Molting the Mortal Coil

After three days of miscellaneous tasks, Sage finally returned to his transcription of the Ancient Maps. The Map Sphere, as Sage was now calling it, was being rapidly filled with new maps. After some practice, he had rapidly decreased the amount of time needed to copy the maps into the Memory Sphere. He had grown more familiar with manipulating the sphere and far more skilled at creating a map within it. As Sage used it more, he realized the Memory Sphere was the dream of all artists. It had been something he had always wanted back on earth, a device that could record memories. With a bit more practice even thoughts could be copied down. It was no wonder that Memory Spheres were so expensive, it seemed they could contain nearly anything. The main purpose was to copy down techniques and the experiences of those who used them, imparting mass amounts of knowledge and life experience. Being able to create a world and narrate a story that others could directly experience was merely a side-effect. It’s too bad Memory Spheres are so expensive… I wonder if creating stories people can experience like their own memories would be lucrative?

Putting aside these ideas for later, Sage became ever more experienced manipulating the Memory Sphere and visualizing the maps he was looking at. Memories were for the most part the recordings of experience, the summation of the senses that person had experienced. A normal person’s memories would be quite cloudy and only those things related to intense emotion would leave deep and lasting memories. A Cultivator was different as their bodies would continually grow stronger with each increase in rank. At first this was just the muscles, skin and bones. Next came the internal organs to support a stronger body and in time even the nervous system would get transformed for faster reaction times. Once a certain level was reached the brain along with every single cell would undergo a complete transformation. A chain could only ever be as strong as the weakest link, which meant that in time the most powerful of Cultivators had improved their bodies dozens of times over. Even without any special memory improving or mind enhancing techniques they could be many times smarter than a normal person and possess photographic memories.

After a couple months, Sage had become so skilled at visualizing the map in his mind that he could copy them into the Memory Sphere with only a few seconds of study. It ended up taking him longer to pull out the map scroll and hang it up for viewing than it did to actually record it into the Map Sphere. With this new speed the thousand different maps were recorded within only a couple days. During the first few days he’d only been able to copy down a couple maps per day yet by the end he was fast enough to do one per minute. Quite a training program. I wonder if I can copy in books using the same technique?

Intrigued, Sage didn’t immediately start analyzing all the maps and instead started to work on methods to copy down the books. Unfortunately he didn’t have any blank Memory Spheres so he asked around among the Elders and Disciples. Luckily he found someone who was willing to sell one. Unfortunately, he charged him double the normal value, but Sage took the deal since he didn’t wish to waste time and they were quite far from any other civilization at the time. In the end it was only Spirit Stones, two hundred instead of one hundred wasn’t a huge expenditure for Sage. With the new Sphere in hand, Sage picked out a general book about Demonic Beasts and started to try and copy it into the sphere. He was sure there was probably Qi Techniques that could accomplish this quite quickly, but doing it this way himself was a very useful memory and mental training technique. He had to visualize blocks of text in their entirety and hold it within his mind long enough and with enough detail to add it into the book within the Sphere. After all the training with the map it took him only a few more days before he was able to copy a page at a time. From there it was only a matter of practice. Within a few more weeks he was flipping through books page by page as if he was just browsing through a picture book, all the while copying it all down.

Sage’s new problem was picking which books to copy down, the tens of thousands of books were quite a huge library to choose from. While the third floor housed all the actual techniques, Sage found that the first floor held all the foundational knowledge. After he had copied down a few dozen of the books detailing a large variety Demonic Beasts, Spirit Animals, and Spirit Plants from different regions, he moved on to the Spirit Insect books. For Spirit Insects he copied down every book, not just the general reference books as it was an area he was most interested in. After that he did the same for all the varieties of Snakes, Serpents and similar scaled beasts. From there he delved into those books that covered all the basics. They may not seem like much since they didn’t actually contain any techniques, but they built a solid foundation of knowledge that would actually make learning different techniques for easier. For example there was dozens of different books about the intricacies of different metals. A Blacksmith might only read a general ore guide that details where to find all the different metals and the basics on how to work with them and their properties. On the other hand an entire book that was devoted to that one specific metal would delve into great detail on the exact temperatures for smelting the ore into metal, melting the metal into a liquid state, and what temperatures it worked best for shaping or hardening. It could go into detail on how it interacts with other materials, what array formations or types of arrays work best with it and of course many specifics on its flexibility, hardness, brittleness, and how to change those general attributes.

This specialized books didn’t just pertain to the materials for Professions there was also many books pertaining to the body and its functions for Doctors, monster anatomy for Butchers, spice interaction for Chefs, the etymology of individual array symbols… the list goes on. These books covered the minutiae of every possible profession or interest. At least in some part. Many topics only had a few books while others had whole shelves, most Sects focused on different things after all. Sage was the same in that he aimed to focus on the areas he already had skill, building his Spirit Insect library up before heading over to the sections on array symbols. There were no actual formations listed here, but there was more than a few books dissecting specific array symbols themselves and how they interacted with others.

The array symbols were quite unique and had been passed down since before anyone could remember. The symbols were like a language that nobody spoke, each symbol corresponded to a different element, energy, or type of creature. As Sage read in one of the books, it was said that once a Cultivator could reach a certain level of mastery and power they could see the symbols that made up the world around them. By using these symbols they could channel energy to make it do what they wanted. It was like how a Cultivator channel energy through their Qi Pores and shaped it with their will to create different techniques. The symbols control and sculpt energy to allow it to accomplish basically anything. While most people thought that a more powerful array required more powerful array symbols, this was far from the truth. Instead the array symbols became more powerful by becoming more complicated. Multiple symbols could be combined in different ways, creating a sort of secret code that other Formation Masters would then have to crack in order to defeat an array. The symbols were combined into formations like words in a book. Even the simplest of symbols could be used to make moving stories, and even if one had a massive vocabulary and wrote a sesquipedalian story(full of big words!) it didn’t mean it was good.

Sage delved into copying down the books about array symbols and just like the Spirit Insect books he didn’t stop to study them yet. He wasn’t sure how long this exploratory expedition was going to last so he had to make the best use of his time. Hundreds of books were rapidly copied down and within a couple weeks Sage had finished the collection on array symbols. With his two main areas of focus covered he moved onto things he guessed would be useful to him in the future. The Soul Taming Abode was a place that seemed to deal with souls, and Sage had just merged together with the Twin Ringed Soul Serpent. He already had a technique that could attack souls, so it only fitting that he record down all their knowledge in this area.

As he expected, the number of books on the Soul filled a whole aisle of the library. The number of books on this topic were overwhelming!