964 Small Insight into a Dao

Alex went in and out of the Demonic Forest, returning to the sect every 2 to 3 weeks and spending about a week cultivating.

His cultivation speed had dropped vastly, but his overall ability was growing rapidly.

In the last 2 months he had remained alone in the forest, he had trained all of his Dao to the best he could, and then some.

He also helped train Pearl to get used to his Saint realm abilities, but it didn't need much on his end. Pearl was naturally talented and it took him no time to get used to his new strength.

Whisker on the other hand was very troublesome. Despite his cultivation base, he was very easily scared by every beast Alex put him up against and more times than not simply run away.

Alex tried to get him to fight a few times before giving up entirely. If he wasn't meant to be a fighter then that was alright. He would follow him into the production profession and learn to make pills and medicinal pastes.

Aside from that, Alex also practiced his 21 Sword array technique. More specifically, he tried to improve it by adding swords to it while using various pathways in the Metal spiritual root to try and figure out just which pathway was the right one for him.

He didn't learn much, but he did understand which one of the four starting pathways the technique had to start from.

He used that knowledge to see what sort of other techniques he could use with the same pathway, whether it was the same spiritual root or different ones.

Before he knew it, he was going through his various techniques at the same time and categorizing them based on which pathway they started with as well.

Skills such as Iron Fist punch, Palm of the Sun, Metal Barrier, and every other skill that was basically a long-ranged attack used one particular pathway. Most of Alex's skills fell under this very pathway.

Cultivation skills or any that had to do with improving one's body used the 2nd pathway.

The third pathway as Alex came to understand was used by skills such Jade skin technique, or Smiting Blade. It was for skills that could be used to put Qi or Aura into something to make it stronger or give it other properties.

The Supreme Elemental Accord fell on this very pathway as well.

As for the final one, this was what the 21 Sword Array technique used to manifest. After a bit of testing, he found out that there were a few other skills that used this pathway as well.

His Earth Devour technique used this pathway, and so did his Flickering Shadows technique. His movement skills fell under this as well, and so did some aspects of the Flame Mastery Scripture.

And most importantly, this was the same pathway used by his Pill-splitting technique. So, if he wanted to change the technique so that it always worked for a single set of pills, then he needed to use this same pathway.

Alex was very excited to learn about this, but that was the furthest he went with his new understanding. There were still quite a few things he needed to understand, and until he did that, he could forget about understanding the Dao of Technique.

After training for 2 months and killing quite a few beasts, Alex had been able to gather enough blood to push him over the edge of whatever rank he was before with his Blood aura to one level higher.

Alex was super happy about it and was looking forward to making more blood beasts, which this time around would be much stronger than before.

Between fighting and cultivating, Alex didn't find much time to put into learning about the ingredients, which made him quite sad.

Alex planned on returning to the Demonic forest in a few days when someone knocked on his door. Alex walked out to find Ren Xiuyin waiting for him.

"Can I help you, sister Xiuyin?" Alex asked.

"My father is looking for you, brother Yu," the girl said. Alex nodded and went along with her to the sect master's room in the tower.

Alex entered the room and saw the sect master sitting by himself. He turned to look at Alex when he entered and smiled.

"There you are. Come, I want to talk to you about something," the sect master said and gestured for Alex to sit next to him.

Alex sat down comfortably and wondered if he had been called here for something he did.

The sect master started the conversation with some small talk, asking what he had been doing for the last couple of days, asking him how his training had been, and so on.

Only after 5 minutes of such did he finally bring up the topic he had called him here for.

"You will have to slow down your visit to the forest now though," the sect master said. "You will have to prepare yourself before we go to the Dao mountain."

"Dao mountain?" Alex gave a confused expression. Had it been that long already?

Alex thought back to the time that had passed since the last one and was quite surprised.

Indeed, 11 months had already passed, and in less than a month, the Dao mountain would open up again.

"Oh, I didn't realize it was opening so soon," Alex said. "But there should've been more time, right? Or am I forgetting a few days?"

"Oh no, you're fine. It is the Blue Spring sect's turn this year to plan the Dao mountain, so we naturally get to be the first ones to get their names in it," the sect master said.

"Ah, I see," Alex nodded. "So is that why you called me?"

"Of course," the sect master said. "Although, knowing you, you will definitely go and show off some new dao. I should have just registered your name in there and be done—"

"I'm not going," Alex said, cutting off the sect master mid-speech. "I'm sorry, but I don't have any Dao I can just learn. I've been busy learning the ones I already got after all."

"You're really not going?" the sect master asked. "Even if you think you don't have enough knowledge to gain a new Dao, you might start learning about it on your own when you stay in the smell and cultivate there."

Alex shook his head. "I'm confident that I won't learn anything new that I can't just skip a year over. I have been training recently and am getting close to understanding some new things, so I want to continue doing that for now."

"So you're really not going?" the sect master asked.

"I'm afraid not," Alex said. "But thank you for thinking about me. If I had wanted to go, I would've completely missed it this time around."

"Never mind that," the sect master said. "Well, I guess it's fine if you miss this Dao mountain opening. You'll go to the next one right?"

"Definitely," Alex said.

"Alright, you may return then. I have nothing else to say to you," the sect master said.

Alex nodded and left the room before going back to his own room.