After issuing a few more challenges to stir things up, Zue Yin sought Yaan out, tracking him down easily since he publicly declared that he would accept any challenge, any time. So far he hadn’t had any takers, which was a bit depressing…

“You’re still reading? Hmph, what about cultivation, huh?” Zue Yin placed her hands on her hips and lectured him disapprovingly.

“Firstly, I am training, you just can’t see it. Secondly, this is the first time that I have actually read through the technique that I have been cultivating since I became a cultivator…of course I need to read it throughly.”

“You must have finished it by now though, right?” Zue Yin sighed scratching her head.

“Mm.” Yaan nodded. “I’m just…checking something…”

“Checking what?”

“Body cultivation. When I was given the Fiend Transformation technique, I was told nothing about tempering the physical body, only about vital and Yuan Qi cultivation.” Yaan slowly explained as he looked up. “Why do you think someone would explain only these parts of the fiend path to me? Why would they miss out parts that are even included in the partial, incomplete technique?”

Zue Yin became silent.

“I have no idea…but I would definitely want to know, if someone did that to me.”

“Mm. Well, really, I just want to know their intentions. Until then…” Yaan casually rubbed the black ring on his finger, glancing down at it and sighing. “Until then, it’s for the best that you stay asleep…” He muttered softly.

Suddenly, Yaan put down the Fiend Transformation technique and picked up another book that he had put on hold for quite a while now.

“Fiend Alchemy…now this, I’m interested in. An entire branch of alchemy unique to fiends, just how could something like that work?” Yaan spoke to himself eagerly.

“Well, I’m admittedly a bit curious too…if there are parts you don’t understand, then ask me. It will assist my alchemy progression after all.”

Unexpectedly, Zue Yin sat down besides Yaan and began reading through the Fiend Transformation technique. He looked at her in surprise, to which she smiled and stuck out her tongue.

“Two minds are better than one, right? This whole ‘fiend’ path is far too strange, like no other demonic transformation, and it…well, isn’t it multiple separate techniques?”

Yaan paused. He had also had this thought, but hoped that he’d misunderstood it.

The two began reading silently. Three hours in, Zue Yin vanished abruptly. Yaan briefly glanced to the side before he continued reading. Ten minutes later, she returned, then silently sat down and went on reading.

For the both of them, be it the 2nd or lower 3rd levels, they still could not find an opponent who could even make them break a sweat. Even Zue Yin, with her Qi refining and weak body.

She once mentioned that in actual fact, this pressure and gravity was of help to her bloodline. Apparently, the Zue Clan were a long lost branch of a subsidiary of the phoenix clan! She was only willing to reveal this thanks to their current situation of course. Either way, she had powerful fire in her blood, which seemed to only grow stronger as it was tempered by this spiritual pressure day in and day out.

A couple of hours passed by and Yaan vanished. When he took a full 20 minutes to return, Zue Yin raised an eyebrow and teased him.

“What’s wrong, encounter trouble?”

“No, just…two of my three opponents were at the 3-Star realm…the other was at the 3rd Layer Qi Palace realm.”

Zue Yin sat bolt upright, now feeling slightly alarmed.“What the hell, you’re still fighting three at a time? Did you deliberately pick body temperers?!”

Yaan nodded.

“At higher levels, we’ll definitely be forced to face demonic body cultivators. You should also get used to it now. They’re resilient, after you kill them, kill them again. Then cut their heads of, and burn the body. Then they might stay dead.”

Yaan had just battled one opponent from the upper 2nd level and 2 from the 3rd level, all together. It took him longer as he wasn’t used to fighting body temperers, but he never felt that he was in serious danger. They had merely been at the initial and early 3-Star realms, whilst Yaan, now that he had finally integrated almost all of the vortex’s total energy into his body, had reached the mid 3-Star realm!

54% vital energy, but also, his physical body was growing strong beyond reason. After reading through there Fiend Transformation, he had some entirely new thoughts on this, but he needed to study some more to be sure.

Life went on. Yaan was no alchemist, so it took him some time to study and finally understand the Fiend Alchemy guide. By the end, his face was pale and his breathing rough, so much so that even Zue Yin was stunned.

He let her read the guide, just in case he was wrong….he hoped that he was wrong…

In the mean time, Yaan took the chance to begin reading through other books. Sure, his cultivation was important, but this foundation of knowledge would pave the way for his future.

