Blue Phoenix

As soon as they had settled inside the ship, Huli looked at Hui Yue and her eyes were filled with worry. Hui Yue was simply too weak. He knew nothing about what it meant to fight as a God and Huli could not wait to teach him the techniques and knowledge he would need to know to survive in fights against other Gods.

"Sit down," Huli ordered, and for once her words were serious. They were not playful at all and contained none of her usual tenderness. Hearing her harsh voice, Hui Yue did not pause and sat down promptly.

Seeing this, Huli nodded her head approvingly before she sat down next to him and looked out at the vast universe that lay outside.

"As a God, your entire body is formed from Ancestral Worldpower which is fundamentally different from Wu Wei, Qi, and spiritual energy. It is an energy which is present everywhere, and the world is built from this energy. But when it comes to fighting, using Ancestral Worldpower in the same way you used Wu Wei is very crude. In the universe, there exists the dao. The dao is everywhere and nowhere; it is visible but also invisible. The dao is a path of cultivation and also a law of the universe. To fight Gods, one needs to gain insights into the daos of the universe."

“In the universe, there are thousands of daos. Everything has a dao. The daos themselves are ranked based on how fundamental they are. There are the heavenly daos: heaven, earth, fate, death, and life. Then there are the major daos split into water, fire, wind, earth, metal, darkness, and light."

"Beneath the major daos are an almost uncountable number of minor daos. For example the dao of wind. In it, there is the calm dao of the gentle breeze, the fierce dao of gale, and there is also the dao of sound and so on. There are thousands of minor daos within each major dao. All the minor daos combine to form a major dao."

"After watching you for some time I realized, you know nothing about the daos, yet you have already touched upon the daos without knowing it."

"From the moment you opened your memories you started to gain insights into the dao. You have already touched upon more than one dao path. Some of them you have even comprehended in your previous lives but although you have merged with their memories, this is something you could not understand before, and thus the memories would have been vague or unattainable."

"The daos are always around us at any moment. It is a force, or energy, which is all encompassing and you can learn to control this energy. As you comprehend the daos, you will acquire new forms of attack and new insights into the universe."

"When you went into the red realm you touched upon the dao of inferno. The Vermilion Bird had comprehended the entire major dao of fire. One of the reasons that he was so powerful was because he had comprehended a complete dao path."

"The red realm was created based entirely on the dao of inferno; a smaller dao within the dao of fire. As you traveled through the world so dense with the dao of inferno, your body assimilated to this dao. You got familiar with it, and soon your body started to learn how to control it."

"If you just live for thousands of years, you will have embarked upon thousands of daos as your body comes into contact with them just by living, but the better you are at understanding the dao, the stronger you will become."

"You have a great advantage that others do not have. You have already comprehended more than one complete dao path, though you just never realized it or used it in the correct way."

"If you had not fully comprehended the dao of inferno, you would not be able to use the full Phoenix Descent, but because you never sat down and meditated on your control over the inferno, you never realized the true strength you had gained."

"Not just this, but you have the memories of your previous life. As such you should already have known about these daos and the dao paths you have already comprehended in your previous lives, but because you merged with the memories before you became a God, the dao was simply too mysterious and enigmatic for you to comprehend and the memories got lost. As the memories got lost, it is impossible for you to regain them, but what you can do is walk the daos you have already comprehended in your previous lives."

"You refer to a few of them as the blue cloud, the red mist, the green pearl. The truth is that these kinds of energies are actually daos. The blue cloud is the dao of devouring. It focuses on devouring the energies of the universe. Any energy can be consumed by you. Even more interesting is it seems that in every life you lived you walked down the dao of devouring."

"When you were the red wolf you were an asura that devoured soul after soul, life after life, and lived in a world filled with death and despair."

"The monk devoured energies letting none escape his grasp in his world while he ensured that no person was harmed."

"While the green witch was not a God, she had already started down the path of a devourer. She devoured lifeforce from the dead and gave it to the living."

"Although we do not know about your other lives just yet, I can imagine that they too have something to do with this dao as you have already devoured energies, souls, and lifeforce."

"The devouring dao is a minor dao under the dao of darkness, but although it is a minor dao, it is as strong as the major daos when it comes to attacking. If you comprehend the complete dao of devouring, then you will be able to rip out the soul of your opponents and consume it unless they have astonishing soul defenses."

