"You're both right, but you're only seeing the surface."
"Dou Qi, no matter how extraordinary one's talent, must be cultivated after birth. Drawing qi into the body, refining and purifying it, circulating it through the heavenly cycle—this is an ironclad law regardless of who you are or what faction you belong to."
"But soul power is different. It accompanies every person from the moment they are born. It can be strong or weak, but everyone possesses it. It is the foundation upon which we first perceive the world."
"From the moment they came into being, these two powers have been fundamentally different."
Yao Qingyu nodded as though she understood, though not entirely. She naturally understood such simple and straightforward reasoning, but she did not understand why Yao Lao was bringing it up.
Xiao Yan, meanwhile, stared intently at the soul power in Yao Lao's hand. For some reason, he recalled when he had first entered the Spiritual State Soul and first sensed and absorbed the spiritual energy of the outside world. The experience of drawing in spiritual energy bit by bit from the outside truly differed from arduously cultivating Dou Qi.
"The Mortal State Soul is, in truth, a state in which one has not truly mastered the soul power within one's body. The soul can only grow stronger automatically as one's Dou Qi improves, though certain rare treasures and special constitutions can speed up this process considerably. In short, the path of the Mortal State Soul is a passive, straightforward process of accumulation."
As he spoke, the condensed soul power in Yao Lao's palm suddenly generated an invisible suction force. In an instant, the originally sparse spiritual energy within several miles seemed to answer a summons, wildly gathering together and forming a soft, misty cloud in Yao Lao's palm.