After deciding to collect all types of touched souls, Li Yuan began to systematically implement his new strategy. The operation that was once focused on human souls now expanded into a spiritual exploration that encompassed the entire spectrum of life on the planet.
The five thousand human souls in his Zhenjing vibrated with a familiar harmony, but now Li Yuan was preparing to add a complexity he had never before imagined.
Animal Souls: The Purity of Instinct
Li Yuan started with the category that seemed most straightforward after human souls—animal souls. With the new Instinctual Wrapping technique he had developed, he moved through various landscapes searching for the bluish wisps of light that marked the presence of touched animal souls.
The first he found were a pack of wolf souls in a former hunting ground that had since become a vast grassland. Seven bluish wisps with golden fringes floated in a formation that still resembled a pack structure—even in death, the wolf souls maintained their social bonds.
"You are still together," Li Yuan spoke softly as he activated Instinctual Wrapping. The resonance he emitted was not verbal communication, but a kind of spiritual howl that acknowledged the dominance hierarchy and pack loyalty.
The response was immediate and surprising. The seven wolf souls trembled simultaneously, their light flickering in a synchronized pattern. There was no resistance, no confusion—just instant recognition and acceptance.
"Incredible," Li Yuan observed while wrapping all seven souls at once. "Animal souls resonate with genuine spiritual authority without questioning or analysis. They recognize the 'alpha' in the spiritual spectrum."
The process of collecting animal souls proved to be much more efficient than human souls. Where human souls sometimes required a careful approach due to the complexity of their spiritual structure, animal souls responded with immediate trust when they recognized legitimate spiritual authority.
But Li Yuan also discovered something unexpected. Each animal soul collected added a unique dimension to the Soul Comprehension space within his Zhenjing. The wolf souls brought pack loyalty, the eagle souls brought freedom and perspective, the bear souls brought strength and protection.
"You enrich my understanding of the soul in a different way than human souls do," he reflected, sensing the new harmony in his Zhenjing. "Human souls teach complexity, but animal souls teach... authenticity."
After collecting hundreds of animal souls from various species—predators and prey, land and water, solitary and social—Li Yuan began to feel the impact on the planet's spiritual ecosystem. Areas that once had a "wild energy" due to the presence of touched animal souls now became more... domesticated. Not in a tamed sense, but in the sense of losing a subtle yet significant edge of wildness.
Plant Souls: A Different Time
The second category proved to be far more challenging. Li Yuan found that plant souls not only operated on a different rhythm, but on a fundamentally different concept of time.
In the first ancient forest he visited, Li Yuan found the soul of a 2,000-year-old oak tree—a single wisp of faint green light that flickered once every few hours, floating among the branches of the still-living tree.
Using the Growth Wrapping technique, Li Yuan began a process that required a total recalibration of his temporal expectations. The resonance he emitted had to match the seasonal rhythm—spring growth, summer abundance, autumn preparation, winter rest—in a hypnotic and meditative cycle.
"Patience," he reminded himself, sensing how the oak soul was slowly beginning to respond. "This is about growing time, not thinking time."
This process took 18 hours for a single tree soul. Eighteen hours of continuous resonance with the seasonal cycle, gradually building trust and recognition in a consciousness that operated in decades and centuries rather than moments and hours.
But when the oak soul was finally wrapped and entered his Zhenjing, the impact was extraordinary. The plant soul brought a profound stability and rootedness, a sense of deep time and endurance that provided grounding for his entire internal spiritual ecosystem.
"You teach a patience that goes beyond what I've ever comprehended," Li Yuan spoke to the oak soul and the other plant souls he began to collect. "About time that is measured in growth cycles rather than heartbeats."
Most astonishingly, Li Yuan interacted with an ancient forest that had a collective soul. Not individual tree spirits, but a forest consciousness formed from the interconnection of hundreds of trees over thousands of years.
A redwood forest on the western continent proved to have a collective soul so complex that Li Yuan required a modification of his Growth Wrapping technique—what he called "Forest Wrapping." The process of collecting a forest soul took weeks, requiring sustained resonance with the entire ecosystem.
The First Universal Soul: An Ancient River
The third category—universal souls—proved to be a completely different challenge. Li Yuan realized that out of the estimated 100 universal souls touched by his global resonance, most were still "alive" in their geological sense. Mountains were still standing, rivers were still flowing, the sky was still protecting.
But there were some that had "died" on a geological timescale—a river that had dried up, a lake that had evaporated, even some small mountains that had been completely eroded by geological processes over the past 4,000 years.
Li Yuan chose an ancient river as the first universal soul to collect. A river that was once the lifeline for a civilization 4,000 years ago but had since changed course and left a dried riverbed for hundreds of kilometers.
The river's soul floated as a massive wisp of silver-blue light—as large as a building, pulsing with a very slow but powerful rhythm. This was not an individual consciousness like a human or animal, but a geological consciousness that encompassed the entire watershed that once was.
Using the Geological Wrapping technique, Li Yuan began a process that immediately showed a different scale. The river's soul did not respond with recognition or acceptance—it responded with... spiritual gravity. Like a celestial body pulling other objects into its orbit.
"This isn't a collection," Li Yuan realized, sensing the massive presence of the river's soul. "This is a... merger."
When the river's soul finally entered his Zhenjing, the transformation was dramatic and unexpected. The Soul Comprehension space didn't just gain an occupant—it fundamentally changed its architecture. The river's soul didn't float like the other individual souls. It became a... current that flowed through the entire spiritual landscape within the Zhenjing.
Li Yuan felt an immediate change in the quality of his existence. With thousands of individual souls and now one universal soul, he no longer felt like an individual entity. He began to feel like... an ecosystem. A complex and interconnected living spiritual ecosystem.
"Universal souls are fundamentally different," he concluded with a profound realization. "They don't join the community in the Zhenjing—they change the very nature of that community."
The Transformative Impact
With the successful collection of a representative sample from all three soul categories, Li Yuan began to understand the true scope of the transformation he was undergoing. This was no longer about an individual Li Yuan carrying spiritual passengers. It was about the emergence of something entirely new—a hybrid entity that combined an individual consciousness with the collective soul of multiple species and even geological consciousness.
"I no longer know what I am becoming," he admitted with a mixture of wonder and apprehension. "But I know that this path is irreversible, and the responsibility I bear now extends beyond anything I could have ever imagined."
The collection operation was still in its early stages, but already Li Yuan could see that the final outcome would be something that never existed before in the history of spiritual evolution—an entity that truly represents the intersection of individual consciousness, collective soul, and planetary spiritual heritage.
The journey toward an unknown form of existence had begun in earnest.