Dao

In a dark eerie forest, a young man was running in-between the towering trees.

The young man looked ordinary, with an average appearance and no outstanding feature whatsoever.

The various dangerous poisonous plants, the strange miasma and the sound of monsters' fighting didn't seem to affect the young man at all.

Xiao Huo walked through the forest according to his memory and the map that Li Yuan had given him, wanting to reach the secret place as soon as possible.

He could already imagine himself getting the various treasures of the inheritance and reaching the top of the Sun Empire.

What he didn't know was that the white paper that he had carefully put in his pocket suddenly glowed with a strange white light.

At the same time, a tiny transparent figure flew out of it and floated above the talisman.

"Is this the Dark Mirror Forest?"

Li Yuan murmured and looked around.

The talisman contained only a tiny part of his soul, but even then, he could not only communicate with Xiao Huo, but also look at his surroundings.

Of course, as a result having a part of his soul cut off, Li Yuan would have to recuperate for some time to recover.

Li Yuan didn't mind however and looked around curiously.

It was the first time he left the range of the Heaven's Secret Pavilion since he first came into this world, making even the most mundane things seem interesting to him.

Whether it is the terrain, the massive plants or the ferocious monsters, Li Yuan looked at them with some interest.

If anyone else saw his look, they would have called him a country pumpkin.

"Only after you've lost something can you see how valuable it is.", he sighed.

Time passed and in the blink of an eye, while Li Yuan was admiring the scenery, Xiao Huo had reached his destination.

It was a mountain, filled with massive trees and plants, that looked extremely ordinary in the surrounding forest.

In the Dark Mirror Forest, such environments could be found everywhere.

Xiao Huo wasn't fooled by the mountain's ordinary appearance and according to his memory, he walked straight towards its peak.

Before long, he arrived in front of a dark hole drilled on one of the sides of the mountain.

The hole was quite narrow, just enough for only one person to pass through at a time.

Xiao Huo didn't immediately enter it but took out the map and went through it one more time.

After he memorized its contents, he stepped forward and entered the hole.

Once inside, Xiao Huo found himself in a somewhat dark, narrow passage.

On the walls on both sides, tiny, dimly lit runes could be seen, slightly illuminating the passage.

The passage was very long, causing Xiao Huo to only be able to see a red light at its very end.

Above the white paper, Li Yuan didn't care about the red light and stared at the runes in the walls carefully.

Even though the information didn't mention these runes, perhaps because they were not part of the inheritance, Li Yuan's intuition told him that they were very valuable.

As cultivators increase their realm, their intuition will become more and more acute and they will be able to sense dangers, opportunities, etc..

So, most cultivators trust their intuitions.

This was even more true for Li Yuan, who practiced the Great Destiny Technique, a technique suitable for the Dao of Destiny.

With this in mind, Li Yuan ignored Xiao Huo's slow movements and stared at the runes, trying to imprint them in his memories.

He felt that these runes would be very helpful to his future cultivation journey.

As he stared at the runes on the wall, Li Yuan became immersed in them, until his vision went completely blank.

The next second, he appeared in a dark place, surrounded by various shining white stars.

Li Yuan didn't seem to notice this change and looked blankly at the white stars, trying to understand them.

Countless insights appeared in his mind and it seemed as if he had understood many things, but at the same time understood nothing.

He was engrossed in this feeling, ignoring everything around him.

Time inside this space seemed to flow at a completely different speed from outside and Li Yuan's split soul looked as if it had gone through thousands of years.

Just as Li Yuan felt that he understood something and was about to discover some great secret, space cracks appeared around him, filling this entire dark place.

"Crack...crack..."

Before he realized the great secret, the dark place shattered into countless pieces.

When he opened his eyes again, he had returned to reality, with a dimly illuminated passage behind him.

His eyes opened again and flashed with a bit of reluctance.

'Is this Dao?', he murmured inwardly and thought about everything that happened.

Even though his cultivation was only in the Qi Condensing Realm, Li Yuan had the high-level Great Destiny Technique and had read the many cultivation techniques that Xiao Huo and others had given him.

His knowledge about cultivation was way beyond his realm.

He recalled everything and realized that these runes should be traces of Dao.

Before, Li Yuan didn't understand what Dao meant, but now, after having this experience, he understood.

A Dao is essentially one of the countless laws according to which the world operates.

Understanding a Dao basically means understanding a certain law.

For example, Li Yuan's technique, the Great Destiny Technique allowed cultivators to understand the Dao of Destiny, equivalent to the Law of Destiny.

Thinking of this, Li Yuan shook his head and suppressed the reluctance that had just arisen in his heart.

Although he felt that he was close to understanding something, Li Yuan knew that this was just an unfounded feeling.

Let alone him, even Great Saints would be unable to understand a Dao.

Glancing at the passage behind, Li Yuan forced himself to calm down.

Then, his attention turned back to Xiao Huo's current situation.

At the moment, Xiao Huo was standing in front of a gate that shone with a eerie red light.

The gate was huge, as if it had been made for giants, enough for even the tallest humans alive to pass through easily.

Despite its weirdness, the gate exuded an extremely sacred aura, as if it could drive away darkness, ominousness and all evil things.

Let alone Li Yuan who had been an otaku since he came to this world, even Xiao Huo, who frequently visited various inheritance places and had seen many things was stunned by this sight, even though he had already seen it once before.

Last time he came here, it was by seeing this gate that he knew that this was an inheritance place.

Thinking of the instructions on the map, Xiao Huo stepped closer carefully.

The closer he got, the more obvious the gate's sacred aura became.

Finally, he stopped right in front of it and stretched his hands, putting them on the gate.

With a thought of his mind, his aura surged and his whole body's strength poured into his arms, pushing the red gate open.

The gate made a creaking sound and as Xiao Huo pushed, it slowly opened, revealing the darkness inside it.

Before Xiao Huo and Li Yuan could react, the darkness gushed out of the gate, engulfing the two of them.