- Tie clan, One Week After the Celebration -
With his back straight and his chin proudly raised, Tie Mu Bai stood atop a hill, looking down at a large structure dug deep into the earth with skepticism in his eyes. "The more things I see him do, the less I understand him."
Standing next to him is one of the clan's elders. "Then why do you still let him continue to build?"
"Because one doesn't understand a person's intentions by putting them on a leash, but rather by seeing how they soar."
Xie Ling was an investment—a giant slayer. If everything in the reports is true, then Tie clan has gained a warrior capable of hunting down other rank-5 Gu masters like cattle. What other words could you use to describe a man who slayed what once were giants in the Southern Border?
The elder at Tie Mu Bai's side held in his hands the reports from a week ago, when Xie Ling first came to the clan.
The reports held widely conclusive information using multiple Audio Photo Gu and they also aligned with the other reports coming from those in the area at the time; however, if one knows the right tricks or is friends with the right people, such information can be manipulated, although the number of people that Tie Mu Bai knew that were capable of such a thing was so small that he could count them using the fingers on his hand. Something about Xie Ling just didn't sit right with him. For some reason, within the span of a single week, he trusted Xie Ling; never in his life has he trusted someone this fast before. He didn't even trust his master when he was saved from the claws of a Crimson Spark Tiger.
- Xie Ling's Temporarily Given place of Residence, Six Days Ago -
An hour after the party subsided, Laying on a soft bed with a small amount of light coming from the sun peeking over the mountain, Xie Ling held an Emotion Influx Gu in his hands, twiddling it between his thumb and index finger.
Inside his head, he asked Qi Cou's Will. "Qi Cuo, in all your years as a practitioner of Emotion Path what would you say is the essence of it?"
"Self. It's the ability to master one's own self. With it, one can either help someone better understand themselves or remove that very self from them."
Xie Ling nodded his head. "Based on what you said, I can assume you believe that when someone allows themselves to be taken over by their own emotions, they're no longer themselves."
"No. It's only when one lets their emotions take over that they realize who their truest self is, and vice versa, by controlling someone else's emotions, you now control the other person's self."
"Most people would say that actions are who they are."
"No. One's actions are only a reflection of who they are on the inside."
"Aren't emotions based on one's own perspective of a situation?"
"No. Under that concept, alcohol wouldn't be something that changes your emotions, but rather something that changes your perspective."
"I'm fully aware of how one can influence dopamine release from taking drugs; however, pleasure and emotions are not the same thing; pleasure influences emotions but is not an emotion. Let's take alcohol as one of the most common drugs. It mostly influences emotions through gaba, dopamine, and endorphins, causing calmness and pleasure."
Qi Cuo let out a loud laugh. "While you are right that pleasure and emotions are not exactly the same, practically they are the same, as pleasure will always influence emotions, and likewise, emotions will influence how much you enjoy the pleasure. Whether it be through drugs, alcohol, pleasure, or perspective, all of them influence emotions; as such, where is the sense in separating them? Secondly, you make emotions sound like chemicals rather than what they are, which are collisions in the heart, like how thoughts collide in the mind to come to an answer."
Xie Ling raised his hand to his chin and went into deep thought: "Theoretically different, but practically the same. Self and emotion are only different in sense, but they are so intertwined that treating them as separate entities is like treating the sword master and the sword as something separate, when in truth, when a sword master reaches the state of master, practically the sword is no longer just a sword but instead an extension of the master." Realization quickly set in for Xie Ling: "In this world, everything is in one way or another changed from the theoretical to the practical: souls, thoughts, emotions, emptiness, darkness, skill..."
He suddenly rose from the bed and headed for the Whispering Forest.
- Tie clan, Whispering Forest -
Standing in the dim forest, resting his hand on the bark of a tree, Xie Ling pulled off a piece of bark before tossing it into a large pile of bark.
