Hou Niao was a little excited. This was why he had come here to shoulder the burden alone: he could always witness all manner of strange methods in the cultivation world, things he would never encounter if he stayed holed up at home.
Aspect Birds were a transitional form between true demon creatures and Origin Soul Beasts. Yu Kuohai was a sea beast, while the Sea Leech he had encountered near Crab Claw Island was an Origin Soul Beast. Between them existed another kind, which relied not on an origin soul to sustain itself, but on a manifested aspect as its foundation: the Aspect Beast.
Aspect Beasts had been developed purely to cater to Heaven-Connecting Realm cultivators, making them easier to master, control, and cultivate; Origin Soul Beasts, meanwhile, were the exclusive province of cultivators at Golden Core and above.
Bao Wen's Aspect Birds fell into this category. In fact, cultivating them was exceedingly difficult, because the actual creatures these Aspect Birds represented did not exist on the Brocade Continent. Cultivators had to visualize them themselves using their sect's secret manuals, then draw Aspect Beast Spirit Souls from the sect's special Aspect Beast Soul Pool. Only after many further efforts could they finally produce a single Aspect Bird.
It tested patience, perseverance, aptitude for Aspect Beasts, and so on. This was not a skill ordinary wandering Rogue Cultivators could master, because the conditions for producing Aspect Beasts were too exacting for anyone but a major sect to pass it down. Only a limited number of sects on the Brocade Continent possessed Aspect Beast Soul Pools, and lineages capable of systematically producing Aspect Beasts were rarer still, a mere handful. The Southeastern Zhou Sect was one of them.
As the Mourning Dove, Walking Bunting, and Beheaded Oriole swooped forward, a clear