A Farmer's Journey To Immortality

Chapter 554: Creating a True Aether Soul Clone for Fortune Telling Art

A week later.

Emerald Cove. Aksai’s residential palace.

The cultivation hall was silent except for the faint hum of energy flowing through the array lines inscribed across the marble floor.

The Spirit farmer sat cross-legged in the very center, his back straight, his hands resting on his knees. The light of the glowing Essence Equation and Aether runes painted his face in shifting shades of green, gold, and blue.

Behind him, tall lanterns burned with steady flames, filling the vast chamber with a calm brilliance.

The array formation he sat in was unlike any ordinary one. It was a fusion of knowledge he had gathered across worlds—the Dadangar Subcontinent’s Spirit Essence arrays and Acarnis’ Aether Essence formations.

Aksai’s Neural Link Fabric had refined and merged the two completely different concepts, enhancing their strengths while suppressing their flaws. The result was something new and slightly dangerous.

It was clear that the formation had demonic concepts integrated into it as well. If someone from the righteous faction were to see what Aksai was doing at this point, they would have surely labeled him as a demonic cultivator.

However, Aksai had stopped distinguishing between righteous and demonic concepts a long time ago. To him, there existed only two categories—useful and useless.

One could say that Aksai’s setup had otherworldly qualities that couldn’t be explained by the righteous or demonic standards of Dadangar. Even though the formation was only at a Foundation Building level, it gave off a profound aura no less potent than a top-tier 3rd Order formation, bordering on the realm of a 4th Order formation.

It had been quite some time since the activation of the formation. The basic preparations were complete. It was time to act.

Aksai’s eyes slowly opened. Determination burned in them, sharp and unwavering. He raised his hand, and the array responded.

A spectral light shimmered, gathering into a strange weapon—an Aether Knife. It had no true form, shifting between a blade, a shard, and a streak of light, but its edge carried the weight of pure intent.

Taking in a deep breath, Aksai clenched his fists. His soul phantom rose from his body, seated in front of him—a translucent mirror image of himself. For a moment, the two figures stared at one another—one real, one ethereal.

“Haaaaaaah!”

Then Aksai roared. With a desperate swing, he drove the Aether Knife down, cleaving the phantom into two halves.

Agony struck like a tidal wave.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaargh!”

Aksai screamed, his voice echoing through the hall. His head snapped back as he clutched at his temples. His eyes turned crimson, as if blood itself was boiling within them. Sweat poured down his face, soaking his robes.

His cultivation surged wildly out of control, and the vast hall trembled. The runes etched into the floor flickered, the walls groaned, and the lantern flames swayed violently in the rushing wind.

The phantom halves writhed, trembling as though they were about to collapse into fragments. But at that critical moment, the auxiliary array hidden beneath the first activated. Pale silver light surged upward, wrapping around both Aksai and his broken soul phantoms.

The pressure eased. The storm of spiritual energy began to settle, and the trembling in the hall grew still. The aura it released was strange—like a mother’s hand, soft and protective.

Within that light, the two broken halves of the phantom soul began to regenerate, filling in their missing parts. Slowly but surely, they became two complete figures, each identical to Aksai, yet subtly different in aura.

Aksai had split his soul once again.

And this time, it was split at its very root of existence.

It was enough to say that no Foundation Building Spirit cultivator from the Dadangar Subcontinent would have had the courage to do what Aksai had just done. Firstly, most of them had no means to attempt something this drastic. Secondly, they wouldn’t have survived even if they did.

Forget about the Foundation Building experts—even Core Formation Lords could not split their souls without harming their cultivation base and shortening their lifespans by a huge margin.

The arts related to soul splitting could only be attempted by experienced Nascent Soul Kings. Even then, most Nascent Soul Kings would not casually experiment on their own souls unless they were truly desperate.

And yet, a mere Foundation Building expert had not only split his soul but also managed to keep his Spirit cultivation base unharmed. It was nothing short of a miracle.

“Haah!”

Aksai gasped for breath, his chest heaving. His vision was blurry, but as he saw the two full phantoms stabilizing, a faint smile tugged at his lips.

“It was indeed a wise choice to create the auxiliary formation,” he muttered under his breath. His voice was hoarse, but there was relief in it.

“Although I burned through a mountain of Aether Crystals, at least I don’t have to sulk over a shattered soul again,” Aksai comforted himself, patting his own chest.

“It… it was damn painful. But nothing compared to the time I made my clone for Acarnis. And this time…” He looked at the two soul phantoms with satisfaction.

“This split clone should be even stronger.”

***

This was not Aksai’s first time dabbling with soul-related experiments. For instance, he already had a clone establish a foothold in Acarnis. For the most part, that clone was carrying out the tasks he had assigned flawlessly.

However, the Acarnis clone had some obvious flaws, which restricted its actions to a certain degree. For example, it couldn’t awaken the Aether Beast the usual way. Since Aksai was not from Acarnis, his Soul Origin was different from the denizens of that world.

The Acarnis clone also struggled to maintain a stable soul connection with the original. While it could think and work independently, it still needed Aksai’s help to fully harness Aether cultivation. This made it difficult for the clone to level up and expand his influence in Acarnis.

The problem lay in the fact that even though the clone could act independently, its Aether cultivation path could not be completely isolated from Aksai’s. And since Aksai’s true self was in Dadangar, he didn’t have the luxury to focus all his attention on his Aether cultivation.

It was like the clone was handicapped—its half of the soul had to work twice as hard because the other half could not match its rhythm.

The new Soul Clone, however, was almost flawless. If the previous one was 90 percent like Aksai, this new creation could barely be called a clone at all—it was nearly 100 percent similar to the original.

This clone could cultivate independently of Aksai, no matter the path.

In simpler terms, Aksai’s previous clones and his soul were like a single CPU handling two computational threads. Though the threads were independent, they still had to pass through the same core.

This time, however, the new Soul Fragment had its own individuality, standing separate yet equal to the original. It was like giving each computational thread its own dedicated core on a single CPU.

***

A few hours later.

Aksai sat in silence for a while, letting his breathing steady.

His gaze then shifted to the fortune-telling manual lying on a pedestal beside him. Naisha had entrusted him with it, and though he knew little of the art, he would not waste such a gift.

His eyes narrowed in thought. “Fortune Telling Arts… I won’t gamble my main body’s path on it. But…”

He reached into his storage and summoned the wood-element clone he had prepared earlier.

The clone stepped out of the shadows. It was made from Aksai’s puppet-crafting skill, enhanced with Bloodfiend principles, and carried a wood-natured body. It looked almost alive, almost like him, though its expression was blank, waiting for a soul.

Aksai gathered his strength once again. He pressed his palms together, forming complex mudras, and whispered mantras under his breath. One of the two phantom souls floated forward, merging its essence into the waiting clone, while the other phantom soul image sank back into his own body.

The moment the fusion began, light blazed from the clone’s body, its form trembling violently as it was filled with new life.

The blank face started to shift, features sharpening into Aksai’s likeness. Its chest rose and fell as if it had learned to breathe. Its eyes fluttered open, and for the first time, they glimmered with true awareness.

Aksai looked at it, his lips curving faintly.

The clone straightened, its gaze steady and calm. It was him—yet not him.

A vessel for the Fortune Telling Arts.

===

AN: Fortune Telling Art was first introduced in chapter 267.

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