After witnessing the extraordinary nature of the Soul Suppressing Array, Liu Bai no longer wasted time on irrelevant matters. He chose the second level of the array to test its true power.
As Liu Bai's fingers traced across the stone door, the numbers "one" and "two" lit up one after another. Instantly, a strange pressure descended within the entire stone chamber, pressing heavily upon Liu Bai.
This was a pressure that acted entirely upon the soul. It felt as though an ordinary man were crushed beneath a massive boulder, except the boulder weighed upon the body, while this array weighed upon the spirit.
Liu Bai frowned slightly. In that very instant, even his breathing came to a halt.
After taking a moment to adapt, he gradually began to strengthen his spiritual power.
Thus, after a full day, when Liu Bai could completely adapt to the pressure of the second level, he took a deep breath and directly adjusted the level to the third.
Buzz!
Liu Bai could distinctly feel a resonant vibration from within his soul, and his entire body dropped to the ground, both hands bracing against the floor.
At this moment, if anyone had been present, they would have seen Liu Bai's entire body tense up. His physical form had not been touched by any external force, yet every muscle was taut.
This was one of the manifestations of the soul reflecting upon the body. Although Liu Bai's physical body had not actually suffered any damage, his mind had already projected that sensation onto his body, and even the pain that should have been purely spiritual had directly been mirrored in his flesh.
It somewhat resembled the illusion arts of the Kurama clan from his previous life's "Naruto" anime, which controlled the five senses.
This round of adaptation took far longer. Only after three full days did Liu Bai finally walk out from the oppressive might of the soul's coercion.
Jiuyou had once again taken human form and sat idly to the side.
Such a low-grade soul pressure had no effect on her at all. After all, she was a supreme divine beast, the Nine Nether Sparrow. When it came to matters of the soul, the divine beast clans were the most authoritative.
"Tsk tsk, you humans really do have fragile souls. This level of soul suppression is barely comparable to the Heaven Transformation Realm, and yet you actually need this long just to adapt."
Since the Soul Suppressing Array was still a Array, it naturally followed the classification system of arrays. A third-level Soul Suppression corresponded to a third-level Array, equivalent only to the Heaven Fusion Realm.
It was only due to the unique nature of this particular array that it could exert a might comparable to the Heaven Transformation Realm. Even so, it caused immense discomfort to a cultivator like Liu Bai, whose spiritual power was already formidable.
After all, the spirit and the soul were two different existences. The latter was formed from the fusion of the former with spiritual power, an intangible yet substantial essence. The pure soul, however, was formless and ethereal. Unless one's cultivation reached a sufficient level to perceive it, its existence remained undetectable.
Only true experts could manifest their souls visibly—a state known as the True Spirit.
In many ancient or even primordial ruins, the flesh, spirit, and spiritual energy of powerful figures might have long since vanished, yet their True Spirits would still remain.
Though the True Spirit could not grant rebirth, it was far from powerless.
Some ancient Heavenly Sovereigns had left behind True Spirits capable of reshaping heaven and earth through sheer spiritual might.
Of course, since the soul was formless, it required a sufficiently powerful vessel to anchor itself.
Just like the Heavenly Emperor Sword from the original text…
The Outer Realm Demonic Clan possessed demonic thoughts, while the Great Thousand World had True Spirits. It seemed that across all vast worlds, the soul remained the most mysterious and powerful essence of life.
Inside the stone chamber, as Liu Bai prepared to activate the fourth level of the Soul Suppressing Array, his mind began to contemplate deeply.
Should he attempt to decipher the array himself?
To see through and deduce the full diagram of this seventh-grade Soul Suppressing Array with his current power, he would at least need to elevate his Void Heart Eye to its highest level.
And the experience points required for that were an enormous amount.
"From the beginner to the intermediate level only takes a hundred thousand experience points, which is already ten times more than what it took to awaken it initially… Then to reach the advanced level, will it also require ten times that amount?"
"Damn it, that means I'll have to burn through all the experience points I've painstakingly accumulated again!"
Honestly, Liu Bai was reluctant.
