Questionable Interruption
On the 2nd level, the pagoda seer was able to appraise practically every sort of item. At the very least, the seer could still deduce the use, risk and effect of something, even if they had never encountered it before.
According to rumours, the 2nd level pagoda seer had been here ever since the creation of the inheritance. This meant that she was over 18,000 years old, so naturally, her experience was vast.
Perhaps, by visiting the 2nd level pagoda right now, he was just distracting himself from the miserable truth that he had realised after studying the Fiend Alchemy guide. Perhaps, he was just burning time until Zue Yin came back and told him what he already knew…
The 2nd level pagoda only looked like an ordinary pagoda on the outside, but looks could be deceiving – the inside of this building was huge. There were five floors in total, and customers like Yaan who brought in a huge quantity of items would be taken directly to the highest floor.
When Yaan stepped through the door and into the fifth floor, he found himself standing within a vast, seemingly endless, world of white. All he could see, aside from the old woman ahead of him, was an expanse of whiteness in every direction. It was disorientating and left Yaan feeling dazed for a moment, but he quickly recovered and shook his head.
Compared the red spatial vortex, just this was nothing to feel shocked about.
The old woman, whom was the spirit of the 2nd level's pagoda, turned to face Yaan calmly. She sat down as a wooden chair manifested below her. A wooden table appeared in front of her shortly after.
"So, you want everything in your possession appraised…?" She spoke slowly and drearily; the passage of time could be heard within her aged voice.
"Yes, if you could." Yaan replied politely.
He took out his spatial bag and held it above the table between himself and the old woman, but he paused before turning it upside down.
"What is the matter…?"
"I don't think this table is big enough…" Yaan laughed wryly. He had accumulated an immense horde of treasures, a single table couldn't possible hold his entire wealth.
The old lady slapped the table and suddenly, it expanded in all directions. After a few seconds, Yaan glanced around at the table, which had turned into a large ring around the two of them
"Pour the contents…"
Swoosh….
Yaan held the bag upside-down. The contents within the bag erupted out from the pouch at such a tremendous speed that it created whooshing noises, accompanied by the constant clanging of the items against one another as they fell.
After a minute passed by, Yaan shook the bag a few times in order to push out some of the larger items.
"…An impressive bag." The old woman was clearly caught off guard, not expecting that this bag would be so ridiculously vast. She had noticed at a glance that it was a world treasure, but she couldn't see through a world treasure's capacity with a simple glance.
Yaan watched in silence as the old woman began to work. She didn't consult any guides, nor did she use any instruments. Instead, she simply held up the items and looked at them briefly. Somehow, this seemed to be enough for her to understand what it was that she was seeing.
She muttered to herself under her breath as she work. Sometimes her tone was dull, but at other times, a gleam appeared in her eyes. After watching her strange method for some time, eventually, Yaan couldn't restrain his curiosity.
"How is it that you're able to do this? Is it experience, a technique, or talent?"
The old woman paused and looked up, now examining Yaan more carefully. She knew that he must have obtained some of these items from the earlier trials, and based on the sheer quantity of rewards in his possession, it was obvious that he wasn't ordinary. She smiled at him slowly shook her head.
"Did you know, that there are countless paths of cultivation?"
Yaan blinked, not expecting her to suddenly pose him this seemingly random question. Even so, he nodded, because he did indeed know this.
Orthodox Qi refining, demonic body tempering, the various demonic race Qi refining methods…these were examples of the many paths of cultivation, but Yaan knew that there must be many more that he hadn't yet been exposed to.
"No…you do not truly understand."
Yaan furrowed his brows. After a moment of thought, he said:
"Qi refiners, and demonic races beings such as fiends, ghouls and vampires...they all cultivate Qi, yet they belong to different 'paths'. And then there is body tempering. Vital energy is also a sort of energy, similar yet also different from Qi, but energy all the same…but tempering the fleshly body can also be considered its own path, and it is unrelated to energy…"
When she heard Yaan's musings, a faint smile crept onto the old woman's face. After quickly hiding her smile, she pulled out a single rolled up scroll from the pile of treasures to her side. She handed the scroll to Yaan, then stopped looking at him, returning to her task.
"This is just something that the shopkeeper gave me free after I bought a bunch of other books and guides…." Yaan muttered.
"This scroll is both worthless and invaluable. To those who seek the ultimate path, this scroll contains the truth essence of cultivation."
After speaking these mysterious words, the old woman no longer paid him any attention.
Now intrigued by the woman's words, Yaan slowly straightened out the scroll. As he unrolled the piece of parchment, he immediately realised that the paper alone made this scroll incredibly valuable - even with Yaan's strength, he would struggle to damage it! The ink used to write and draw on this piece of parchment also emanated an aura of wisdom and knowledge, as if each dot, slash and stroke contained the truth of the world.
As his gaze travelled down the scroll, Yaan's eyes widened further and further.
Strangely, despite the text being written in a language that he had never seen before in his life, Yaan instantly understood the meaning behind each of the runic characters.
Yaan's eyes trembled as he stared at these runes. His mind was thrust into turmoil, as if something had finally clicked, falling into place within his mind.
"Countless paths…" Yaan muttered to himself.
Silently, the old woman paused. She shut her eyes, listening to his voice as she sensed the fluctuations in his aura.
