Ryu caught the two jades out of the air and turned to leave. It wasn't long before he was once again in his Immortal Abode, standing upon the white grass of the gold moon world.
Sitting in a meditation position, he looked toward the defensive art first, his mind entering a state of unprecedented focus.
[Radiant Monument].
The name of the technique entered Ryu's mind almost instantly and the use of the art was quite straight forward. Manifest a monument, be protected, it didn't get any simpler than that. But this was also to be expected. Defensive techniques were better the simpler they were. The more tweaks and tricks one had to use to execute a defense, the less reliable it would be. As such, a technique designed to be defensive couldn't be too overly elaborate.
What was interesting about this technique, though, was that these so-called Monuments could even be called Constellations. From Ryu's understanding, the creator of this technique used the Constellations in the skies as reference for the creation of this technique.
Ryu wasn't familiar with any of these Constellations as they were staples of the True Martial World, but if he was correct, this wouldn't be too bad of a way to rely on concepts of Faith that already exist to gain strength.
What was fascinating about this technique, though, was that it seemed to use one's own Fate Star as the core of resonance, forming a type of technique Ryu had simply never seen before. It felt like every time he learned something new in the True Martial World, it would baffle him.
From everything Ryu had known until now, the Fate Star was nothing more than a faint representation of one's destiny. The idea of using it in a cultivation technique never even crossed his mind, let alone using it in a fashion like this one.
This was also where the difficulty of the technique lied. A large part of the complexity of this technique was in the meditation and priming needed to even sense one's Fate Star to begin with. Not everyone was like Ryu who had personally laid eyes on his Fate Star before. While to others this would be the most complicated and difficult part of the technique, and even be a barrier that stopped the vast majority from even taking a single step, it was so simple to Ryu that he didn't even need to bother with the meditation method.
The first part of the technique was to sink into a state of meditation similar to what one would need to use to enter the Path Extinction Realm. Upon doing so, one would be able to sense the Abyssal Plane. And, once one's state grew profound enough, there would be a chance to sense your Fate Star.
Once you succeeded in this matter, it became a matter of using one's Fate Star to resonate with the Constellations of the Abyssal Plane. The more powerful the Constellation, the more powerful your Monument would become, and thus the more powerful your defenses would be.
In addition, you would be able to cultivate the unique qi of said Constellation and use it to empower yourself.
Feeling curious, Ryu checked the control technique as well. After learning that it was called the [Infinite Skies] technique, he likewise learned that it relied on a resonance of one's Fate Star with Constellations of the Abyssal Plane to form these so-called "Skies".
When Ryu learned this, he paused. In all likelihood, all seven of the techniques relied on this method. In such a case, the Radiant Star Sect was entirely built on this method of cultivation.
Ryu felt that it was quite ingenious. If he was correct, the simplified versions of these techniques that the others learned were likely distilled versions of very specific Constellations.
The strength of these techniques obviously depended on which Constellation you resonated with and cultivated qi from. And, if Ryu was correct, even the weakest one was astoundingly powerful. It was likely, then, that Aika and the others had used weaker Constellations as a foundation and simplified them to the point that they could be used by "geniuses" of the First Heaven.
The only real difference in these techniques was in the meditation method used. Depending on the meditation method, you would have better resonance with certain kinds of Constellations that had certain kinds of abilities. In fact, dividing them into seven pieces like this was to lower the difficulty.
Ryu retrieved his mind from the jades and opened his eyes.
If things were like this, since he had seen one of these methods, he had already seen them all. He no longer even needed to go to Aika to ask for the other methods because… he simply didn't need them.
Ryu didn't need to waste time meditating to increase his resonance with the Abyssal Plane or his Fate Star. Even with his eyes sealed, so long as he had one of these meditation methods as a trigger, finding his Fate Star would be as easy as thinking, and resonating with it would be even easier.
This ironically led to a situation where he actually had too many options. Even without trying it, Ryu knew that he would have hundreds of Constellations to choose from even if he was just looking for defensive ones and removed all those too powerful for him to use with his current cultivation or too weak for him to even care to consider.
Despite this, this was actually a very good problem to have. Others could only choose whichever Constellation they had fate with or whichever one was the most inviting, but Ryu could directly choose the one he wanted and cultivate it without issue.
Of course, these thoughts were just about the foundational methods of cultivation related to these techniques.
With how high level these techniques were, they definitely had accompanying technique methods. While Ryu didn't need these jades for the cultivation method, he would need them for the techniques that made use of the Star Qi he would call down.
This Radiant Star Sect was actually so perfect for him.