The sun shone over the tranquil lake and redwood forest, a young man sat in the midst of the clearing, unperturbed by the sunlight hitting his face.
He kept pushing his absorption speed, the bottleneck to the 7th Tier gradually loosening. In just 20 seconds, his bottleneck disappeared.
Valerio felt as if he was out of phase with his body. It felt like his soul itself had been pulled out of his body in an instant and stopped immediately.
As Valerio absorbed more and more Lu, the Lu in his body searched for the easiest outlet of energy. It had to be remembered, the First Plane was all about cleansing the body and laying a foundation for the future. Tiers 1-3 cleansed the adjusted the meridians, Tier 3-6 adjusted the body, and Tiers 7-9 adjusted the soul.
Since his body and meridians had already been satiated, the only remaining place was the soul. Lu rushed through his meridians to Valerio's brain, concentrating inside his skull.
All human brains were incredibly vulnerable; each section was invaluable for its own function, but perhaps the most important section was the optic chiasm, where the soul bead rested. The optic chiasm was the connection point where the brain and the eyes converged, and in its center was a shimmering marble-like bead. The bead itself could vary from human to human due to talents, but it would always lie there.
Valerio's very own soul bead was shimmering in a hue of rainbows right now. Before long, the rainbow hues transformed to hues of green, as if his soul had chosen its favourite color. Without a pause, the Lu in Valerio's skull started funnelling towards his soul bead as it increasingly glowed in various hues of green.
And once his soul bead absorbed enough, it began to blossom.
The blossoming of a soul bead was not a blossoming in the literal sense. The soul bead would essentially stay as it is, externally, that is. An unawakened soul bead was simply the soul, and the soul was the soul bead; there was no distinction, not until it blossomed.
The process of blossoming was completely internal, the bead and the soul within it would expand outwards—hence the name—and form the soul sea.
The soul sea would contain the actual soul of the human and their Spiritual Lu. The Spiritual Lu took the form of a sea with its radius, depth, etc, changing with the specifics of their talent, foundation and whatever other variable there may be; after all, the world of cultivation was vast and unpredictable.
It was because of the sea-like form the Spiritual Lu of the human took that the soul bead blossomed into what was referred to as the soul sea, even though the soul sea's physical location was still in the same bed.
Valerio's blossoming was not ordinary. His soul had already been tampered with by his friends and family, albeit in a better way. Under the influence of Lu, the dormant objects that had been sent into his soul bead started manifesting. The green lights gave way to a multitude of different colours, as various birthday presents showed themselves.
A spiritual tattoo in the shape of a circle with a cross over it appeared on his soul bead. The tattoo emitted blue lights, which directly mixed with the green of the soul bead. His dad's [Shifter's Lock] had appeared, the sole reason he was 100% shifted towards the Material Realm. It had to be remembered, without it, Valerio would naturally be 50% shifted to the Void!
Just as the blue lights had mixed in with the green ones, another tattoo appeared on his soul bead. Immediately, an iridescent hue was added to the color mix that was emitted from his soul bead. It was the [Soul Camera] Lucius had gifted him for his birthday.
Valerio had no way of seeing what was happening in his skull; he needed Spiritual Lu for that, but he could feel the familiar aura of his present. Though he didn't have much time to ponder over the matter as the last tattoo on his soul bead manifested, the [Soul Lily Seed]. A pink tattoo flashed into existence on his soul bead, its symbol was tiny compared ot teh others, a modest lily with its petals closed. This one had been given to him by his mother.
His soul bead glowed in various colors, it was as if the rainbow of colors had returned.
Now that the Neutral Lu could stop flowing into the tattoos, his blossoming resumed.
As Valerio's soul continued to absorb Lu, the world around him began to spin. Waves of vertigo struck with such force that his consciousness collapsed, his mind surrendering to the overwhelming sensation of vertigo.
But the moment Valerio lost control over the flow of Lu. Previously, he had been making sure that the Lu didn't ravage through his meridians; he didn't want to suffer any damage to them. But without his conscious effort…
Chaos erupted.
Like an unchained beast, the Lu flow around him grew to a dangerous amount as Lu practically rammed itself against his meridian's walls to travel the slightest bit faster towards the suction force of his soul.
His soul, having tasted the Lu for the first time, clung to it with a ravenous and obsessive hunger. The stillness of the clearing shattered as a tempest of raw energy surged outward. The ancient redwoods groaned under the pressure, their towering forms swaying violently, while the once-calm lake roared to life, its waters twisting and spiralling into the air. The very essence of the surroundings entered a frenzied state, responding to the unrestrained pull of Valerio's soul.
The cause of the storm sat in the eye of it all, eerily still amidst the chaos. His robes remained immaculate, untouched by the destruction swirling around him. Though his meditative posture suggested serene focus, the truth was far grimmer—he had blacked out, his body frozen in a tense, unrelenting grip as it wrestled with the overwhelming influx of Lu. The influx had been so sudden that his muscles simply hadn't had a chance to relax, leaving him upright in the middle of the storm.
Seconds after the storm began, the phenomenon intensified. The ancient redwoods flickered between two extremes—moments of perfect harmony, their branches moving as if in synchronised dance, followed by complete disarray, their limbs writhing unpredictably. Branches cracked and splintered due to the tug of Valerio's soul, snapping free from their trunks and hurtling toward the unconscious Valerio.
Yet, just as each branch seemed poised to strike him, it inexplicably reappeared behind him, its momentum unbroken, as though the laws of reality bent to protect him. Time and space seemed to warp around the young man, leaving him untouched.
Unbeknownst to Valeiro, his soul's awakening was much more important than he could have ever imagined.
And it wasn't going to go unnoticed.