Chapter 35 - 35: Myriad War Dao Palace
His brows twitched in pain as he looked at his right arm. The karmic value had experienced a change: 162.5 -> 162.4.
"The value lowered by 0.1?" Wei Wuyin’s eyes lit up as he recalled the Yin-Yang God Sphere. Meeting that elf man and receiving the sphere was considered a 0.1, but he had turned it into his greatest lucky chance to date. Could he do something similar here?
What type of lucky chance would it be? Spontaneous?
Just as he thought this, someone bumped into him. It was a teenager who looked anxious and wary. It was a young boy with grey eyes and black hair. He wasn’t particularly handsome, but there was a certain quality to him.
He apologized with panic and left, constantly looking back in fear.
Normally, he would ignore this. After all, he had already seen three separate incidents of people bumping into others, and he had bumped into a person before. However, because of the timing, he grew suspicious. Wei Wuyin frowned as he swept his spiritual sense towards the boy.
Tiss!
A feedback he hadn’t expected stung him. His spirit shivered.
"A spiritual sense prevention formation?" He was shocked. This was his first time coming into contact with one, and it prevented even him, at the Sixth Stage of Qi Condensation Realm, a Mortal God, from sending out his spiritual sense.
He had a far stronger spiritual sense than normal too. No wonder people bumped into each other by accident. He frowned instantly, as he looked at the boy’s back. He didn’t feel a sudden desire to follow the boy, so perhaps the lucky chance is easily presentable but still left for one to grasp?
My first 0.1 was finding an essence stone and using it to propel me to the Qi Condensation Realm. The second was receiving the Yin-Yang God Sphere for comprehension, what I gained from it was dependent on myself. Could it be a true chance where a slight decision or inability in discernment leads to failure? As he thought of this, he couldn’t be absolutely certain.
However, with two minds processing his thoughts at its fastest speed, he had already decided to follow the boy. He lowered his presence and used his keen physical senses to follow along. He also noticed three sets of footsteps following along the same path without fail. They were also following the boy.
After a while of observing, he realized the boy was injured. A faint smell of blood wafted out of his abdomen area. The three men also had a faint blood smell, but they didn’t seem to be wounded.
He wondered if the authority was watching this, and if the boy was in trouble, why didn’t he make a show of it? It would’ve saved him at least.
It was only when the boy had traveled for two hours trying to dodge their pursuit that the men were soon lost in the crowd and all the zig-zags. Besides a little cursing, they redoubled their effort to find him, but since they lost him, finding him was going to be difficult.
After another hour, the boy ensured that he wasn’t being followed. He was paranoid as he would take the narrow alleys and spontaneous turns, seeing if anyone else was following. With Wei Wuyin’s sense of smell, he could track the boy from a mile away indirectly.
So he just stayed away and kept his trail. Nightfall soon came, and the boy seemed satisfied and entered an abandoned building.
Wei Wuyin frowned. The Golden Milk City looks so prosperous and active, with every space treasured like gold, but there was an abandoned and tattered building here? This didn’t make much sense.
When the boy entered the door, he vanished.
Literally.
Wei Wuyin lost his scent trail and it was as if he had just vanished. He couldn’t even hear footsteps within the building. As he approached the building, he entered the door. However, he just passed through it like it was a normal door. Inside, there were dusty and old areas within.
"Suspicious..." Could he have been fooled and given the runaround? Thinking about it, he didn’t find it too likely.
"Think about this logically. Without your spiritual sense, what could you have missed? What could cause a person to vanish? An illusionary formation? No, it couldn’t hide from my sense of smell unless I entered it beforehand. Even if I did," as he pondered, he picked up an object and crushed it.
The objects were real. An illusory formation that could fool his senses would need to be of the highest level, established by someone who reached the Godlord at least.
He shook his head.
What else could cause one to disappear suddenly and why did he need to lose people? There has to be a way for anyone to enter, otherwise, just entering here was enough to lose any pursuers. What was the point of all that then?
"Could he have been obliterated? No, no remnant energies of any type to feel. Wait, to feel?" As he thought about this particular bit, he frowned. He had tempered his physique with qi and eleven-types of energies, so he was sensitive to them all.
The one energy he wouldn’t be sensitive to would be...
He went out and stood where he last saw the boy. His spiritual sense didn’t exit normally. Instead, he used his hand to grab the doorway and sent his spiritual sense through his body and channeled it into his fingertips. Using direct contact, he sent his spiritual sense into the doorway in much the same way as interacting with a storage ring.
