With his seven acupoints now open, Moon was about to close his inner vision when sothing caught his eye.
His gaze sharpened.
There was spiritual energy inside one of his acupoints. A faint wisp of blue, swirling slowly in the hollow space like smoke trapped in a bottle. It was small in comparison to his acupoint, but it was unmistakably there.
It hadn't been there a second ago. It had just appeared, as if opening the acupoints had given it sowhere to settle for the first ti.
Moon frowned.
'I haven't killed anything since I evolved. Where would the spiritual energy co from?'
Spiritual energy ca from absorbing that of other creatures you killed, just like lives did.
He thought about it for a mont. Then a look of understanding flashed across his face.
"Could it be the Evolvers I killed during the attack from that mysterious organisation?" Moon muttered. "I absorbed their spiritual energy at the ti, but without any open acupoints, it had nowhere to go. It just sat dormant inside my body until now."
That was the only explanation that made sense. The energy had been floating loose inside him this entire ti, unanchored, invisible, waiting for a container to take hold of them. The mont his acupoints opened, the stray energy found its ho and settled into the first available one.
Moon stared at the faint puff of blue smoke drifting inside his first acupoint. It was a tiny amount. Nowhere near enough to fill even a fraction of the space. But it was proof of sothing important.
He had been accumulating spiritual energy long before he even knew what it was.
Excited by the prospect of accumulating spiritual energy, Moon imdiately dove into research. He pulled up the leaflets Glassy Group and the Association had given him and supplented them with online forums where experienced Evolvers shared their firsthand accounts of setting up skills inside acupoints.
Of course their skills were mostly uncommon rank, with a few Evolvers bragging about having a single Rare Rank skill in their acupoints. The more he read, the more excited he beca. But alongside the excitent, a creeping paranoia began to settle in.
Setting up a skill inside an acupoint wasn't as straightforward as he had assud. It wasn't a matter of simply selecting a skill and pushing it into the empty space. The process required focus, ti, and intent.
First, Moon needed to draw on the spiritual energy within the acupoint while simultaneously channeling the chosen skill. The two had to be used in tandem, over a certain period of ti, until the skill began to take root inside the acupoint's foundation. Then you would need to go through the cultivation phase. He had to sit and carefully weave the skill deep into the acupoint's base structure, layer by layer, ensuring every thread of energy settled correctly.
The process could not be rushed and it could not be sloppy. A single lapse in concentration, a mont of impatience, and the skill could embed itself incorrectly. The result was a backlash, and the consequences were severe.
"Injury to an acupoint is this serious?" Moon muttered, staring at the forum post in front of him.
An injured acupoint couldn't be healed through normal ans. No spell, no potion, and no healer below an Ascender could fix it. The only redies were ti, which could take months or even years, or natural treasures that cost in the tens of millions. Resources that most Evolvers would most likely never be able to afford in their lifeti.
For a wealthy Evolver backed by a powerful group, an acupoint injury was a painful setback. For a poor Evolver with no connections and no savings, it was a death sentence for their road to power. One mistake, and they were done.
Moon closed the forum and sat in silence for a mont.
He wasn't going to rush this.
The first skill Moon decided to place was Advanced Elental Body.
It was a deliberate choice he had taken after so careful thinking. This was his first ti attempting the process, and he didn't want to bite off more than he could chew. Starting with the most difficult option would be reckless, and Moon had read enough horror stories on the forums to know what recklessness cost.
Advanced Elental Body was an Epic-Rank skill. Powerful, complex, and deeply familiar to him after months of use. If other Evolvers were able to set up Epic-Rank skills in their acupoints, there was no reason he wouldn't be able to do the sa.
Legendary was a different matter entirely.
Eye of Truth sat in his skill list like a loaded weapon. He knew it would be the most potent foundation he could place in any acupoint. But a Legendary-Rank skill was uncharted territory. Nobody had ever done it before, at least not that he knew of. There were no forum posts about it, no guides, no warnings from experienced Evolvers about what to expect.
Diving into the deep end with a skill that had no precedent was asking for trouble. One wrong move during the cultivation process and he could injure an acupoint permanently. With a Legendary skill, the backlash might be even worse than what the forums described.
He needed experience first. He needed to understand the feeling of the process, the rhythm of it, how the spiritual energy reacted when a skill was woven into the foundation. Once he had that understanding locked down, he could approach the Legendary skill with the skill and focus it demanded.
Moon sat down, closed his eyes, and turned his vision inward.
He found one of the open acupoints and began to channel Advanced Elental Body.
Moon focused inward. He found the first open acupoint in his stomach and began to channel Advanced Elental Body.
The elents began to form around him. Moisture in the air condensed into tiny droplets that orbited his shoulders. A flicker of heat blood in his palms, and a gentle current of wind began to circle his body.
Earth, water, fire, and wind. All four swirling around him in slow orbits.
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