Chapter 527: Dao of the Sword
Hearing Huli speak, Hui Yue nodded his head. It made perfect sense that he should focus on the dao of the sword. He was ready to begin his training already but looking at the ones around him a tender expression appeared on his face.
He had been gone for so long and had not spent enough time with his family, so instead, he decided to spend the rest of the day with Sha Yun, Lao, and Jo.
The group went to Muchuan City and bought some snacks as they walked the streets. Although everyone knew the name Hui Yue, not many knew what he looked like and therefore when they walked down the streets no one troubled them.
The day was passed quickly. Hui Yue asked his two children how their training was going and was in a great mood as he heard them talk about their experiences. Although they could not comprehend the daos just yet, they had touched upon the threshold of the dao when they were in the red realm. For this reason, they were capable of absorbing Ancestral Worldpower.
Since they knew that they would be entering the Formation of Life, they had given up on the idea of consuming the essence of the heavens and the earth and focused solely on cultivating Ancestral Worldpower.
As they returned to the mansion, Hui Yue sent the kids to their rooms to cultivate and took Sha Yun with him into the library.
Together the two were talking about their lives as they were now, about the dangers they might encounter, and about their everyday life as a family.
Although Sha Yun disliked Wang Ju Long at the start, she truly missed the other woman now. She told Hui Yue how the children longed for her as well, but all of them felt confident that Hui Yue would be able to resurrect her.
The night went by fast, and as Hui Yue was about to leave the office, he placed a gentle kiss on Sha Yun's forehead. This was the first time that he had kissed her, and although she was an enchantress, her face turned beet red in surprise. His action caused her heart to melt.
Being treated like this from Hui Yue meant that he truly loved her and as long as he loved her, she could live with the fact that he also loved other women as well, even if one of these women was the alluring fox-woman Huli.
Leaving the library, Hui Yue went straight to the garden where dawn was breaking as the first rays of sunlight shone over the horizon. He found a beautiful tree and sat below it so that when the sun rose, he would still be under the cover of its shadow.
As he sat down, he checked the condition of his internal energy. He saw the dragon beast and blood essence twisting and churning in a small light-red ball of energy within his body, but even when he tried to examine it, he found nothing. All he could do was watch it constantly change. Not knowing what this ball of energy in his body was made of caused Hui Yue to feel very uncomfortable.
'I can't control this energy within me,' Hui Yue said to Lan Feng, and the phoenix quickly stopped cultivating and instead focused on the ball which was pulsating within his core.
'It is a mixture of the dragon's blood and beast essence alongside the Qi that you devoured from the dragon. It seems to be merging itself together and creating a different type of energy. I don't know what it can do, but to be honest, considering how problematic it was for us to overwhelm this volatile energy, I fear that it might fight us again. Although it does not have sentience like a soul, it is still incredibly powerful and fierce.'
Pausing for a bit, Lan Feng looked at the ball more closely as his soul encircled it, observing it from every angle before he sighed.
'We cannot do anything about it now. My suggestion is that we let it be for now and when it is finished merging into this new energy we fight it. There are three options. One is that the energy will attack us and we will have to subdue this volatile and fierce energy.'
'The second option is that the energy slowly exhausts itself on its own, or stays as it is now forever. It won't bother us, and we won't bother it. That would be boring, but I guess it’s a possibility.'
'Finally, there is the option that the red orb will crack open once it has finished fusing itself into whatever kind of energy it is, and then we can control it similarly to how we control Ancestral Worldpower, and it will do something awesome. I, personally, prefer this possibility. Although I am an amazing and awesome blue phoenix, I would love to have just a little power of that dragon we fought as it was definitely no ordinary dragon.'
Hearing the options, Hui Yue also hoped it was the last one. It was definitely much better than fighting against the energy and even better than just having this light-red ball of pulsating energy hovering in his core for who knows how long.
'We will have to wait and see what happens,' Hui Yue said with a nod and looking at his core there were all the many different energies that he had control over alongside the memories of previous lives.
Nothing else happened, and after looking at everything, Hui Yue sighed as he summoned forth his Sword of the Icy Tempest.
Laying the sword in his lap and placing himself in a lotus position, Hui Yue took a deep breath and started cutting off his senses one after another.
First, he cut off his sense of sight, and then he could see nothing around him. Then he cut off his sense of hearing and descended into a world of silence. He cut off his sense of smell and soon in this black world he had descended into he started to see specks of light.
