Noah floated in the emptiness of the dimension, surrounded by darkness.
With curiosity, he opened the palm of his hand.
"Rank 2 Innate Spell: Primordial Taiji."
Above his palm appeared a circular diagram, a taiji diagram whose two halves—one white and one black—rotated slowly around a common center. The yang half, of pure white, was traced by an intricate pattern of celestial blue that wound elegantly around the small black point at its interior. In contrast, the yin half displayed an identical pattern but with dark red lines that enveloped the white point at its center.
Born from the fusion of the power of Raava and Vaatu, this spell represented the principle of absolute balance between opposing forces. Its nature was dual.
Passively, Primordial Taiji maintained perfect equilibrium between any pair of opposing energies present in Noah's body and soul. Even if one of them grew in an uncontrolled manner, the spell constantly readjusted both, preventing conflict, rejection, or corruption. Thanks to this, Noah could harbor powers that would normally destroy each other, allowing them to coexist as parts of a single whole.
When activated actively, the diagram ceased merely to balance the two forces and began to intertwine them. Instead of alternating between one power and the other or employing them simultaneously in an independent fashion, the spell fused them into a single perfectly harmonized manifestation. The result was not a simple sum of both powers, but a qualitative transformation. The strengths of each extreme compensated for the weaknesses of the other, while their properties mutually enhanced each other until they formed an attack whose nature transcended the opposition between order and chaos.
Yet the more perfect the balance between the forces employed, the greater the power released by the spell. If one of them predominated over the other, the fusion lost stability and its effect diminished proportionally.
Noah closed his hand and the diagram vanished.
"There is not much left for me to do in this world, save one last thing."
He opened a portal and appeared within the spiritual plane. He waved his hand and used his control over the spacetime of that place, causing time to begin flowing in fast-forward. Before his eyes the spiritual plane reconstructed itself at dizzying speed. The meadows of celestial-blue grass sprouted once more, the floating mountains rose again toward the starry sky, and the aurora resumed its eternal dance overhead. Yet something was different. The landscape seemed less alive than before, like an imperfect copy of the original, and its size was much smaller. The great quantity of energy that had been drained from it had left scars that could not be hidden.
Noah clapped. The space around him shifted, folding reality and depositing him before some ruins covered in tree roots. The roots coiled around columns of white stone, and luminescent moss covered the steps that led inside. Noah entered the ruins.
It was an immense library. Shelves of dark wood rose until they were lost from sight, each one crowded with books, scrolls, and rolls from every era. White-furred foxes worked diligently, arranging volumes with their muzzles and paws. Their movements were precise and coordinated, like those of an ant colony.
Suddenly a shadow fell over Noah. A giant owl with dark feathers landed before him, its talons scraping the stone floor. Its large yellow eyes scrutinized him with a mixture of distrust and fear.
"Who… who are you?"
The owl's feathers bristled. It could feel Noah's presence—an aura so dense and overwhelming that it was almost suffocating even though he was not releasing it consciously.
The name of that creature was Wan Shi Tong, the Spirit of Knowledge. An ancient spirit who had dedicated his existence to collecting knowledge and storing it in this library.
Upon seeing the appearance of the being standing before him, Wan Shi Tong began to put the pieces together.
He recalled the events that had occurred hundreds of years earlier. Suddenly and without warning, the Avatar of that era, Aang, had lost his powers. A mysterious being had captured both the spirit of order, Raava, and the spirit of chaos, Vaatu, and had vanished together with them and the Tree of Time. That incident had shaken the entire Spirit World, plunging it into a period of disorder and chaos from which it had only begun to recover decades later.
But more than sixty years afterward, during the Harmonic Convergence, the Tree of Time reappeared and absorbed nearly half the power of the Spirit World. Not only that: the Spirit World itself had been shattered into pieces, most of the weaker spirits had perished, and only those ancient spirits such as himself had managed to survive. Subsequently the survivors and the remnants of the Spirit World had been swallowed by a spatial vortex that carried them into a new dimension, separating them from the human world, where the Spirit World had barely been able to begin reforming.
And according to the information Wan Shi Tong had gathered, the being responsible for all of that possessed white hair and two wings of different colors on his back, and exuded a terrifying aura.
Exactly like the individual who now stood in his library.
"Oh, it seems I frightened you."
Noah realized this and withdrew his aura. The pressure vanished at once, and Wan Shi Tong felt he could breathe again. His feathers slowly smoothed, though his eyes remained cautious.
"Might I ask Your Excellency what you desire in my humble abode?"
"I want to know whether you have in your possession a piece of information I need," Noah said, going straight to the point.
"Information?"
"Yes. I want the meditation method of the seven chakras. As a seeker of every kind of knowledge, you have surely recorded that teaching, have you not?"
"Y-yes."
"Good. Then bring it to me."
Wan Shi Tong looked at Noah's face. There was no threat in his tone, yet neither was there any doubt. That was not a request, but an order. And he was not foolish enough to risk angering someone who had destroyed and rebuilt the Spirit World.
He gestured with a wing to one of his fox subordinates. The small spirit ran toward one of the shelves and, after searching for a while, returned with a book held between its teeth. It deposited the book at Noah's feet.
Noah picked it up and leafed through it quickly.
"Good. It appears to be authentic."
He closed the book and, without adding another word, vanished from the place.
Wan Shi Tong was left alone in the silence of his library, stupefied. He had many questions. But something told him he would not receive answers.