Just like that, another day pa.s.sed silently…**
Dyon sat in the Heaven"s Wine private room, diligently packaging food for every child and demon general.
For the children, he created well rounded meal plans – strengthening their hibernating meridians, increasing their bodies" capacities, and making their souls more robust for future cultivation. For the demon generals, although he didn"t know the extent of all of their powers just yet, he had still grasped their specialties. He wasn"t satisfied with his army having any weaknesses, so, he decreased the amount of food towards their strengths, and increased the food to buffer their weaknesses. After he had sent enough for an entire week and equipped the demon generals with cultivation methods for their weaknesses from the Celestial Deer Sect, he finally ate himself.
Although the dip in revenue would be obvious from the Elvin branch"s perspective, the overall scale of Heaven"s Wine was so large that Dyon"s influence was minute. Again, what was feeding thousands for free, versus getting payment from millions? Even tens of millions?
From what Dyon could see, there were no overseers at any branch. There were no guards, no waiters, and this branch didn"t even seem to have one of the owner"s disciples. So, Dyon deduced that Heaven"s Wine was most likely overseen together as a collective, rather than individually. As such, he used their resources freely.
But, at the back of Dyon"s mind, he was fully aware that Iaachus could most likely see what was going on. And, by extension, his master could too. But, Dyon couldn"t be bothered to care. Not right now. He had too many other things on his mind.
He knew that Ri was probably worried and p.i.s.sed that she couldn"t get out of the spatial world, but, he was in no mood to interact with anyone at the moment. Even his seemingly heartfelt task of diligently tailoring meal plans for each person, was done as though he was an emotionless robot. He calculated. He planned. He strategized. But, during the hours he spent doing this, not once did he feel.
Silently meditating and slowly absorbing his food, Dyon"s essence integration slowly increased. Although the pace was much slower than before, it was much better than without the spiritual foods. His demon qilin and celestial deer blood were already approaching 11%, and his demon sage essence had finally firmly planted itself at 2%. With this, his body"s strength could finally rival those at the lower meridian formation stage without the need for him to use his understanding of wills or his soul. Although, that was only when they too didn"t use their wills or souls.
This being said, Dyon felt a faint watershed at surpa.s.sing 10% of integration. It seemed every 10% mark would bring him another set of challenges and another level of trials. However, he could only push through.
In addition to his body, he also spent time on his soul. Although he had yet to investigate his manifestation, he could faintly feel his soul diligently approaching the middle tier of the 5th stage. However, Dyon felt like he needed to know more about the soul before he studied his manifestation. For example, he still had no idea what an "innate soul strength" was. In fact, the first time he had even heard of such a concept was when Ri explained the requirements to enter Acacia Academy.
How could Dyon study the manifestation of a soul, without understanding the soul itself? He knew it was time to pour through his master"s memories.
He had hoped he wouldn"t meet any mental blocks on the information, but he could only grit his teeth when he realized that there were.
No wonder he hadn"t stumbled upon the term "innate soul strength" before, his master had never left it in her memories for him. Dyon could only resign himself to heading back to the Acacia Academy Library. Afterwards, he"d leave his marks on the guilds and slowly uncover the mystery of the Elvin Kingdom.
Despite Dyon"s cold heart, his mind was clear as he realized something… if every mental block was in correlation to the destruction of the Celestial Deer Sect, wouldn"t that mean that by a complex system of elimination and cross-referencing things Dyon"s master should know versus what her memories didn"t have, Dyon would be able to slowly piece together the story?
"it seems you"ve left me quite the puzzle game master…"
This was Dyon"s first real human-like thought in days…
**
Within Dyon"s spatial world, everything was peaceful.
The demon generals and children happily ate their food. Dyon had sent each set in separately, marked for each person, and divided by day. Since he didn"t know how robust the appet.i.tes of everyone would be, he technically sent more than he needed too. In fact, many scratched their heads when reading the notes Dyon left behind.
One of the demon generals laughed, "this is a week"s worth of food? I could go through a month and still not finish this."
A beautiful white-haired demon general giggled lightly, "it seems our leader has quite the appet.i.te. Look at all of this, he"s a.s.sumed we"re all as gluttonous as he is. How adorable!"
The atmosphere was light and heartfelt. None of the generals were aware of how Dyon was feeling. Although some could vaguely sense that something had happened judging by the influx of children, they didn"t mind too much. Their leader cared enough to send them food, tailor make their meals, and even send them cultivation methods to strengthen their weaknesses. What could they have to complain about?
To them, if the successor needed help, he would come to them. It wasn"t like they could leave the world of their own free will anyway. That was simply how spatial worlds worked. As long as the user was able to force you in, you would have to be strong enough to match the creator of the ring to break free. But, how could experts that peaked at the lower saint level break free of constraints set by a transcendent level ring? At most, they could shake the world like they had before.
Suddenly the beauty spoke again, "What I"m most interested in is the fact the successor has such good cultivation methods… where would he get them in such a low-ranking universe?"
"Ai. At first, I was only going to flip through casually and let the successor know later that they were too low level… but, these are all at the very minimum heaven ranked techniques and cultivation methods… aside from the body cultivation manuals that is."
"True, but high-level body cultivation manuals are rare everywhere. The fact he has earth level ones is a miracle into and of itself."
"The successor is indeed interesting… he also wants us all to learn music will to at least the 3rd level, doesn"t he know how hard music will is to grasp?" A demon general shook his head bitterly.
The beauty smiled, "he must have a reason for it... maybe he isn"t expecting all of us to grasp it. Maybe… he"s only expecting it out of a few of us."
This was indeed the truth. Dyon had vaguely grasped that music will, despite its being seemingly simple, was among the most difficult to grasp. Much like the human mortal realm, music wasn"t something you could force a true level of understanding in. You may be able to memorize notes, and play the covers of your favorite songs, but none of these things const.i.tuted being a true expert.
Music will meant being able to convey and understand artistic conceptions. Sure, a normal person would be able to feel that one song was meant to be happy, and another was meant to be angry. But, would they have the talent to understand why such emotions were being conveyed? Would they be able to distinguish sadness brought by the loss of a lover versus the loss of a parent? Would they be able to distinguish anger from not feeling that you were good enough versus feeling that the world was against you? These weren"t easy things to grasp, especially without the use of lyrics seen in the human mortal realm.
As such, music will was more about talent than almost any other will. There was such a high level of emotional intelligence needed, that often, it was simply too much for the vast majority of people. This was why Dyon was so surprised when he realized Jade couldn"t use music will… how could someone who could literally see through everything… not have high emotional intelligence?
This was when he realized the sheer difficulty of understanding music will and when Madeleine jumped another level in his respect for her.