The days following the spar settled into a new, surprisingly productive routine. Jian Xuan, now a formal, if secret, member of the sect, divided his time between slowly healing the last of his profound injuries and relentlessly training. The brief, intense spar with Li Yu had done more for his cultivation than the last twenty years of solitary meditation.
The crack in his spiritual barrier was a tangible thing, a source of constant, fervent hope, and he dedicated every waking moment to widening it, to pushing against the bottleneck that had defined his life for two decades.
Li Yu, in turn, finally had a whetstone sharp enough to hone his own skills. They would meet in the subterranean training ground every few days, their spars growing in intensity as Jian Xuan recovered more of his strength. Li Yu's combat instincts, his ability to seamlessly weave his various techniques together, grew at a visible rate. He was learning how to truly fight an expert, and the experience was invaluable.
When they were not training, Li Yu dedicated his time to the jade slip Jian Xuan had given him. The soul technique, 'Soul Dominion', was a marvel of cultivation theory. It was profound, intricate, and possessed a simple, elegant logic.
It was a method for a Soul Formation expert to project their will, to manifest their soul outside their body as a form of absolute spiritual suppression. To Li Yu, whose own soul techniques were born of instinct and self-discovery, this orthodox, human-developed art was a fascinating new field of study.
He spent hours in the highest chamber of his pagoda, seated in a meditative position, the jade slip resting in his lap. He memorized the Qi pathways, the spiritual circulation patterns, and the specific mental triggers required to coax the soul from its sanctuary in the sea of consciousness. The technique made perfect sense to him. With his level of control and the sheer power of his Koi Qi, he felt confident that he could master it.
After a few days of study, he was ready to practice. He sat on his balcony, the night air cool and still. He took a deep breath, calmed his mind, and began to follow the steps of the Soul Dominion technique. He circulated his Koi Qi along the prescribed pathways, gathering a tendril of his spiritual sense and using it as a gentle guide, a lure, to call his nascent soul forth.
He could feel it stir within his sea of consciousness, the colossal, sleeping leviathan shifting in the deep. He followed the technique perfectly, creating a stable channel from his mind to the physical world, a bridge for his soul to cross.
He pushed. He coaxed. He commanded.
And nothing happened.
The leviathan soul acknowledged his call, its immense presence brushing against his consciousness, but it remained firmly anchored in its abyssal home. It was like trying to summon a mountain. It would not budge. There was no resistance, no struggle; it was simply an absolute, immovable inertia.
He tried again, this time with more force, pouring more of his Koi Qi into the process. The result was the same. He spent the entire night, trying again and again, meticulously following every step of the technique, but he made no progress whatsoever. The leviathan would not come out.
The next day, a deep sense of frustration had settled over him. He sought out Jian Xuan, who was meditating near one of the quieter pools in the menagerie.
"Brother Jian," Li Yu said, his voice holding a rare note of confusion. "I have been practicing the soul technique you gave me. I have followed every step, but I have made no progress."
Jian Xuan opened his eyes, a look of surprise on his face. "No progress? That is… unexpected. Your control and spiritual sense are profound, Young Master. You should have been able to grasp the basics almost immediately." He stood up. "Please, show me what you are doing. Let me observe your energy flow."
They returned to the privacy of Li Yu's pagoda. Li Yu explained exactly what he was feeling—the stirring of the leviathan, its acknowledgment of his call, and its absolute refusal to be moved. Li Yu sat down and once again began the process, this time allowing Jian Xuan to monitor him with his own powerful spiritual sense. Jian Xuan was a fantastic teacher, his explanations clear and his observations precise, but he was faced with a problem he's never encountered before.
Jian Xuan watched intently, his brows furrowed in concentration. He observed the perfect, flawless circulation of Li Yu's Koi Qi, the precise formation of the spiritual channel, the clear and powerful intent of his will.
After Li Yu had made several more fruitless attempts, Jian Xuan sighed, a look of complete and utter bafflement on his face.
"Young Master… I do not understand," he admitted. "Your execution of the technique is perfect. Flawless. Better, even, than my own first attempts years ago. From a technical standpoint, it should be working. Your soul should be responding."
