Destiny in Cinders

In the next few days, Ming Guangchen taught An Jing everything about the features of common wonders and their affinities to different elemental aspects. Ocular Blaze, Frostmercury Blood, Dragonnet Tendon, Jade Marrow, Dantian Ocean, Metal Muscle, Skyhold Pillar, Copper Skin, Vajra Arms, Corbel Hands, Visceral Cycle, Soul-Will Control and Force from Will were common and practical wonders used by many in the martial world.

"Just because they're common doesn't mean they're weak. Instead, it's a testament to their effectiveness. Dantian Ocean and Ocular Blaze, for instance, are wonders that any common martialist can manifest at the Fortification Realm. In fact, even those of Grand Chen's imperial bloodline manifest it, though perhaps to an even deeper level. The core principles remain the same," Ming Guangchen explained. "The most important thing about wonders is their configuration. You have to come up with a combination that suits you. Like you've noticed, the Flame Wine Devil was able to push you into a corner by using a combination of his lifearc's traits, martial techniques and wonders."

After Ming Guangchen taught An Jing about the common ways to manifest wonders, he taught him the three arcana of his sect. Glass Bones was similar to Jade Marrow. While it was weaker in terms of durability, it greatly increased the conductivity of spirit qi and was a prerequisite for many body refinement abilities of the Brightmirror Sect such as Void Mirror Body and Sky Crystal Body.

Dustless Eyes was the next level of Ocular Blaze. Unlike what most people thought, Ocular Blaze was actually an aspectless wonder rather than a fire-aspect one. The fire that shot out from the eyes wasn't real fire. Instead, it was a kind of destructive lethal qi. In essence, Ocular Blaze was an ability that relied on qi manipulation. Dustless Eyes was weaker when it came to manipulating spirit qi in the environment, but it greatly improved self-regulation, serving as a foundation for many other ocular techniques of the Brightmirror Sect, Ebony Sun Eyes being one of them.

Lastly, Brightmirror Heart was a wonder unique to the Brightmirror Sect in the sense that no other sect had comparable wonders. It was something that the founding ancestor of the sect, Venerated Voidsight, had passed down. It wasn't something used to boost the physical body or arcane eyes. Rather, its only function was to increase spirit-qi capacity, making it a wonder that was typically manifested later on. Unlike the former two wonders that were specialized, Brightmirror Heart depended on the user's own talent. If one didn't have enough, manifesting this wonder came at a cost.

"Brightmirror Heart suits you quite a bit, I think." Yvelbane was listening to the lecture too. As an immortal sword from ancient times, he did have a lot to learn about the martial path of Void Embrace. Concepts such as using the body as a formation, anchoring into terrestrial veins and Celestial Ocean and simulating a microcosm in the body to engrave universal laws were quite similar to Evenstar Ivory Divine Seal's practices.

As far as Yvelbane was concerned, the first people who developed the martial path had fused formation and artifact techniques with body refinement techniques to establish the foundations for the martial path. Yvelbane excitedly said, "Since you're doing body refinement on the immortal path, you should do more qi cultivation for the martial path!"

"I don't mind it either way," An Jing said. "The only thing I care about is making Temporal Grasp the formation eye, in other words, its center. Then again, I have some doubts. The results of my dao-comprehension state tells me that Temporal Grasp can harmonize between wonders and cultivation techniques so that I can develop my own Mahesvara Heaven's Child Art, is that really fine? Wouldn't that affect things negatively?"

"Don't doubt yourself. Trust the dao you have comprehended," Yvelbane said ardently. "Anything you 'hear' from the Heavenly Dao in Void Embrace is absolutely correct. If the Heavenly Dao says that it's fine, then it's fine. Do you think you know more than the Heavenly Dao?"

An Jing felt like he knew less than Yvelbane, let alone the Heavenly Dao. He nodded. "Alright, then I'll manifest Temporal Grasp."

According to Ming Guangchen, Temporal Grasp was aspectless just like Brightmirror Heart and Ocular Blaze, making it suited to supporting other wonders. To break through to the Clearing Realm, one had to either manifest wonders of the same aspect or manifest wonders that include aspects from all five phases.

Lu Jin, for instance, had four wonders, namely, Copper Skin, Vajra Arms, Ocular Blaze and Dragonnet Tendon. They correspond to metal, metal, aspectless and wood respectively. The wonder he had planned to rely on for his breakthrough, Steadfastness, was also aspectless. This should've been a good setup for a breakthrough. All he needed was to regulate Ocular Blaze into the metal aspect and contemplate Steadfastness into Vajra Immovability to have four metal-aspect wonders.

However, Dragonnet Tendon was a wood-aspect wonder. Even if Lu Jin managed to borrow the power of heavenly fiends, he wouldn't have been able to break through to the Clearing Realm. Not to mention, he had already regulated his Ocular Blaze into the fire aspect, taking the "blaze" part of the name literally, making the breakthrough even harder. Just as how orthodox teachings could exist in the name, names could also mislead people into adopting skewed teachings.

After many days of lectures, An Jing eventually asked whether he could manifest five aspectless wonders as well.

"It's not that you can't," Ming Guangchen said, "But you only have so much energy and focus to divert to manage your wonders. With five aspectless wonders, which one takes command? Which ones serve? Which will you set as the formation eye? Which ones shall grasp the cardinal directions? In theory, using five aspectless wonders is ideal, but it's too difficult in practice. Most people in this world aren't able to achieve this level of perfection and have to compromise somehow."

"It sounds like spirit roots," Yvelbane said. "You should also know that if a person has a complete set of five spirits, basically pentaspirit roots, there's a high likelihood that the conflicting and nourishing relationships between the five spirits could cancel out. It would be a miracle if they were still able to use one or two parts of their spirit roots at a reduced capacity. However, if all aspects of the five phases nourish each other and do not conflict, that means they have a celestial dao body that's superior to celestial spirit roots!"

Yvelbane felt the urge to laugh. "Back in my time, there were only a small handful of people with celestial dao bodies, with quite a number of them being bodies that grand-ability users prepared for their own reincarnation. Your master of the martial path is basically saying that even if you find suitable aspectless wonders that encompass your entire body, if you don't have the right constitution and foundation to support it, you'd end up having to compromise anyway."

"That also means that if it works out, I'll get a primordial dao body of some sort, right? Then it's worth trying," An Jing said. "I have seven lifestars, so that means I have a complete set of the five phases and the yin and yang aspects. If I choose only one aspect to cultivate, I worry that I will be boxed in and be unable to realize the full potential of my celestial arc. I need a dao body."

"You're right." Yvelbane fell into deep thought. "But are you really going to attempt it? You need five aspectless wonders, and so far you only have Temporal Grasp for the soul, Ocular Blaze for the head and Brightmirror Heart for the heart. You still need to include limbs and meridian pathways. It's really hard to manifest aspectless wonders for those."

An Jing seemed rather optimistic about it. "Let's try it nevertheless. I can always switch midway anyway. It's not hard to regulate aspectless wonders to align with specific aspects. In fact, I need to do this precisely because it's hard. If I only do things most people are capable of when I have talent like mine, why would the universe birth someone like me? I bear a celestial arc, so I need to do things that others believe are impossible to pave the way for the future. In a way, this also challenges the established order of things, characteristic of my lifearc."

Yvelbane didn't disagree. With that, An Jing had learned everything there was to manifesting wonders. His cultivation at the Aura Realm had also reached its peak. As he was meditating one night, the moment finally came. As he was manifesting Temporal Grasp, he broke through to the Fortification Realm.