As soon as he closed his eyes at the bottom of the lake, the first thing he did wasn't to immediately start creating the cultivation technique but to review his actions in this new life since the beginning because according to Buddha's teachings to become a Buddha is to understand yourself completely.

For the Buddha, ultimate reality is a process of self-realization. Nobody is going to save you. The only person that can liberate you from your own pain and suffering is yourself.

So he started analyzing all of his actions and the first step in doing so was for him to suppress all of his emotions and what he realized deeply unsettled him, ever since he came to this world and reincarnated he was acting extremely unlike his past life.

He even disregarded the Buddha's teachings that you should kill living beings in order to not gain any negative karma, just because of his desire to get stronger and reach enlightenment he committed a massacre against the innocent beast of the surrounding area.

But no matter how much he thought about it he couldn't figure out the answer to why he was acting this way, but just at that moment he again felt the faint whispering of the Heavenly Will, it was telling him that the answer will he should focus on creating the cultivation technique he had in mind and that with that the answer will reveal itself.

Wang Wei was a bit confused about how the Heavenly Will could possibly know this. But then he remembered what he read in the book his ancestor left him.

It was said that all Heavenly Wills of the higher realms were connected to Great Dao, and since everything originates from the Great Dao including all knowledge. That meant that the Heavenly Will was connected to a source of limitless knowledge so it did make sense that it would know how to help him.

So with that in mind, Wang Wei started going over Buddhist scriptures in order to find the core of Buddist ideology and because of his abundant experience and understanding of the scriptures he quickly found out what the core of Buddism was.

He decided that the core of Buddhism was getting rid of the five hindrances, and by doing so achieving nirvana.

The five hindrances were namely the first hindrance sensory desire, also known as an attachment to seeking pleasure through the five senses of sight, sound, smell, taste, and physical feeling.

The second hindrance is Ill-will also know as being prone to feelings of hostility, resentment, hatred, and bitterness towards living beings.

The third hindrance is sloth-and-torpor, which is laziness and half-hearted action with little or no concentration.

The fourth hindrance is restlessness and worry, which is anxiety and the inability to calm one's mind.

And finally, the fifth and last hindrance is doubt, which is the lack of conviction or trust in oneself and others.

The Buddha teaches that to control and detach yourself from the five hindrances is the ultimate goal, but in order to do that one first had to know what the five hindrances really are.

Wang Wei made some headway in that regard and had a working theory that the five hindrances were in fact the flaws of the soul and originated from the soul and that would mean that the core of Buddhism would be the cleansing of those flaws from one's soul.

But the problem that Wang Wei had encountered while trying to devise the cultivation path back in the Celestial Wang realm during all those years was that it was thought to be impossible to sense your soul before breaking through the Nascent-Soul realm.

However in this realm, as soon as Wang Wei thought about trying to sense his soul he immediately felt the Heavenly Will assisting him, it felt as if it was trying to tell him something but as soon as he tried to decipher its whispers he couldn't quite grasp their meanings.

Nonetheless, though a long time passed he still managed to decipher what the Heavenly Will was trying to tell him, it was pointing to one specific place of his body located above his eyes.

In the stories of his old world, it was said that this was the place where the third eye was located, and he supposed that it would make sense that the soul would be located there.

When he started concentrating on that spot he felt something, and after spending an unknown amount of time solely focusing on only that one spot he finally got a clear picture.

It was a completely black space and within that space floated a strange figure, as soon as he saw it he knew what it was, it was his soul.

His soul looked exactly like his body except that it was naked and it was completely made from what looked like glowing blue liquid, when he made that observation, the Heavenly Will whispered to him that it was called spirit energy.

Wang Wei would have been ecstatic if he wasn't currently suppressing his emotions and only using logic, but as it was he felt completely indifferent towards his discovery.

Since that was the case he quickly moved on to try to find the origin of the five hindrances he hypothesized was hidden within the soul. However, when he started looking for them and examining his soul he was still clueless about where they would be hidden.

Except he didn't need the help of the Heavenly Will this time for him to realize what the issue was because he remembered that Buddhist scriptures said that to detach oneself from the five hindrances one first has to be aware of them.

The problem with that was Wang Wei was taking that information too literally, but after analysis, he finally realized its meaning. Because the five hindrances were a part of every human being's soul it was an intrinsic part of it and that meant that there wasn't just a place within the soul that the five hindrances originated from.

