The whole floor was full of shelves. But the shelves didn't hold paper books. They held crystal balls used to store information.
There were also four large white crystal balls the size of an elephant in front of the shelves just behind the doorway into the library. These large crystal balls contained the directory of the content of the third floor.
The attendant told him that if he had something, he should first search for it in the large crystal ball. He will get the location of the technique from it. Then he can go directly to that location to pick up the crystal.
He did as she told him. He connected his mind to the large crystal and was struck by a sudden barrage of information.
The onslaught of information was so impactful that he became stunned. Fortunately, it was brief, so he didn't become stunned for too long.
He closed his eyes to concentrate and sort out the information. All that information hadn't actually been deposited into his head. He had only gained access to the information stored in the large crystal.
The reason why he was stunned was because his mind connected to the large reservoir of knowledge, and he was trying to hold himself back from absorbing all of it.
Now that he has had time to settle down and accommodate his senses to the new perception, he was able to scroll through the information in the large crystal without blacking out.
The information in the large white crystal was a list. He can scroll through this list, or he can make specific requests to the large crystal, which will narrow down the information presented to him.
This way, he was able to find the location of the spells that he wanted. This was the easy part.
The difficult part was that there was no single option for the spells he wanted. There were many versions of spells that did the same thing in different ways.
For example, searching for energy shield yielded more than a thousand results. There were fire mana energy shields, water shields, Earth mana shields, earthen shields, leyline earth shields, leyline water shields, etc.
Fortunately, there were brief descriptions next to the names of the spells. He was able to use this to further narrow down what he wanted.
In curiosity, he wanted to check the difference between an earth mana shield, earthen shield, and leyline earthen shield.
He discovered that the earth mana shield was a purely energy-based shield that used the internal energy to form a shield without transforming the mana.
This will create a powerful shield with little durability. So the earth mana shield is strong but can only block a few attacks before it breaks.
The earthen shield, on the other hand, transforms internal mana into a solid state before using it. The spell creates physical rock that is then constructed into the form of a shield.
The advantage of this is that it is strong and highly durable. The disadvantage is that it is energy intensive and is slower to activate.
The third type of spell, the leyline earthen shield, involves mobilizing the power of the earth to support a physical earthen shield.
This type of spell is the most durable, and it also solved the problem of energy consumption by using part of the mana in the world to supplement its requirements.
The disadvantage is that it is the slowest technique to activate. An earth mana shield spell could be cast in a second or less depending on the power of the mind, but this one would need at least 10 seconds and could take up to 30 seconds before it was activated.
He snorted in disdain when he saw this and thought to himself, "If I pick this, I would be dead before I could set it up."
He has only fought one person in the second mortal coil, but he can still remember how fast the fight was. Changes in that fight occurred in less than a second. No one would give him 10 seconds or 30 seconds to set up a shield.
Of course, he understood that this shield wasn't useless. In the right place and with enough time to set it up, it could shine better than the others.
Unfortunately for it, it wasn't what he was looking for, so he continued to look for spells.
He discovered that what made the list of techniques so large was their level or their quality. For example, for the earthen energy shield spell, there were different versions ranging from level 1 to 10.
Other spells also had various levels. It was up to him to pick which level he wanted. But in general, spells of the same type usually stay close to each other on the same shelf.
As opposed to spells were fighting techniques for body-refining cultivators. These fighting techniques didn't have levels, as the power of body refiners is based on the power of their bodies and the quality of their life force, not the specific technique they are using to fight.
Techniques for body refiners are just ways to use their inherent power. So the differences in the various types of fighting techniques were clearer than those of spells.
Even so, there were some similarities. For example, there are more than a thousand types of palm techniques. Just looking at the list made him dizzy.
His focus was on spells for now. So he narrowed his selection to the flight spell, energy shield spell, dust cleaning spell, water whip spell, spirit sight spell, swift body spell, quicksand spell, wind blade spell, icicle spell, and fireball spell.
These ten spells are general-purpose spells that every cultivator should know. Of course, not everyone can use spells like wind blade, fireball, icicle, water forming, and quicksand spells because of the conflict of mana affinity.
Only someone like him with an attributeless mama affinity can use them. But because he doesn't have the internal energy to use them, he will have to rely on external mana, which will make his spellcasting excruciatingly slow.