Wearing a clean violet martial cultivator outfit from the Ying Clan's spatial ring, he looked at himself thoroughly. Over the past two years, his changes were extraordinary. To the point where his mother and father would barely recognize him, and he wasn't sure how he felt about it all.
His muscles were robust and defined as if sculpted like a greek statue, his pectoral muscles were elegantly made as if chiseled, his face was handsome and filled with masculine charm, the amber eyes of his sparkled with vibrant strength and lifeforce, and his height reached six feet.
Tao flew over to Yan Zaizen, his body radiating faint traces of origin aura. When he arrived, he looked at Yan Zaizen curiously. He remembered when this boy first arrived, how he was like a newborn child looking curiously at the gates of hell, but now he felt more like a man ready to ascend to the heavens.
When Yan Zaizen first informed him that his soul cultivation could rival an Origin Core practitioner, he was skeptical. Who wouldn't be? He was only 17 years old, and soul cultivation required a massive amount of specific resources and enlightenment to progress. Out of all the cultivation methods, soul cultivation was the most difficult and time-consuming. If someone told him three years ago that a 17-year-old kid reached the Aurora Soul Realm, he would've dismissed them as being insane or uneducated.
But here he was.
Yan Zaizen found another outfit from the Ying's Clan spatial ring and handed it to Tao. It was an identical pair with his current violet attire. These outfits weren't normal by any means. They were shrouded in formations designed to gather essence for cultivation and qi recovery, defensive formation for protection against all types of energies, and tight-fitting, stretchable fabric that conforms to any body type.
The outfit could be considered an earth-rank armament of the top-grade. It was designed to be worn against and by Qi Unification Cultivators and thus wasn't that effective in combat situations at the Origin Core Realm. Despite this, it was suitable for both Yan Zaizen and Tao.
"This seemed to have been created by a formation specialist. Do you know how to create formations also?" Tao inquired. These outfits truly were exceptionally crafted, the Ying Clan was a formation clan with over a thousand years of legacy after all. If they couldn't make an earth-rank, top-grade armament with rank six formations embedded into it, they would've been a shame to all armament creationist clans realm-wide.
"Naw. A clan was nice enough to let me keep them, it's a long story." He responded with a slight smile. If the Ying Clan heard his words, they would probably be spewing copious amounts of blood out of hate and indignation.
"Mhm." Tao nodded, using his qi-essence to remove the embedded dirt in his skin, regaining his original color of brown skin, dark brown hair and pearly white teeth. "What now?"
"There's something I want to check out before we leave." Yan Zaizen said, looking deep into the hole. Earlier, when he arrived, he felt an odd life signature from below. Over the two years, he felt that odd life signature constantly fluctuate between strong and weak erratically. Whenever it became strong, he could feel something inside him resonate with it. This sensation kept getting stronger and stronger with each fluctuation.
"Something's calling me. I just don't know what." His tone was filled with curiosity. With his soul cultivation recovered, if he wanted to leave, no one could stop him from doing so.
Tao followed Yan Zaizen's gaze, slowly nodding his head. "In that case, shall we go down?" He was willing to follow this boy anywhere. Not only because he saved his life, but because over the two years, they've become remarkably close. Even if he was nearing 700 years in age, he felt close to Yan Zaizen. Not to mention that Yan Zaizen's soul cultivation base exceeded his own considerably, he had no qualms about following him to the ends of the earth.
If it wasn't for Yan Zaizen, he would've jumped off this cliff a year ago and arrived in the underworld.
"...Absolutely."
Yan Zaizen withdrew his silver-blue soul energy from his body. This action caused his body to suddenly descend downwards. Initially, it was slow, but as he continued going downwards the speed of his descent increased to terminal velocity.
"Hahaha! Down we go!" Tao chuckled seeing Yan Zaizen be so decisive. He withdrew the levitating force of his qi-essence, falling downwards following Yan Zaizen, but his qi-essence still formed a faint barrier around his skin to prevent any damage. Unlike Yan Zaizen, he didn't have a profound body cultivation.
They continued their descent, passing the many people who were working the mines, and most didn't even give them a glance. A person saw them two falling and jumped after them in suicide. Yan Zaizen ignored him, letting him fall.
1 li.
10 li.
