Li Yu continued to enjoy his peace but he was getting increasingly frustrated. He felt like a child who had been given a divine sword but had no knowledge of swordsmanship. His soul arts and understanding of the soul had come to a complete stand still.
Frustrated by his lack of progress, he decided to do what he had always done when faced with an unknown: he would seek the wisdom of those with more experience.
He entered his Koi's Sanctuary, manifesting on the central island. The first person he sought was Cyra. He found her in her elegant human form, standing at the edge of the sanctuary's vast, tranquil ocean, her silver eyes watching the Aether-Fin Skyfish leap and glide through the air.
"Cyra," he began, his tone that of a student approaching a respected teacher. "I wish to ask you about the soul. About the nascent soul."
She turned, her expression serene and respectful. "I will share what I know, Master, but my knowledge is limited to my own bloodline."
"Tell me," he said, his curiosity genuine. "Among beasts, how do you use a nascent soul?
She was silent for a moment, contemplating. "A nascent soul? Most beasts, even powerful sovereigns, live and die by the strength of their physical bodies and their innate control over the elements. Their spirit is a wild, untamed thing. Only a very, very few, those with ancient bloodlines and a unique opportunity for enlightenment, will ever have their soul coalesce into a true, tangible form. It is a sign of a creature that has transcended the limits of its species since the soul is usually the weakness of beasts."
"And for those who do," Li Yu pressed, "what form does it take?"
"It is always the same," Cyra replied with certainty. "The nascent soul is the purest expression of a being's true self. For a beast, its shape is always a perfect, ethereal reflection of its own true form. My own ancestor, the first of our line to form a nascent soul, was said to have a soul in the perfect image of a Kaleido-Kraken, woven from moonlight and deep-sea pressure."
Li Yu's mind reeled. His own soul was a leviathan. But he was a human. This… this was a profound, fundamental deviation from the natural laws she was describing. It made him an anomaly, a mystery even among the most ancient of beings.
"And techniques?" he asked. "Are there cultivation arts for the soul?"
"There are," she confirmed. "But they are not like the techniques of men. They are not learned; they are inherited. They are instinct, woven into our very bloodline. My own nascent soul, were I to ever form one, would have the innate ability to project a 'Song of the Deep,' a mental art that could soothe the most savage of sea creatures or lure sailors to a watery grave. But this is a technique of my species. I could not teach it to a Roc, nor could a Bear teach me its art. We beasts walk the path that was carved for us by our ancestors. Some really talented ones will evolve or awaken new abilities and those would then be passed down through the bloodline."
She looked at him, her silver eyes full of a profound, humbling respect. "From what I know, human nascent souls can be used based on the techniques you develop, so if you had a human nascent soul you could find techniques to learn. But you, Master… your soul is not that of a human, you are a human with a soul of what looks to be a leviathan. You have no pre-carved path. You must be the one to carve it yourself. Perhaps at the right time you will inherit some abilities from it like a beast."
Her words were both a confirmation of his fears and a liberating truth. There was no ancient text, no wise master who could guide him. He was truly on his own. He thanked her for her wisdom and turned his attention to his other great source of knowledge. He teleported to the dark, isolated island that was Khaos's domain.
The colossal, galaxy-shelled sovereign was in a state of deep, arrogant refinement, his presence a constant, silent pressure on the fabric of the sanctuary.
"Khaos," Li Yu said, forgoing any pleasantries. "I have questions about the soul."
A low, rumbling sound of contemptuous amusement echoed from the great crab. "The soul is not a thing to be questioned, boy. It is a thing to be wielded. You mortals and your endless, pathetic need for theories and manuals. It is a waste of time."
"Then tell me of your own soul arts," Li Yu pressed.
"My 'soul arts' are an extension of my will," Khaos boomed, his voice a vibration of pure, absolute power. "This king wishes for the space before me to be crushed, and so, it is crushed. I wish for my enemy to be still, and so, they are still. I do not 'use' techniques. This king is the technique. My will is the only law that matters. To a true sovereign, the soul is not an instrument to be played; it is the hand that moves the strings of the world itself."
His advice was arrogant, abstract, and utterly unhelpful in a practical sense. And yet, within it, Li Yu found the same core truth that Cyra had given him: he could not rely on the paths of others. Khaos was a Stygian Void-Crusher. His soul arts were a unique expression of his own, absolute nature.
Li Yu returned to his own island, a new resolve hardening in his heart. He was not a kraken. He was not a crab. And he was, it seemed, not entirely human. He was a cultivator whose soul was a primordial leviathan. His path was his own, and the «Leviathan Heart Sutra», the art he had created himself, was his only true guide.
He spent the next two weeks in a state of feverish, joyful experimentation. He no longer sought to create new techniques from scratch; he sought to refine and understand the three he had already instinctually discovered.
He would enter his spiritual sea and focus on the Leviathan Soul-Shield. He would have Cyra, from the outside world, send a gentle, non-lethal pulse of her own spiritual energy at him. The first few times, the attack would land, a disorienting but harmless jolt to his consciousness. He learned that he could not just will the shield into existence.
He had to use the Sutra. He would circulate its defensive flows, and as the leviathan in his core resonated, the crimson-gold shield would manifest. He practiced the timing, the flow, until the process became almost instantaneous. An attack would come, his Sutra would flow, and the shield would appear, a perfect, seamless defense.
He then turned to his Death's Roar. He could not practice such a dangerous technique at full power. Instead, he worked on control. He would find a single, small, barren rock on a distant island in his sanctuary and make it his target. He would focus on the primal, roaring intent of the leviathan, and he would try to project a tiny, focused pulse of that soul-annihilating power. The pulse washed over the rock, and nothing happened. The rock had no soul, no consciousness to annihilate.
The attack simply passed through it, a silent, invisible wave. This was the proof he needed. It was a purely spiritual attack. He then found a simple-minded, low-rank Spirit Guppy swimming in a secluded pond. He projected an infinitesimal fraction of the roar's power. The guppy did not explode; it simply stopped swimming, its eyes going vacant for a full minute before it dazedly began to move again, its tiny consciousness completely overwhelmed and rebooted.
Finally, he honed his Leviathan's Strike. He would stand at the edge of his inner ocean and practice the aggressive, flowing movements of the Sutra. He would envision the powerful tail sweep of his nascent soul, and he would push. At first, the projection of soul-force was a chaotic, wide wave.
It didn't create a physical tsunami, but he could feel the unfocused mental impact washing over a huge section of the water, causing every fish in the area to become disoriented. But he practiced, again and again, learning to shape the force, to condense it. The chaotic wave slowly transformed into a sharp, focused, and terrifyingly fast silent strike of pure soul-force.
He would target a single fish in a large school, and when the strike landed, that one fish would be knocked unconscious, floating belly-up, while the others around it, mere inches away, would continue to swim, completely unaffected.
He was a swordsman sharpening his divine blades, a musician mastering his divine instrument. The progress was slow, the effort immense, but his mastery was growing with every passing day.