Dyon immediately steeled himself. This was not a time to panic.Deviations in cultivation where one would essentially go berserk were things he had read about. But, those materials weren"t helpful here.
Normal occurrences usually involved over-tempering meridians that could result in scarring or sheering, and maybe even them completely bursting apart. There had also been doc.u.mented occurrences of people dying by trying to absorb higher level energies too soon, but that type of cultivation deviation would normally have to be fixed by an expert of that level taking the energy, all while the person in question stopped absorbing it.
But, how could Dyon stop absorbing saint energy right now? It just wasn"t possible. This was a break through, and as such, his soul wouldn"t be satisfied until it was filled to the brim. The only saving grace was that this universe had such a poor concentration of saint energy that Dyon had some time to think before he completely blasted apart.
"Okay, think think think." Dyon stood oddly like a statue, all of his muscle tightened to their peak degree. He couldn"t move even an inch and he felt as though he was becoming a slowly inflated balloon. The worst part was that his soul was still threatening to become too powerful for his body to handle, and although the bulge wasn"t obvious now, he could feel his soul pushing against the barriers of his body.
Dyon didn"t even have time to think about the benefits of something like this, although he was sure there would be. After all, if he was dead, how would he enjoy anything?
"I can"t panic. Panicking will only slow me down. I have to think about things from their simplest forms and work my way up."
The first thing Dyon remembered was a seemingly useless piece of conversation he had had with the old man. He remembered very clearly that his grand teacher had said that he would never be able to sense saint energy because his body would never be able to withstand mastering an intent unless he reached the essence gathering stage. Something that was obviously impossible for him at the time because he had had a seal on his energy cultivation.
This let Dyon know a few things.
For one, the old man had no idea that sensing saint energy would be possible for Dyon as soon as his soul broke into the saint stages. That meant that this had never happened before – or else Dyon had no doubt that the old man would have known. And, if the old man had known, he would have without a doubt told Dyon and warned him, because he should have been aware that Dyon was only a single small leap from reaching a saint soul.
Although this information was seemingly d.a.m.ning, to Dyon, it was really important. That let him know that there was no need to waste time looking for solutions that others had come up with, because no one in history had dealt with what he was dealing with right now.
The second thing that Dyon thought of was energy. What was it about and what made it different.
Then his thoughts shifted to Gama. That was an amalgamation of wills and energy if Dyon remembered correctly. The old man spoke about how Gama was split into levels, but each level was the same in that they held every will in existence in combination with a comparable level of energy.
Then Dyon thought of qi and wills. Will outputs were known as qi because will power was dependent on a level of energy output, was it not?
This was the mind of an innate aurora wielder. The way they thought of and connected things reached levels a normal person couldn"t hope to reach, and Dyon"s mind only seemed to be thinking even faster with his life on the line.
But, there was one thing grating on Dyon.
In orthodox cultivation, you had to temper your meridians with wills to open them up to accept energy. However, it was also commonly understood that the more wills you used, the more powerful you were. This was why the best of clans didn"t bother with tempering with wills one by one, but instead used Gama energy to floor the meridians with every will.
However, how did those things connect? Why did using more wills allow for more energy acceptance? Couldn"t you just understand a single will incredibly well and then use that to open your meridians to their fullest extent? What was it about wills and their connection with meridians that made you more powerful if you used more? And how did that connect with energy?
Every avenue of thought brought Dyon more questions, and they were all seemingly dead ends.
Then Dyon thought of something else. His aurora. He used a form of energy to draw arrays to then change the laws of his surrounding, right? But, what kind of energy was that? What exactly was his aurora and what was it made of? It was clearly not a normal flame. And yet, at the same time, it was its own eye.
The aurora, or mind"s eye, seemed to contain a flame. That flame was of course the special energy that was used to either draw arrays or produce an alchemic flame. At the same time, that flame was among the best for manipulating energies. This was why Dyon was so good at dual cultivating. His ability to manipulate energy flows within others was unprecedented. How ironic…
To be able to control energy flow in others so well and yet be so lost when it came to himself.
His ability to control energies within himself was completely useless to him right now! The problem wasn"t energy control. It was the fact that the energy itself was too pure for him to handle. It"s flow into himself wasn"t something he could stop, but that didn"t mean that he had lost control of the energy itself. It was only that his soul was ma.s.sive hole at the bottom of a lake, the saint energy was the water in that lake.
And that water was killing him.