He realized that they were like salt dissolved into water and in order to be able to remove the salt from the water was essentially impossible unless you take each particle of salt that was hidden among the water molecules and remove it.

So the idea he came up with was that in order for a human being to "become aware of the five hindrances" they essentially have to be aware that their soul was completely contaminated by them.

Therefore to make sure he was right he started checking his soul to see if his theory was correct, he first started analyzing his very soul deeper and deeper until he could see each and every whisp of the so-called spirit energy.

However, what he saw shocked him, even though his soul looked pure at first glance when he finally saw each individual whisp of the spirit energy he saw that each and every one of them was in fact covered in a strange black liquid, that gave off a specific feeling.

When he saw that his first thought was to immediately remove it, but he was completely stumped as to how he could do so. However, the Heavenly Will once again assisted him.

It told him that how he should remove it was that he should manipulate the whisps of spirit energy and use them as his hands to remove the black liquid off of the other whisps of spirit energy.

He tried doing that but at first, it was very difficult to even move one whisp of spirit energy let alone multiple but through repeated practice, he was able to move the spirit energy as if it was his limb.

Then he picked a whisp of spirit energy at random it was then surrounded by other whisps which he used to separate the black sludge from the lone whisp.

However, once he tried separating it he felt as if his very soul was being repeatedly stabbed, but he was a Buddhist monk who has trained his will in his previous life so he persevered, and finally, after an unknown amount of time he finally succeeded in removing it.

And what followed was that that whisp of spirit energy, after being separated from the black liquid, started glowing golden and Wang Wei felt as if his entire body and spirit were cheering.

Moreover, he suddenly felt as if he was one with the entire world, his senses expanded outwards and he could sense everything within a one-kilometer radius, he could even see Qi for the first time ever. He realized that this was the spiritual sense that cultivators developed at the Golden-Core realm.

Nonetheless, he still wasn't done so he temporarily put aside his newfound ability and continued the process. But when he tried to remove the black sludge from his soul entirely there was a strange attraction force as if there was a magnet that didn't allow it to leave.

Wang Wei knew that that meant that this was only a part of a single hindrance and if he wanted to remove it he first had to cleanse his entire soul of that particular hindrance to remove the attractive force between them.

Therefore he immediately got to work cleansing the other whisps of spirit energy, but he immediately noticed that each whisp of spirit energy gave off a different feeling.

This meant that the different black liquids that contaminated them weren't uniform and were divided into different types, some gave off a feeling of anxiousness others gave off a feeling of lust.

Once he felt the feelings contained within the black liquid he removed from the first whisp he realized that it radiated feelings of hunger.

That meant that this particular black liquid was a part of the first hindrance and particularly it what it represented was, in fact, the sensory desire of taste.

So in order to not waste time he located the other whisps that contained the first hindrance and started cleansing them first.

However, an interesting phenomenon occurred, as he cleansed another wisp of spirit energy the removed black liquid as if it was sentient immediately merged with the other black liquid as they continued to float in his soul.

As the process continued, instead of using the contaminated whisps he started using the cleansed golden ones and he came to a realization that the control he had over the golden wisps of spirit energy couldn't even be compared to the contaminated ones.

Therefore the more wisps spirit energy he cleansed the faster the process went, and an unknown time later he finally finished cleansing the entire first hindrance.

However what he wasn't expecting was after the last part of the hindrance was cleansed and the remaining blobs of black liquid merged together, it immediately solidified into a glossy black sphere while a huge repulsion force was also created between it and his soul.

And before he could react it left his soul and floated in the black space that his soul resided inside of.

What was completely out of his expectation was for the Heavenly Will's voice to suddenly come and tell him to prepare himself, and what followed next was that the solidified black sphere broke open and from it, something that looked similar to his own soul emerged.

Except that while his own soul started taking on a golden color after he cleansed it of the first hindrance.

The thing that emerged from the black sphere only looked like him, everything else was completely different, it was made out of the black liquid and by looking at it you would feel as if it was the filthiest thing you have ever seen.

Even being near it would make a person sick to their very core, and even Wang Wei who was actively suppressing his emotions felt that his control over them slipping.

That was extremely strange as Wang Wei has trained his whole life to control his emotions but even one look at this disgusting thing was enough to almost make him lose control over them, let alone a normal person.