Experiment

When Locke reached out with both hands and cradled that faint flame, it flickered wildly several times.

A trace of confusion appeared on the Knight Commander's face outside.

He could not understand it at all. The man before him had clearly done nothing, yet he felt an immense terror.

It was as though that fear had seeped out from the depths of his soul.

He did not know that this feeling was not an illusion. His soul was currently being kneaded at Locke's whim in the palm of his hand.

If Locke was even slightly careless, his soul might be destroyed by Locke in an instant.

"Hmm, human souls don't seem all that different from magical beast souls..."

Using his Soul Power, Locke scanned and analyzed the Knight Commander's soul over and over. After a long while, he came to that conclusion.

Before Locke had become a Saint Domain expert, he had spent nearly ten years studying magical beast souls in order to perfect his technique, the Heavenly Dance Treasure Wheel.

The greatest difference between human souls and magical beast souls was perhaps that a magical beast's soul was essentially its own form.

Whatever kind of magical beast it was, its soul retained that same appearance.

Human souls, on the other hand, were defined by sheer unpredictability. They could take any form whatsoever.

Yet in essence, they fell into only a few major categories.

Elements, plants, bones, weapons, books...

This was Locke's first time personally working with a human soul.

Under normal circumstances, Locke would not use human souls for research.

After all, although he had lived longer in this life than in his previous one, the Locke of his past life had already formed a complete set of values, and he had no intention of changing them.

However, when Locke encountered certain special circumstances, his values could be quite flexible.

Everything the man before him possessed had been gained by sacrificing the souls of others.

Since this man could use other people's souls to gain power for himself, Locke could naturally use his soul to improve himself as well.

The principle was simple: however you treated others, that was how others would treat you.

Perfectly fair.

The Knight Commander's soul had the ordinary elemental essence.

Judging by the shape of that flame, this fellow's elemental affinity was truly terrible.

If he had not luckily found three women with pure souls, he would have remained nothing more than a peak Rank 6 warrior for his entire life.

As far as Locke knew, the masters who manipulated souls in the Coiling Dragon Universe could temper soul essence, extract Soul Essence, and refine Soul Gold Beads...

The stronger ones could even read others' memories and enslave their souls...

Some could even strip away another person's comprehension of the profound mysteries of laws, allowing those who had not comprehended those profound mysteries to refine them and thereby comprehend new profound mysteries of laws.

Although Locke had attained a certain level of accomplishment in the soul, he could not perform a single one of the methods that had appeared in the Coiling Dragon Universe in his memories.

With ease, Locke sensed the "five senses" within the Knight Commander's soul.

Locke felt that he already understood enough about the soul's "five senses."

What he wanted to study from the Knight Commander's soul now was the "sixth sense" that exceeded the ordinary five senses—or rather, the "sense" the Knight Commander possessed when he entered the state of Unity of Heaven and Man.

Locke believed that since someone could directly strip a soul of its comprehension of profound mysteries of laws, there had to be a part of the soul that resonated with the Law of Heaven and Earth.

It had to be said that a Knight Commander of the Temple of Light was absolutely the most suitable subject for Locke's research.

Judging by the strength of his Mental Strength, the Knight Commander possessed only the Mental Strength of a Rank 7 Mage. But because he himself was a Saint Domain expert, the essence of his soul had already received the recognition of the Law of Heaven and Earth.

Even though that "recognition" had been forcibly elevated by Augusta, the Light Overlord, a Saint Domain was still a Saint Domain. The Knight Commander could fuse his soul with the laws between heaven and earth and enter the state of Unity of Heaven and Man.

Because of this essence, although the Knight Commander's soul was not particularly strong, it possessed more "resilience" than the soul of an ordinary Rank 7 Mage.

Back when Locke was in the Monster Mountain Range of Enbo Territory, in order to transform the Heavenly Dance Treasure Wheel from merely "deceiving" souls into making them believe that their five senses had been stripped away, to truly being able to strip the five senses from souls, at least several thousand magical beasts had died by Locke's hand.

Quite a few of them had been Rank 7 magical beasts or above.

Compared to the soul of a Rank 7 magical beast, as long as Locke was careful with the intensity of his research and did not inflict severe damage on the Knight Commander's soul all at once, the Knight Commander's soul would slowly recover after a period of rest.

Clearly, once a person's form of life reached the Saint Domain stage, they became a lifeform on an entirely different level from ordinary people.

Infinite lifespan naturally included both the body and the soul.

Once a living being came into contact with and comprehended profound mysteries of laws, and their Magic Power or battle-qi reached the standard required for those profound mysteries to undergo a qualitative transformation, the profound mysteries they had comprehended would temper their body and soul, imprinting both with the marks of laws.

As long as laws remained immortal, Saint Domains would not perish.

Each analysis of the Knight Commander's soul deepened Locke's comprehension of profound mysteries of laws by another degree.

Of course, since Locke himself had no affinity for the fire element, and this Knight Commander had not achieved the Saint Domain through the Water Law, Locke did not know whether what he had comprehended from the Knight Commander's soul was truly a profound mystery of the Fire Law.

Still, merely coming into contact with these things was a major breakthrough for Locke.

Next, based on what he had comprehended from the Knight Commander's soul, Locke would begin a deeper development of the Heavenly Dance Treasure Wheel.

Beyond that, Locke also began slowly using the Profound Mystery of Illusionary Fog that he had comprehended to gradually dissect the Knight Commander's memories, then study how to delete, seal, or add things within a soul's memories...

Thus, from that day onward, the Knight Commander of the Temple of Light lived a life of utter misery.

At times, the Knight Commander would suddenly enter a state of Unity of Heaven and Man, gaining insight into all sorts of strange things—things that seemed capable of greatly increasing his strength...

At times, the Knight Commander would suddenly forget certain things, or remember things all over again...

As time passed, under Locke's experiments, the Knight Commander's memories became somewhat confused.

He began to regard some of the memories Locke had planted in his mind as things he had truly experienced.

Meanwhile, many things he had actually done seemed to have been crowded into the dusty corners of his memory by those superfluous recollections...