"Right now, what you need is to become strong." Huli continued, "you need to be as strong as possible so that you can survive the trip to the Netherworld, and even more so to prove your strength and catch the attention of Yanluo!"

"There is still some time before we reach the netherworld. This ship is silent and peaceful. It is only natural that you spend the time you have here training and emerging yourself in the daos that you are comprehending."

"Considering how many of your previous lives have walked the dao of devouring, I am sure that you will be able to comprehend it very quickly."

Hui Yue's brain was so busy comprehending everything he had heard that he did not notice that Huli was no longer speaking. He was reminded of the word devour and how it had filled him with a feeling of profoundness earlier.

Now he was filled with confusion. He knew which path to take; he understood that he needed to comprehend and use the daos to fight, but the difference in knowing what a dao was and fully understanding it was as far apart as the heavens and the earth.

Without delaying, Hui Yue sat down in a lotus position with his eyes closed. He started sorting through every piece of information Huli had given him.

The dao was everywhere around him. He would be able to understand the dao if he took some time to ponder upon it. Some were harder to comprehend but contained immense power, others were easier to comprehend but contained little power. Some daos required one to already have fully understood others before one could unlock the greater dao associated with them. Understanding a greater dao allowed one to truly become an unparalleled supreme expert. Only a few, including Yanluo, had managed to comprehend a heavenly dao.

Devouring was a minor dao under the major dao of darkness, whereas darkness was a major dao under the heavenly dao of death. Not many dared to venture into a dao like this, a dao which was so domineering and so evil in nature.

But Hui Yue was not your usual cultivator. When he thought about how his dao of devouring could be evil and domineering, he also understood that it could be gentle and soft.

When he thought about the blue monk, he knew that a dao was not what determined one's personality. There was the red wolf, a domineering and coldblooded asura, and the blue monk who would travel the world and do anything in his power to make everyone have a gentle life. He would bless those who he came across and use his powers for good; he never killed, and only took away the energies of those who opposed him. There was also the green witch who devoured lifeforce, but she did so from the dead who no longer needed it and gave it to those in need. She was a healer and a gentle person, but despite her personality, she walked the dao of devouring.

Thinking of this, Hui Yue understood something. There was no good or evil in this world. Everything could become good just like anything could become evil. It depended on the hands wielding power. It depended on the views of whoever was viewing the topic in question. No one was fully evil just like no one was fully good; even a devil could care for someone while an angel could resent another.

Realizing this, Hui Yue did not hesitate to let his thoughts wander and thought about devouring.

Devouring was to consume greedily, to forcefully take something and make it a part of oneself. Hui Yue felt that the more he thought about the word devour, the more complex it became. He thought of how he had absorbed souls and energies time and time again, both out of anger, to pass judgment according to his own desire, and to absorb energies to increase his strength.

Only then did it click. His desire. His desire was what determined what and when he devoured energies. Controlling the dao had to do with his desire to do so.

Although the dao and his previous energies were different, they had something in common. Both required his desire to activate them; both required his desire to move them.

Sitting with his eyes closed, his entire body started to draw in the Ancestral Worldpower from his surroundings, and as time went by this devouring force became stronger and stronger.

Hui Yue no longer visited the Divine Beast World to tell them what was going on. He did not move at all as his body was constantly absorbing and devouring the energy from the universe around him. Even though he was taking in an enormous amount of energy within this infinite galaxy, there was an unlimited amount of energy. He could keep absorbing for the rest of his life and not even make a change to the galaxy’s energy.

The first month of their travels Huli only looked at Hui Yue and kept him under her watch, but as the months turned to half a year, she no longer paid attention to the young man who was focused on the dao.

A year passed by before Hui Yue opened his blue eyes once more. Deep within them, a black whirlwind could be seen, but after his eyes opened, it soon vanished leaving behind no traces of ever having been there.

"This is the Netherworld?" Hui Yue asked curiously as he moved up to the deck where Huli was standing and looked at the bright star that was right in front of them. The star was clearly closer than any other world; it was right in front of them, and the halo of Ancestral Worldpower and lifeforce was sending ripples from the world so strong that Hui Yue could feel it blazing on his body like the scorching heat from the blue flames of Lan Feng. Bathed in this scorching heat, Hui Yue greedily absorbed the energy with a smile on his face. They had finally arrived at the Netherworld.