He looked back at the spirit stone and tried injecting a small amount of his aura into it. As soon as the aura entered the stone cracked and he quickly retracted his aura.
"Hmm" Hamar placed the spirit stone on a nearby rock then he closed his eyes. He focused on his refined aura and controlled a portion of it.
By spreading the aura around, he could detect an area around him. For basic detection of anyone hiding it didn't need to be dense, he could just use a small amount of aura in a mist.
Aura was naturally invisible much like the mana it was refined from. Mana is an invisible force which is one of the reasons no one in this world uses it, they do not know of it.
Hamar spread the aura out in a large circumference around himself and detected no one nearby. He breathed out a sigh of relief and held out his sleeve.
A small snake slithered out, into he rock with the spirit stone. It hissed and spoke,
"A spirit stone...?"
Hamar nodded, "Hou said it was what allowed a cultivator to be a cultivator, is that true? What is it? It seems outside the sect people use it for currency."
The spirit snake slithered around the stone as if inspecting it, "That would make sense...spirit stones are likely created from souls taken from people. The way cultivators, the real ones, do it is by turning their soul into a spirit stone but...it makes sense that all spirit stones are souls..."
Hamar finished his thought, "And therefore limited in number and can be used as a currency..."
"Indeed but also...in your case it will be useful."
"Useful? ...How?"
The snake grabbed the stone with his body and then shot it back to Hamar, "You can feed me. Kill some things and as they die use your mental energy to force the death laws into the stone. Once a few are in it, it shouldn't need your supervision anymore."
Hamar caught the stone and sighed, "You are a picky eater, can you not 'eat' other laws?"
The snake jumped and crawled back into his robes, "When Hou created me, he gave me a connection to the death Dao and in order for me to function I need Death laws to keep that connection open. Otherwise...Hou's consciousness, my consciousness, might not hold on."
Hamar's fist clenched at the mention of Hou and he nodded. "Death huh" he thought of his conception of death.
This was important to the step that the snake mentioned, "Use my mental energy to focus entirely on those death laws and funnel them into the stone" he repeated the manta in his mind as he strengthen what he thought 'death' was.
He let out a small amount of mental energy, willpower, into the world. He held a small ball of mental energy with a deathly intention.
He placed the energy ball into the spirit stone and it was sucked in. It didn't transform just yet but...the stone had a different aura.
Hamar looked at it and guessed, "This should last a while, once I kill something the death laws will react to the mental energy and be sucked in...then I won't need to use mental energy anymore?"
He stomped his foot and spread out his aura again, using it to find any creatures he could kill and take the death laws when they die.
First, a rabbit. He took a step forward but by injecting aura I to his foot he jumped hundreds of metres, landing in front of a rabbit and piercing it with his sword.
A slither of black death laws were sucked into the stone. They weren't actually viable in the material world but Hou could peer vaguely into the astral world where laws inhibit and look at it.
This was the same principle he could Intuit the thoughts of Xuan Yu or manipulate any laws. The consciousness has an intuition which can look past the material.
Second, a wolf. Again, he stepped forward and slashed his sword simply. However this time the wolf's fur was hard as metal.
His sword broke off the wolf and Hamar stood surprised. "This must be a mystical animal with metal laws in its fur?" Hmm.
He shrugged his shoulders then rebuilt his sword not with metal but with aura. The sword was a massive of glowing purple energy which cleanly struck the wolf's head off.
He walked around and picked up the half of his sword which snapped off. He looked at it with a painful expression.
He had an idea and held the two halves together, then he looked inwards. With his connection to Hou's body he could use laws, he felt heat laws and dragged them out.
He injected the heat directly into the metal and the two pieces melted together. It became a sludge and the sword was uneven and weak.
Hamar looked at it with shame, as a swordsman he wanted to take care of his sword but...he wasn't a blacksmith.
"I'll need to find a blacksmith soon...maybe a cultivator could create a sword that was strong without aura? That's a thought for later, concentrate!"
He swung his sword in the air, feeling the uneven balance. "It'll hold for now, but no more using without reinforcing with aura". He sensed the area of aura he spread about, and searched for another thing to kill.
He felt the stone was nearing 'completion' where it would absorb laws without suing his mental energy. It just needed more death energy.
At that very point he felt a disturbance in the ground. From within his robes the death dragon snake shouted out, "Snake, below! It's strong, I feel strong earth laws!"
"Strong?! How strong? Worth it to take the time to kill?"
Hamar could almost feel it's excitement as the snake added, "Yes kill! When something dies some of its laws will be transmuted into the death domain...therefore the stronger the enemy, the more death laws when it dies!"