The Vessel of Desire

Learning new knowledge could raise psychic power?

It sounded a little absurd, but in truth, it was not all that absurd.

For the Chosen, raising their psychic power required nothing more than drinking more elemental potions, then lying down to sleep—the lucky few born with awakened psychic power saw both its strength and degree of development grow with age, as though they had possessed psychic power in its ultimate form from the start and merely needed time to break its seals.

Quite a few people on the Terra Continent believed that the Chosen were actually reincarnations of powerful psychics from the past. Their memories might have been worn away in the Nether Sea—or perhaps in the natural psychic field between heaven and earth—but a portion of that powerful psychic power could still be preserved, helping them once again embark upon the path of psychic power in their next life.

Considering that Ian himself was also reincarnated, he felt this possibility was quite likely.

As for Ascenders who reached the Third Energy Level through the Path of Ascension and awakened life psychic power, if they wished to strengthen their psychic power, they had to temper their bodies and wills through all manner of arduous cultivation, raise their Ascension rank, and drink more elemental potions.

For psychics, elemental potions truly were like hot water—there was never a wrong time to have some.

Besides that.

In general, it was extremely difficult for Ascenders to improve their psychic power. Resources, arduous cultivation, inheritance, and talent were all indispensable; they might even need luck.

Their sole advantage was that Ascenders cultivating psychic power could learn from the experience of those who came before them and steadily control the type of psychic power they awakened.

Naturally, there were not many types to choose from, but having a choice at all was already quite good.

Thus, for nobles who lacked neither resources, talent, nor inheritance, this was instead the most popular method of cultivation—they could deliberately awaken psychic power best suited to their bloodline inheritance, achieving an effect where one plus one was greater than two.

Finally, for those who awakened later in life, strengthening their psychic power required fulfilling their desires, as well as drinking more elemental potions.

—Why did a person awaken psychic power later in life?

Perhaps it was one moment of unrestrained indulgence, one unforgettable misfortune, one grief that tore the heart apart, one stroke of luck that brought extreme ecstasy...

Good or bad, sorrowful or joyful, blissful or despairing...

In an emotional upheaval so indescribable that ordinary people might never encounter it even once in their lives, life might awaken psychic power.

Their psychic power came from intense desires and emotions, so naturally, its growth followed the same pattern.

For someone who awakened psychic power because of vengeance, their psychic power would continually grow stronger throughout their revenge, reach its peak when they killed their enemy, and then fall into stagnation.

For someone who awakened psychic power through a yearning for wealth, their psychic power would continuously accumulate as their fortune grew, until its holder felt fully satisfied and desired no more.

Desire, dreams, and ambition—the power of psychic ability sprang from such longing.

The greedier a person was, the more sincere they were, the purer they were...

Or rather, the more rational they were while also being utterly obsessed.

The stronger their psychic power would be, and the deeper its potential.

After all, if an ordinary person content with modest wealth and an obsessive man who wished to become a perpetual property owner both awakened psychic power dependent on wealth, who would be stronger was obvious at a glance.

In the terminology of Terra's Ascenders, the psychic power of later awakeners was, in essence, a "vessel of desire."

As great as the desire, so great could the psychic power grow.

As for whether the end of that desire was a cup, a water vat, a bath, a lake, or a sea.

Or even a bottomless abyss capable of swallowing everything.

That depended on whether the psychic could carry out their desires and dreams, reaching the limit of their own will.

Though it sounded much like paranoia, madmen could not awaken psychic power.

Those unable to command their own will were merely prisoners of fate. Naturally, they could not become masters of their own destiny and wield the power born from the Ascension of their own desires.

The essence of psychic power was a contradictory spiral: knowing something was impossible, yet stubbornly "desiring" it nonetheless—only such rational obsession could catalyze the first stirring of psychic power.

Seen this way, if the requirement for Ian's psychic power to advance was to "learn more knowledge and know more novel things," then it was not strange at all.

Rather, in the City of Knowledge, there were surely countless people whose desires had been similar and who had gained psychic power because of them.

It was simply that Ian's desire might have been more sincere and pure, so even "the course of the future" was regarded as a form of "knowledge and novel things," allowing him to glimpse it.

"I really have learned quite a lot of new knowledge recently... But psychic power advancing too quickly probably isn't a good thing either."

