The body serves as a vessel, enabling existence. The soul bestows consciousness, imbuing life with awareness. The dantian functions as a center for energy accumulation, while the meridians channel and circulate this vital force. Blood Essence embodies vitality, longevity, and inherent potential. Affinity, however, grants one the qualification to interact with the world.
***
The body, soul, dantian, affinity, meridians, and blood essence are necessary for any cultivator. Perhaps if one solely focused on Body Tempering, a dantian wasn't needed, but even they still used it to some extent.
Messing with any one of those could bring about unexpected consequences.
For example, those who absorbed beast blood essences incorrectly might deform, turn into raging monsters, or die on the spot. Even doing it correctly but using an incompatible bloodline wasn't ideal.
Doing so could also hinder one's potential.
However, that simply dealt with one's blood essence, which was the most 'malleable' part of a cultivator aside from the body. As for the rest... just a slight amount of damage could severely affect not just one's potential but one's qualification to cultivate!
Yet, there was one that wasn't even accessible to nearly every cultivator in existence: One's affinity.
Throughout the course of a cultivator's life, many things could happen. They could have all their limbs severed, their dantian destroyed, meridians blocked, and blood essence nearly depleted, yet their affinity will remain intact.
In fact, it wouldn't be affected by any of that.
It merely existed since the day one was born until they died.
In most cases, the quality of one's affinity, or how close one was to a specific element, largely remained the same. Heavenly treasures could enhance that connection, making the element stronger and more potent. There were even many cases in which people somehow obtained more than one affinity after birth.
However, things that 'depleted' one's affinity—that took it away, not blocked but completely removed... were exceedingly rare, to say the least. Doing so was no different than removing someone's soul, which was equivalent to killing them, but even that was more simple than destroying one's affinity.
Yet, Mira wanted to mess with and potentially reshape the one thing that made her a true cultivator?!
The consequences of such an action...
'Even I have no idea what they'd be.' Mira thought with a bitter smile.
Would she cripple herself? Die? Or maybe go crazy and start destroying everything around her?
Would the Heavens try and strike her down?
'...Now that I think about it, isn't this technically worse than what I did when I broke through to the Core Formation Realm?' She chuckled.
Honestly, she wasn't completely sure if the Heavens even saw her as an entity. From what she understood, the moment her previous body died, her 'identity' died along with it. The Firmament had deceived the Heavens and protected her from being seen, preventing its wrath.
However, doing something stupid like this might very well set it off.
'There's also the fact that... I don't even know how to find my affinity, much less edit it.'
On the surface, it existed in her soul and was currently connected to her Absolute Essence Core, but was that all there was to it?
'If I delved into my soul, I could find and isolate the ice crystals within, but that wasn't necessarily where my affinity was, and simply changing one of those didn't mean anything.'
Trying to find the core of her affinity was like asking a physicist where math was.
Nowhere yet everywhere.
'But I don't believe that to be the case.'
It was definitely somewhere; she just had to find it.
'...I guess it's back to conducting experiments.'
***
Somewhere around the cabin, Hana suddenly shivered. The image of a crazy fox entered her mind, and she quickly found a place to hide, using Vulcan as a shield.
'If that's the case, then I might as well go all out.'
"...You could lose those abilities, you know? Creation and destruction."
'Really?'
"Yeah, not just them, either. But all your other affinities as well."
Mira half-expected that, so she wasn't too surprised. Still, she was curious.
'Why?'
"Say you remove someone's heart. They'd die, right?"
'Well, I suppose so.'
"What you're planning isn't any different. If you take all the usable 'organs' that make up an affinity, it wouldn't work as intended and may even disappear."
'...I see. That makes sense.'
"That's why-!"
'Then, I just need to make sure to suck them dry!'
"....W-What?"
Mira's eyes grew in intensity. 'Losing my affinities? Hah! Why should I care? If anything, they're just tying me down!'
'Creation? Destruction? They should become a part of me, too!'
'In the end, I want to stand above everyone—not as some paragon of the elements, not as some creation god, but as the ruler of ice! To reign as an absolute god of ice!'
"...Damn... I knew you were crazy, but..."
Inside his little space, the Guardian's body trembled with excitement as a wide smile spread across his face. "I can't wait to see that happen! Hahaha~!"
Mira unconsciously let out a little smile, listening to his laugh. For once, the two were finally on the same page.
'Then, do you know where I should start?'
The Guardian's laughing stopped, and he fell into a moment of contemplation.
"This... I... Yeah, I do, but even I'm not 100% sure. All I know is this will be more difficult than you think."
'Enough of your nonsense. Just tell me.'
"Ahem! I... would start with your soul. As you know, the soul is the source of consciousness and awareness. Yours is a bit more unique in that it's also a physical manifestation of your Dao. At the same time, it wouldn't hurt to also inspect your Core, and then sweep your consciousness across your entire body. Find any similarities between the two, not any discrepancies, and cover all your bases.
Then go from there."
Mira nodded solemnly. That's similar to what she had in mind but a bit more complicated.
However, before she got started, she looked back at Maria and said, "Protect me."
Maria was a bit startled and wondered what Mira was about to do, but refrained from asking and instead nodded. "Alright."
"Also, make sure nothing disturbs me."
'...Wouldn't it be better to enter the house, then?' Maria wanted to ask, but Mira had already closed her eyes and entered a deep meditative state.
'Well, not that it matters.' She shrugged and sat not too far away from Mira.