in those eight years. However, he'd given up his resources to Ya Qinqan for less than a decade of his life, leaving him stuck with this weak cultivation base.

Now, however, he was beyond wealthy!

There must be almost ten thousand drops of liquid essence and one hundred crystal essence. To further his excitement, he can tell that none of these essences were of the Low-grade! He was rich, baby!