Chapter 719: Mixed Meanings (1/2)

“Mixed Dao works, huh,” Zac muttered as he looked out across the valley.

His vision had been broadened quite a bit over the past 40-odd days he had been under the tutelage of Catheya. The focus had been on skills and necromancy, but everything was interconnected when it came to cultivation. Catheya simply had a much broader vantage coming from a powerful clan in a massive empire, in addition to having a Monarch to personally guide her. The basic understanding that formed the foundation of her lessons contained as much new information as the lessons themselves.

They had touched upon the system of Daos a bit as well when talking about upgrading skills. The last time he got some sort of rundown into how Daos were interrelated was all the way back when he met Anzonil during the hunt. He had gathered a few more missives since then, but they were just things that were publicly shared in a frontier sector. They were nothing compared to the information crystals Catheya got from her master.

The biggest shock was that Chaos actually wasn’t the sole Supreme Dao.

That simple fact had completely thrown his worldview for a spin. As Zac understood it before, Creation and Oblivion were the peak Daos, with the unattainable Chaos on the top. This was the pure path he thought, with other all Daos subservient. The Dao of Chaos was definitely a top-tier Dao, but it was just one of many peaks. There were others just like it.

For example, the Dao of Axe was not part of either Life or Death it turned out. Zac had thought it a branch of Oblivion, but it was rather part of the “Truths of Conflict”-grouping along with other weapon Daos. Space and Time belonged to their own groupings as well, as did the elements.

Furthermore, his particular path leading toward Chaos wasn’t part of the System’s domain. Zac had already guessed as much from the Aetherlord’s talk about broken peaks, that reaching the absolute peak of Creation and Oblivion wasn’t possible within Heaven’s Path. Zac previously thought this created some problems for the Undead Empire, which was so heavily steeped in Death while still being part of the System. After all, Death was a subordinate of Oblivion.

But it turned out that it wasn’t as big a drawback as one could expect. For one, the elemental paths including the Dao of Ice were within Heaven’s Path, and so were the other two great heritages of the Undead Empire. Furthermore, it was also possible to infuse concepts of one Dao Group into another, where you made one the leader.

These kinds of Daos were generally called mixed-meaning Daos, and they were different from the fusions that Zac had completed until now. First of all, Dao seeds weren't true Daos of any particular branch, but rather simple concepts that could be added into pretty much any Dao. A real mixed-meaning Dao would appear if he did something like fuse his Fragment of the Bodhi and Fragment of the Coffin into one Dao Branch.

Catheya didn't say it outright, but it sounded like this was the path she was walking down. She would take her Dao of Death and Dao of Ice, and fuse the two into the ‘Branch of Deathly Ice’ or something similar, where her ice insights were the primary. There was an endless number of possible combinations, such as Branch of the Deathblade which was a common fusion of the Fragment of the Sword and various Death-attuned Daos.

For a while, Zac had been confused a bit about why people would “limit” themselves with these kinds of Daos rather than pursuing one or multiple pure paths such as himself. After all, there was a clear line from the lowest Dao Sead all the way to the Supreme Dao of Chaos when going down his path.

Certainly, reaching those heights was beyond difficult, but cultivators should have dreams, right?

But it turned out that walking a mixed-meaning path had one clear benefit. As long as one of the Dao components were covered by the System you'd be within the System's purview, which shielded you from the wrath of the original Heavens. Zac was currently walking away from Heaven’s Path with his cultivation leading toward Chaos, which put him in the crosshairs for some nasty punishments. This would be a problem that haunted him through all his breakthroughs, unless he changed his plans for his path.

For example, he had found that he was currently at a crossroads with two of his Daos. He could take the Fragment of the Bodhi either toward the Branches of Life or the Branches of Nature as things stood. The Branches of Nature were within Heaven’s Path, while Life was not. He could even change his path toward the Buddhist Sangha if he wanted.

The same was true with Coffin. He could either push it toward Death or Nature due to its features of rot and decay. There were no doubt other directions he could take the Dao Fragment as well, though he didn’t have any clear path in mind at the moment. In either case, he wasn’t technically on the Boundless Path just yet, which was why Triv was so confused as to why he had attracted tribulation while still early E-grade. It was the next step on his path that would properly place him onto the Boundless Path, for better or worse.

All this knowledge didn’t really change Zac’s plans since he still had the intention to move toward Oblivion and Creation, but it was important to remember how flexible the Grand Dao was. The Dao was not a series of narrow corridors leading toward the same exit, it was an endless sea of truth where you picked what resonated with you to form your path.

It was simply that some parts of the oceans were uncharted territory, whereas others had already been secured by those that came before. Part of the Dao had been integrated into the System from day one, fueled by the understanding of Emperor Limitless and his followers. Actually, this all tied back to the Apostates as well.

It was widely believed that each of the Apostates had mastered a Supreme Dao and brought it into the System’s purview. The Apostate of Order had obviously mastered the Dao of Order, but the others weren’t as obvious. The Beast Progenitor was believed to have added the Dao of Nature, which covered everything from beasts to plants to the seasons themselves.

The Apostate of Mercy was actually the one who perfected the Elemental Daos. Before then the Daos had still been part of the System, but it had been an incomplete heritage. The Apostate of Greed was surprisingly the one who finally brought the Dao of Space into the fold, which made the Mercantile System possible, while also letting the System perform the randomizations and perfected teleportations.

The only question mark was the First Defier. It was unclear which Dao he helped perfect, if any. His appearance was ultimately so long ago that it was impossible to really confirm anything, especially considering his reign had been extremely short-lived by all accounts. Some said ten thousand years, others a millennium. A few even claimed he reached the peak within a century.

Catheya had no idea which was the truth, but she was ultimately just a member of the young generation. There were tons of things that she didn’t know. For example, some still held to the belief that Chaos was the Original Dao, which was why it was impossible to master. Only by placing all the other peaks under the control of the System would there be a chance at grasping it without being reduced to nothingness.

Not that things like that mattered. He hadn’t even pushed all his Fragments to the Peak yet, though this excursion would hopefully remedy that.

“So these things are actually plants?” Zac asked skeptically as he looked at the large oyster fifty meters away from them.

“It’s a bit of a hybrid, I think,” Catheya shrugged. “The lines are a bit blurred on some beings. Just look at the treants. In either case, observe.”

She threw out a supreme Miasma Crystal the next moment, and then an icicle that cracked it. A large haze of Miasma spread out, and the oyster started to shake a bit as it started to rise from the ground. Only then did Zac realize that it was actually attached to a thick thorned stem, and it was this stem that was rising from the ground to get closer to the dense deathly energies.

Catheya shot a blade of ice toward the Life-Death plant the moment it had stopped moving upward, which caused the area to explode with activity. A dozen blade-like stalks sprung up from the ground as the ‘oyster’ started to descend toward the ground. However, Catheya was too quick, and with a flash of ice she had passed the sharp stalks and appeared right next to the plant, and it was cut off in one swift swipe.

The sharp stalks started to flail about erratically, exhibiting power strong enough to take out middle E-grade cultivators with their thrashing. A series of ice barriers sprung up with Catheya as the core, and she ignored the stalks as she placed her hands on the severed stem holding the oyster. A storm of deathly energies burrowed into the plant next as she infused it with her Deathly Dao.

“Help me deal with the stalks, please?” Catheya asked, and Zac started to sever them while Qirai gripped them and ripped them apart.

Soon enough the two stood in front of Catheya who kept infusing the oyster with her Dao. By this point, the oyster had actually started to absorb large amounts of Twilight Energy from the surroundings, which Zac guessed was the cue that the process of forming the pearl had begun.