After giving instructions to both of them, Sam went to meet Markan privately.
"So, do you know any details regarding this specific seal?" Sam asked as both of them sat down on the ground on the bank of a stream.
"It has an ability to suppress elemental energies."
"How high is suppression?"
"A one hundred percent."
Sam was stunned when he heard that. Markan looked at him and said.
"I don't know what kind of seal this is, but I don't know that it is tailor made. When I was first attached with this seal, I lost consciousness and I lost all of my elemental energies, apart from that, even my cultivation progress has slowed down."
"All of your elemental energies? How many do you have?"
Markan hesitated a bit and said.
"Six."
Sam was once again surprised. Six elemental affinities is something he hasn't seen yet. Throughout the long journey Sam has been through until this point, the person with highest elemental affinities is the five-elemental king.
Now someone with six elemental energies arrived.
"What are the elemental affinities you had?"
"Water, Lightning, Dark, earth, metal and wind."
"That is a weird set. So, apart from all these elemental affinities, you are also a warrior?"
"Yes. But the people that tried to harm me, didn't know that, so they only prepared the seal for the six elemental energies."
Sam digested all the information and started asking questions again.
"So, your six elemental energies were completely suppressed and your cultivation progress was also halted, are there any other changes?"
"My appearance changed?"
Sam didn't feel surprised anymore, just confused.
"How?"
"My face has completely changed. I don't look like this at all."
Sam frowned and extended his hand to use the observation ability on the face. He didn't extend the ability and only focused on the face itself which gave him a much more detailed view of face. When he was done with that, Sam was beyond surprised.
"Someone seemed to have surgically changed your face?"
"What do you mean?"
"They have used the face of another man and placed in on yours after skinning the outer layer and forcefully healed it. Even though, I couldn't get a detailed vision, I could still see the minute signs of rejoining at the edge with my ability.
Are you sure they just wanted to harm you? They changed your face, took off your elemental abilities and suppressed your cultivation speed and then threw you out somewhere. If you ask me, there is a possibility that they knew you being a warrior but deliberately let that ability go. Now you are a completely new person."
Markan didn't even speak and just sighed. It seems like he is also aware of the possibility. Sam just shook his head a bit and said.
"Okay continue with the symptoms. Any other changes other than the face?"
"I can absorb the elemental energy, but it doesn't reach my core at all. It is like miraculously disappearing as soon as it entered my body. I can only absorb pure spiritual energy. But whenever I want to use elemental energy, there would be no problem internally, at least at the core, I could feel the elemental energy conjuring according to my will, but when I wanted to circulate it in my body past the core, it is disappearing once again."
Sam just took a mental note of all these things. He is already numb for all kinds of surprises. There is no need to be shocked anymore.
After asking a few more questions, Sam finally said.
"Okay, first I need to check your core. You need to trust me. I know a person's spiritual core is a dangerous thing to expose to other person, particularly in your case, but just let me take a look and don't resist my attempts."
Markan nodded heavily. He knew he doesn't have a choice.
Sam placed his hand on the other party's head and used the observation ability, he directly went for the spiritual core without any delay.
When he looked at the spiritual core, Sam was really impressed by what he saw.
It just looked like any other spiritual core, but the difference is that it has six different colors turbulently moving. If one looked at it, they might misunderstand that the energies are conflicting with each other and it would have been harmful, even Sam would have thought that if he didn't use observation ability. But he can clearly see now and it didn't look like a conflict between energies at all. Rather it looked like the six elements are dancing in harmony.
But that is not the only thing that impressed Sam.
There is an even more impressive thing around that spiritual core.
There is a black dot on one side of the core and from that black dot emerged a pattern similar to a spider web which completely enveloped the whole core.
That is the seal on the core.
Sam removed his observation ability and asked Markan.
"Expend your energy. Empty your core."
Markan nodded and used all his energy to launch a sword attack at the stream. The sword ray flowed along with the stream following the path and disappeared.
The water rained around like crazy and everyone could see a large line appearing under the stream.
Markan once again sat down and Sam placed his hand again and used the observation ability to look at the core.
The glowing energy of the core clearly dimmed indicating the expended energy.
He took out a bunch of different energy liquids and asked Markan to absorb them one by one.
When Markan absorbed the neutral energy, it indeed reached the core and it slowly started filling. But when it changed to the elemental energy, the liquid in the container is disappearing but it is not entering the core at all.
Sam wanted to check the remaining body while absorption is still going on, but he knew it would be difficult to do so because he wouldn't be able to observe the seal if he spread out his observation ability too much.
So, he just focused on the core first.
"Okay now, use elemental energies. Anything is fine."
Sam said while still observing the core.
As he looked, soon the dark elemental energy moved and the seal didn't block it at all. It moved out of it and entered the meridian network but soon the energy disappeared as if it was never there.
Sam was shocked and told Markan to continue.
After some attempts, the result is still the same.
After expending all the energy, they moved to the next test.
"Try to cultivate."
Markan hesitated a bit once again, but he gritted his teeth and did so. After all, his whole meridian network is open for Sam to see, his cultivation technique could easily be leaked.
And it is not exactly a good think to leak some thing like that.
Sam focused on the core, after the energy circulated over the body and entered the core, he finally found how the suppression works.
The seal is absorbing most of the energy and the spider web is using that energy to suppress the core which absorbed the remaining energy.
This made Sam shocked and excited at the same time.
It has been a while since he saw something this profound.
After he was done with the examination he said.
"I understood how the seal works. Give me some time and I might be able to break it. But there is one more problem. I cannot understand why the elemental energy is disappearing as soon as it entered your meridian network. When that happened, your seal is not reacting at all."
Markan became nervous instantly as soon as he heard it.
"Don't be too nervous, let me break the seal first and then we will test again, if the same scenario repeats itself, we can think of a way."
"Are there any possibilities you could think of?"
"I actually didn't encounter this kind of case, but from what I could see, there might be a problem with your physical body itself. It might be something related to the meridian network or there might even be some kind of seal placed which was hidden behind this seal."
After Sam said that Markan became silent.
Sam looked at him and said.
"Don't worry. We will take it one step at a time."
With that Sam left.
He directly entered the ice divine dimension and then entered his divine dimension.
He sat in the second floor of the tower and simulated the seal as he looked at it upclose.
The seal acted like a real life form as it stuck to the core and absorbed the energy which was meant for the cultivation growth. That is what he noticed during the testing session.
He was really fascinated by such a phenomenon as he never saw something like that.
He never had any encounter with something like this and he didn't even come across anything similar in the books he read.
He could only test and experiment slowly.