Oblivious to the woman's strange actions due to become engrossed in the contents of the scroll, Yaan continued to mutter to himself quietly.
"There are countless cultivation paths…and yet, at the same time, there are not. If there was a number of cultivation paths that could be easily defined, split and quantified….then the number of paths would be four…"
As the word 'four' emerged from Yaan's mouth, shock covered the old woman's face and she couldn't help but open her eyes.
"Cultivation is the path of ascension, it is the practise of transcending our limits, achieving something greater than our original state. The paths of cultivation are equivalent to the innate components of our being…body…soul…energy…consciousness…"
The scroll depicted a diagram of a single individual, an ordinary mortal human. At first, Yaan did not see anything else, but after staring at this image for a long period of time, he saw that the mortal could actually be split into separate fragments. There were four fragments, four parts - the physical body, the flow of energy, the ethereal soul, and the indistinct consciousness.
"And in the centre of it all…there is dao."
Yaan stared at the scroll in a daze. He had the feeling that he was approaching a certain understanding, and with just a bit more time, he would arrive at something truly incredible…
But for whatever reason, someone did not want him to arrive at this enlightenment.
Just as Yaan was a hair's breadth away from reaching his understanding, a certain individual appeared by his side.
"That diagram may represent general cultivation…but it does not represent you, nor does it portray your path or your personal ascension."
"Lord!" The old woman was startled, but she hurriedly clasped her hands and bowed when she saw who had arrived.
Yaan blinked, slowly coming out of his daze, before turning around and facing the red-skinned devilish spirit. The spirit's expression was stern, but when it saw Yaan's daze fade away and his expression return to normal, the devil was able to relax.
When Yaan realised that he had been deliberately interrupted during a moment of enlightenment, and by the inheritance spirit no less, he felt extremely gloomy in his heart. However, he didn't say anything, nor did he show his discontent on his face.
The old woman kept her head lowered, not daring to look up. She didn't know why the devil spirit had interrupted this child's enlightenment, but since the devil spirit acted personally, the reason must be of utmost importance.
Yaan turned back to the scroll silently, but he no longer found it as enchanting when compared to before. It did, however, make him fall into thought. Now that he was able to carefully and logically analyse the scroll, his previous enlightened state fused with his thoughts, allowing him to reach a certain understanding.
"There are four principle paths of cultivation, am I correct?" Yaan ignored the old woman for now and looked at the devil spirit as he spoke. Before the devil could say anything, Yaan added:
"And dao…how does dao tie into these four paths…and why did the creator of this inheritance choose to reject dao?"
Now, it was the devilish spirit's turn to feel shocked.
"How did you learn about master's struggle?!"
Yaan didn't react, despite the devil spirit glowing with an infernal red light as its emotional state became unstable for a moment.
"I understood it whilst I cultivating in the spatial vortex. That tunnel cuts through space itself, yet it does so by force, using an immense power of vitality. If my deduction is correct, then fragments of the dao of space are born within the vortex due to the creator's own vitality…"
Yaan didn't hide his understanding of the inheritance's creator, because the more promise he showed, the greater his chances of becoming the inheritance's true inheritor.
The devil spirit stared at him dumbfoundedly. Comprehending such a thing…was not a part of this inheritance. The inheritors were not expected to gain this insight into the creator's true nature, and the fact that Yaan had reached this understanding, was…unexpected.
"Master cultivated his body. He cultivated his body to the apex, but he refused to cultivate dao. He refused to study the principles of this world. He was obsessed with creating his own power, without a thread of reliance on the external world." The devilish spirit finally explained, looking at Yaan deeply as it spoke.
Yaan's eyes widened, but when he thought about it, he understood the creator's desire. Who wouldn't prefer for their power to be entirely their own?
"Can I just ask, what exactly is Vital Energy cultivation? Is it truly body tempering, or is it a form of energy cultivation? Or perhaps, is there no definitive distinction between the paths? I want to understand the true path forwards."
The devilish spirit sighed and slowly shook its head.
"This is explained in full in the Fiend Transformation Technique. You already understand it, but…you are unwilling to accept it. I suggest that you return to that girl, she will soon finish studying the Fiend Alchemy guide. With her confirmation, you will no longer be able to pretend that you do not understand the truth."
"The truth?" Yaan laughed, almost mockingly, as he shook his head. For the first time, he showed a trace of his discontent when he looked into the devil spirit's eyes.
"This is merely a single truth. There are far too many secrets being kept from me. As always, the strong hide everything from the weak, only revealing a small portion of the truth when it suits their own agenda."
Yaan stared at the devil with a firm gaze and an unrelenting will.
Yaan hadn't forgotten that the devil spirit interrupted his enlightenment without providing him with an y sort of explanation.
Yaan wasn't stupid. The fact that the devil spirit had stepped in showed that he was being treated differently compared to the other inheritance challengers. In fact, Yaan had a strong hunch that the devil spirit had been watching him since the moment he entered the inheritance.
Too many things were being kept from him. The feeling of others knowing something that he did not, made Yaan feel a powerful desire.
He desired to escape from the control of all these people and their schemes.
"I will become strong. Regardless of what others say, I will create my own path, and I will walk it until the end. I will uncover every lie used to deceive me, I will unveil every truth hidden from my eyes. What I cultivate is not the body, energy, soul, mind, or even dao…what I cultivate is myself."