But the Soul Suppressing Array was simply too enticing.
If he could use it in battle, even cultivators whose strength far exceeded the array's grade would find themselves trapped within, unable to escape for a while.
If he were ruthless enough, he could even directly annihilate their souls…
Then they would be left with only a body and spiritual power—mere walking corpses.
Thinking about that image made Liu Bai shudder. He could hardly stomach the thought.
Hesitation, uncertainty, indecision…
Liu Bai suddenly realized he was suffering from decision paralysis.
When he finally reached a conclusion, he noticed—without even realizing it—that the number on the stone door had already lit up to the fifth mark.
"What the… I've already adapted to the pressure of the fifth-level Soul Suppression?"
That startled Liu Bai. He hadn't expected that, while lost in thought, he had already met the qualification. By his estimate, there was still nearly a month left.
"Does that mean my soul is stronger than I thought…"
As Liu Bai pondered, he opened his status panel.
"One hundred thousand experience points to upgrade Void Heart Eye to Intermediate, one million experience points to upgrade to Advanced!"
In an instant, his experience points—originally exceeding one million four hundred thousand—plummeted, leaving barely over three hundred thousand.
In exchange, the light orb at his brow, which resembled an eye, had almost taken tangible form.
From Jiuyou's perspective, Liu Bai appeared to have grown a third eye. A hazy light emanated from his brow's ethereal eye, and even Jiuyou, a Fourth-Grade Sovereign and a Nine Netherworld Sparrow, suddenly felt dizzy, as though sinking into a dream.
"Huh?!"
Suddenly, Jiuyou snapped awake. When she looked at Liu Bai again, her expression was full of astonishment and unease.
"You… just now, why did it look like there was an extra eye on your forehead? And when I saw that light, I actually felt dizzy, like I was drunk!"
It was not that Jiuyou's resistance was weak, but rather that the Void Heart Eye itself was a perception born of the soul.
The higher the level of Liu Bai's Void Heart Eye, the stronger his soul became—so powerful, in fact, that it could even affect Jiuyou.
From this alone, one could see just how monstrously strong Liu Bai's spiritual power had become.
Of course, the benefits of fully mastering the Void Heart Eye were far from limited to this.
When a Spiritual Array Master who possessed the Void Heart Eye controlled the same Spiritual Array, not only would the spiritual energy consumption be much lower than that of an ordinary Array Master, but the Array's power would also become significantly stronger. At the same time, the failure rate would greatly decrease. For a Spiritual Array Master as exceptional as Liu Bai, he could even arrange arrays beyond his current level.
At this point, when Liu Bai activated his Void Heart Eye again, the intricate formation lines covering the stone chamber became crystal clear. Following those lines, given enough time, Liu Bai would be able to trace them back to the array's core. Once he found that array's center, he could completely imprint the Soul Suppressing Array's design for his own use.
At the thought of this, Liu Bai's spirits immediately lifted, and he began to carefully organize the formation lines.
In this busyness, time flowed quietly by.
The approach of the Five Sect Grand Competition had already stirred up excitement among all five lower sects, including the Fire God Sect itself.
Although the main purpose of the Five Sect Grand Competition was to help the Five Element Divine Sect select new disciples, that did not mean that only cultivators like Liu Bai, who practiced elemental arts, could participate.
The prodigious disciples within the five sects would also take part in the grand event. While victory would not easily make them disciples of the upper sect, the rewards were still extremely generous.
There were even divine arts corresponding to their elemental attributes distributed as prizes. Because of this, every disciple of the five great sects was highly motivated to take part.
After all, they were divine arts. Even someone like Liu Bai had yet to encounter a single minor divine art despite all his experiences so far.
Between heaven and earth, myriad powers coexisted.
Spiritual Arts and Divine Arts were two completely different systems of power.
The former relied on cultivation, while the latter depended on mastery.
No matter the Grade of Spiritual Art—Common, Spirit, or Deity—their essence lay in channeling one's own spiritual power through specific methods to attack, defend, or even fly.
