Yugong listened to Yiye and Lingyue explaining the matters of cultivation, what to be careful about and how to do things properly.
In the end, he smiled and said "Alright, I will make sure to follow your advice.
Go out for now and wait for me to change my cultivation art, then we can go visit Elder he together."
The two nodded and went out.
When they were out, they chatted about their surprise and motivated each other to work harder.
Yugong, on the other hand, closed the formation and went back to the meditation room.
There, he made a move with his spiritual power inside the sword pendant.
Then he pressed the pendant to his forehead.
The little information before could be transferred through the air because it was very little information.
But this time he took the whole inheritance he gained: one cultivation art, three techniques and three spells.
It took longer this time.
When Yugong opened his eyes again, he sighed "The myriad intent art is really suitable for me!"
Previously, he had this guess already when the elders told him about the art in the sutra hall.
Now that he read the art, he fully understood why.
In the world of cultivation, there are many paths.
Cultivation is the core split into three – spirit, body and soul.
The common mainstream path is the spirit path that can connect the two, making it not only extremely strong but also versatile.
Further on, every dao has a different way of cultivation.
The creation daos that include things like alchemy, weapon refining, and so on.
Magic daos that rely on spell casting, spiritual power and more.
Among the many daos, there is one dao that is just as prominent as the creation daos and magic daos – the Weapon Dao!
This dao focuses on cultivating a weapon. Among the many weapons, the sword is the most pupular and renown of the weapon dao, but in fact, every weapon can be cultivated the same way in the weapon dao.
Different daos have different ways of advancing, and these advancements are outside the normal cultivation.
For example, cultivating the alchemy dao means one might create pills of the third stage even when one is at the second stage of cultivation.
This is where the term "genius" comes from – not from normal cultivation, as that is rather basic.
At one point, everyone will basically have the same normal cultivation speed if one excluded outer influence.
Rather than this, the comprehension of the daos are a better proof of talent.
These talents are split cleanly: if you can't even reach the same dao stage as your cultivation stage, then you are not talented in this area.
If you reach the same dao stage as your cultivation stage, then you can practice this dao freely.
Once your dao stage is higher than your cultivation stage, but still in the same major realm, people call it advanced talent.
In case your dao stage can cross the major realm and be a full major realm higher than your cultivation realm, you will be a genius!
As for further talents, that isn't possible.
Just like how a smart child will not be able to calculate high mathematics, a weaker cultivator can't cross over two major realms, because he simply doesn't fulfil the requirements.
There are more rules to this talent – for example, everyone has a basic talent, they just have to find it.
Or, if you have an advanced level talent for one dao, then you will have a basic talent for at least one related dao.
Yugong only read a few basics and didn't know too much.
Now the reason why he was sure the myriad intent art was special was because of the weapon dao's stages.
Like the cultivation stages, the dao stages are also from one to nine.
The weapon dao stages are:
Weapon Sensing
Weapon Harmony
Weapon Energy
Weapon Intent
This was everything Yugong could read, he guessed that higher stages weren't important to him for now.
But, he knew that there were at least five more stages ahead.
Now the issue with the myriad weapon intent art is that it doesn't take the normal path!
Instead, it cuts off sensing and harmony, so the first stage is energy.
After weapon intent, the next stage is manifestation.
Manifestation is more like a sub-stage than a real stage.
Basically, every two stages, whether cultivation or dao stages, there will be a major change of theme.
For cultivation, the first two stages focus on the lower dantian, the next two stages focus on the middle dantian, and so on.
In the weapon dao, the first two stages focus on creating a bond between the wielder and the sword.
The next two stages focusing on strengthening the weapon.
On the other hand, the Manifestation stage maximises the manifestation ability of the Weapon Intent stage.
This manifestation ability usually allows one to manifest the weapon intent, in the case of a sword, a small sword made of intent will be manifested.
Although it sounds strong, in fact, the manifestation without physical body is rather weak – it's a method of attacking weaker enemies, not equally strong or stronger.
But, the manifestation stage changes this.
The intent itself will become a physical entity, and the cultivator fights with intents rather than weapons.
When taking this cultivation art, one has to cultivate a different intent every stage of cultivation, which is extremely difficult.
Although the three stages become a freeway, as one can reach the manifestation stage extremely fast, the intents created through the cultivation arts will always be capped to the manifestation stage.
Yugong laughed once again when he thought of this "Actually, the reason why this art is so bad is because people focus on things such as swords!
In fact, there is a loophole in this art.
As long as one starts the weapon dao cultivation before cultivating this art, one will be able to cultivate the previous one before on the normal path, while cultivating the manifestation intents at the same time.
The reason why people don't look at this is because starting the dao stage before formal cultivation is extremely difficult.
Although one could theoretically cultivate normally and then switch cultivation arts, no one would do so.
Destroying the foundation is never worth it.
Since there are equally strong cultivation arts anyways, it doesn't make any sense to cultivate this.
Well… it seems I am the 0,0001% of the people that can abuse this loophole.
The number of people who really use it in the end is probably abysmal, but well, for me, this art is perfect!"