As he felt this world around him, thousands of different colored specks of light appeared around him. They all had different lengths and intensities.
Hui Yue could not feel anything else apart from the many daos surrounding him. He could not help but feel his soul expanding. The more he focused on the dao, the more his soul seemed to expand outwards, and it was as though his soul became all-encompassing; he could sense the daos that sprung forth from everything, but currently he was looking for one specific dao.
The dao he was looking for was the dao of the sword. He understood that this dao was fairly simple and he quickly found the large silvery specks of light.
His soul reached out towards this dao, and as they touched each other, Hui Yue suddenly felt a massive explosion go off in his mind. It was the dao of the sword that was exploding within his mind.
The sword, it was a simple weapon that most experts used, and most people were proficient with this weapon. Although they could not wander down the dao of the sword until they became a God, they would still gain an understanding of the weapon. As soon as they became a God ranked cultivator, they would realize that the insights they had gained were actually the dao of the sword.
Hui Yue had used a sword for years already, and he already understood the basics of this dao.
The sword was not only a piece of metal; it had a soul. To comprehend the dao of the sword one had to reach the highest pinnacle of sword arts! One had to understand the soul behind the sword, and then one would no longer need a sword to attack. They would be able to infuse all their attacks with this understanding, with swordlight.
Beginning to comprehend the dao of the sword one needed to understand exactly what a sword was and to do so one also had to forge a sword.
Hui Yue had a deep understanding of the Sword of the Icy Tempest, and because of this, his understanding of the dao of the sword was strongly influenced by this. Although he had not previously experienced the dao of the sword before, he was no beginner, and this helped his comprehension greatly.
Hui Yue was able to realize that the ultimate path for a sword was that of gaining a soul. He knew this from when he forged his Sword of the Icy Tempest as after using a forging method which required blood and divine lightning his sword gained a soul.
Since then, Hui Yue had also used the bloody swords which needed to absorb blood to stay sharp, and those swords also had a soul of their own. Because Hui Yue was lucky enough to own and be around swords with souls, he had no issue comprehending the first aspects of the dao of the sword.
Unfortunately, understanding the dao of the sword became more difficult as he had reached the soul aspect part. The start of the dao was to understand the beginning of the sword. It was to understand the metal the sword was forged from. After understanding the method of creating a sword, one needed to understand a wide array of attacks to understand the versatility of the sword. Hui Yue was fortunate to have sword attacks in all shapes and sizes from his old memories, and from Lan Feng, and this allowed him to quickly master the versatility of the sword aspect of the dao.
Understanding versatility was just one aspect. After this, one needed to understand the concept that everything was the same. The sword was versatile, but the sword was just a single weapon. It was a sharp blade meant for killing, and after understanding its versatility, one had to comprehend the simplicity of the sword.
These three things, Hui Yue, was able to comprehend fairly quickly. In a week as he sat underneath a tree in the garden he had grasped these aspects. While Hui Yue was meditating on the dao, no one interrupted him. His body's senses had been completely severed from his mind, and all he could feel was how the silver specks of light rushed into his mind while he was comprehending the dao of the sword rapidly.
After a week of focusing on the dao of the sword, Hui Yue shifted his focus for some time and managed to comprehend the first three steps of the dao of the sword. Afterwards, he started to understand and comprehend the soul of the sword.
Hui Yue had no issues understanding that each sword had a soul, but as soon as he reached the sword soul part of the dao, his comprehension speed slowed down remarkably.
Going from understanding a soul to understanding and controlling swordlight, was very difficult. The swordlight that Huli displayed was the complete dao of the sword, but what Hui Yue could produce now only used the soul of the sword when attacking. He was able to attack using his sword, and it was many times more powerful than a week ago, but, unfortunately, he was unable to fully comprehend what swordlight was.
Hui Yue was seated still for two weeks, and during the second week, he did not seem to gain much insight into swordlight.
After the full week of no advancement, Hui Yue sighed deeply and once more felt his senses return to him. He had to look for another way to gain enlightenment, and therefore he picked up the sword in his lap.
The sword was his Sword of the Icy Tempest, and when he moved it, he could feel a strength inside of him that he had never felt before. With a flick of his hand, a tree was cut in half, and with a thrust of his arm, another tree had a massive hole right through it.
Using the sword was now second nature to him, and while using the sword, his whole body was filled with energy. His Ancestral Worldpower flowed freely, and suddenly he felt as if he had merged with his sword. It felt like the two had become one and the strength of his sword surged through the heavens!