"And the priest shall burn them upon the altar; it is the food of the offering made by fire for a sweet aroma; all the fat is the LORD's. Leviticus 3:16" Xie Ling let out a light chuckle at the thought of quoting a book that many were willing to die for, but in a world where concepts become reality, he thought it best to quote something where the material is given to the divine.
Pulling out a rank-1 Passionate Fire Gu, he poured his primeval essence into it at a slow but steady pace.
He then pulled out a Fluctuating Spark Gu and took out a Will that he had left inside it. "Humans temper their muscles through exercise and strain; that would be Strength Path. Back on earth, the brain would be considered a muscle, but here it's a separate entity not empowered by Strength Path, but rather empowered by Wisdom Path."
"Emotion Path is collisions in the heart; Information Path and Wisdom path are collisions in the mind; how they use that information is different; my Wills have memories, thoughts, and emotions; that would imply that they are made up of all three paths; however, in this world, theory becomes practical; as such, is it possible that Wills are in a category of their own?"
Taking the Will once inside the Fluctuating Spark Gu, he placed a small amount of it into the Passionate Fire Gu.
Immediately, the Passionate Fire Gu began absorbing primeval essence differently, from steady to fluctuating and from slow to greedily absorbing primeval essence. This lasted for two seconds before a small crack appeared on the Gu, and just as suddenly, Xie Ling took the Will out of the Gu.
The Will fluctuated rapidly at first, but steadily the fluctuations began to slow down before they reached a calm flow. This wasn't anything new; with his multiple experiments on Gu worms, he's gotten this result many times. "Wills can also be made up of other paths, like Fire Path and Lightning Path; when a Will has multiple paths, it will start an internal fight within itself until one of the paths wins."
Using the Fluctuating Spark Gu, he lit the pile of bark ablaze. "One can use a Lightning Path Gu to start a fire to burn a forest, just as they can use a Fire Path Gu to burn that forest. Separate paths, but the result is the same."
He looked up from the flames to where he came from, seeing nothing but trees. "Religion takes what is physical and extends it's meaning to something beyond that. What was merely a burning sheep on a pile of logs is now a noble sacrifice to an omniscient entity that will bring prosperity to their followers for many generations."
Taking the dying Passionate Fire Gu in his hand, he threw it into the burning fire, causing this specific Gu to heal back to full health.
As the Gu's body healed and its muscles relaxed, more Will from the Fluctuating Spark Gu entered its body. Causing cracks to appear along its spine that lightly leaked blood with a dark orange color.
Carefully controlling the speed of Will entering the Passionate Fire Gu to ensure the speed at which it was breaking matched the speed it was healing.
After a minute of this, the Fluctuating Spark Gu eventually ended up empty without any Will left, but that wasn't a problem for Xie Ling. With an unnecessary snap of his fingers, he filled it back up with Will and continued the process.
He was refining a Gu worm from one of the recipes he bought from Vai Tao. The Gu he is making is called Deep Blue Fire Gu; while rare, it wasn't particularly useful; the flames were only slightly stronger than those of the Passionate Fire Gu, and they were blue. It's real strength came from it being an ingredient in another Gu recipe.
However, something about Xie Ling's refinement was different from the recipe.
"After the Passionate Fire Gu begins glowing a deep blue caused by the wild will of a Lightning Path Gu, take the Gu, feed it coal from wood with Sound Path Dao Marks inside it, and clean out the wild will from the Lightning Path Gu. If all works well, you'll have a rank-2 Deep Blue Fire Gu." Repeating the recipe aloud, he looked down at the fire as the Gu struggled to survive.
Firstly, Xie Ling didn't use the wild Will from a Lightning Path Gu; the Will he used was made out of copying the characteristics of a wild Lightning Path Gu, a man-made wild Will.
Secondly, the lone Will of a single wild Lightning Path Gu wasn't actually strong enough to damage Passionate Fire Gu. After all, if the average Will of a Lightning Path Gu was strong enough to kill a Gu worm, then refining a wild Lightning Path Gu would be impossible for anyone with an aperture of the same rank as the Gu.
