**Chapter 65: Five Aggregates Rainbow Mirror**
The Five Aggregates Rainbow Mirror.
A supreme escape tool among magical treasures, according to the Great Dao Book Pavilion. When activated with intent, it allowed the user to transform into light, achieving extraordinary speed in an instant.
During this state, it granted immunity to most physical attacks and could penetrate weak energy barriers and non-physical obstacles.
Its drawbacks were clear.
First, it lacked offensive or defensive capabilities.
Second, it was extremely taxing, draining most of a cultivator’s true essence and divine sense per use.
As its escape effect scaled near-infinitely with the cultivator’s level, it always consumed a proportional amount of true essence and divine sense, regardless of stage.
It was a last-ditch escape tool, not to be used lightly.
At lower levels, users could only move in a straight line, with little control over the landing point.This issue eased only at the Nascent Soul stage.
If the light form was forcibly disrupted by a powerful attack, the cultivator’s soul would suffer severe damage.
For Jie Ming, these flaws were negligible.
The Five Aggregates Rainbow Mirror filled his gap in escape methods. If he needed to use it, counterattacking wasn’t the goal.
Per the Pavilion’s demonstration, even the basic version enabled near-lightspeed escape.
If an enemy could intercept that, Jie Ming might as well accept his fate, soul damage be damned.
Beyond these, the forging process posed another challenge.
The technique’s complexity aside, the materials were notably “troublesome.”
The mirror required purely conceptual materials.
Its principle involved collecting, refining, and harnessing the concept of “light.”
The core concepts were light’s speed, penetration, color, rhythm, and birth-death cycle.
These intangible concepts had to be forged into a tangible object, which could then channel the same conceptual light back to the user.
Thus, the materials were natural light imbued with pure “light concepts.”
In plain terms, the required lights were dawn’s glow, rainbow’s radiance, moonlight’s sheen, starlight’s twinkle, and thunder’s flash.
Each represented a unique light characteristic, tied to the five elements and hence the treasure’s “Five Aggregates” name.
They had to be captured and refined directly from nature at specific times and places using particular techniques.
While gathering these was tedious, it was better than treasures requiring materials nonexistent in the wizard world.
“The forging difficulty is real. True flame alone is a hurdle.”
Though the mirror didn’t require a cauldron, it demanded true flame to refine spirituality, divine sense to shape the embryo, and concept integration to create a soul-linked treasure.
“True flame as the guide, divine sense as the craft, materials as the bones, concepts as the soul…” Jie Ming recited silently.
These were the core and fundamental techniques of artifact forging.
In essence, the Five Aggregates Rainbow Mirror tested a cultivator’s mastery of basic skills.
“First… let’s try condensing true flame.”
The wizard world had fire spells, but those manipulated external fire elements, unlike a cultivator’s true flame.
True flame, a highly refined form of true essence, embodied the cultivator’s spiritual power, capable of purifying materials and awakening their spirituality.
Jie Ming braced for a long ordeal. According to the Pavilion, ordinary cultivators might take years to condense their first true flame.
Then…
“Wait, it’s done?!”
Staring at the faint, grain-sized golden flame before him, Jie Ming was dumbfounded. “Am I actually a genius?!”
Though it took some time, he condensed his first true flame in less than a day.
He wasn’t serious about being a genius—he knew why it came so quickly.
“Didn’t expect practicing Alchemy Technique and Analysis Technique would help with true flame. What a win.”
Alchemy Technique required mental manipulation to analyze all things, while Analysis Technique honed energy fluctuation perception.
Combined, and applied to himself, these skills gave Jie Ming far greater control over his power than typical cultivators.
With true flame resolved, the next step was crafting an embryo to hold the light concepts—the treasure’s foundational form.
Using specialized embryo-forging techniques, he could use mental energy to create a soul-linked embryo, serving as the treasure’s prototype and concept carrier.
After capturing the intangible “concepts” in light and converting them into tangible “light essence dew” or “light crystal sand” with specific methods, they could be fused into the embryo for forging.
At this stage, the treasure would be formed, requiring only prolonged refinement thereafter.
“Embryo forging and light concept collection take time, plus refining the Eye of Detection and other talismans… Oh, and studying alchemy and potion-making. Looks like I’ll be busy.”
Listing his tasks, Jie Ming stretched.
Though forging the Five Aggregates Rainbow Mirror was daunting, especially the “light collection” process, he had ample time.
With five years until Noren Workshop’s academy-wide assessment, he could take it slow.
Looking out the window, he was surprised to see dawn approaching.
His mind flashed to one of the mirror’s materials: dawn’s glow.
This light, tied to wood and fire, symbolized birth and awakening, the first ray piercing darkness with speed and penetration.
It had to be collected at dawn’s first light, when purple qi lingered.
Watching the rising sun, Jie Ming instinctively circulated his technique, reaching toward the morning light.
The next moment, seeing the faint glow in his palm, he grinned.
“A good omen.”