The old man running the little shop looked utterly ordinary, but his cultivation was no small thing: he was a Golden Core Cultivator.
Outside, lower-level cultivators would have addressed him respectfully as "Exalted One."
His judgment was hardly poor!
After receiving the Soul Absorption Essence Seizing Art from the gray-robed man, he had only leafed through it for a moment before realizing how extraordinary it was!
Its pages recorded a secret art that could extract essence from the souls of living beings.
Souls were something unique to beings with spirit.
They seemed formless and insubstantial, yet they truly existed.
And they had countless uses. In cultivation, nothing was more important!
On the surface, the path of immortal cultivation was about refining qi. In truth, it was about refining the spirit.
From the soul to the emergence of Spiritual Sense, then to its transformation into Divine Sense capable of affecting the outside world after reaching the Golden Core Stage—it was a complete path of transformation.
If one attained the Nascent Soul Realm, the Nascent Soul could even serve temporarily as a second vessel for the soul.
Legend had it that the Spirit Transformation Realm was called "Spirit Transformation" because the Nascent Soul could transform into a Primordial Spirit.
At that realm, the soul and Nascent Soul fused completely. Even if a cultivator's body was destroyed, they could survive through the Primordial Spirit alone, no longer fearing Heaven and Earth Assimilation or calamities of heaven and earth.
Why had people throughout the ages said that only those in the Spirit Transformation Realm could ascend?
It was precisely because of the Primordial Spirit. During ascension, a powerful Primordial Spirit could lock onto the guiding spiritual light and ascend to the Immortal World.
But that was getting ahead of things.
Back to the Soul