Autophagy

A gust of air swirled around the room, disturbing the calm of the relatively lightweight objects in the room. All this disturbance in the room was caused by a single person. This person was Song Lei. As the air around him kept swiveling, it converged into a single point.

[With constant practice, your Control stat has risen!]

"Fu~"

Ejecting a hot gust of air out of his lungs, Song Lei felt the changes in his body. This was the first time that one of his stats had risen naturally. He wasn't sure what the reason behind this was. It could either be something that was special to the control stat, or it could be something that was caused by the fact that his stat was low.

For example, he had 13 points in his body stat. If he were to try to raise it by training, he would have to spend an immense amount of effort doing so. With such high levels of physical strength, none of the traditional training ways would be a viable option for him. He couldn't just lay down on the ground and start doing push-ups as he could do thousands of them without achieving much. This would be an incredible waste of time. He may as well go and start randomly murdering wandering souls to gather EXP.

However, being this low, it wasn't the same for his control stat. He could raise it by diligently training, and Song Lei would do exactly that.

Inside his mind, Song Lei did his best to converge the soul energy into a single point. He did all kinds of things with it, swinging it around, causing the winds inside the room while doing so. He then pulled them back towards himself and sunk deep into his own consciousness. He picked a small part of his soul and gathered all of his soul energy to condense a small, solid disc.

This was a hard thing to achieve as every time he tried to focus on one part of the disc to form it, the other part came undone and dissipated. He had to do a lot of multitasking. Even with his high mind stat, he wasn't able to achieve it easily.

'It seems like my control and mind stats are working together...' Song Lei muttered inside his head.

He once more tried to condense a disc, however, the thoughts running through his head distracted him, causing all of the soul energy that he had condensed to explode. Fortunately, he had already lost more than half of his soul energy and was holding back quite a bit. If he were to condense the maximum amount of soul energy he could and cause it to explode, his soul would instantly dissipate because of the force created by it. This would also cause a soul explosion, which would travel through the apartment and gravely wound any kind of creature that had a soul.

Leaving his mind, Song Lei laid down on his bed. His back had started aching because he had been sitting for about an hour. Now that more than half of his soul energy had been spent, he had to rest for some time.

'Is there some way that I can use to gather my soul energy faster?' Song Lei asked himself. Opening the system shop, he picked the first thing that caught his eye.

[Soul Energy Regeneration Art. 500 BC.]

'Hm? That's much cheaper than I expected... Let's buy it.'

Accepting the transaction, Song Lei watched his balance fall to 530. Hopefully, with the help of his two new tenants, he would be able to quickly get more blood beads.

Inserting his hand into the system shop, Song Lei grasped the book and pulled it out. The book had a dark figure sitting in a lotus position on its cover. Compared to what Song Lei expected, it was relatively modern.

Opening the book, he started reading through it carefully. It took him about an hour before he could read through all the book. The whole thing was more like a diary than a guide. He had to pick bits and pieces from every part of the book to figure out the thing.

Taking a deep breath, he sat straight up on his bed and got into a lotus position just like the figure on the cover. He then closed his eyes and dived deep into his soul once more. He had learned this after he awakened his soul. Diving into his soul helped him check out if there was anything wrong with it.

Compared to before, his soul was much darker because of the lack of energy. His soul was pure white before, now, however, it had become a darkish gray. In case he was to spend all of his soul energy, his soul would become completely dark and he would lose his consciousness.

Looking around his soul space, Song Lei focused and did his best to expand his field of view. According to the book, going into one's soul space and zooming out was the first part of energy recovery. Song Lei wasn't sure what the book meant by zooming out so he assumed that he had to expand his field of view.

After a bit of trial and error, Song Lei managed to do what the book meant. Fortunately, there was something that could help him achieve this. Normally, a human's soul would be completely empty, or uniform, rather. This would make it harder for the individual to expand their field of view. After all, there was nothing that you could use to see if you were actually zooming out.

In Song Lei's case, however, he had the soul storage given to him by Aston. Using that soul storage as an anchor point, he was quickly able to figure out how to expand his field of view. Quickly, the soul storage started becoming smaller and smaller in front of his eyes until it eventually turned into a dot and disappeared.

Song Lei kept doing whatever he was doing for fifteen minutes until suddenly, he felt a sharp stinging in his head. this was the signal for the second part mentioned by the book. Turning around, Song Lei stared outside. Outside of his soul to see what the fourth dimension actually looked like with his own eyes.

Obviously, as soon as he did so, the throbbing in his head became more and more unbearable. Before he could get a proper grasp of what he was seeing, Song Lei was ejected out of his soul.

This, too, was mentioned in the book. According to it, one's soul was the most and only understandable part of the fourth dimension for a human. However, the outside of it was different. A human's puny brain couldn't grasp it even if it was enhanced by multitudes like Song Lei's.

Once the individual managed to look out of their soul, they would have to do their best to perceive the outer 4th dimension as a three-dimensional space. Human brains weren't programmed to perceive higher dimensions. For this reason, they had to turn it into something that they were actually able to understand.

Just like what happened to Song Lei, if one were to fail, the reality of the 4th dimension would come crashing down on their brain. This would cause the soul of the individual to instinctively eject their mind outside of itself. This was merely a defense mechanism as staring at the bare absurdity of the 4th dimension could and would easily destroy a person.

'What did I just see..?' Song Lei asked himself. He was left gasping for air as he felt his consciousness settling down back inside his body. He couldn't explain what he had seen to anyone even if he tried to, as there were no words to do so. 'I was sitting here by myself but I felt as if countless different people were having a symposium in my head. Their voice was echoing... Anyways... I have to do this better. I can't waste my blood beads.'

Taking a deep breath, Song Lei fully readied himself for feeling the same pain and once again dove into his soul.

He was in that darkish gray infinity again. He repeated what the book told him to do and zoomed out until he could finally feel that pain in his head. This time, however, he didn't directly stare out. He instead calmed himself down and waited for the pain to go away. He didn't know how long he waited for, however, the pain eventually died out.

Only then did Song Lei turn around and stared out of his soul. All the colors, countless thoughts, and familiar emotions settled inside him as he tried to grasp what was going on. However, he repeated what the book told him not to do.

'Don't try to understand, try to interpret..'

'Don't try to understand, try to interpret..'

'Don't try to understand, try to interpret...'

After repeating it inside his head three times, Song Lei once again looked outside.

"Fuck! Blergh!"

After once again, being ejected, Song Lei started puking the insides of his stomach.

'I think I understand why the book was so cheap....'