While the experintation with his third ridian system seed to be successful, it was still untried and reliant on the new ridian system being tough enough to handle the energies he tried to channel through it. Even if the mouth structure of the Warp Worm could handle an attack, it didnt an that it wouldnt destroy the ridians.
Ill need to figure out a way to strengthen the ridians without a cultivation technique.
The dragon bloodline didnt just provide him with a higher quality body, there was also an ancestral technique carried along with them. The problem with ancestral mories was that they beca corrupted with each generation. With a parent around to explain the intricacies, it wasnt even an issue for direct inheritors. The problem ca when the children werent acknowledged or lost. If they couldnt repair the problems in their inherited mories through their own trial and error, their only other option was to try and reach a higher level of power. Every ti they had a breakthrough there was a chance to rebuild so of the mories. Over ti and many generations, the remaining mories and techniques would be quite thin.
Even the Breach Hawk, a very powerful creature, was far removed from the original dragon bloodline that made it so famous. It didnt even have any of the mories of its dragon kin. Its only remaining mories were a strong body and a single technique from its other line. The Breach Hawk was a descendant of the Void Wyrm. Most thought of it at a true dragon, given how powerful it was. Sage found that in actuality, it was a half dragon. Its other ancestor was a creature called the Space Worm. It sowhat resembled the Warp Worm in appearance, but was absolutely imnse. Sage had once seen it ntioned in a book as one of the creatures that lived among the stars.
The lone ancestral technique that the Breach Hawk had was its main claim to fa: Cosmic Traction. Sage found the na extrely lofty, but the ability was quite fitting. It was the main attack that King had been using upon him. Cosmic Traction was the ability to affect space as if it were a physical object. Kings talons didnt need to puncture through armor or tough hides, he could pierce through space and stab directly into a creatures flesh. He could ignore the resistance of the wind by forcing his body through a gap in space like a fish swimming in the water. That along with the ability to send out blades of space with a flap of his wings were rely aspects of the Cosmic Traction technique, skilled applications of the core technique.
Sage had of course already started to learn it and so far the best he could do was step and push off of space, similar to trying to run up a wall. When he pressed against space there was a high resistance and he gradually lost traction. The technique explained this issue, but it was a matter of his lack of skill. If he were to master it, applying his energy correctly would allow him to alter the amount of resistance or traction he felt. It said that a master could treat space with the softness and fluidity of water, or with the weight and solidness of stone. His own ager ridian system creation seed like nothing in comparison to the endless possibilities of Cosmic Traction.
The last technique was the most intriguing. It was from the heritage of the Golden Egg. As he had been told, it did indeed co from the line of a dragon. It was far closer to the pure bloodlines of a dragon than the Breach Hawk was. At the sa ti it was also far more damaged and muddled in its mories than the Breach Hawk. The long ti in stasis had done quite so damage to it. The Breach Hawk line had only maintained their singular technique, their other mories were basics for Breach Hawks. On the other hand, the Golden Egg carried many mories and techniques. The problem was they were all quite muddled and blurry. Sage learned the Golden Egg was from the Myriad Wyrm, a creature that was only a few generations removed from a true dragon, far less than the hundreds for the Breach Hawk.
Unfortunately, the mories were only small flashes and tidbits of knowledge. Sages hope was that Ruanfu might recover more of them as she increased in strength. His own advancent relied on cultivation techniques and not gradual strengthening of a beast core, so he would experience no restoration of mories like Ruanfu would. Even so, the sole intact technique seed promising. Soul Fragnt was a sowhat mysterious na, but it was quite fitting. With careful practice, and great pain, it allowed the user to break off a fragnt of their soul. This fragnt could be placed inside an object and give the user so control of that object. An arrow could be made to fly around corners, twisting and curving in flight. A sword could seem like it had eyes of its own, striking backwards with unerring accuracy.
It wasnt a true possession, nor could it provide direct control, but it was sothing similar. Just as a person controlled their body using the input of their senses, the fragnt of soul acted in a similar fashion. Of course, it was only a tiny fragnt of the soul so it was only a tiny portion of the ability that a person would normally have. The amount of control was greatly reduced, like a person heavily drugged or restrained. The senses were similarly impaired, like trying to move while tied up and blindfolded.
While it didnt seem like much, it was actually very promising. Soul Fragnt had no limits on its use, any number of fragnts could be forged, given the user could withstand the pain of breaking off a piece of their soul. The amount of control and sensory feedback was more and more powerful based upon the strength of the fragnt. The technique even answered one of Sages questions from long ago. The nature of the spiritual root.
The spiritual root was the source of talent. The skill of a person to perceive and control energy. So theorized it was related to the soul, as those with weak souls would have weak talents. On the other hand, there were also those with very powerful souls that did not have great talent. It was a constant mystery. Sage found the answer in a throw away line of the Soul Fragnt technique, sothing it barely gave a ntion to. The spiritual root was the strength of the binding and compatibility of the soul and the body. Essentially it was a limiter on the soul. If a persons soul was powerful, it did not matter if the spiritual root wasnt enough to keep up. It still didnt teach him how to fix his problem, but now he knew where to start looking.
Soul Fragnts efficiency could be heavily influenced by the qualities of the item to be imbued. It was actually similar to the description of Necromancy that he once saw. Sage saw a description of zombies and found out that it wasnt just a joke. It was a book in the Tiless Masters library, and said that Necromancers had a way to create a fake soul. Then they put the fake soul into a corpse and it could animate the body to move and act on its own. The fake soul was pretty pathetic, but it was enough to move a body and act out crude commands. They theorized that greater forms of undead were created with more powerful fake souls and required more skilled necromancers to control.
The biggest disadvantage of the Soul Fragnt technique was the strength of the soul. Weakening the self to create helpers. There was also the decision on how much to split apart. The technique ntioned the dangers of splitting off too much. It certainly wasnt a new idea, splitting the soul in half and putting that half into a puppet or golem. With such a strong fragnt it was similar to an avatar technique. It was heavily warned against, because it was far too easy to commit too much to such a fragnt and cripple ones talent. Once fragnted it could no longer be combined. The soul was a hard thing to train and most only improved it by breaking through into new ranks. If they impacted their talent they would train slower and if they went too far it might beco impossible to advance further.
All of this was odd to see in a technique for beasts, but it confird what hed heard long ago. The truly powerful beasts didnt just passively improve by eating to improve their beast core, they had cultivation techniques of their own. While Sage had the body of a beast, fundantally, he wasnt one of them and had a dantian instead of a beast core. Even if he figured out how to, he wouldnt want to be one of them completely. Not only would he have no suitable cultivation technique, who wanted to face such a crisis of identity?
I may have the body of a monster, but Im still human on the inside!
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