Yao Shen willed his Earth Qi, and it responded. Before his eyes, a Golem was shaped from the very earth beneath his feet, taking on humanoid features as it came into being, a near-perfect replica of Yao Shen’s own physical body. He then stretched his right arm forward, releasing strands of Divine Sense that latched onto the golem’s body. His fingers began to flex, twist and writhe, as a Divine Sense thread running from each of his phalanges connected to a different part of the Golem’s body, resulting in a very unusual puppeteering style.

The Golem began to cycle through a bare handed martial technique, throwing a flurry of hooks and jabs with an occasional elbow mixed in. It was one of the more brutal fighting styles he’d learned as a disciple, which also made it trickier to execute perfectly. As time went on, the construct’s choppy fighting style saw rapid improvement, it’s movements gaining a fluidity that could only come from mastery.

Then, without warning, the Golem stopped. It stood with its feet planted onto the ground, rendered inert as Yao Shen had withdrawn his Divine Sense threads.

“Not enough,” he muttered under his breath, as he walked towards the Golem. It might seem impressive at first glance, but Yao Shen was subconsciously relying on his ability to manipulate the earth in conjunction with his Divine Sense, rendering the exercise pointless.

Two hours passed as Yao Shen delicately sculpted ball joints onto the Golem, giving it functional arms, legs and finger joints. Once he stopped influencing it with his Earth Qi, it folded upon itself and crumpled onto the ground.

“Good,” Yao Shen thought to himself, satisfied by the results.

He withdrew a spare sword from his spatial ring and flicked it, causing it to land near the Golem’s feet.

Once again, Divine Sense threads stretched out, this time from both his hands. The Golem groggily got back onto its feet, its first footsteps a little unsteady as Yao Shen got the hang of controlling it without tapping into his earth manipulation abilities. It withdrew the embedded sword from the earth, gripping the sword with both hands and holding it near the waist level. It felt odd to grasp a sword through a proxy, the lack of tactility requiring a few minutes to adapt to.

The first movements were slow and strained, as the Golem transitioned from one basic sword form to the next, from a series of thrusts to a succession of strong, overhead blows than finally bloomed into a more balanced sword form, blending the two into a truly deadly art. As Yao Shen increased the tempo, the sword went flying out of the golem’s hand, biting into the cave walls.

“Almost,” he remarked, not at all disappointed with the outcome.

Three hours later, Yao Shen felt like a grandmaster conductor orchestrating the performance of a lifetime, his fingers rapidly twisting and flexing as he lost himself in composing, his symphony the Golem’s sword dance. The construct lunged, the construct feinted, it slashed, it cut and even executed a few sweeps, growing increasingly graceful in its movements with every subsequent strike.

After ascending to Soul Emperor, Yao Shen’s greatest weakness had been his own inability to control his Soul’s output, it’s sheer potency to great for him to manage without years, perhaps decades of practice. This exercise had only confirmed what he had suspected the true purpose of Soul Cultivation and consequently, his artifact was— when that ripple had struck him, it had caused his soul to fold upon itself.

Though the change was slight, he had most definitely noticed that his soul had shrunk, even whilst its volume remained the same. It had been compressed, and just one session was enough to significantly improve his control,

What were the upper limits of refining his soul?

At what point would it begin to harm him instead of improving his control?

What was the second ability the bell artifact concealed, but refused to reveal to him?

The answers to those questions would only be discovered with time but as Yao Shen finally stopped manipulating the Golem, a smile made its way to his face.

“This is the key,” He whispered, as his eyes gleamed with anticipation. Not only would the bell artifact help him advance as a Soul Emperor, but it was also they key to unlocking the Origin Treasure that tested Divine Sense Control and possibly, the other ones as well.

Delighted though he may be, his heart wanting to experiment further, he knew he could not. Soul Cultivation was an arcane technique that could not be taken lightly. Had he dropped the bell artifact while it’s effect was reverbrating across his Soul, even Yao Shen did not know what consequences that would entail.

Even now, it was only willpower that kept the spitting headache and overwhelming exhaustion at bay. The effects may have been a net positive, but it was not something he could repeat in the short term; intending to give it atleast a month as he observed his soul for lingering effects before subjecting himself to Soul Cultivation again.

The more tempting a power was, the more wary one should be of it— the Demonic path had many cruel methods that could allow a cultivator to directly jump a rank, enticing many with such seemingly logic-defying methods. What they tended to omit was that one would die not long after conducting such a blood ritual, sometimes in as short as a day or a week, but never more than a year. And the reaper would not allow them to go silently, their deaths would be an agonizingly painful one right until their dying breath.

Overall, he was satisfied by his new artifacts capabilities and chose to return back to his residence. Meili Zhu had recommended that he return before daybreak, leaving him with little under an hour to return.

In the end, he found nothing of value in the sealed cave systems, not even the slightest inkling of danger. The caves were empty, deserted and devoid of any and all natural resources. Which raised the question….

Why were the cave systems sealed to begin with?