Cultivation is Creation

As soon as training had ended, I made my way to the library and claimed one of the more secluded study tables, partly hidden behind towering shelves of cultivation texts.

Now six hours later, a small mountain of books surrounded me, their spines bearing titles like "Understanding the Immortal Soul," "Companion Bonds Through the Ages," and "A Modern Analysis of Ancient Soul Theory."

My eyes were starting to blur from reading endless philosophical debates about the nature of souls.

"This is getting us nowhere," I muttered, closing yet another tome that spent three hundred pages arguing whether souls were made of pure spirit energy or were simply a manifestation of consciousness. "How can there be so many books about souls and so little actual information?"

"That's because you're reading the theoretical texts," Azure replied. "Cultivation philosophy is... complicated. Everyone has their own interpretation."

I picked up one of the thicker volumes. "This one claims souls are fragments of the universal dao that broke off during the formation of reality. The next one says they're crystallized intent formed through countless reincarnations. And this one..." I squinted at a particularly confusing passage. "I think this one is saying souls don't actually exist and we're all just very condensed clouds of qi?"

"Technically, all of those could be true simultaneously," Azure mused. "Or none of them. The nature of souls is one of those fundamental mysteries that even immortal realm cultivators debate."

I picked up another heavy tome aside, this one about inner world theory.

"Azure, according to this, beings that form soul bonds with cultivators can actually live inside their partner's inner world." I followed the text with my finger as I read. "It's not like storing items – normally Qi Condensation cultivators can't bring physical things into their inner world at all. But soul bonds are something different.”