"What I meant wasn't to alter the nature of the two spirits," William corrected, his voice firm. "Attempting to change what they are is not only impossible, it would likely kill you in the process.
We don't need to worry about their inherent hostility toward one another; the merger is already happening. We just need to manage the architecture of that merger."
Berry listened intently, her brow furrowed as she tried to bridge the gap between her traditional education and William's esoteric logic. "Then how can we make them more compatible?" she asked. "If they are hostile by nature, won't they just continue to clash?"
"It's simpler than you think," William explained, pacing a small circle around her in the moonlight.
"Until now, your training has been entirely one-sided. Your spirit power was directed solely toward your Dragon spirit. Because of your family's lineage, you've treated the Fire Dragon as your dominant soul, feeding it everything while ignoring the other."
"That's right!" Berry chirped, a flash of that carefree, arrogant pride returning to her eyes. "My family's spirit is tyrannical! It doesn't like to share, hahaha!"
William resisted the sudden, phantom urge to smack her on the back of the head—a reflexive memory of how his own master used to handle him whenever he said something particularly dense.
"It won't work that way," he sighed, regaining his composure. "To succeed, we need to balance the scales. We must make the two spirits equal in spirit power. Only then will the first phase of the merger stabilise. Once they reach $Equilibrium$, the pressure on your meridians will drop, and you will breakthrough."
"I got it!" Realisation finally flashed in her eyes like a struck flint. "But how can I actually do that? No matter how hard I've trained over the last year and a half, I couldn't move the needle even a fraction of an inch."
"That's because you were using the wrong tools," William said. He knew that if he tried to explain the deep metaphysics of $Dual-Soul \text{ } Resonance$, they would be standing in the forest until sunrise, and she still wouldn't grasp it. He needed to see the foundation she was building on. "Let me see your training manuscript."
"Here."
She didn't hesitate. She reached into a hidden pocket of her gown and produced a folded sheaf of high-quality parchment, extending it toward him.
William froze for a moment, genuinely stunned. In the spirit world, asking to see another clan's training manual was a massive taboo—an insult that usually resulted in a duel to the death.
These manuscripts were the most guarded secrets of any lineage, the "Holy Grails" of their power. He had prepared a dozen different excuses and logical traps to convince her to show him, expecting a wall of suspicion and refusal.
Instead, she handed it over as if it were a grocery list.
"Aren't you afraid I might steal it? Or sell it to your enemies?" he asked, his voice laced with genuine astonishment.
Berry simply shrugged, her hand remaining steady as she held the papers out. "What's there to be afraid of? You are the only person who has actually given me a real answer in two years. You are genuinely trying to help me. From this moment onwards, I'll do whatever you ask."
"Tsk." William realised she was as stubborn as she was kind. She was still fixated on the idea of a "reward," and he could see in the set of her jaw that she had already decided how she intended to repay him, regardless of his protests.
He didn't want to be "paid" for settling a debt from a past life she didn't even remember, but he knew arguing with her now was a waste of time. He took the manuscript and began to read.
His eyes scanned the ink, his mind processing the formulas and circulation patterns with the speed of a seasoned sage. In less than a minute, he had digested the entire contents of the Long Clan's primary training manual.
He couldn't help but let out a long, weary sigh.
The training manuscripts of this world are truly ancient—and not in a good way, he thought bitterly. They are hopelessly out of date.
The script in his hand was supposed to be the crown jewel of the Long Clan, one of the mightiest families in the kingdom. Yet, to William's eyes, it was a mess of inefficient loops and missing key nodes.
It missed several vital points required to help a spirit master break through the high-level barriers. If even the elite clans were using such broken, rudimentary maps to navigate their power, it was no wonder the world had fallen so easily in his previous life.
William had never actually trained in this world during his first life. His true path of cultivation had only begun after he escaped this realm and entered the vast, cutthroat universe beyond. Consequently, his knowledge of the local training manuals was almost non-existent until this very moment.
As he pored over the parchment, he realised the manuscripts here were fundamentally flawed.
They were designed to prioritise raw, explosive power over refined control—a shortcut that allowed a spirit master to feel strong in the short term but made breaking through the final barriers an exercise in futility.
To reach the ranks spoken of in legends, to pierce the veil of this world and enter the "True Spirit World" outside, one didn't just need to train diligently; they had to train correctly.
Without an intact path toward the ranks that existed beyond the so-called "Legendary" rank of this world, a spirit master was essentially building a tower on a foundation of sand.
"I get it then," William said, handing the paper back.
This time, it was Berry's turn to be struck by shock. "You're done? Did you find it too hard to understand? I can explain the difficult parts if you want," she offered, her voice soft.
She completely misunderstood his reaction. In her eyes, he was a porter who had never touched a high-level manual in his life. She assumed the complex diagrams and ancient script had simply overwhelmed his mind.
"No, it's actually quite simple," William said honestly, his eyes reflecting a deep, old fatigue. "But it's broken. And it's completely unsuitable for you."
"..."
Berry stood frozen, her mouth agape. No one in the history of the Novistic Kingdom—perhaps no one in the history of her lineage—had ever dared to call the Long Clan's foundational manual "broken."
This was a treasure passed down from the First Patriarch himself, a relic of absolute authority. She felt a sudden, cold wave of relief that her father wasn't present; the Patriarch's reaction to such "blasphemy" would have been violent.
"Do you have a brush and paper?" William asked, ignoring her stunned silence. He didn't have such luxuries in his tattered backpack.
"Here," she whispered, helplessly tucking her clan's manual back into her silver bracelet. She produced a long, elegant red brush and a stack of high-quality yellow parchment. "Is this enough? What are you planning to do with these?"
"It happens that I know of a manual far better suited to training your twin spirits," William said casually. He accepted the tools and moved to a large, flat-topped boulder, using it as a makeshift desk.
Berry watched him, her heart hammering against her ribs. She observed the way he gripped the brush—not like a novice, but with the fluid, decisive grace of a scholar-warrior. He began to draw and write with a speed that was almost dizzying, his hand moving in a blur of precision.
What he had just said was impossible. In the hierarchy of the spirit world, the manual she held was considered a pinnacle of human achievement. To criticise it was madness; to claim to have a superior one memorised was a feat of a god.
A broken manual? A far more suited one? She repeated his words in her mind, her amazement growing with every stroke of his brush.
If she didn't know for a fact that he was a weak porter, she would have suspected he was a disguised elder from some ancient, forgotten sect. How could a boy like him not only read a top-tier, refined manual like hers but also possess the knowledge to find its flaws and replace it?
In her eyes, he was either a delusional boaster or the greatest genius the world had ever seen.