He fought more, earned more, sold more…including all but two of his residences. The pagoda on the 3rd level bought and sold real estate, and Yaan had won so many in battle, that he had 20-30 homes to sell across the 1st and 2nd levels. He accepted full payment in astral crystals.

He then returned to the 2nd level. On the 2nd level, the pagoda seer was able to appraise items, almost any and all. At the very least, they could still deduce the use, risk and effect of something, even if they had never encountered it before.

But supposedly, the seer in that pagoda had been here since the beginning. This meant that she was over 18,000 years old, her experience was vast.

After filling his spatial bag with all of the stuff he had looted from his opponents, Yaan went and had it appraised. Perhaps he was just distracting himself from the truth he had discovered in 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 was huge. It was designed with a variety of customers in mind, and customers like Yaan with absurd quantities and qualities of items, would be taken to the highest, 5th floor. From the outside, this floor looked like a ten feet wide pyramid. Within the floor was an entire micro-realm, a vast expanse of whiteness spreading for a mile in every direction.

As the old woman sat down towards the ground, a white chair materialised before her and a wooden table in front of her.

“So you want everything appraised…and you have earned substantial rewards throughout the earlier trials…?” She spoke slowly and drearily, the passage of time could be heard in her old tone.

“Yes, if you could.” Yaan bowed politely. He then held up his spatial bag, held it over the table, but then paused before pouring out the contents.

“What is the matter…?” The old decrepit woman asked calmly.

“I don’t think this table is big enough…” Yaan admitted with a forced laugh. Unexpectedly, the woman smiled brightly. She slapped the table and suddenly, it expanded in all directions, even surrounding her in a square.

“Pour the contents…”

Yaan shrugged. If she said so, then she couldn’t blame him for the mountain that was to come, right?

Swoosh….

….

….

….

Yaan held the bag upside-down, allowing everything within to fall onto the many tables, for a far too long period of time. After a minute passed by, he coughed, shaking the bag a few times and shaking out some of the larger items.

“…An impressive bag.” The woman commented dryly. Yaan could only laugh and nod.

As a chair materialised behind him, he sat down and began watching her. She didn’t consult any guides, she didn’t use any instruments. Instead, she simply looked at the items, one by one, and seemed to quickly understand what it was that she was seeing.

She muttered to herself, sometimes dully, sometimes with a gleam in her eyes. Eventually, Yaan couldn’t restrain his curiosity.

“How is it that you’re able to do this? Is it just experience, or talent?”

The old woman paused and looked up. She smiled at him softly and shook her head.

“Did you know, that there are countless paths of cultivation?”

Yaan blinked, but then nodded.

“No, you do not.”

“Uh…ok. Then what are these paths? No, if they’re countless, then that question is dumb…”

She was about to roll her eyes, but when Yaan corrected himself, the woman paused and stared at him.

“Qi masters, demonic races like ghouls and vampires...they both cultivate Qi, or energy, yet they’re different paths. But then there’s body cultivation. Although vital cultivation is also a type of energy…maybe…I think….but the fleshly body is not!”

The old woman smiled brightly. From the giant piles of junk, amongst many hundreds and thousands of items, she pulled out one rolled up scroll. She handed Yaan the scroll, then stopped looking at him, returning to her task.

“This is just something that the shopkeeper threw in for 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 of all cultivation.”

After leaving him with that dubious line, the older lady went back to organising and categorising his stuff. Of which, there were literally multiple tonnes worth.

Yaan slowly opened the scroll, not sure what to expect, what he would find within. He had some anticipation, but also felt like the only woman was probably just teasing him. What ‘truth of all cultivation’, how could some spirit living in an inheritance pagoda know something like that?!

Well, maybe she didn’t…but the scroll did…

Unrolling the scroll, Yaan realised that it was perhaps the finest quality paper he had ever held in his life. The ink itself also emanated an aura of wisdom and knowledge, as if each dot, slash and stroke contained the truth of the world.

As his eyes travelled down the scroll, Yaan’s eyes widened further and further. Strangely, this was not written in any sort of language he had ever learned, yet he inherently understood the meaning behind each and every rune and symbol.

Yaan continued to unfold the scroll, until it was now straight, the size of a double spread page.