Jian Xuan fell into a deep, contemplative silence, pacing back and forth on the balcony. "Perhaps…" he said slowly, thinking aloud, "perhaps the issue is with the nature of the soul itself. This technique was developed by humans, for human souls. Your soul is in the form of a leviathan. It is a divine beast. Perhaps its nature is simply incompatible with a human technique? It might require a different method, a different approach entirely."
It was a logical conclusion, but it didn't feel right to Li Yu. "But it is my soul," he countered. "And I am human. Its form may be different, but its essence should still be tied to my will. It should respond to my commands."
Jian Xuan stopped pacing, a new, far more radical and unsettling thought striking him. He looked at Li Yu, his expression hesitant, as if he were afraid to even voice the idea. "Young Master… you are correct. A nascent soul, no matter its form, is a part of the cultivator. It should respond to your will." He took a breath. "But… you yourself are not yet in the Soul Formation realm. Your soul was not born through the normal process of cultivation."
He looked at Li Yu, his eyes wide with a dawning, heretical theory. "Perhaps… perhaps it is not your soul at all. Perhaps it is the soul of something else, a separate entity that resides within you?"
The question hung in the air, heavy and world-altering. What could it be the soul of, then? A parasite? A possession? The idea was deeply disturbing.
Li Yu considered this for a long, silent moment before shaking his head. The leviathan soul felt like a part of him, as integral to his being as his own heart or mind. It did not feel like a foreign entity, it was definitely a part of himself.
"No, it is mine," Li Yu stated with certainty. ". It was born at the moment I established my understanding of my daos, when I formed my core and solidified my two daos. I had no control over it then, no understanding of what it was. It was just… there. A sleeping giant in my mind."
Jian Xuan stared, his mind struggling to process this new, even more impossible revelation. The boy hadn't just acquired a nascent soul through some heaven-defying treasure; it had been naturally born from his own unique foundation.
"You are aware that I can use soul techniques," Li Yu continued, reminding Jian Xuan of their first battle. "Those techniques did not come from some ancient inheritance. After my nascent soul was born, I had no way to command it. I created a cultivation technique myself, based on my own dao, I called it the Leviathan Heart Sutra. It was from the slow, painstaking process of creating and practicing that Sutra that I was able to develop the three techniques I now possess for the soul."
The revelation that Li Yu had created his own soul cultivation techniques was the final, devastating blow to Jian Xuan's understanding of the world. He was a pioneer and trailblazer. He was the kind of existence who didn't just follow the rules of cultivation, but wrote new ones.
What he didn't realize was that Li Yu created those techniques through purely trial and error with his leviathan soul. There was no backlash or damage from the soul due to the wrong techniques or paths taken.
When he was wrong the leviathan simply did not respond to him. When he was on the right track, the leviathan responded in kind. If he didn't have that kind of free reign to create, he most probably would have been dead already. Li Yu was fearless because he didn't know better.
The cultivation of the soul was the most dangerous because one wrong move could be absolutely devastating to a cultivator.
Jian Xuan let out a long, slow sigh of defeat, his expression a mixture of profound awe and deep frustration. "Then I am at a complete loss, Young Master," he said, his voice now devoid of any pretense of being a teacher. "I am like a child trying to explain the stars to an ancient god. This is grounds I have never been on, a level of cultivation theory I cannot even begin to comprehend."
He looked at Li Yu, a newfound, almost reverent respect in his eyes, though a lot of it was a misunderstanding that both of them didn't know. "It is as I suspected. Your soul is a unique existence, born from a unique dao. It operates by its own set of rules, a logic that is beyond my understanding. The techniques of humans, at least the one I have, are simply not usable for you."
He shook his head, a wry, self-deprecating smile on his face. "It would seem, Young Master, that in this, as in all other things, you will have to figure it out for yourself. You might be walking a path no one else has."
Li Yu fell silent, a thoughtful expression on his face. The easy answer he had been hoping for was gone. The human soul technique was a dead end. But Jian Xuan's words had not discouraged him. They had ignited a new sense of resolve.
He was on his own path. The rules that governed others did not apply to him. He had created his own cultivation method, his own soul techniques. If he wanted to bring his leviathan soul out into the world, he would not find the answer in the scrolls of other men.
He would have to create the answer himself.