<Whoever masters this technique and properly utilizes this array... will be able to compress their own personal soul emerald.>

".........?!?"

A crushing silence fell over the grand hall, so heavy that even the faintest movements seemed to echo unnaturally within the vast space.

"Hahaha this is incredible, now my path in the first cultivation path will—!!" one of the excited attendees suddenly shouted, his voice filled with uncontrollable anticipation, but he abruptly cut himself off as realization struck him like a blow, his expression freezing into pure shock.

The excitement in his eyes flickered, replaced by something deeper... calculation, doubt, and disbelief.

Somewhere up within the Soul Society—

Whoosh

Morval made a simple, almost lazy gesture with his hand, and the glowing sphere before him instantly dimmed before disappearing entirely, as if it had never existed. He remained still, his gaze lowered toward the grand hall below, his expression unreadable.

"Hmm, is that all for the announcement? You’ve wasted a rare opportunity..." Timari stepped forward with calm, measured steps until she stood beside him, her eyes also drifting downward. "You could have spoken for another hour about the full benefits of this technique, detailed its applications, and at the very least mentioned the availability of personal arrays."

Her tone was casual, but her words carried a subtle pressure.

Timari’s statement was not merely a suggestion, but a reminder.

Lord Morval was not the first to grasp control of the Soul Society, and he certainly would not be the last.

The duration of his authority was tied, in its entirety, to two fragile pillars... his major administrative achievements, and the general acceptance of the countless beings across the universe. And announcements of grand, influential products like this one fulfilled both conditions in a single stroke.

Thus, someone in Lord Morval’s position, especially in such a precarious moment where the selection that occurred once every hundred thousand years was drawing near, a moment where another brother could easily replace him and take control of the Soul Society... someone like him needed to extract every possible advantage from an announcement of this magnitude, ensuring that his name, his image, and his presence became inseparably tied to the product itself.

That association alone could anchor his position and reinforce his legitimacy in the eyes of the universe.

"It is a matter of prestige that everyone listens when I speak, my little sister," Morval said quietly, his tone steady and serious, devoid of any trace of hesitation. "If I continue speaking now, no one will truly hear me. I would become nothing more than a man speaking to himself... and that is beneath me."

"Why wouldn’t they listen?" Timari raised an eyebrow slightly, her gaze sharpening. "I can already imagine an extended speech, one that breaks down every single advantage of this project, one that ensures no one leaves without understanding its true value."

"Do you truly believe they don’t already understand?" Morval shook his head slowly, then gestured toward the grand hall below. "At this very moment, each of them is clinging to a single benefit, turning it over and over in their minds. The moment excitement begins to rise, another thought interrupts it... a consequence, a cost, a hidden implication. They fall silent, retreating into themselves, calculating gains and losses once more... their minds have already left us."

He paused briefly before placing his hands behind his back, his posture straight yet relaxed.

"And I cannot blame them," he continued. "What Lord Robin has done this time is truly... dangerous in ways they have yet to fully grasp." A faint smile appeared on his lips. "He was not exaggerating when he said he would support the path of lone cultivators... he has delivered a decisive, irreversible blow to every major power structure in the universe."

His voice lowered slightly as he added, almost to himself, "Every single one of them... without exception."

He returned his gaze downward, his eyes narrowing slightly, as if even he was still dissecting the consequences of the very announcement he had just delivered.

In truth, Morval had felt something he rarely experienced when he first examined the technique and the array... fear.

Not hesitation, not rejection... but genuine, unmistakable fear.

For a brief moment, he had seen two futures overlapping before him.

One was radiant, filled with limitless potential, a universe where individuals could rise through their own efforts without reliance on ancient forces or inherited structures.

The other was far darker, a future where balance shattered, where countless unpredictable variables collided, where disasters emerged faster than they could be contained.

He saw a future that defied prediction entirely.

He saw power slipping out of the control of established forces, spreading into the hands of individuals who might not be bound by any order or restraint.

He saw opportunities beyond imagination... and catastrophes beyond calculation.

A genius of calculations and administration, for the first time, he found himself standing helpless before a decision, his thoughts colliding in ways he had never experienced before.

But that moment of hesitation did not last long. In the end, the overwhelming weight of the benefits in his eyes crushed any fear of potential consequences that might follow.

The greatest benefit, from the perspective of the Soul Society, was undeniably the massive increase in the quantity of soul emeralds. And that meant a direct expansion of the primary currency circulating within the Soul Society alongside pearls, strengthening its economic backbone.

This, in turn, meant a sharp rise in purchasing power, and an explosion in trade volume that could multiply overall sales to levels never seen before in the history of the Society.

Would this inevitably lead to inflation? If everyone became capable of compressing their own personal soul emerald, and all of them sought to purchase the same valuable resources, wouldn’t that gradually erode the value of the soul emerald itself?

Not in this case, and for several critical reasons.

The first was that today’s announcement would elevate the soul path to an entirely new level. The number of individuals aspiring to become soul masters would increase at an alarming rate, and each of them would require enormous quantities of soul emeralds just to sustain their advancement.

The emeralds they produced through the array would rarely enter open circulation. Most would use them for personal cultivation, others would trade them directly with fellow soul masters in exchange for pearls or rare resources, while many would simply store them, waiting patiently for the moment they could afford something truly valuable... meaning that, at least in the early stages, the actual flow of soul emeralds across the broader market would remain extremely limited.

And then came the next crucial factor... the array and the technique themselves required significant time to produce even a modest amount of emerald.

Upon activating the array for the very first time and beginning the process of gathering units from the surrounding environment, it would take an entire week just to form a basic, solid soul emerald... and after that, a full day would be required to add a single additional unit to it.

Which meant that after ten full days of uninterrupted operation, one would only possess a solid emerald containing three units. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

If the practitioner maintained complete seclusion for an entire year, allowing the array to operate continuously without pause, the result would be an emerald containing 358 soul units.

Extend that effort to ten full years of relentless activation, and the total would surpass 3500 units.

"...."

Morval allowed a faint smile to appear as he contemplated the figure, shaking his head slightly as if amused by the contrast.

For the great powers, such a number was insignificant, barely worth attention. But for the common masses, it was a dream beyond imagination... most who stepped onto the first training path failed to gather even a thousand units throughout their entire lives, dying before ever reaching the rank of soul master.

Thus, obtaining more than 3000 units, already condensed and ready for forceful refinement within ten years, represented a nearly guaranteed path toward becoming a soul master and achieving the coveted silver soul.

Yet the price was equally clear. Those ten years would not be lived freely, but spent in silent servitude to the array, day after day, night after night, bound to that small disc, pouring time, focus, and existence into it in exchange for strength. And once strength was gained, the cycle would not end... it would deepen, pulling the user further into dependence.

"The soul emeralds production of that disc... no, the production of the Soul Inheritance Array, is not large enough to destabilize the emeralds prices or disrupt the balance of power to a level that would alarm the Dreamer Galaxy, yet it is not so limited that people would reject it or abandon it as impractical," Morval murmured quietly, his voice steady as his thoughts sharpened, "...it is perfectly balanced, engineered to bind its user to it, to become an eternal addiction that no one would willingly abandon."

He paused for a brief moment, his eyes narrowing slightly as a deeper thought crossed his mind, then continued in a quieter tone,

"..I wonder whether Lord Robin truly calculated all of this from the very beginning, shaping every detail with intention, or if this flawless balance is nothing more than an extraordinary coincidence?"