That kind of power came from one's own cultivation. The stronger one's strength, the greater the power the Spiritual Art could unleash.
But Divine Arts were far more mysterious.
It was said that the world itself contained all kinds of wondrous forces. When one could invoke those forces, they could erupt with terrifying might and the method of invoking such powers was known as a Divine Art.
Thus, the power of a Divine Art was a force that already existed within heaven and earth, while cultivators merely learned how to control and wield it.
The stronger one's mastery, the greater the power one could command, and naturally, the stronger the resulting might.
That was the true difference between Spiritual Arts and Divine Arts.
For Liu Bai, even if he obtained a high-level Deity-grade Spiritual Art, due to his current cultivation level, he would be unable to unleash its full strength.
Take, for instance, the Five Element Divine Lightning Art—Liu Bai had long since cultivated it to its highest realm, and even actualized tangible Five Element Divine Lightning within his body.
Yet even now, he could not fully draw out their true might. Though he was capable of instantly defeating a Sovereign, he still could not be considered perfect.
Divine Arts, however, were different.
Liu Bai could use his experience points to achieve perfect control and thereby unleash the Divine Art's full power—
Most importantly, without being constrained by his cultivation realm.
If that were to happen, what kind of existence would Liu Bai become then…
All of this, for now, remained an unknown, as Liu Bai himself had yet to realize these possibilities.
Perhaps he would only understand once he obtained his very first Divine Art.
On the final day of his seclusion within the Soul Suppressing Array, Liu Bai finally unraveled the entire formation within the stone chamber.
With just a thought, he could freely control the array's levels within the chamber. If he wanted, he could even reconstruct it himself, though doing so would take considerable time.
After all, strictly speaking, Liu Bai's rank as a Spiritual Array Master had not yet reached the sixth grade. While his comprehension of array was exceptionally high, the problem lay in his insufficient spiritual power—he could not yet condense the spiritual seals needed to sustain a massive sixth-grade formation.
Although the Void Heart Eye had drastically reduced the energy cost of array inscription, setting up a seventh-grade Soul Suppressing Array two levels beyond his current capacity was still highly difficult.
However, with the enemies Liu Bai would likely face, there was no need for a seventh-grade array. A fifth-grade Soul Suppressing Array alone would be more than sufficient.
As for a sixth-grade Soul Suppressing Array, that would be a terrifying weapon capable of instantly killing an opponent.
With that settled, Liu Bai ended his seclusion with peace of mind.
With the current strength of his spiritual power, he had no doubt he could perform at full capacity within the space of the upcoming Five Sect Grand Competition.
What he did not expect, however, was that the moment he emerged, he would be greeted by two utterly astonished faces.
"You… you actually stayed inside that chamber all this time?" Yan Xu stared at Liu Bai in disbelief, his eyes wide with shock.
"Uh… what about it?" Liu Bai was momentarily baffled, not understanding what was so surprising.
"Didn't you two just come out yourselves?"
Dong Qing shook his head with a wry smile.
"No, we actually came out ten days ago."
Liu Bai was taken aback.
"What? These two guys are that incredible? They managed to adapt to the Soul Suppressing Array in such a short time?"
He almost wanted to ask which one of them was the real transmigrator with a cheat ability.
How could their spiritual power be so freakishly strong?
But as it turned out, Liu Bai was overthinking things.
"We may have adapted to the fifth-level Soul Suppression, but we could only endure for ten days. Any longer, and we'd start falling into a state of mental fatigue, possibly even unconsciousness."
"But since the Five Sect Grand Competition only lasts for five days, that's already enough for us."
That had been their reasoning, but upon seeing that Liu Bai had endured for the full two months, they were completely stunned.
"It seems Brother Liu will surely earn a fine ranking in this Grand Competition. Allow us to congratulate you in advance."
"Congratulations!"
Both Yan Xu and Dong Qing cupped their hands with slightly forced smiles.
"Many thanks, many thanks. I appreciate the kind words. But with your superior talent and cultivation, I'm sure you both have an even better chance of entering the upper sect."
...
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