Yaan’s eyes trembled as he gazed upon these runes, these drawings, whilst his mind was thrust into turmoil, as if something had finally clicked, like everything had now and only now, come together as one.

“Countless paths…” Yun muttered to himself.

Silently, the old woman paused. She didn’t move and nor did she look up at him, but she shut her eyes, listening to his voice and feeling his aura.

“Indeed, you could consider there being countless paths…and yet…there are not countless. If there were 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, the old woman trembled and disbelief plastered her face. She couldn’t help but slowly look up. She worried that she would distract him, but Yaan was far too entranced by the scroll to care about anything else right now.

“Cultivation is the path of ascension…for mortals, cultivation is to rise past our limits, to achieve something greater than we are. For us mortal beings, the components of cultivation are equivalent to the components of our being…body…soul…energy…consciousness…”

Upon the scroll, Yaan could clearly see the distinct splitting into four. On this scroll, there was a diagram of a single individual, a single mortal human being, with the mortal’s body, energy, soul and consciousness each being represented by a separate fragment of the diagram.

“And in the centre of it all…there is dao.”

Suddenly, the woman stood up, no longer caring about anything else. Yaan stared at the scroll in a daze, getting the feeling that he was approaching closer and closer to something, the more he looked…

“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 hurriedly clasped her hands and bowed. Yaan blinked, slowly coming out of his daze, before turning around and facing the now human sized red-skinned devilish spirit, face to face. The spirit’s expression was stern, but as he saw Yaan’s daze fade away and his expression return to normal, he relaxed, exhaling in relief.

The old woman kept her head lowered, not daring to look up. She knew not why the devil spirit interrupted this child’s enlightenment, but she was certain that the reason must be of utmost importance.

Yaan turned back to the scroll, but no longer found it as enchanting as compared to before. It did however, make him fall into thought. Now that he was able to carefully and logically analyse it, his previous enlightened state fused with his thoughts, allowing him to reach an understanding.

“There are indeed four principal paths of cultivation, aren’t there?” Yaan asked not the old lady, but the devil. The devil didn’t hesitate to nod.

“And dao…what about dao…and why….why did the creator of this inheritance choose to reject dao?”

Now it was the devilish spirit’s turn to feel shocked.

“You, how could you possibly know about master’s struggle?!”

“I understood it whilst I was in the ‘spatial vortex’. That tunnel cuts through space and realms, yet it does so by forcefully drilling vitality into a vortex…in the vortex, fragments of the spatial dao are formed from the creator’s own vitality…”

Yaan didn’t hide his understanding of this, because this was an inheritance; the more promise he showed, the greater his chances of becoming the true inheritor.

But the devil just stared at him dumbfoundedly. Comprehending such a thing…was not a part of this inheritance, nor these trials. This was just…what the hell even was this?

“Master cultivated his body. He cultivated his body to the apex, but he refused to cultivate dao. He refused to study the principals 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.

Yaan blinked. In a way, he understood. Wanting your own power, not wanting to be controlled by others, he understood it. Who wouldn’t prefer for their power to be entirely their own?

“Can I just ask, what exactly is vital cultivation? Is it body cultivation, or is it energy cultivation? Or am I being naive to make such a distinction? I just…I want to understand the true path forwards…”

The devilish spirit sighed and slowly shook its head.

“In the Fiend Transformation, this is explained simply, but for you, it is a difficult truth to digest. I suggest that you return to your friend, she will have finished reading the alchemical book within the hour. With the confirmation of another, you will no longer be able to pretend that you do not understand the truth.”

“The truth.” Yaan laughed, almost mockingly. “No. This is a truth…there are far too many secrets being kept from me, there is far too much that the strong hide from the weak, until the moment that it suits their own agenda.”

Yaan turned towards the devil with a firm gaze, unrelenting in his will.

Yaan hadn’t forgotten that this spirit had interrupted his enlightenment without so much as an explanation. He also wasn’t stupid; he was fully aware that for whatever reason, he was being special treatment. In all likelihood, this spirit had been watching him ever since he entered the 4th trial.

Too many things were being kept from him, and the feeling of others knowing something that he didn’t, made Yaan feel a powerful desire. A desire to escape the control and watch 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 sight. What I cultivate is not the body, energy, soul, the mind, or even dao…what I cultivate is myself.”

After hearing Yaan out, the devilish spirit spared him a deep glance, then vanished without a word.