Reaper of the Martial World

Book 1: Chapter 31: Forever and Always

Madeleine looked at Dyon as they sat atop the Celestial Deer, gently running atop the ocean under the night sky, “musical will… with your voice? Is that possible?”

Dyon smiled holding Madeleine in his arms.

<em background=”white”>What would I do without your smart mouth

<embackground=”white”>Drawing me in, and you kicking me out

<embackground=”white”>Got my head spinning, no kidding, I can’t pin you down

<embackground=”white”>What’s going on in that beautiful mind

<embackground=”white”>I’m on your magical mystery ride

<embackground=”white”>And I’m so dizzy, don’t know what hit me, but I’ll be alright

<em background=”white”>—

Madeleine trembled. The emotion in Dyon’s voice, it felt so clear.

“This is actually a song from the human world from an artist called John Legend. He obviously has no cultivation, but he can still make people feel indescribable pain and love to the point of tears. Why? Because the best instrument you have access to is your body. Nothing connects with what you want to convey more than your voice. You’ve been communicating with it since you were born. Whether they were gurgles or cries and now that you can use it to its fullest extent, think about how much it would amplify your will of music. Cultivation will always cap you at the 9^th level of a will, but, I’ve come to understand that when you can find the root of a will, its most perfect form… you can make that will emit power comparable to an intent.”

Madeleine sat in a state of thought for a while, partly to wait for the tears in her eyes to stop from the song and partly because it seemed that whenever she spoke about cultivation with Dyon, she would reach a new level of enlightenment.

“How’d you figure that out?”

“I must have read hundreds of thousands of books on cultivation by now. Some of them mentioned a state of understanding of wills and intents that surpass a surface understanding. I didn’t understand what it meant initially, but, the human world appreciates vocal music to a much higher extent than the martial world does, so while I was trying it out one day, my musical will evolved. So, I came to understand that a state of oneness with your will can come once you’ve understood the essence of what the will was created for and what medium maximizes it.”

Madeleine smiled, “my master would bow down to you if you explained this to her, no matter how you try to play it off as simple.”

Dyon laughed, “if I wasn’t at least this amazing, would I be worthy of you?”

Madeleine giggled, “at least you understand.”

**

Madeleine had fallen asleep while leaning on Dyon. The trip back was a long one, so Dyon was looking up at the sky in thought.

‘I have so many cultivation techniques I can choose from, but I can’t seem to decide on just one…’

The truth was the cultivation was entirely too complex for most people. Much like arrays and alchemy, there comes a point when you realize that everything in cultivation is connected. However, when you come to realize this, it only increases your confusion. Almost as if being ignorant to that fact would make everything easier on you.

For example, when Dyon was reading on body cultivation and energy cultivation, he was hard-pressed to understand the difference between them. This was because energy cultivation begins with body refinement, and the body must get stronger in order to accommodate higher level energies as your cultivation improves. But, if you need to improve your body to cultivate energy, then where is the line of difference between body and energy cultivation? It just seemed as though everything was connected to the point where understanding was impossible.

And if that didn’t make matters bad enough, you also had to include soul cultivation in the mix, while also taking into account that you need a stronger body to accommodate a stronger soul.

However, after reading so many books, Dyon had begun to piece together what was actually going on. Energy and Soul cultivation use the body as a container, diverting energy from themselves to strengthen the body. What this unfortunately results in is a relatively weakened state of the resultant soul or energy cultivation. Dyon had come to this understanding when his master fused the 2 drops of essence blood with him. Although he was nowhere near accumulating 100%, his body’s power had improved significantly. This lead to his soul power increasing along with it. Which meant his soul had finally stopped diverting its power.

Originally, Dyon had assumed this increase in soul strength was due to a tempering of his will. For example, after his near death at the hands of Darius, his soul strength had increased, so Dyon couldn’t help but link the two. However, that was a symptom and not the cause. The truth was that Dyon’s innate soul strength had already far surpassed any normal human’s who had not soul cultivated, because of his innate aurora. However, that soul strength was boxed in and unable to fully manifest itself. Feeling its life in peril, the soul had no choice but to give up some of its energy to power Dyon’s body so that it could expand.

When Dyon had powered up his body via external means, his soul was finally able to take back what it had spent and manifest its peak 3^rd stage innate level. This may not seem like much, but it’s near impossible to find someone with an innate soul strength of the first stage as the innate level of most wouldn’t be comparable to a low-level foundation stage fighter. In fact, only clans that specialize in soul type techniques such as the Ragnor auxiliary clan: Saeclum, would have a small percentage of geniuses who reached this level before even cultivating. The fact Dyon had an innate soul strength at the peak of the 3^rd stage which would be comparable to a mid level meridian formation expert, was unprecedented in the history of the martial world.

But, now that Dyon’s innate soul strength had manifested to its full abilities, Dyon would need a soul cultivation technique to improve it. Before, he had assumed it would just continue strengthening, but he then found out that for it to strengthen any more, he would have to first reach that level in energy cultivation before his soul improved any more. Dyon obviously didn’t like the idea of slowing his cultivation down like that because there was no benefit to it unlike with energy cultivation.

For soul cultivation, Dyon wasn’t too worried. What technique could be better than an ancient god sect’s that specialized in the soul due to their mastery in array alchemy? In addition, unlike energy and body cultivation, soul cultivating only had a single method: masochism. Soul cultivating required heart rending pain. To improve, the soul needed to be constantly torn apart and mended. They were only separated by the levels of pain you were willing to endure: common, earth, heaven and divine. In a sick twist of fate, the best technique also required the most pain. The reason being that only the best techniques can completely tear the soul into its most minute bits which would result in not only a purer, but also a tougher and stronger soul.

Dyon, not wanting to do anything by half measures, had chosen the divine soul cultivating technique: Celestial Deer’s Rend.