A faint ripple he hadn’t noticed before formed.
Then, he appeared elsewhere.
He had entered a different location. It was like another world. In fact, as he looked at the sky, his pupils constricted to its limit in shock.
The sky looked like the sky, but there were hexagonal outlines that made it seem more like a reflection than a true sky. The sky was a dome!
He quickly calmed himself down as his two minds worked in conjunction, "A spatial gate? It was far larger than a spatial ring and could transport living creatures! Who could set something like this up?!" He looked and saw a silver pillar behind him.
That must be the spatial gateway medium. If he sent his spiritual sense inside, would he be sent back? He frowned but didn’t test it yet.
He looked around and sent out his spiritual sense. Almost immediately, he realized this place was mostly barren except for a single palace. Everything else was grassland and the sky was clearly fake.
The palace, however, was dilapidated and ancient.
"Could this be his lucky chance? I had the slightest of opportunity to grasp onto it? In fact, if I didn’t notice my karmic value drop, I wouldn’t have been suspicious. However, if I smelled his blood, noticed people following him, and had good intentions to help the young boy, I could’ve also been brought here, no?" As he pondered the scenario, he felt that the situation was to benefit the good-natured, but a piece was missing.
How many people did this fellow bump into and lost their karmic luck value because they decided to not help? How many people lost karmic luck value just from interacting with this kid?! They sinned because they kept to themselves? How hilariously ridiculous.
As he thought of this, he ruefully sighed. He wasn’t good-natured and definitely wouldn’t have helped otherwise. In fact, he would have only helped because his karmic luck value dropped.
This palace had definitely been established by an ancient and powerful figure, and it had a great opportunity within.
He walked forward until he arrived at the palace. It had ninety-nine steps. He stepped towards the first step. When he did, his vision blurred slightly and a figure emerged in his vision.
It was a short old man that had a low opacity blue body, eyes, and hair of different shades. He hovered off the steps like a ghost and had a smile on his face. Wei Wuyin started.
The blue ghost kept smiling and said in a monotone voice, "To ascend to the Myriad War Dao Palace, you must select your Dao."
It was robotic and a sharp contrast to his lively and smiling appearance.
Myriad War Dao Palace?
"My Dao?"
He heard of the Heavenly Daos, and had been in places such as the Scarlet Dao Temple. He knew that Dao meant a way of life. The Heavenly Daos supervised life’s morality, placed sin and gave luck on those it deemed worthy, having lived a past lifestyle of their liking. The Scarlet Dao Temple contained the cultivation dao, where all its qi arts, spiritual spells, cultivation methods, and information about the cultivation world was gathered.
So he knew it meant a way of life, a path to follow and it was broad and limitless.
The blue old man said, "There are three Daos to choose from: The Weapon Dao, the Mind Dao, the Material Dao."
Wei Wuyin’s eyes brightened. So archaic! He now knew what the blue old man meant.
Weapon Qi was an Ethereal Qi born from one’s self. He had never heard of Mind Qi, but there were many ways to temper the mind’s eye, and even the Haven Heart Qi Method cloned it. The Scarlet Qi was a Material Qi, birthed from the world(external) and not one’s self.
It must mean the cultivation of the weapon, mind, and world.
"Can you explain what each meant in-depth?" He asked to see if the blue old man could explain. He was just trying his luck, but shockingly it yielded fruit.
"Yes. The Weapon Dao encompasses all forms of war. The Mind Dao encompasses all forms of enlightenment. The Material Dao encompasses all things born from the celestial bodies." The old man did not specify as much as he hoped, but it answered his question.
Heart of Scarlet Qi. Heart of Elemental Qi. Heart of Aquatic Qi.
Those were three material forms of qi he was familiar with. They were all born from the world itself, essence and matter.
Heart of Battle Qi. Heart of Spear Qi. Heart of Sword Qi.
Those born from belief, memories, and experiences. They originated from the mind and spirit.
He contemplated what he should choose. Since he was striving for a Heart of Elemental Qi, the Material Dao seemed like the best choice.
However...
"I’ll choose Weapon Dao."
The blue old man nodded with his static smile and said, "Please choose amongst the three thousand Weapon Daos."
Wei Wuyin was taken aback, but not by the multitude of choices, but by the limited number of.
The Heavenly Daos had three thousand commandments.
Was three thousand the ultimate limit of a Dao?
