After he stood up and sensed the new state of his body he smiled for a brief moment before frowning slightly. He opened and closed his hands while he thought to himself “now that i'm using two cultivation styles, what should I call this stage, or should I wait until I truly merge the two to rename them?” As he thought of this several random events seemed to line up and occur. Inside of his soul sea the sphere that the rune had left shook lightly and information came out into Naath’s mind. The information essentially told him to simply ignore this until the future. The information had the aura of the old rune that stayed in Naath’s soul sea though.

Perhaps due to him just becoming a cultivator again, perhaps because of his odd soul, perhaps just some chance coincidence. However it happened that this aura swept outwards across Naath’s invisible sensory range ‘buble’. It was faint and undetectable even to those powerhouses close to leaving this world behind for the heavens. But thousands of miles away in a high grade alchemy sect there was suddenly a great stir. Explosions rang out and a strange rune flew out from the sect shattering countless formations as it did so that were attempting to restrict it.

The sect master of this place was in a panic when this happened and hollard out orders to capture the rune again. They had been using this rune for centuries to secretly get lost knowledge and pill refining methods and plant care methods. It seemed as if this rune was the god of alchemy, yet it seemed powerless to resist the sect’s restrictions. It did not have the power to match it’s knowledge nor a true body to use it’s alchemy skills anyway. They had trapped it and tortured it constantly for new information and methods to raise the fame of their sect in producing unequalled medicines.

This rune flew out at a speed so great it left even the sect master at a loss, a man at aura assimilation was left far behind in the dust! The rune had felt this pulse of the old runes aura and as if drawn like metal to a magnet shot directly towards Naath. While he was still in his room Naath was in fact just starting to stand up and getting ready to walk out of his bedroom. As he reached for the door this rune shot through his window and floated gently in front of him. Naath jumped and his eyes shook for a moment, he asked “old rune is that you?”

He quickly realised it was not the same rune he knew however, this one had a completely different shape. He spoke up again saying “Ah no you are not the old rune im familiar with, you must be one of his brothers or sisters. My name is Naath, it’s an honor to meet you, I am a reincarnator and I know one of your allies from a past life. We were very close friends, allies even, I owe him a huge debt and many favors.”

As he spoke Naath slowly took a knee in greeting to the rune, who remained silent. Without a sound it slowly approached Naath’s forehead, smiling Naath lowered all defences to his soul. The rune paused at this and seemed to realize that the young man in front of him truly had no ill intent. The rune didn’t hesitate any longer and directly went inside of Naath’s soul sea. What it saw left it shocked and horrified.

The rune finally spoke and when she did it was a screech of recognition and fear. “A VOID MASTER?! KID YOU COMPREHENDED THE VOID!!!? EVEN ME AND MY VARIOUS BROTHERS AND SISTERS FAILED IN THIS. You have completed what has only ever been theory in this universe!!!”

A light smile bloomed on Naath’s face but before he could speak the rune found the gift left by the old rune. She screeched again “MY KING?! Child, no Naath, you knew our king?! He lives?! Haha there is hope for us all yet! Ah right where are my manors, a friend of the king is a friend to all of us. My name is Alch, as in alchemy, there is little to nothing I do not know of alchemy, from techniques, to recognising treasures and herbs, even raising the plants and animals needed or creating furnaces. My king seems to have left you all of the information on our ancient secrets for when you are ready and strong enough to know. In that case I will guide you in alchemy, you are clearly a trusted ally of the primordial race of man.”

Naath paused for a moment and began to think before speaking. After thinking intensely he asked “What is the primordial race of man? And was the old rune I met last time truly your king? How many other runes are out there that still exist? Also why have I somehow managed to find two of you two lives in a row?”

The rune spoke back instantly. “Ah you didn't even know about the primordial race of man haha. This involves some rather deep secrets, if it weren't for the unique nature of your soul I wouldn't have dared to even utter the name of our race. Essentially we are the first humans to ever exist in this entire universe. That’s all that I can tell you for right now, anymore and the heavens would detect the karma tied to the information and target you even more. Even wiping out a whole solar system or star cluster would be justifiable to them if you knew.

