Gu Zhi had two new techniques in his arsenal. He had his wife read him the blood transformation art while he studied the soul technique in his mind in the meantime.
He currently didn't know how to read brail so he had to improvise. The blood transformation art had 4 transformations to it that allowed you to temporally transform into blood related entities. They were in order: asura, vampire, werewolf, and blood phoenix. Each with there own unique abilities and cons. Additionally you could use the technique to alter different parts of your own body permanently on a minor scale. The technique in one word would be described as revolutionary. There was a reason as to why it was his second reward of three to his exemplary performance. The technique was marvelous, neverminded the temporary transformations for combat, the ability to permanently alter your body on a smaller scale was enough to get any party interested. Any minor injures could be cured, small defects like scares, freckles, or birthmarks could be erased, Meridians, could be restored or altered, muscles could be trained easier, and grow faster. There were an endless amount of uses to the technique, the problem for most however is the strong blood affiliation required to use it.
Everyone had their strengths and weakness, including sometimes someone's element. They could have an element that doesn't synergize well with them. They could have high amount of power but low control over such element. They could have a very weak resonance with their own element and so on and so forth. To find someone who has a very strong resonance and control over the blood element in specific, is so niche that many will never even be able to use the blood transformation art. That is ignoring the fact that they have to get the technique in the first place. If the Gu clan did have plans to sell this technique, I would be for a VERY high price.
From what Gu Zhi can tell, to master this technique he will need a lot more time than his previous techniques. Maybe that's because they are on different levels entirely, but his main combat technique and blood cultivation technique should be covered for a long time to come. The other thing he had to focus on was his new soul technique.
The soul enlightenment technique. It was a very weird technique, it focused on strengthen and molding the soul by self introspection. The first part of the art was learning how to find your own soul and then finding out by yourself, the blemishes and the strengths of your own soul. Here is where it gets weird, by understanding your own soul you then have to find out ways by yourself on what would be the best course of action to improve your soul.
This probably involved the biggest secret to soul refining, in that you have to find out yourself the best way to improve it. You basically had to make your own technique regarding your own soul. The difficulty in making your own cultivation technique should be obvious. Many spend their entire lives just to perfect one art only for it to become mediocre in the eyes of others. It was much more pragmatic to follow the roads of others and to use previously seen techniques. That was why some techniques were so expensive and well guarded. In many cases some clans hoarded one or two special techniques exclusive to their clan holding a unique advantage over others. If every soul cultivator had to make a technique only applicable to them, the difficultly matches the rumors.
The soul enlightenment technique gives some examples of some people making their souls into threads and weaving it.
'Disgusting'.
Some shroud their soul in amour giving them protection from divinations and curses.
'Intriguing'.
Some devour other peoples souls to impower their own.
'Resourceful'.
There were many more examples, but the idea was the same. You had to find a unique and exclusive way to impower your own soul. The best way to do this was experimentation. To study your own soul and go through many different instances were you try to impower it. The problems were quite obvious with this approach however. Of course time was an issue, but more than that you could permanently damage your soul in these experiments. Damage to the soul was one thing that Gu Zhi wanted to avoid more than the plague. He was MUCH more scared of having an injury on his soul than losing his sight. The reason being, that he has already died once before. Your soul played a crucial part of your afterlife experience. Damage there could not only effect this life, but the next, and the one after that as well. For this reason and for others, soul attacks were without a doubt the most feared attacks in the entire world. If a person or party claimed they had a way to damage the soul, not only local powers, but global powers as well wouldn't stop attacking them until they were dead. This was knowledge provided to him by the technique. It was a warning that if you tried to develop your soul in a offensive way to attack others... let's just say you won't be able to show your face again in the world.
Cultivators at a higher level had much more knowledge about souls and the afterlife. It also played a crucial part of cultivation especially when you reach nascent soul and higher levels. It was why they were so sensitive on the topic and tried to keep knowledge about it under tight wraps. It just goes to show how much of an opportunity Gu Zhi had now that he had this technique. The biggest advantage to having a stronger soul, had to do with senses. It was why those who had reached nascent soul developed their spiritual sense. The two had a direct correlation that Gu Zhi didn't understand until now. It was one of the reasons why he was going to focus much more on this technique now that he had lost his sight.