Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

Senior Yang remained silent throughout his time in Alex's Soul Space, his face contemplative the entire time, while Alex did his best to survive.

He could feel his spiritual energy depleting with each passing minute, but he could do nothing to stop it. He just had to bear the burden of the senior being inside of him while making sure it didn't deplete to the point that he ended up unconscious.

Thankfully, there was someone frantically crying out in his spiritual sea, after having just woke up from a nap, not realizing what was happening.

Alex should have alerted Godslayer on what was happening, but he had forgotten. But, now that he was awake, he was relying on him to tell him when his spiritual sense was getting too low.

He struggled for a good few minutes, bearing the heaviness on his soul, and couldn't continue any longer. "Senior, you'll have to leave," he said. "I'm reaching my limits."

"Just a bit… fine," the man reluctantly said. He needed more time here, he wasn't nearly done, but he had to leave. It was that or let the young man outside die. And if he wasn't wrong about what he had noticed, he couldn't let that happen. Not now.

"Pull me out," the man said and Alex followed his words, instinctively bringing him out from his Soul Space.

The moment the man arrived outside, Alex felt as if the shackles on his soul had been removed as if he had been allowed to breathe after being underwater for a long time.

He heaved a long sigh of relief and closed his eyes for a while to catch his breath. The relief from his soul unburdening was almost ecstatic.

After a few more minutes, once he had more or less become calm again, he looked toward the man who was deep in thought. He waited for a minute longer, but couldn't contain himself after that.

"Did you find something, senior?" he asked.

"Hmm?" the man got out of his muse. "Oh right!" He thought for a moment longer on what exactly to say and then spoke.

"I think I understand, at least superficially what has happened," he said. "I will need to enter your Soul Space a few more times when you are ready, but for now these are the truths I've found."

"I am not aware if you've noticed or not, but your Soul Space is full of Yang," the man said.

Alex's eyes narrowed. "Yang? I did not sense any at all, and neither did my beasts mention it," he said.

"Hmm," the man paused. "Calling it Yang alone would be wrong. It's not yang, but Yang in an aura that is still Yang and yet a variant."

"I… do not understand what you are saying at all, senior," Alex said. All of those words made sense individually, but together they felt like gibberish.

"Life aura," the man said. "You are aware of this, correct?" 

"To an extent," Alex said before his eyes widened. "Are you saying my Soul Space is filled with Life Aura?" He knew Life aura was something that had in part to do with Yang, just as Death aura had to do with Yin. Was this what the man meant?

"I won't say filled, more so that it just exists there. It's very minute and spread out. I would doubt you would be able to feel it even if you want to," the man said.

"How strong would you say it is?" Alex asked.

The man reached into the grassy meadow and tore out a few blades of the grass. He let it fall from his hand. "Barely good enough to grow this much in any particular area," he said.

"That's… not very good," Alex said. 

"No, it is not," the man said. "But you are not taking into account how vast the soul space inside of you is. Even Life aura that thin, when put together from all corners of your Soul Space, would be very rich."

"I was once told the Sage of Ten Thousand Treasures took away a Space Stone of a size that could create a Soul Space enough to devour the sun. Yours was smaller than that, but it might still be enough to devour this realm."

Alex's breathing hastened with those words, his eyes gleaming with excitement. The man saw this but said nothing to caution him about how he felt. He didn't have to. Alex calmed himself and asked another question.

"Why is there life aura in my Soul Space?" he asked. "I don't remember owning any treasures that had life aura. Or was I just blind to the aura?"

"No," the man said. "I doubt the Life aura originated anywhere other than your body."

"My body?" Alex asked. "It's a result of the Sun God's body?"

"That's what I believe," the man said. "Otherwise, the aura shouldn't have permeated so evenly. Any object with Life Aura should be heavily concentrated around the aura."

Alex nodded. Still, the words were hard for him to believe. "Does the fact that I have learned the Dao of Death not affect it in any way?" he asked.

"Death is something you learned, Life is something you were born with, it's part of your constitution as the owner of the Sun God's body," the man said. "Throughout history, we have learned that Sun God's body affects one's aspects in certain ways."

"Their body is capable of turning anything to Qi from Space stones and Pill to Beast cores. Their minds are capable of withstanding assault from outside, their spirit capable of devouring other spirits."

"Their Soul Space being filled with vigorous life aura is now just another thing that it is capable of," the man said. "We've never before had one with a body capable of devouring Space stones to form a Sou Space, but that must be another perk of the Sun God's body that none of the previous ones born with that happened to come across."

"So I was just… lucky," Alex said.

"Not lucky," the man said. "Destined. Although one could consider someone destined to be lucky." The man laughed alone. 

Alex wasn't of half a mind to laugh. He thought curiously about what he could do with this information. His Soul Space was full of Life aura, so was that why the Yang tree had sprouted roots in there?

"So the Nine Yang Divine tree's seed responded to my Soul Space's life aura and germinated?" he asked the man.

"In a sense," the man said. "Maybe you had a Yang body that helped it feel like at home or something. I cannot tell you the exact reasons why that happened, but yes, it grew. And I can confidently say that it grew before the World Tree."

The man sighed in somewhat disbelief. "The Yang seed much had been looking for more sources of energy, which was why its roots shoot out to grab onto anything," he said. "And in its search, it came across the World Tree seed. Unfortunately for it, the World Tree seed is not a minor thing."

"It is something said to have survived frigid landscape, to devour energy from magma itself to grow," the man said. "The Nine Yang Divine Tree simply activated the World Tree's survival instinct, and most likely forced it to sprout to protect itself when it should have not."