As for your second question, yes he is our king, he has particularly strong knowledge about the soul. If it weren't for his god-like soul arts our entire race would have long since perished to the damnable heavens and the river of time would surely have erased our name. To answer the third, there are as many of us as there are human professions in this world, each of us named after said profession. Everything you can imagine from forging equipment, all the way to simply writing down information in books. Thousands of us, each one specialized in a specific field.

To answer that final question, well you have interacted with two of the major components of our own ancient cultivation techniques. It seems you are fated to cultivate the body of a primordial man, this has benefits you cannot even begin to imagine! However you are not yet ready, you must first come into contact with our third part of cultivation. In order to stabilize this type of body or else you will die completely, soul and all. I cannot show it to you myself, as the karma involved is dangerous. Anyway enough questions, I just spent all of my energy escaping from a group of crazed alchemists when I sensed the energy of our king. I need to rest, when I wake back up I will begin to teach you alchemy. For now I can say only three things, one work on your true void arts.

Two alchemy is fucking expensive to start learning!!! And finally, don't cultivate any further until I wake up to guide you. Even if I cannot teach you the missing piece I can guide you to have a formidable enough body with what you have. Also if you unbalance your cultivation right now you will immediately die without a trace, well except the massive crater it will create from the explosion. Now then I must rest.”

Naath processed all of the information and nodded as he did but there was one question he forgot to ask. Did he have to re-cultivate his soul?! He let out a groan at that thought, he has so much more time in his memories to relive again and again now. Would it even be safe to cultivate his soul right now or would it upset his cultivation balance?! Naath panicked as he wondered how long the rune would take to wake up, he took a deep breath after a few minutes and just accepted it all. He pulled out the light blue token from the storage bag the emperor had given him.

He rubbed it gently with his thumb and smiled, he had always had a fondness for books and knowledge after all. After carefully rubbing his thumb over it he put it back in his storage bag and then walked out of his room and then out of the house after letting a servant know he was going to the library again. The maid smiled gently when she heard this knowing her young master might be a reincarnator but was still in the end the kind, book loving young master she had watched since he was born. With his cultivation Naath arrived at the library in only half of the time it usually took him. When he got there he directly found the librarian and took out the token for him to see.

The librarian smiled wide and just nodded, with that Naath now had full access to any book or tablet, any scrap of knowledge in this entire library. Naath smiled at this and began to sweep out his soul power and it entered several jade tablets all at the same time. In a few seconds Naath had read all of them simultaneously, a perk of his now four part soul. He could multitask effortlessly now, if before he could read two things at once now he could read eight at once. In this way he quickly walked through the library section he had never been able to read or look into before. In only 20 minutes he had read the entire section.

He nodded satisfactorily and moved on to yet another section of the library, one with scrolls on every shelf, all of them looking thousands of years old. Once again he spread out his soul energy and began reading them all. This section was meant exclusively for soul masters after all, these scrolls would probably fall apart if picked up. Soul energy was the only way to read them without destroying them now. Naath gained no new information he had not already learned about soul cultivation from master Gui. He quickly moved on to the next section of the library and finished that one as well.

After going around the library methodically like this he had gained an astonishing amount of information on martial pathway ideas, elemental cultivation, etc. He continued to slowly walk around the library clearing out section by section. Eventually he wandered to the end of the hallway of rooms. At the end of this hallway stood a pair of massive double doors. They seemed grand and magnificent and had runes engraved all along the frame and the doors themselves. In the center of one of the doors was an indent that seemed like Naath’s token would fit perfectly.

Without much thought Naath casually took out the token and laid it into the space. The token started to emit a gentle light and the doors slowly opened by themselves. Inside was a long dark spiral staircase going deep underground, occasionally a room was off to the side of this staircase as it wound down. Each room was filled with books, scrolls, and even tablets seemingly placed haphazardly. The knowledge of these seemed to all be secrets of this country that would cause many to condemn the royal family and even the country itself. Naath ignored these and kept going down the staircase until he reached a basement that seemed several hundred feet deep.

He let out a low whistle as he looked at the gates in front of him, again he needed his token. This time however the token let out a brilliant almost blinding deep blue light like the ocean. Naath couldn't help but wonder exactly what sort of information was behind this gate. He had the highest grade token in the country and based on the glow of the light only exactly that would let him in here. After Naath used the token on this gate it went very dim though as if it needed to recharge, this time he had truly used the token.