The issue, though, wasn’t his soul cultivation, it was separating his body and energy cultivating. Energy cultivation techniques were as plentiful as the stars in the sky, but the issue was that there were so many paths to take, and yet, none of those paths seemed perfect, even among the cultivation techniques of the ancient god clan. As for body cultivation, the Celestial Deer Sect had only a few, and they were all subpar. None were above the earth level which made Dyon feel a bit bitter, but he had to accept it. Not only were those who understood the deviations between energy and body rare, the ones willing to deviate time into forming good techniques for the body were even fewer.

There was nothing Dyon could do about energy cultivation for now. He still had time before his 16^th birthday, so he planned on finding as many energy cultivation techniques as he could, and maybe one would be perfect for him. Although he hadn’t found the perfect technique for him, he had found a technique perfectly tailored to Madeleine’s Goddess’ Disposition. It wasn’t a surprise that a celestial clan would have a technique perfect for the purity of Madeleine’s constitution. It was called: Celestial Goddess’ Will. It was also part of the reason Dyon wanted Madeleine to personally understand Celestial Will, because the technique required the meridians and body to be tempered with celestial will. With Madeleine’s compatibility with it, it was without a doubt a peak level Divine technique.

By adding a few divine level martial techniques to the mix, Dyon would be confident in leaving Madeleine so she could grow on her own while he explored the world. He would miss her, but he knew that this would benefit them both greatly. Madeleine would affirm her place in the Sapientia God Clan and Dyon would make the Celestial Deer Clan’s name ring through the continent.

All Dyon had left to do was figure out what to do about body cultivation techniques. Dyon had a feeling that there was a reason for 3 paths in cultivation. Much like array alchemy, he didn’t think they should be separated. In fact, he was certain that you’d only become a true expert if you practiced all 3.

But, despite his confusion, there was one thing Dyon was sure on. Body cultivation involved creating your own bloodline. For example, the demon qilin bloodline within Dyon currently was first cultivated by an ancient expert many millions of years ago, and yet it still remains this potent after so many generations of dilution. Of course, it would be replenished as some further down the line would decide to also pursue body cultivation, but Dyon doubted they ever reached the same level as their ancestor.

This thought made Dyon’s blood boil, ‘Once I manifest my blood line to its peak, I’ll put a super baby in Madeleine,’ he thought with a grin.

That being said, there were many things that still left Dyon apprehensive. For example, when the qilin and celestial deer essences completely merged with him, what evolution would the bloodline take? Were bloodlines just about improving one’s strength and affinity for wills? How did constitutions, and specially god level constitutions, connect with the idea of bloodlines?

Despite all he had read, Dyon still had so many burning questions. In a book Dyon was reading on constitutions, he had found out that they were essentially bloodlines granted by the heavens. Almost like the will of the martial world itself didn’t want body cultivation to fade out of existence so it was screaming at the top of its lungs: “LOOK! Look at how powerful you could be if you followed the true martial way!”

Originally, Dyon hadn’t thought much of this. But, the more he thought about the perfection you could reach cultivating body, energy and soul, the more he realized that maybe it really was heaven’s will for this to happen.

So, although Dyon didn’t have a god level constitution, he was confident that if he found enough bloodlines to merge with his own, he would soon form a bloodline incomparable to even those top 3 god level constitutions. Then, he thought about how the earth level body cultivation techniques were all about how to temper your blood with your understanding of wills, intents and doas, and he got even more excited.

‘I’m already so lucky to have the bloodlines of two transcendent beasts in me. In fact, I might have a companion in Little Black who has surpassed transcendent beasts because of his lineage. If I can use my understanding of wills to even further temper my bloodline, and then combine that with other transcendent level beasts, or even the bloodlines of ancient experts like those who started the bloodlines of those beasts and god level constitutions… Why would I need those shitty body cultivation manuals?’

Dyon smiled. He had finally understood what he needed to do. Destroy and rebuild his soul. Find and merge with bloodlines. And accumulate knowledge on energy cultivation to the point of being able to create one that perfectly conformed to himself within 2 years.

Dyon smiled bitterly, ‘easy… right?’

All that left is to find strong techniques.

‘I’ve reached small success of the first layer of the celestial movement technique. It has 3 levels to it, and each is broken into small success, large success and perfection. So, I’ll have to slowly improve that as my celestial, wind and space wills improve. For attacking, I have my sword and the weapon’s hell array. Although I have not cultivated any sword techniques because none of the ones within the Celestial Deer Clan were good enough considering it wasn’t their specialty, I can pretty much match up against more earth level sword techniques used at this level purely because of my understanding of sword wills.’

For now, Dyon wanted to focus on those martial techniques. If he found anything interesting in the future, he would use them as well. But, having less that you were more proficient at, was better than having a lot you barely understood.

‘my sword, my movement, my body’s strength and my arrays… it should be enough.’

**

Madeleine’s eyes slowly opened as she felt her bra slip off and a comfortable white shirt being put over her head.

She looked up to see Dyon sliding into bed next to her with a smile on his face. Madeleine was in a trance, ‘it seems he really loves me…’

It wasn’t that Madeleine doubted Dyon. It was just that as a human, sometimes you needed little things like this to let your heart rest well. Dyon taking off Madeleine’s clothes to make her comfortable as she rested may seem like a small gesture, but how many men wouldn’t take advantage of that opportunity? How many men wouldn’t have woken Madeleine up to try and get something out of it for themselves?

A bright smile appeared on Madeleines face as she watched Dyon roll over and gently fall asleep before falling asleep herself.

‘I’ve yet to have an opportunity to protect you… You’re so strong and always have a smile on your face despite what you’ve been through. I’ll work hard so I can stand by your side… forever and always’