After thirty minutes, the cracks along the Passionate Fire Gu changed color from a dark orange to a glowing blue, revealing the aura of a rank-2 Gu.
After one hour, the blue cracks changed to white light, revealing the aura of a rank-3 Gu.
After two hours, the white cracks changed to yellow powder, revealing the aura of a rank-4 Gu. At this point, the cracks would no longer heal from the flames.
But instead of pulling his Will back from the Gu, like a normal person, he began rapidly pouring even more Will into it.
Within one second, cracks covered its entire body.
Within two seconds, blood poured out of its body onto the fire, causing the flames to reinvigorate, creating a brutal cycle of healing and destruction.
Within three seconds, the blood ran out faster than it could be replaced.
Within four seconds, as if hanging on a small thread of hope, the Will inside the Gu wrapped around its body, holding it together.
Within five seconds, the Gu exploded, covering the area in yellow blood with a purple tint to it.
He wasn't upset, for his goal wasn't to get a rank-5 Gu; rather, what he wanted was the creation that would be leftover from the process.
A small Will floated inside the fire. Solid in mass, but weightless. A contradiction on earth, but a reality in this world.
He could faintly sense something different about this Will compared to all other Wills he's made till now; this will had attainment. It was microscopic, but it was there.
This attainment was caused by three things: the internal conflict of Will, a way point, and a connection to the Dao.
The internal conflict of Will came from the Will of the Fluctuating Spark Gu and the Will of the Passionate Fire Gu combined into an internal fight.
The way point refers to the refinement recipe; since the recipe contains the ingeniousness of someone converting their attainment into knowledge, the recipe was a catalyst for turning that knowledge back into attainment.
Lastly, the connection to the Dao refers to how all living beings possess Dao, the Passionate Fire Gu being that subject.
Looking at the amount of will, he frowned. He estimated that in order to make a Will with Master Fire Path Attainment, he would need to successfully or unsuccessfully refine over one thousand different unique Gu.
He had found a way to convert knowledge into attainment, but the cost was simply too much. "Based on Tie clan's history and trade, I estimate that if Tie clan's entire wealth was converted into recipes, I would at best only get Master Attainment in three paths."
This was only a guess on his part; naturally, he would need to run more tests to see if a recipe can grant more attainment and whether or not multiple recipes when combining the attainment would produce an additive effect or a merging effect. In one case, one plus one is two, and in the other case, one plus one is only one and a half because both refinements were similar enough to the point that the attainment gained was almost the same.
- Tie clan, Present -
Feeling eyes on him, Xie Ling tilted his head ever so slightly to see out of the corner of his eye Tie Mu Bai standing with a clan elder, both staring down at him. "It's a bit surprising that Tie Mu Bai allowed me to have property so soon within Tie clan's walls, but I guess that just goes to show the pride of a super clan. They have the confidence and power that if I were to try something, they could then just dismantle it without issue."
He was interrupted from his thoughts when a Wood Path Gu Master walked up to him. "Sir, where do you want the Whispering Trees placed?"
Without speaking, he raised his hand high into the air and faked casting a killer move before releasing thousands of little lights made of Will to different locations on the construction ground.
The Wood Path Gu Master took that as a sign to plant the trees in those spots.
Over the next few hours, multiple Gu Masters went to Xie Ling, asking him where to place materials that he had ordered. The construction was expensive. So much so that after he added up his reward for the five heads, it wasn't enough for a complete build, but that was fine; he could always just get more fake heads.
An Earth Path Gu Master was walking past with a crate of rocks to reduce Primeval Essence expenditure on making walls when Xie Ling stopped him.
"Um, yes, sir?" the Gu Master asked, worrying that he might be trouble.
Xie Ling reached his arm into the crate before pulling out a rock and inspecting it. "Nothing; keep up the good work."
- -
"What exactly is his obsession with rocks?" The elder standing next to Tie Mu Bai asked.
"I couldn't say. If I had to guess, he just likes them." Replied Tie Mu Bai.