After finishing his morning exercise, Teacher Hilliard had gone to work. This should have been Ian's free study time.

But because another vision had appeared just now, showing him all sorts of inexplicable trees and a desert oasis, he could only sit at the entrance of his home and tilt his head back to watch the clouds.

As dawn gradually rose, the sky resembled a painting daubed with countless colors, from golden red to pale orange and bright yellow, while pale cyan and deep blue spread around its edges—clouds without the slightest impurity floated upon this backdrop, and the colors at the farthest end of the heavens were so profound that faint starlight still glimmered within them.

Watching such beautiful scenery improved Ian's mood considerably. Even the incessant visions temporarily ceased, and he could not help murmuring, "Generally speaking, those who can awaken psychic power are mostly intelligent. At the very least, their thoughts and logic are clear."

"But the effects of psychic power are rather dependent on the mind... When one is in a good mood, it feels stronger. If one falls into despair, psychic power cannot display much effect either."

Psychic power.

As the name implied, abilities that originated from the heart and soul were psychic power.

But despite that, psychic power was not an absolutely mind-over-matter force. Activating it drove the brain to its limits, making psychics overly sensitive to everything in the outside world.

In other words, their "spiritual sight" became too high, creating malignant synesthesia, until they saw all kinds of illusions for no reason, just as Ian did now.

Frequent use of psychic power not only consumed physical strength, but also dangerously stimulated the brain. Hallucinations caused by excessively high spiritual sight could leave psychics mentally exhausted and might even cause them to lose control.

To avoid losing control and to continue improving psychic power, many Ascenders had developed numerous potions to calm the mind, enhance psychic power, and restrain loss of control.

The more powerful the psychic, the more rational and clear-headed they tended to be. But should they go mad, the contradictory spiral would lose its balance, and the destruction they caused would grow all the greater.

Ian himself guessed that the visions he had recently experienced might be an aftereffect of using his psychic power too much during this period, as well as forcibly observing a great Magic Beast like the Mountain Tide Spirit.

But as Hilliard had said, it was also possible that his psychic power was growing stronger while his brain development had failed to keep pace with its intensity.

After all, aside from the Chosen, it was exceedingly rare among later awakeners for someone Ian's age to possess psychic power.

Children's emotions seemed simple, direct, and extremely intense, but that was actually only an illusion—a cognitive error.

They found it difficult to remain happy for long, and their grief also rarely endured through lengthy periods. They did not yet know what true happiness, gain, and achievement were, and naturally did not understand true despair, abandonment, and failure.

Without such extreme emotions, psychic power could not awaken. By the time a person could understand those emotions, their brain should also have matured.

In other words, only Ian, having lived two lives, was rather unusual. He could experience mental maturity while the hardware of his brain failed to keep up.

—Thud, thud, thud.

A string of heavy hoofbeats approached from afar, and even the clamor of the crowd could not drown them out. Each impact seemed to shake the street.

Ian, who had been gazing up at the clouds, froze. He turned his head toward the source of the hoofbeats, then frowned slightly. "Someone is galloping a horse down Central Avenue?"

"Where did they come from? Who rides horses in the Southern Ridge? That's far too strange!"

It was no wonder Ian was so baffled.

Terra's horses were creatures similar to, yet different from, Earth's horses. Leaving ordinary packhorses aside, warhorses generally stood over 1.7 meters tall. They were extremely intelligent, their bodies covered in a layer of scale-like armor, and they were formidable omnivorous prairie predators. They hunted, but also planted the forage grass they liked in fertile locations by digging pits and defecating in them.

Biologically, Terra horses were classified as "Equine Genus, Terrestrial Wyvern Family, Dragon Order"... In other words, they were essentially gentle, domesticated subdragons.

The Bison Mountains did not produce warhorses. After all, anyone who wanted to ride a horse into adventure through swamps and jungles had to have something wrong with their brain. If they absolutely had to ride something, why not a Bison bison? Those three-meter-tall behemoths were far more imposing! And if that did not work, boars were also a fine choice. Midra's mountainfolk boar cavalry had made the Empire's pioneers suffer terribly back then.

He was somewhat curious, and he truly had nothing to do at the moment. Ian had just fed his younger brother and finished cleaning the house, so he felt no hesitation about going to watch the excitement.

Before long, he turned through several street corners and arrived on Central Avenue.