Trapped Souls (1)

Without activation, all The Doctor knew about the orb was that it could help with the accumulation of enormous amounts of cultivation energy, the comprehension of laws, and its activation conditions.

You have to understand that cultivation is progressive and the further you go on the path, the harder it becomes to advance. The amount of energy required for The Doctor to advance was astronomical. Besides, even if he had the ability to accumulate as much energy as was needed, there would still be an issue with the comprehension of laws. For this mysterious orb to solve both issues simultaneously, was heaven's gift. There were moments The Doctor couldn't help but fantasize that he was heaven's chosen.

Unfortunately, just as the benefits were outrageous, so too were the activation conditions.

For one, he needed a near-perfect understanding of over 1,000 laws. Laws are the very code in which the universe is written. They define our very being and guide the understanding and progression of every cultivator. High-level cultivators are just beings that have a better understanding of the laws of the universe, and the energy to support the application of said laws.

However, understanding the laws is exceptionally difficult, especially for humans who lack innate endowments to boost their understanding. Thanks to that, most humans focus solely on perfecting one law or maybe two or three at most and anyone that has an understanding of four or more laws is considered an exceptional genius. Nevertheless, just for the simple activation of the orb, The Doctor was required to have an understanding of over 80% in at least 1,000 laws.

The second condition was to have an understanding of billions of entities, animate or otherwise across different galaxies and planes. This was an odd condition, even for The Doctor but he didn't have the luxury to question the orb. What is there to say to an unresponsive sphere anyway?

Lucky for The Doctor, the first and second conditions coincided. The easiest way to understand a law in a universe was to study the creatures affected by it at a basic level. Nonetheless, you need to be insanely powerful to take this route as it is one that is met with heavy opposition. Who would condone a mass murderer traveling from galaxy to galaxy on a killing spree all in the name of increasing power? Besides, those that are truly powerful are those that have already forged a path for themselves and lack the desire to study different laws that might prove to be useless.

Despite most of the truly powerful beings knowing that he was embarking on such a path, no one came to stop him. The cultivation world is ruthless and it is always better to have fewer competitors. In their eyes, it was great that he was wasting his time embarking on a broken path. As for the creatures, plants, minerals, and everything else involved, they didn't care. No one was so benevolent as to waste time saving ants with nothing to gain. The one time he was chased around was after targeting a few beings that were on his level, and even that was after he was done with most of the required research. Needless to say, it had not been an easy path but he would do it all the same given another chance.

The third condition was his power level with regard to the strength of his soul, body strength, vitality, agility, perception, defense, and other facets.

The last condition was to provide sufficient energy for the orb during and after its activation phase.

As far as he understood the activation, the orb would select souls from across the multiverse that would then serve as an anchor to its power. Essentially, the orb would create essence clones that would then be used to gather power in The Doctor's stead. However, these essence clones couldn't exist independently, which is why they needed a soul to be an anchor.

Of course, there were certain conditions that the soul had to meet for it to be selected as a suitable anchor, better known by the orb as a soul container.

The most important of these conditions was that the soul had to be undergoing a baptism by the laws. Baptism represents the moments the very laws of the universe are embedded into a soul. That could happen during a breakthrough in cultivation or at the moment of death.