100 li.
They were falling for quite a while. The hole seemed virtually endless. "How far does this truly go?" He couldn't help but inwardly question. It seems that no matter how deep they went within the hole, they weren't even close to reaching the bottom. However, the odd life signature became more and more vibrant with every meter traveled.
From his discussions with Tao, he learned quite a lot about these Deep Mines. It was created over ten thousand years ago, before the new era of the myriad world was established, during the Chaos Era. The current era was the Rebirth Era, and it started over twelve thousand years ago after the Chaos Era ended.
The Chaos Era was just like its name described - full of chaos. It was an era filled with a great war that terrorized every inch of the myriad realms. Many beings at the height of power fell, and worlds were destroyed. It was so chaotic that even entire realms fell, laid barren with no life or chance for life to be born anew.
When the Rebirth Era was ushered, it signified the end of the chaos. It hoped for the rebirth of a cultivation society after a near total collapse. It succeeded. The myriad realms were no longer drenched in blood and death, but stable and developing once more to its former glory.
When Yan Zaizen first heard of this, his mind was blown. When he was younger, he only knew of the continent and the four countries inhabiting it. When Wu Yuanxu informed him of the Anima Society, he learned that the realm he resided in was called the Xiantu Realm, named after the Xiantu Empire. The Realm had three habitable planets called continents due to each having one large land mass followed by millions of minor ones. He was currently living on the continent named the Fallen Stars Continent.
He remembered Meteorite City and how its population was decimated by falling meteors. As he heard of its name, it brought about a sense that made them seem heavily connected. Many believe a majority of the resources on the continent was from the asteroids that traveled the void. They bombarded the planet and gave it its many characteristics and unique lifeforms.
Due to the vast amount of time that passed since the Chaos Era, not many people knew much about the Deep Mines except that it was exceptionally deep. Tao informed him that even the Grux Empire wasn't able to explore the depth of the holes. It seemed that there were many mysteries about not only its depths but how it was formed that its own country didn't know about.
After traveling 700 li downwards, Yan Zaizen stopped his falling momentum as a silver-blue light surrounded his body. Tao attempted doing the same, but his ability to stop was far inferior to Yan Zaizen and he kept going for another kilometer. He had to fly back up to meet Yan Zaizen, but one could tell the energy required to stop his momentum exhausted him.
"You found something?" Tao inquired.
Yan Zaizen didn't answer right away but continued gazing at the wall to his furthest right. There, a fluctuating grey light was being emitted, but it was embedded deeply within the wall. This grey light indicated spiritual life, and it was the first time he'd encountered such a thing.
Their current distance beneath exceeded 1,000 li in total. The mines no longer existed, and there were no guards, miners, or dug out mining holes in this area. It just looked like a deep dark hole with no light, and even Tao could only see Yan Zaizen through his qi-sense. If Yan Zaizen concealed his qi-aura, he'd be invisible to Tao right now.
"You don't see it?" It took a while before Yan Zaizen asked.
Tao was shocked, looking around but only seeing darkness. He tried using his qi-sense to find any form of energy fluctuation, but he came up with absolutely nothing. He didn't like using his spiritual sense due to its limited range and cultivation of the Initial Nascent Soul Realm, but even while using it now, he still he couldn't find anything.
"No. What is it?"
"A grey light. It has a low-life emission, but its spiritual, not physical. I've never seen a spiritual life form before." He couldn't help but be bewildered. Normally, cultivators have a physical lifeforce energy and when it goes kaput, then your body is dead. Without a working body, your soul will slowly exit it and enter the cycle of reincarnation. However, souls don't give life emissions, because they don't have lifeforce energy, they have soul flame to indicate consciousness and energy base - that's their life signature.
This also meant that life law can't heal soul damage, which is why its something feared by all cultivators. Only heavenly resources, specific pills, or a considerable amount of time-extensive cultivation can help restore the soul flame to its peak. This also means death laws can't directly affect the soul either. If one wanted to affect the life or death of the soul, one would need to merge the two world laws with the world law of souls and produce the Imperial Law of Samsara.
Tao was shocked when he heard Yan Zaizen's description. He contemplated for a long while. Something struck him like lightning as he jumped in shock, "A TRUE SPIRIT?!"