"Saber Dao," he answered swiftly.
The blue old man nodded and vanished.
Suddenly, Wei Wuyin felt that a myriad of ghost-like sabers floated at the base of each step. He took his second step and an illusory saber turned into a ray of light and entered his glabella.
He trembled briefly.
After a few seconds, his eyes widened in disbelief and excitement! That was a trace of a saber spirit and intent! It entered his mind and spirit with the intent to slash and destroy them both, but his mind was two-fold and so was his spirit.
It barely left a scratch.
With dense and pure yin energies bolstering his mind by a decent amount while his pure yin-yang gave his spirit boundless potential by subtly influencing his soul, he didn’t fear this type of attack. He also realized that faint traces of saber intent lingered in his mind and spirit due to its failure.
He had no doubt that failing this meant death of the mind and spirit. If he chose Mind Dao, would he receive pure mind attacks? If he chose Material Dao, would he need to use his qi and body to resist?
He took a deep breath and felt relieved that he hadn’t taken either of those options. While he was confident in surpassing the Mind Dao, that would never be his choice, only Material and Weapon. He didn’t know if the Material steps scaled off cultivation or was flat for everyone.
How would he compare to ancient cultivators?
He took another deep breath and entered the third step. Two saber images entered his glabella and he trembled. His eyes grew brighter as he continued taking step after step absorbing the saber intent within.
As he reached each step, the sabers would double. By the time he reached the tenth step, he had to deal with 512 saber images.
Looking at all ninety-nine steps, he realized that the difficulty was insanely high...but he strived forward fearlessly. This was an opportunity! This gave him a chance of giving birth to an Ethereal Qi! If his spirit and mind gave birth to a saber seed, he could use his meridians to create saber essence, convert that into energy, and use it to refine his Heart of Qi or produce saber qi.
Even if he doesn’t use it to form a Heart of Saber Qi, he could still use saber energy to temper his spirit, mind, and produce saber qi!
He continued pushing forward.
By his seventy-seventh step, his spirit and mind shook. His eyes flashed as he entered a state of enlightenment. A grand saber formed in his mind’s eye and even his spirits transformed into sabers. They were valiant, ferocious, and commanded respect. They were peerless in their killing potential and had no equal!
Haughty, murderous, without limit, and extremely forceful!
It was like he had become a saber. He was the saber and the saber was him.
He hadn’t formed a seed, but the constant tempering of saber intent had allowed him to direct birth his own intent, to mimic its state.
He straightened his palm and slashed forward. The faint illusory image of a saber’s edge flashed and completely replaced his arm for a moment.
After that moment vanished, his eyes flashed with a domineeringly saber light. It was fierce and murderous! There was no elegance, only battle and slaughter! In comparison to the myriad of forms and elegance a sword possessed, it was single-minded and basic. Most sabers were similar, while swords can be wildly different in size, shape, and structure!
"So this is Saber Intent!" He marveled as he felt his spirit return to its original state, his mind’s eye changed. His arming sword had changed. It was reshaped into a saber, symmetry be damned, but it was perfect! It was as if his two minds had become perfectly connected by the saber intent.
As he released his saber intent, the saber images fell flat, all their tips pointing towards him, as if he had become their new king. They were bowing before their new king!
The seemingly countless sabers were all bowing!!
He felt an incomparably majestic feeling surge within his heart. This moment would never fade from his memories for as long as he existed.
The blue old man appeared abruptly beside him. "You have formed a Saber Dao. Completion: Seventy-Seventh Step. Initial State: None. Grade: Astral Star Talent." The robotic voice echoed out and Wei Wuyin smiled. He didn’t understand what an Astral Star Talent meant, but he felt proud.
What he didn’t know was that he had gone from no saber intent to forming it in seventy-seven steps, a feat that hadn’t been performed since the creation of the Myriad War Dao Palace. While there have been people who used less steps, they were already nearing forming an intent at step one.
"You have no need to enter The Forge. Your reward: Nascent Saber Soul."
"What?" Wei Wuyin felt his body ripple with spatial energy. He was going to be sent away? The Forge? Was that the palace? What’s a Nascent Saber Soul? Why can’t I enter? He had so many questions, but before he could get any words out, an egg the size of a walnut entered the glabella.
Then, he felt his surroundings shift.
When he blinked, he was right outside of the abandoned building.
He hastily tried to re-enter, but his spiritual sense was rejected. He stood there frozen.
"What?!"